Colours in lamplight

Related poetry:

1. The Lady's Yes “Yes,” I answered you last night; “No,” this morning, Sir, I say. Colours seen by candlelight, Will not look the same by day. When the viols played their best, Lamps above, and laughs below – Love me sounded like a jest, Fit for Yes or fit for No. Call me false, or call me free […]...
2. To Women As Far As I'm Concerned The feelings I don’t have I don’t have. The feeling I don’t have, I won’t say I have. The feelings you say you have, you don’t have. The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have. The feelings people ought to have, they never have. If people say they’ve got […]...
3. Summer Colours Long curls Lightest blond Like silver and gold In the saffron sun Summer dresses Cool white Show lots of skin Golden brown Painted toenails Fierce red In summer shoes Walk by And catch eyes Green and blue Behind black shades Against the gleam...
4. We do not know the time we lose We do not know the time we lose The awful moment is And takes its fundamental place Among the certainties A firm appearance still inflates The card the chance the friend The spectre of solidities Whose substances are sand...
5. I Mark Your Courage I had no profound feelings of shock or surprise To those matter-of-fact revelations Which spelled the end of this chapter of your life. It was, as you put it, too late for recriminations, And the horrendous realities could be no worse For having faced them. I mark your courage in that moment of admission, When […]...
6. Under the Harvest Moon Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With […]...
7. Autumn River Song The moon shimmers in green water. White herons fly through the moonlight. The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts: Into the night, singing, they paddle home together....
8. Water Babes We were water babes, born in the arms of a sparkling brook That patiently took us into its heart. At the very start we Were never far from its shingly banks, playing amid ranks Of serried wildflowers. When one of us all but drowned In a careless encounter the stream buoyed her up in a […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. Mountains of Delight The problem was the manner of choice (or whether there was a choice for that matter) As you had taken those options to yourself, Choosing as you had to do, and as it was right for you, There is no shame in that – and no reproving, But my alternatives were emptied by your doing. […]...
11. This Window is This window is confidence, Documenting proceedings, Capturing moments, Cleansing views Challenging sentiment. This window is nourishment Filling the eyes With strong drink, And acidly piercing Over-elaborate structures. This window is furniture Re-hung like a picture, Recording new outlooks When the old pleases No more. This window is doorway To feelings, Good feelings and bad, All […]...
12. 308. The Epitaph on Captain Matthew Henderson STOP, passenger! my story’s brief, And truth I shall relate, man; I tell nae common tale o’ grief, For Matthew was a great man. If thou uncommon merit hast, Yet spurn’d at Fortune’s door, man; A look of pity hither cast, For Matthew was a poor man. If thou a noble sodger art, That passest […]...
13. Cockroach Roach, foulest of creatures, Who attacks with yellow teeth And an army of cousins big as shoes, You are lumps of coal that are mechanized And when I turn on the light you scuttle Into the corners and there is this hiss upon the land. Yet I know you are only the common angel Turned […]...
14. To Music Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: Silence of paintings. You language where all language Ends. You time Standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts. Feelings for whom? O you the transformation Of feelings into what? : into audible landscape. You stranger: music. You heart-space Grown out of us. The deepest space in us, Which, rising […]...
15. Fall Understand the language Of fall, approaching: Cold mornings Drawing your bundled warmth; Sailing-leaf afternoons, The enchantment of melancholy, Departure etched In the bronze of light Whispering with the wind; Its shimmering tones marking time Like the strike of a gong, Soft, yet insistent. (2000)...
16. The Planter's Daughter When night stirred at sea, An the fire brought a crowd in They say that her beauty Was music in mouth And few in the candlelight Thought her too proud, For the house of the planter Is known by the trees. Men that had seen her Drank deep and were silent, The women were speaking […]...
17. Passer-By, These Are Words Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading I want you to listen: to this frail Voice like that of letters eaten by grass. Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names. It flits between two sprays of leaves, Carrying the sound of branches that are real […]...
18. Man Sails The Deep Awhile MAN sails the deep awhile; Loud runs the roaring tide; The seas are wild and wide; O’er many a salt, o’er many a desert mile, The unchained breakers ride, The quivering stars beguile. Hope bears the sole command; Hope, with unshaken eyes, Sees flaw and storm arise; Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand, Steers, […]...
19. Late Evening Song For a while Let it be enough: The responsive smile, Though effort goes into it. Across the warm room Shared in candlelight, This look beyond shame, Possible now, at night, Goes out to yours. Hidden by day And shaped by fires Grown dead, gone gray, That burned in other rooms I knew Too long ago […]...
20. Colophon TO LAYLAH EIGHT-AND-TWENTY Lamp of living loveliness, Maid miraculously male, Rapture of thine own excess Blushing through the velvet veil Where the olive cheeks aglow Shadow-soften into snow, Breasts like Bacchanals afloat Under the proudly phallic throat! Be thou to my pilgrimage Light, and laughter sweet and sage, Till the darkling day expire Of my […]...
21. Poet's Household 1 The stout poet tiptoes On the lawn. Surprisingly limber In his thick sweater Like a middle-age burglar. Is the young robin injured? 2 She bends to feed the geese Revealing the neck’s white curve Below her curled hair. Her husband seems not to watch, But she shimmers in his poem. 3 A hush is […]...
22. Sonnet V: It Is Most True It is most true, that eyes are form’d to serve The inward light; and that the heavenly part Ought to be king, from whose rules who do swerve, Rebles to Nature, strive for their own smart. It is most true, what we call Cupid’s dart, An image is, which for ourselves we carve: And, fools, […]...
23. Morning's Reflections Were meetings predestined then ours was intended, Great oracles decreed it as fate, and the auguries chattered With sweet benefactors and fêted to chance with a face. We were then both separate and free in our choosing Sailed in clean air on the breeze, a following sea to sail Where we pleased and our pleasure […]...
24. The Mowed Hollow When yellow leaves the sky They pipe it to the houses To go on making red And warm and floral and brown But gradually people tire of it, Return it inside metal, and go To be dark and breathe water colours. Some yellow hangs on outside Forlornly tethered to posts. Cars chase their own supply. […]...
25. Night's sentinel Even tonight will pass into memory’s oblivion, Doomed, despite an ardent reunion Of once estranged yet precisely matched parts, To a guiltless verdict – a foregone conclusion. As you dissolve twice-blessed In a kaleidoscope of dreams, Claimed by the deep, curdling sands And sink, absorbed in sated self-suffusion, I sense hard-edged awareness balefully prick, Dredging […]...
26. Cold cold world in the night The deep deep night Do i dance Where mirror images Are lost within I bleed across The shattered hopes The ice reflections Would you That a child Might live, Without seeing their eyes Without hearing their cries Black in light Am i wandering In dreams Where only Shadows dance Oh, This cold […]...
27. The Pike In the brown water, Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine, Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds, A pike dozed. Lost among the shadows of stems He lay unnoticed. Suddenly he flicked his tail, And a green-and-copper brightness Ran under the water. Out from under the reeds Came the olive-green light, And orange […]...
28. Dreams of a lifetime Ronald Hi Khong Wong is gone, Sadly he deceased The commencement of this week. It wasn’t unexpected. He never contradicted The prediction of his death Although, perhaps, he hoped for time To sort some odds and ends, And we for time to make allowances For our friend’s impending end. Alas it weren’t to be. We […]...
29. Impossibility, like Wine Impossibility, like Wine Exhilarates the Man Who tastes it; Possibility Is flavorless Combine A Chance’s faintest Tincture And in the former Dram Enchantment makes ingredient As certainly as Doom...
30. In the Stalls My life is like a music-hall, Where, in the impotence of rage, Chained by enchantment to my stall, I see myself upon the stage Dance to amuse a music-hall. ‘Tis I that smoke this cigarette, Lounge here, and laugh for vacancy, And watch the dancers turn; and yet It is my very self I see […]...
31. The Bride My love looks like a girl to-night, But she is old. The plaits that lie along her pillow Are not gold, But threaded with filigree silver, And uncanny cold. She looks like a young maiden, since her brow Is smooth and fair, Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed. She sleeps a rare […]...
32. They Know Not My Heart They know not my heart, who believe there can be One stain of this earth in its feelings for thee; Who think, while I see thee in beauty’s young hour, As pure as the morning’s first dew on the flower, I could harm what I love, as the sun’s wanton ray But smiles on the […]...
33. A precious mouldering pleasure 'tis A precious mouldering pleasure ’tis To meet an Antique Book In just the Dress his Century wore A privilege I think His venerable Hand to take And warming in our own A passage back or two to make To Times when he was young His quaint opinions to inspect His thought to ascertain On Themes […]...
34. The last of Summer is Delight The last of Summer is Delight Deterred by Retrospect. ‘Tis Ecstasy’s revealed Review Enchantment’s Syndicate. To meet it nameless as it is Without celestial Mail Audacious as without a Knock To walk within the Veil....
35. Delight's Despair at setting Delight’s Despair at setting Is that Delight is less Than the sufficing Longing That so impoverish. Enchantment’s Perihelion Mistaken oft has been For the Authentic orbit Of its Anterior Sun....
36. To A Snowflake What heart could have thought you? Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapor? “God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapor, To lust of His mind Thou […]...
37. Spring Pastoral Liza, go steep your long white hands In the cool waters of that spring Which bubbles up through shiny sands The colour of a wild-dove’s wing. Dabble your hands, and steep them well Until those nails are pearly white Now rosier than a laurel bell; Then come to me at candlelight. Lay your cold hands […]...
38. Love came back at Fall o’ Dew Love came back at fall o’ dew, Playing his old part; But I had a word or two That would break his heart. “He who comes at candlelight, That should come before, Must betake him to the night From a barred door.” This the word that made us part In the fall o’ dew; This […]...
39. Om FAINT grew the yellow buds of light Far flickering beyond the snows, As leaning o’er the shadowy white Morn glimmered like a pale primrose. Within an Indian vale below A child said “OM” with tender heart, Watching with loving eyes the glow In dayshine fade and night depart. The word which Brahma at his dawn […]...
40. Hugo's "pool in the forest&quot How calm, how beauteous and how cool How like a sister to the skies, Appears the broad, transparent pool That in this quiet forest lies. The sunshine ripples on its face, And from the world around, above, It hath caught down the nameless grace Of such reflections as we love. But deep below its surface […]...