Blackberry Eating

Related poetry:

1. Blackberry-Picking Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and […]...
2. The Lane Some day, I think, there will be people enough In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight Broad lane where now September hides herself In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse. To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway Of […]...
3. Eating Poetry Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad And she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs […]...
4. On The Eating Of Mice A woman prepared a mouse for her husband’s dinner, Roasting it with a blueberry in its mouth. At table he uses a dentist’s pick and a surgeon’s scalpel, Bending over the tiny roastling with a jeweler’s loupe. . . Twenty years of this: curried mouse, garlic and butter Mouse, mouse sauteed in its own fur, […]...
5. The Universal Language Of Love There is a universal language that is spoken by all – Both on earth and in the heavens above. It’s a beautiful language that flows from the heart And it’s universal name is love. The language of love uses thoughts and feelings To express what it wants to say, It’s the language that God uses […]...
6. Eating and Drinking chapter VI Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, “Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.” And he said: Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light. But since you must kill to eat, and rob the young of its mother’s […]...
7. Coal I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How sound comes into a words, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open like a diamond On glass windows Singing out within the crash of […]...
8. For The Foxes don’t feel sorry for me. I am a competent, Satisfied human being. Be sorry for the others Who Fidget Complain Who Constantly Rearrange their Lives Like Furniture. Juggling mates And Attitudes Their Confusion is Constant And it will Touch Whoever they Deal with. Beware of them: One of their Key words is “love.” And beware […]...
9. Psalm Three On the day when my words Were earth… I was a friend to stalks of wheat. On the day when my words Were wrath I was a friend to chains. On the day when my words Were stones I was a friend to streams. On the day when my words Were a rebellion I was […]...
10. Reapers Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done, And start their silent swinging, one by one. Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. […]...
11. August When the blackberries hang Swollen in the woods, in the brambles Nobody owns, I spend All day among the high Branches, reaching My ripped arms, thinking Of nothing, cramming The black honey of summer Into my mouth; all day my body Accepts what it is. In the dark Creeks that run by there is This […]...
12. At the Window I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was A time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I Have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had […]...
13. Tz'u No. 1 To the tune “Courtyard Filled with Fragrance” Fragrant grass beside the pond Green shade over the hall A clear cold comes through The window curtains Crescent moon beyond the golden bars And a flute sounds As if someone were coming But alone on my mat with a cup Gazing sadly into nothingness I want to […]...
14. Solidarity Song Peoples of the world, together Join to serve the common cause! So it feeds us all for ever See to it that it’s now yours. Forward, without forgetting Where our strength can be seen now to be! When starving or when eating Forward, not forgetting Our solidarity! Black or white or brown or yellow Leave […]...
15. The Return All afternoon my father drove the country roads Between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself, Though he would grab any unfamiliar side road And follow where it led past fields of tall sweet corn In August or in winter those of frozen sheaves. […]...
16. Summer In The Country One shows me how to lie down in a field of clover. Another how to slip my hand under her Sunday skirt. Another how to kiss with a mouth full of blackberries. Another how to catch fireflies in jar after dark. Here is a stable with a single black mare And the proof of God’s […]...
17. Home Fires IN a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street… faces… coffee spots… children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks. They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts, Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow. Here the stranger wonders […]...
18. Souvenir Just a rainy day or two In a windy tower, That was all I had of you- Saving half an hour. Marred by greeting passing groups In a cinder walk, Near some naked blackberry hoops Dim with purple chalk. I remember three or four Things you said in spite, And an ugly coat you wore, […]...
19. Because my Brook is fluent Because my Brook is fluent I know ’tis dry Because my Brook is silent It is the Sea And startled at its rising I try to flee To where the Strong assure me Is “no more Sea”...
20. Dream Song 48: He yelled at me in Greek He yelled at me in Greek, My God! —It’s not his language And I’m no good at—his Aramaic, Was—I am a monoglot of English (American version) and, say pieces from A baker’s dozen others: where’s the bread? But rising in the Second Gospel, pal: The seed goes down, god dies, A rising happens, Some crust, […]...
21. September Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days Gleaned by the year in autumn’s harvest ways, With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, Some crimson poppy of a late delight Atoning in its splendor for the flight Of summer blooms and joys­ This is September....
22. See they come, post haste from Thanet See they come, post haste from Thanet, Lovely couple, side by side; They’ve left behind them Richard Kennet With the Parents of the Bride! Canterbury they have passed through; Next succeeded Stamford-bridge; Chilham village they came fast through; Now they’ve mounted yonder ridge. Down the hill they’re swift proceeding, Now they skirt the Park around; […]...
23. The Gift “He gave her class. She gave him sex.” Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers He gave her money. She gave him head. He gave her tips on “aggressive growth” mutual funds. She gave him a red rose and a little statue of eros. He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis […]...
24. When I was a Bird I climbed up the karaka tree Into a nest all made of leaves But soft as feathers. I made up a song that went on singing all by itself And hadn’t any words, but got sad at the end. There were daisies in the grass under the tree. I said just to try them: “I’ll […]...
25. September 1 The golden-rod is yellow; 2 The corn is turning brown; 3 The trees in apple orchards 4 With fruit are bending down. 5 The gentian’s bluest fringes 6 Are curling in the sun; 7 In dusty pods the milkweed 8 Its hidden silk has spun. 9 The sedges flaunt their harvest, 10 In every […]...
26. Fare Well If I die, Leave the balcony open. The little boy is eating oranges. (From my balcony I can see him.) The reaper is harvesting the wheat. (From my balcony I can hear him.) If I die, Leave the balcony open!...
27. November Cotton Flower Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold, Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old, And cotton, scarce as any southern snow, Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow, Failed in its function as the autumn rake; Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take All water from the streams; dead birds were found In wells […]...
28. Milano wandering around milan my father I know that (bred in the bone) i’m you I walk and think – my legs roll onwards I take in the atmosphere but not the view But now you’re dead – and i’ve been silent For the past five months since you were burned A numbness that called itself […]...
29. You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop You ask why sometimes I say stop Why sometimes I cry no While I shake with pleasure. What do I fear, you ask, Why don’t I always want to come And come again to that molten Deep sea center where the nerves Fuse open and the brain And body shine with a black wordless light […]...
30. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 5. Sometimes I Hold it half a Sin I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap […]...
31. Late, Late, So Late Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for that we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light: so late! […]...
32. The Summer Day Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean The one who has flung herself out of the grass, The one who is eating sugar out of my hand, Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down Who is […]...
33. What's the Railroad to Me What’s the railroad to me? I never go to see Where it ends. It fills a few hollows, And makes banks for the swallows, It sets the sand a-blowing, And the blackberries a-growing....
34. On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H So here the great man stood, Fermenting malice and poems We have to be nearly as fierce Against ourselves as he Not to misread by their disguises. Blue in dawn haze, the tamarack Across the road is new since Frost And thirty feet tall already. No doubt he liked to scorch off Morning fog by […]...
35. Clouds 1 Dawn. First light tearing At the rough tongues of the zinnias, At the leaves of the just born. Today it will rain. On the road Black cars are abandoned, but the clouds Ride above, their wisdom intact. They are predictions. They never matter. The jet fighters lift above the flat roofs, Black arrowheads trailing […]...
36. The Rest The rest of us watch from beyond the fence As the woman moves with her jagged stride Into her pain as if into a slow race. We see her body in motion But hear no sounds, or we hear Sounds but no language; or we know It is not a language we know Yet. We […]...
37. For A Thirteenth Birthday You have read War and Peace. Now here is Sister Carrie, Not up to Tolstoy; still It will second the real world: Predictable planes and levels, Pavement that holds you, Stairs that lift you, Ice that trips you, Nights that begin after sunset, Four lunar phases, A finite house. I give you Dreiser Although (or […]...
38. Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard His beak could open a bottle, And his eyes – when he lifts their soft lids – Go on reading something Just beyond your shoulder – Blake, maybe, Or the Book of Revelation. Never mind that he eats only The black-smocked crickets, And the dragonflies if they happen To be out late over the ponds, […]...
39. The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, And frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words Get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according To which nation. French has no word for home, And we have no word […]...
40. Late, O Miller LATE, O miller, The birds are silent, The darkness falls. In the house the lights are lighted. See, in the valley they twinkle, The lights of home. Late, O lovers, The night is at hand; Silence and darkness Clothe the land....