BOIREANN

Related poetry:

1. Myself What, younger, felt Was possible, now knows Is not – but still Not chanted enough – Walked by the sea, Unchanged in memory – Evening, as clouds On the far-off rim Of water float, Pictures of time, Smoke, faintness – Still the dream. I want, if older, Still to know Why, human, men And women […]...
2. What Fields Are As Fragrant As Your Hands? What fields are as fragrant as your hands? You feel how external fragrance stands Upon your stronger resistance. Stars stand in images above. Give me your mouth to soften, love; Ah, your hair is all in idleness. See, I want to surround you with yourself And the faded expectation lift From the edges of your […]...
3. Clouds Above The Sea My father and mother, two tiny figures, Side by side, facing the clouds that move In from the Atlantic. August, ’33. The whole weight of the rain to come, the weight Of all that has fallen on their houses Gathers for a last onslaught, and yet they Hold, side by side, in the eye of […]...
4. Song of Karen, the Dancing Child (O little white feet of mine) Out in the storm and the rain you fly; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Can the children hear my cry? (O little white feet of mine) Never a child in the whole great town; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Lights out and the blinds pulled […]...
5. Dartside, 1849 I cannot tell what you say green leaves, I cannot tell what you say : But I know that there is a spirit in you, And a word in you this day. I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks, I cannot tell what you say : But I know that there is a spirit […]...
6. Three Violins THREE violins are trying their hearts. The piece is MacDowell’s Wild Rose. And the time of the wild rose And the leaves of the wild rose And the dew-shot eyes of the wild rose Sing in the air over three violins. Somebody like you was in the heart of MacDowell. Somebody like you is in […]...
7. 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....
8. The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos The wide Pacific waters And the Atlantic meet. With cries of joy they mingle, In tides of love they greet. Above the drowned ages A wind of wooing blows: – The red rose woos the lotos, The lotos woos the rose. . . The lotos conquered Egypt. The rose was loved in Rome. Great India […]...
9. A Lover To His Mistress Ile tell you how the Rose did first grow redde, And whence the Lilly whitenesse borrowed: You blusht, and then the Rose with redde was dight: The Lillies kissde your hands, and so came white: Before that time each Rose had but a stayne, The Lilly nought but palenesse did containe: You have the native […]...
10. Omens When daylight was yet sleeping under the pillow, And stars in the heavens still lingering shone, Young Kitty, all blushing, rose up from her pillow, The last time she e’er was to press it alone. For the youth whom she treasured her heart and her soul in Had promised to link the last tie before […]...
11. Love and Friendship Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most contantly? The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring, Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again And who wil call the wild-briar fair? Then scorn the silly […]...
12. IMPOSSIBILITIES: TO HIS FRIEND My faithful friend, if you can see The fruit to grow up, or the tree; If you can see the colour come Into the blushing pear or plum; If you can see the water grow To cakes of ice, or flakes of snow; If you can see that drop of rain Lost in the wild […]...
13. Sub Mare It is, and is not, I am sane enough, Since you have come this place has hovered round me, This fabrication built of autumn roses, Then there’s a goldish colour, different. And one gropes in these things as delicate Algæ reach up and out, beneath Pale slow green surgings of the underwave, ‘Mid these things […]...
14. My Boy Jack 1914-18 Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?: “ Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh, dear, […]...
15. Age-old debate when the old man said I know everything The young girl replied What is everything When the old man said Wisdom is mine The young girl replied What is wisdom When the old man said I am privy to all life’s secrets The young girl replied What is privy When the old man said You […]...
16. Words Out of us all That make rhymes Will you choose Sometimes – As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through – Choose me, You English words? I know you: You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and […]...
17. Spring Wind in London I Blow across the stagnant world, I blow across the sea, For me, the sailor’s flag unfurled, For me, the uprooted tree. My challenge to the world is hurled; The world must bow to me. I drive the clouds across the sky, I huddle them like sheep; Merciless shepherd-dog am I And shepherd-watch I keep. […]...
18. 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 […]...
19. Danny Deever “What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade. “To turn you out, to turn you out”, the Colour-Sergeant said. “What makes you look so white, so white?” said Files-on-Parade. “I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch”, the Colour-Sergeant said. For they’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play, The regiment’s in ‘ollow […]...
20. Seaweed When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landword in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed from the rocks: From Bermuda’s reefs; from edges Of sunken ledges, In some far-off, bright Azore; From Bahama, and the dashing Silver-flashing Surges of San Salvador; From the tumbling surf, that buries […]...
21. The Enkindled Spring This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze […]...
22. Nest Eggs Birds all the summer day Flutter and quarrel Here in the arbour-like Tent of the laurel. Here in the fork The brown nest is seated; For little blue eggs The mother keeps heated. While we stand watching her Staring like gabies, Safe in each egg are the Bird’s little babies. Soon the frail eggs they […]...
23. O-Jazz-O Where the string At Some point, Was umbilical jazz, Or perhaps, In memory, A long lost bloody cross, Buried in some steel cavalry. In what time For whom do we bleed, Lost notes, from some jazzman’s Broken needle. Musical tears from lost Eyes. Broken drumsticks, why? Pitter patter, boom dropping Bombs in the middle Of […]...
24. The Song Of Empedocles And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines! Have you, too, survived yourselves? Are you, too, what I fear to become? You, too, once lived; You too moved joyfully Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by Gods, In a mightier […]...
25. Mind The slow overture of rain, Each drop breaking Without breaking into The next, describes The unrelenting, syncopated Mind. Not unlike The hummingbirds Imagining their wings To be their heart, and swallows Believing the horizon To be a line they lift And drop. What is it They cast for? The poplars, Advancing or retreating, Lose their […]...
26. Dream Song 129: Thin as a sheet his mother came to him Thin as a sheet his mother came to him During the screaming evenings after he did it, Touched F. J.’s dead hand. The parlour was dark, he was the first pall-bearer in, He gave himself a dare & then did it, The thing was quite unplanned, Riots for Henry the unstructured dead, His older playmate […]...
27. INFAMOUS POET I never did fit in – at six or sixty one – I stand out in a crowd, too young or old And gather pity like a shroud. “Is that real silk?” A teenager inquired. “As real as Oxfam ever is For one pound fifty.” The vast ballroom was growing misty And blurred with alcohol […]...
28. Tattoo The light is like a spider. It crawls over the water. It crawls over the edges of the snow. It crawls under your eyelids And spreads its webs there Its two webs. The webs of your eyes Are fastened To the flesh and bones of you As to rafters or grass. There are filaments of […]...
29. The Lost Ingredient Almost yesterday, those gentle ladies stole To their baths in Atlantic Cuty, for the lost Rites of the first sea of the first salt Running from a faucet. I have heard they sat For hours in briny tubs, patting hotel towels Sweetly over shivered skin, smelling the stale Harbor of a lost ocean, praying at […]...
30. There was a Young Lady Whose Eyes There was a young lady whose eyes, Were unique as to colour and size; When she opened them wide, People all turned aside, And started away in surprise....
31. Monet Refuses The Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes Around the streetlights in Paris And what I see is an aberration Caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life To arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, To soften and blur and finally banish The edges you […]...
32. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
33. The Pity Of Love A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love: The folk who are buying and selling, The clouds on their journey above, The cold wet winds ever blowing, And the shadowy hazel grove Where mouse-grey waters are flowing, Threaten the head that I love....
34. LIFE IS THE BODY'S LIGHT Life is the body’s light; which, once declining, Those crimson clouds i’ th’ cheeks and lips leave shining:- Those counter-changed tabbies in the air, The sun once set, all of one colour are: So, when death comes, fresh tinctures lose their place, And dismal darkness then doth smutch the face....
35. Far Away and Long Ago Far away and long ago, a young lady who had lost her way found herself wandering in a wood and met a young carpenter working on a cupboard by a simple cabin that he’d built himself, to whom after some hesitation she stroke a conversation: “Excuse me, Sir, but I have lost my way around. […]...
36. Clouds Gathering It seemed the kind of life we wanted. Wild strawberries and cream in the morning. Sunlight in every room. The two of us walking by the sea naked. Some evenings, however, we found ourselves Unsure of what comes next. Like tragic actors in a theater on fire, With birds circling over our heads, The dark […]...
37. Reading the Obituaries Now the Barbaras have begun to die, Trailing their older sisters to the grave, The Helens, Margies, Nans-who said goodbye Just days ago, it seems, taking their leave A step or two behind the hooded girls Who bloomed and withered with the century- The Dorotheas, Eleanors and Pearls Now swaying on the edge of memory. […]...
38. Eve Look how she stands, high on the steep facade Of the cathedral, near the window-rose, Simply, holding in her hand the apple, Judged for all time as the guiltless-guilty For the growing fruit her body held Which she gave birth to after parting from The circle of eternities. She left To face the strange New […]...
39. In Springtime My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach, And the koil sings above it, in the siris by the well, From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel’s chattering speech, And the blue jay screams and flutters where the cheery sat-bhai dwell. But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the koil’s note is […]...
40. Equanimity october stops the pretence That somehow summer Should still be loitering around It walks through the garden Hanging the spiders up Between fences and flowers It throws rather more dew On the ground than is Good for the shoes and then Has the nerve to let on Frost is sniffing its way Southwards – some […]...