The Plunge

Related poetry:

1. A Teamster's Farewell Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary GOOD-BY now to the streets and the clash of wheels and Locking hubs, The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs. The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy Haunches, Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle, The smash of the iron hoof on […]...
2. Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
3. What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space What birds plunge through is not the intimate space, In which you see all Forms intensified. (In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself, Would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and translates Things: To become the very essence of a tree, Throw inner space around it, from that space That lives in […]...
4. Lebennin Silver flow the streams from Colos to Erui In the green fields of Lebennin! Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea The white lilies sway, And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin In the green fields of Lebennin, In the wind from the Sea!...
5. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 01: The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea. The walls and towers are warmed and gleam. Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves. The city stirs like one that is half in dream. And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows, Where one by one we wake and rise. We […]...
6. Confession for all my country poses My cells belong to a town Grass is symbol-deep in me But brick dips deeper down Mountains knock me sideways A moor chills my bones A field of wheat exults me I’m awed by ancient stones But lines of dowdy shop-fronts Mean unpolished streets Sever the green man in me […]...
7. Sonnet 20 XX Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh […]...
8. To Mr. Lawrence Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius reinspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire […]...
9. Sonnet 17 XVII Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son, Now that the Fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help wast a sullen day; what may be Won From the hard Season gaining: time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth; and cloth in fresh […]...
10. The house where I was born (02) I woke up, it was the house where I was born. It was raining softly in all the rooms, I went from one to another, looking at The water that shone on the mirrors Piled up everywhere, some broken or even Pushed between the furniture and the walls. It was from these reflections that sometimes […]...
11. The Noon Hour SHE sits in the dust at the walls And makes cigars, Bending at the bench With fingers wage-anxious, Changing her sweat for the day’s pay. Now the noon hour has come, And she leans with her bare arms On the window-sill over the river, Leans and feels at her throat Cool-moving things out of the […]...
12. The Mower's Song My Mind was once the true survey Of all these Medows fresh and gay; And in the greenness of the Grass Did see its Hopes as in a Glass; When Juliana came, and she What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me. But these, while I with Sorrow pine, Grew more […]...
13. Sestina I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, To the short day and to the whitening hills, When the colour is all lost from the grass, Though my desire will not lose its green, So rooted is it in this hardest stone, That speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And […]...
14. Town and Country Here, where love’s stuff is body, arm and side Are stabbing-sweet ‘gainst chair and lamp and wall. In every touch more intimate meanings hide; And flaming brains are the white heart of all. Here, million pulses to one centre beat: Closed in by men’s vast friendliness, alone, Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet […]...
15. My Strawberry O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause To reckon thee. I ask what cause Set free so much of red from heats At core of earth, and mixed such sweets With sour and spice: what was that strength Which out of darkness, length by length, Spun all thy shining thread of vine, Netting the fields […]...
16. Coucy The rooks aclamor when one enters here Startle the empty towers far overhead; Through gaping walls the summer fields appear, Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red. The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown The gate where banners blazoned with a cross Rolled forth to toss round […]...
17. Grass The living room is overgrown with grass. It has Come up around the furniture. It stretches through The dining room, past the swinging door into the Kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the Walls. . . There’s treasure in grass, things dropped or put There; a stick of rust that was once a […]...
18. After Many Days I WONDER if with you, as it is with me, If under your slipping words, that easily flow About you as a garment, easily, Your violent heart beats to and fro! Long have I waited, never once confessed, Even to myself, how bitter the separation; Now, being come again, how make the best Reparation? If […]...
19. Baltic Fog Notes (Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon. Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky, A night harbor, blue dusk […]...
20. Streets Too Old I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years. How old, how old, how old, we are:-the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old […]...
21. Nicotine Hymn to the Dope Goddess of the murmuring courts, Nicotine, my Nicotine, Houri of the mystic sports, Trailing-robed in gabardine, Gliding where the breath hath glided, Hidden sylph of filmy veils, Truth behind the dream is veiléd E’en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding, Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing Purple, grey, and shadow […]...
22. Cape Breton Out on the high “bird islands,” Ciboux and Hertford, The razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand With their backs to the mainland In solemn, uneven lines along the cliff’s brown grass-frayed edge, While the few sheep pastured there go “Baaa, baaa.” (Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede And fall over into the sea […]...
23. While the Fates Sleep Come, let us to the sunways of the west, Hasten, while crystal dews the rose-cups fill, Let us dream dreams again in our blithe quest O’er whispering wold and hill. Castles of air yon wimpling valleys keep Where milk-white mist steals from the purpling sea, They shall be ours in the moon’s wizardry, While the […]...
24. Charms She walks as lightly as the fly Skates on the water in July. To hear her moving petticoat For me is music’s highest note. Stones are not heard, when her feet pass, No more than tumps of moss or grass. When she sits still, she’s like the flower To be a butterfly next hour. The […]...
25. London I wander thro’ each charter’d street. Near where the charter’d Thames does flow A mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man. In every Infants cry of fear. In every voice; in every ban. The mind-forg’d manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackening […]...
26. To His Two Children In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. In East Luh where my family stay, I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours. I cannot be back in time for the spring doings, Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. The south […]...
27. The Tree of Scarlet Berries The rain gullies the garden paths And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades. A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist. Even so, I can see that it has red berries, A scarlet fruit, Filmed over with moisture. It seems as though the rain, Dripping from it, Should be […]...
28. The First Dream The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight And as I lean against the door of sleep I begin to think about the first person to dream, How quiet he must have seemed the next morning As the others stood around the fire Draped in the skins of animals Talking to each other only in […]...
29. Nothing To Be Said For nations vague as weed, For nomads among stones, Small-statured cross-faced tribes And cobble-close families In mill-towns on dark mornings Life is slow dying. So are their separate ways Of building, benediction, Measuring love and money Ways of slow dying. The day spent hunting pig Or holding a garden-party, Hours giving evidence Or birth, advance […]...
30. A Winter's Tale Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow, And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge; Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge. I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky; But she’s waiting, […]...
31. From One Who Stays How empty seems the town now you are gone! A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls Eery, distorted, as it long had shone On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone. The whir of motors, stricken through with calls Of playing boys, floats up at intervals; But […]...
32. Anahorish My “place of clear water,” The first hill in the world Where springs washed into The shiny grass And darkened cobbles In the bed of the lane. Anahorish, soft gradient Of consonant, vowel-meadow, After-image of lamps Swung through the yards On winter evenings. With pails and barrows Those mound-dwellers Go waist-deep in mist To break […]...
33. Reflections of caernarvon i I shall die yearning A hand Reaching out to A face that isn’t there A face Seeking a hand A stone Leaving its mountain- Wall in a wind Anxious to be a bird A bird Crying to be a wall Ii North wales The goat pisses The hawk hangs The mountain leans forward out […]...
34. On A Picture Screen Whence these twelve peaks of Wu-shan! Have they flown into the gorgeous screen From heaven’s one corner? Ah, those lonely pines murmuring in the wind! Those palaces of Yang-tai, hovering yonder- Oh, the melancholy of it!- Where the jeweled couch of the king With brocade covers is desolate,- His elfin maid voluptuously fair Still haunting […]...
35. Ireland With Emily Bells are booming down the bohreens, White the mist along the grass, Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens Move between the fields to Mass. Twisted trees of small green apple Guard the decent whitewashed chapel, Gilded gates and doorway grained, Pointed windows richly stained With many-coloured Munich glass. See the black-shawled congregations On the broidered […]...
36. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain. . . It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls Down golden-windowed walls. We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while […]...
37. To One Coming North At first you’ll joy to see the playful snow, Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, Or waters of the hills that softly flow Gracefully falling down a shining stair. And when the fields and streets are covered white And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, Or underneath a spell of heat and light […]...
38. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 03: Interlude The warm sun dreams in the dust, the warm sun falls On bright red roofs and walls; The trees in the park exhale a ghost of rain; We go from door to door in the streets again, Talking, laughing, dreaming, turning our faces, Recalling other times and places. . . We crowd, not knowing why, […]...
39. O Why Do You Walk (a Parody) O why do you walk through the fields in boots, Missing so much and so much? O fat white woman whom nobody shoots, Why do you walk through the fields in boots, When the grass is soft as the breast of coots And shivering-sweet to the touch?...
40. Forward I’ve tinkered at my bits of rhymes In weary, woeful, waiting times; In doleful hours of battle-din, Ere yet they brought the wounded in; Through vigils of the fateful night, In lousy barns by candle-light; In dug-outs, sagging and aflood, On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood; By ragged grove, by ruined road, By hearths […]...