Unobtainable

Related poetry:

1. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
2. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
3. Jaws SEVEN nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death. It was the first week in August, Nineteen Hundred Fourteen. I was listening, you were listening, the whole world was Listening, And all of us heard a Voice murmuring: “I am the way and the light, He that believeth on me Shall not perish […]...
4. We talked with each other about each other We talked with each other about each other Though neither of us spoke We were listening to the seconds’ Races And the Hoofs of the Clock Pausing in Front of our Palsied Faces Time compassion took Arks of Reprieve he offered to us Ararats we took...
5. Has My Heart Gone To Sleep? Has my heart gone to sleep? Have the beehives of my dreams Stopped working, the waterwheel Of the mind run dry, Scoops turning empty, Only shadow inside? No, my heart is not asleep. It is awake, wide awake. Not asleep, not dreaming- Its eyes are opened wide Watching distant signals, listening On the rim of […]...
6. The Sonnets To Orpheus: XXV But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose name I didn’t know, you who so early were taken away: I will once more call up your image and show it to them, Beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry. Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate, Pausing, as though your young […]...
7. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
8. Rain a symphony orchestra. There is a thunderstorm, They are playing a Wagner overture And the people leave their seats under the trees And run inside to the pavilion The women giggling, the men pretending calm, Wet cigarettes being thrown away, Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the Pavilion. the birds even come […]...
9. The Sonnets To Orpheus: I A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence A new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright Unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; And it was not from any dullness, not From […]...
10. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
11. A Murmur in the Trees to note A Murmur in the Trees to note Not loud enough for Wind A Star not far enough to seek Nor near enough to find A long long Yellow on the Lawn A Hubbub as of feet Not audible as Ours to Us But dapperer More Sweet A Hurrying Home of little Men To Houses unperceived […]...
12. Flight Of Stairs Stairs fly as straight as hawks; Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching. Stairs sway at the height of their flight Like a melody in Tristan; Or swoop to the ground with glad spread of their feathers Before they close them. They curiously investigate […]...
13. Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York,1957 Once, in summer In the blueberries, I fell asleep, and woke When a deer stumbled against me. I guess She was so busy with her own happiness She had grown careless And was just wandering along Listening To the wind as she leaned down To lip up the sweetness. So, there we were With nothing […]...
14. Amber Hover The imagined center, our tongues Grew long to please it, licking The walls, a chamber built of scent, A moment followed by a lesser moment & a hunger to return. It couldn’t last. Resin Flowed glacially from wounds in the bark Pinned us in our entering As the orchids opened wider. First, Liquid, so […]...
15. The Old Guitar Neglected now is the old guitar And moldering into decay; Fretted with many a rift and scar That the dull dust hides away, While the spider spins a silver star In its silent lips to-day. The keys hold only nerveless strings The sinews of brave old airs Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings […]...
16. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
17. Obsessive Combination Of Onotological Inscape, Trickery And Love Busy, with an idea for a code, I write Signals hurrying from left to right, Or right to left, by obscure routes, For my own reasons; taking a word like writes Down tiers of tries until its secret rites Make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS Can amazingly and funnily become STAR And right to left […]...
18. Zermatt to the Matterhorn Thirty-two years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height, And four lives paid for what the seven had won. They were the first by whom the deed was done, And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight To that day’s tragic […]...
19. II. Written at Bamborough Castle YE holy tow’rs, that crown the azure deep, Still may ye shade the wave-worn rock sublime, Though, hurrying silent by, relentless Time Assail you, and the winter Whirlwind’s sweep! For far from blazing Grandeur’s crowded halls, Here Charity hath fix’d her chosen seat, Oft listening tearful when the wild winds beat, With hollow bodings, round […]...
20. Back From Australia Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height, The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay, We never seem to catch the running day But travel on in everlasting night With all the chic accoutrements of flight: Lotions and essences in neat array And yet another plastic cup and tray. “Thank you so much. Oh no, I’m […]...
21. Paudeen Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light; Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought That on the lonely height where all are in God’s eye, There […]...
22. The Craftsmen Of The Little Box Don’t open the little box Heaven’s hat will fall out of her Don’t close her for any reason She’ll bite the trouser-leg of eternity Don’t drop her on the earth The sun’s eggs will break inside her Don’t throw her in the air Earth’s bones will break inside her Don’t hold her in your hands […]...
23. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
24. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
25. No More Music The Porch was blazoned with geranium bloom; Myrtle and jasmine meadows lit the lea; With rose and violet the vale’s perfume Languished to where the hyacinthine sea Dreamed tenderly. . . “And I must go,” said he. He spoke in that dim, ghostly voice of his: “I was a singer; then the Was. . . […]...
26. Come down, O Maid COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love […]...
27. The Knife Can I explain this to you? Your eyes Are entrances the mouths of caves I issue from wonderful interiors Upon a blessed sea and a fine day, From inside these caves I look and dream. Your hair explicable as a waterfall In some black liquid cooled by legend Fell across my thought in a moment […]...
28. Mockingbirds This morning Two mockingbirds In the green field Were spinning and tossing The white ribbons Of their songs Into the air. I had nothing Better to do Than listen. I mean this Seriously. In Greece, A long time ago, An old couple Opened their door To two strangers Who were, It soon appeared, Not men […]...
29. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
30. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
31. Unsolved Amid my books I lived the hurrying years, Disdaining kinship with my fellow man; Alike to me were human smiles and tears, I cared not whither Earth’s great life-stream ran, Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine, God made me look into a woman’s eyes; And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine, Knew […]...
32. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
33. The Song of the Borderguard The man with his lion under the shed of wars Sheds his belief as if he shed tears. The sound of words waits – A barbarian host at the borderline of sense. The enamord guards desert their posts Harkening to the lion-smell of a poem That rings in their ears. -Dreams, a certain guard said […]...
34. Henry King The Chief Defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of String. At last he swallowed some which tied Itself in ugly Knots inside. Physicians of the Utmost Fame Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their Fees, “There is no Cure for this Disease. “Henry will very soon […]...
35. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
36. Reason and Passion XV And the priestess spoke again and said: “Speak to us of Reason and Passion.” And he answered saying: Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and […]...
37. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
38. Some Advice To Those Who Will Serve Time In Prison If instead of being hanged by the neck you’re thrown inside for not giving up hope In the world, your country, your people, if you do ten or fifteen years apart from the time you have left, You won’t say, “Better I had swung from the end of a rope like a flag” You’ll put […]...
39. The Owl And The Pussy-Cat I The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, ‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, What a beautiful Pussy […]...
40. Voices Ideal and beloved voices Of those who are dead, or of those Who are lost to us like the dead. Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams; Sometimes in thought the mind hears them. And with their sound for a moment return Other sounds from the first poetry of our life Like distant music […]...