The Last Unicorn

Related poetry:

1. The Black Unicorn The black unicorn is greedy. The black unicorn is impatient. ‘The black unicorn was mistaken For a shadow or symbol And taken Through a cold country Where mist painted mockeries Of my fury. It is not on her lap where the horn rests But deep in her moonpit Growing. The black unicorn is restless The […]...
2. A Shropshire Lad The gas was on in the Institute, The flare was up in the gym, A man was running a mineral line, A lass was singing a hymn, When Captain Webb the Dawley man, Captain Webb from Dawley, Came swimming along the old canal That carried the bricks to Lawley. Swimming along – Swimming along – […]...
3. OPEN TABLE MANY a guest I’d see to-day, Met to taste my dishes! Food in plenty is prepar’d, Birds, and game, and fishes. Invitations all have had, All proposed attending. Johnny, go and look around! Are they hither wending? Pretty girls I hope to see, Dear and guileless misses, Ignorant how sweet it is Giving tender kisses. […]...
4. The Unicorn The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers Stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness The unbelievable: for there before him stood The legendary creature, startling white, that Had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes. The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a Body wrought of finest ivory. And as He moved, his coat shone like […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
7. Buffalo Bill BOY heart of Johnny Jones-aching to-day? Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town? Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians? Some of us know All about it, Johnny Jones. Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes, A slanting look under a hat on a horse. He sits on a horse and a passing look is […]...
8. Deliverance from a Fit of Fainting Worthy art Thou, O Lord, of praise, But ah! It’s not in me. My sinking heart I pray Thee raise So shall I give it Thee. My life as spider’s webb’s cut off, Thus fainting have I said, And living man no more shall see But be in silence laid. My feeble spirit Thou didst […]...
9. St. Peter and the Angel Delivered out of raw continual pain, Smell of darkness, groans of those others To whom he was chained Unchained, and led Past the sleepers, Door after door silently opening Out! And along a long street’s Majestic emptiness under the moon: One hand on the angel’s shoulder, one Feeling the air before him, Eyes open but […]...
10. The Men That Fought at Minden The men that fought at Minden, they was rookies in their time So was them that fought at Waterloo! All the ‘ole command, yuss, from Minden to Maiwand, They was once dam’ sweeps like you! Then do not be discouraged, ‘Eaven is your ‘elper, We’ll learn you not to forget; An’ you mustn’t swear an’ […]...
11. 'Tis my first night beneath the Sun ‘Tis my first night beneath the Sun If I should spend it here Above him is too low a height For his Barometer Who Airs of expectation breathes And takes the Wind at prime But Distance his Delights confides To those who visit him...
12. 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 […]...
13. Lying in me Lying in me, as though it were a white Stone in the depths of a well, is one Memory that I cannot, will not, fight: It is happiness, and it is pain. Anyone looking straight into my eyes Could not help seeing it, and could not fail To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet Than […]...
14. Love Preparing to Fly He play’d his wings as tho’ for flight; They webb’d the sky with glassy light. His body sway’d upon tiptoes, Like a wind-perplexed rose; In eddies of the wind he went At last up the blue element....
15. For Johnny Pole On The Forgotten Beach In his tenth July some instinct Taught him to arm the waiting wave, A giant where its mouth hung open. He rode on the lip that buoyed him there And buckled him under. The beach was strung With children paddling their ages in, Under the glare od noon chipping Its light out. He stood up, […]...
16. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
17. Sonnet XVII Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
18. Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come Who will believe my verse in time to come If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
19. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. The best days of my life What is it about Bryan Adams and his song ‘Summer of 69’? Why do the lyrics linger? Was it 90° in the shade and the harbinger of the end Of the golden weather, or the impending closure Of a glorious decade? He should have called it ‘The best days of my life’, it would have […]...
22. THANKS HER griefs were the hours When my struggle was sore, Her joys were the powers That the climber upbore. Her home is the boundless Free ocean that seems To rock, calm and soundless, My galleon of dreams. Half hers are the glancing Creations that throng With pageant and dancing The ways of my song. My […]...
23. Dream Song 103: I consider a song will be as humming-bird I consider a song will be as humming-bird Swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange As the world of anti-matter Where they are wondering: does time run backward— Which the poet thought was true; Scarlatti-supple; But can Henry write it? Wreckt, in deep danger, he shook once his head, Returning to meditation. And word had sped All […]...
24. Madam And The Phone Bill You say I O. K. ed LONG DISTANCE? O. K. ed it when? My goodness, Central That was then! I’m mad and disgusted With that Negro now. I don’t pay no REVERSED CHARGES nohow. You say, I will pay it Else you’ll take out my phone? You better let My phone alone. I didn’t ask […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. That Bright Chimeric Beast That bright chimeric beast Conceived yet never born, Save in the poet’s breast, The white-flanked unicorn, Never may be shaken From his solitude; Never may be taken In any earthly wood. That bird forever feathered, Of its new self the sire, After aeons weathered, Reincarnate by fire, Falcon may not nor eagle Swerve from his […]...
27. Here I Am drunk again at 3 a. m. at the end of my 2nd bottle Of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of Poesy An old man Maddened for the flesh of young girls in this Dwindling twilight Liver gone Kidneys going Pancrea pooped Top-floor blood pressure While all the fear of the […]...
28. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
29. Days of the slow roll It was the days of the slow roll, Times when we dextrously dressed Our hand-rolled cigarettes With a dearth of fine-cut tobacco, Teased in frugal strands from A handsomely battered, Always near empty, 2oz tobacco tin. The thin rolls were patiently Mastered in a slow statement Of intense deliberation In a fold of rice paper […]...
30. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
31. IDYLL A village Chorus is supposed to be assembled, and about to Commence its festive procession. [Written for the birthday of the Duchess Louisa of Weimar.] CHORUS. THE festal day hail ye With garlands of pleasure, And dances’ soft measure, With rapture commingled And sweet choral song. DAMON. Oh, how I yearn from out the crowd […]...
32. To Mary Pickford MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS (On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.) Mary Pickford, doll divine, Year by year, and every day At the movmg-picture play, You have been my valentine. Once a free-limbed page in hose, Baby-Rosalind in flower, Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour How our reverent passion rose, How our fine desire you […]...
33. Heritage Now the dead past seems vividly alive, And in this shining moment I can trace, Down through the vista of the vanished years, Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face. And suddenly some secret spring’s released, And unawares a riddle is revealed, And I can read like large, black-lettered print, What seemed before a thing […]...
34. Incantation Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It establishes the universal ideas in language, And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. It puts what should be above things […]...
35. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
36. Carbonara eyes Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has the most expressive eyes. So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard My lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws On […]...
37. 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...
38. Argument Days that cannot bring you near Or will not, Distance trying to appear Something more obstinate, Argue argue argue with me Endlessly Neither proving you less wanted nor less dear. Distance: Remember all that land Beneath the plane; That coastline Of dim beaches deep in sand Stretching indistinguishably All the way, All the way to […]...
39. 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...
40. I Wait For You I wait for you. The years in silence pass And as the image, one, I wait for you again. The distance is in flame and clear one as glass, I, silent, wait with sadness, love and pain. The distance is in flame, and you are coming fast, But I’m afraid that you will change your […]...