Thinking of an Afterlife

Related poetry:

1. In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams I. The poem is important, but Not more than the people Whose survival it serves, One of the necessities, so they may Speak what is true, and have The patience for beauty: the weighted Grainfield, the shady street, The well-laid stone and the changing tree Whose branches spread above. For want of songs and stories […]...
2. Thinking Of A Friend At Night In this evil year, autumn comes early… I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters, The wind on my hat…And you? And you, my friend? You are standing maybe and seeing the sickle moon Move in a small arc over the forests And bivouac fire, red in the black valley. You are […]...
3. At Baia I should have thought In a dream you would have brought Some lovely, perilous thing, Orchids piled in a great sheath, As who would say (in a dream), “I send you this, Who left the blue veins Of your throat unkissed.” Why was it that your hands (that never took mine), Your hands that I […]...
4. I would to heaven that I were so much clay I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling – Because at least the past were passed away – And for the future – (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say – […]...
5. Do you know who is thinking of you? If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way It’s little wonder what other people think of you, but The ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close In their hearts, who’re always thinking of you; Do you know, do you know, Do you know who is thinking of […]...
6. Thinking For Berky In the late night listening from bed I have joined the ambulance or the patrol Screaming toward some drama, the kind of end That Berky must have some day, if she isn’t dead. The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel, Farming out there beyond the old stone quarry Where highschool lovers parked their […]...
7. Simple pleasures that you bring Do you mind if I write a few lines for you tonight? I’m fuelled for sure, perhaps a bit ebullient, (now there’s a rhyme that will be hard to find A word to suit!) I’ll try, but time will surely take A pensive break and provide a chance to make A consequence. Am I afraid […]...
8. Face To Face Day after day, O lord of my life, Shall I stand before thee face to face. With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, Shall I stand before thee face to face. Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, With humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face. In this laborious world […]...
9. Just Thinking Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held For awhile. Some dove somewhere. Been on probation most of my life. And The rest of my life been condemned. So these moments Count for a lot peace, you know. Let the bucket of memory down into […]...
10. On Thinking Faculty 1/ One sorriest thing in life is our capacity With which we think that we think. Some do it with brains, some with hearts, Some stomachs, and some genitals. 2/ Vocabulary is useless without thoughts....
11. The Hangman's Great Hands And all that is this day. . . The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. .. Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his Wife… Anger won’t help. I was born angry. Angry that my father was Being burnt alive in the mills; Angry that none of us […]...
12. February: Thinking of Flowers Now wind torments the field, Turning the white surface back On itself, back and back on itself, Like an animal licking a wound. Nothing but white the air, the light; Only one brown milkweed pod Bobbing in the gully, smallest Brown boat on the immense tide. A single green sprouting thing Would restore me. . […]...
13. The Frost of Death was on the Pane The Frost of Death was on the Pane “Secure your Flower” said he. Like Sailors fighting with a Leak We fought Mortality. Our passive Flower we held to Sea To Mountain To the Sun Yet even on his Scarlet shelf To crawl the Frost begun We pried him back Ourselves we wedged Himself and her […]...
14. XVII (Thinking, Tangling Shadows…) Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, Burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there! Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes, Taciturn miller, Night falls on you face downward, far from the city. Your presence is foreign, as strange to […]...
15. Two Rivulets TWO Rivulets side by side, Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. For the Eternal Ocean bound, These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life, Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by, The Real and Ideal, Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights, (Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, […]...
16. My Land and I They have eaten their fill at your tables spread, Like friends since the land was won; And they rise with a cry of “Australia’s dead!” With the wheeze of “Australia’s done!” Oh, the theme is stale, but they tell the tale (How the weak old tale will keep!) Like the crows that croak on a […]...
17. Thinking Ahead To Possible Options And A Worst-Case Scenario I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel In the center of the road and that’s when The deer came charging out of the forest And forced me to hit the brakes for all I Was worth and I careened back to the other Side of the road just as a skunk came toddling Out of […]...
18. Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks What is so utterly invisible As tomorrow? Not love, Not the wind, Not the inside of a stone. Not anything. And yet, how often I’m fooled I’m wading along In the sunlight And I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining Days ahead I can see the light spilling Like a shower […]...
19. To a Lady and Her Children O’erwhelming sorrow now demands my song: From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung. What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest? What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent’s breast? The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join Th’ increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine; The poor, who once his gen’rous bounty fed, Droop, and bewail […]...
20. Roses And Rue (To L. L.) Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love’s song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! I remember we used to meet […]...
21. I cannot let the moment pass I cannot let the moment pass without a weary greeting, Or retard the recent past where shadows still are fleeting, I’d sabotage the future by just staring in a mirror And never let the glimmer pass and try to hold my image fast In healing my dilemma. Time is gliding in array, I sense it […]...
22. Recollection THROUGH the blue shadowy valley I hastened in a dream: Flower rich the night, flower soft the air, a blue flower the stream I hurried over before I came to the cabin door, Where the orange flame-glow danced within on the beaten floor. And the lovely mother who drooped by the sleeping child arose: And […]...
23. Base Details If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You’d see me with my puffy petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,” I’d say “I used to […]...
24. Dead man's clothes Growing up, I propose, Is like wearing a dead man’s clothes. Death has a way of levelling the ground. I have found the closer your relationship The closer the fit; The unsettling bit is the fear Of not fitting the role, or where Your forbear made a name or leashed A reputation, which by imputation […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Thinking of My Brothers in Shantung on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month Alone now in a strange country, Feeling myself a stranger, On this bright festival day I doubly pine for my kinsfolk. Far away, I know my brothers Will be climbing the heights With dogwood sprays in their jackets, And one man missing!...
27. Rainy Night Ghosts of all my lovely sins, Who attend too well my pillow, Gay the wanton rain begins; Hide the limp and tearful willow. Turn aside your eyes and ears, Trail away your robes of sorrow, You shall have my further years- You shall walk with me tomorrow. I am sister to the rain; Fey and […]...
28. You Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which Is simply a path leading through an archway called Adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life Lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future […]...
29. Your Voices Joined Is All It Takes They came in masted wooden ships across An unindentured sea and cast their lot in ocean Swells to chance at history, and Sovereign power Commanded thus they rot in purgatory. Petty crime or deeds they did in torrid Times from anxious needs which bid them cheat And lie to live; condemned and badly done by […]...
30. Drink of This Cup Drink of this cup; you’ll find there’s a spell in Its every drop ‘gainst the ills of mortality; Talk of the cordial that sparkled for Helen; Her cup was a fiction, but this is reality. Would you forget the dark world we are in Just taste of the bubble that gleams on the top of […]...
31. Wise Men In Their Bad Hours Wise men in their bad hours have envied The little people making merry like grasshoppers In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking Backward but never forward, and if they somehow Take hold upon the future they do it Half asleep, with the tools of generation Foolishly reduplicating Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, […]...
32. I Have Loved Hours At Sea I have loved hours at sea, gray cities, The fragile secret of a flower, Music, the making of a poem That gave me heaven for an hour; First stars above a snowy hill, Voices of people kindly and wise, And the great look of love, long hidden, Found at last in meeting eyes. I have […]...
33. Beautiful Vagabonds I am not the piston in the flower or The bulging seed throttled by pollen But a separate figure expectant and Cupped by the shape palms make Holding sumptuously to the fragile Killings – crickets, bees, and moths The soulful water strider apparently Impervious to deep mirrored waters And the lotus lilies rooted in mire […]...
34. In Me, Past, Present, Future meet In me, past, present, future meet To hold long chiding conference. My lusts usurp the present tense And strangle Reason in his seat. My loves leap through the future’s fence To dance with dream-enfranchised feet. In me the cave-man clasps the seer, And garlanded Apollo goes Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear. In me the tiger […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. The Speakers “A equals X,” says Mister One. “A equals B,” says Mister Two. “A equals nothing under the sun But A,” says Mister Three. A few Applaud; some wipe their eyes; Some linger in the shade to see One and Two in neat disguise Decapitating Mister Three. “This age is not entirely bad.” It’s bad enough, […]...
37. Sonnet LXV Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor […]...
38. The Easter Flower Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground, Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily Soft-scented in the air for yards around; Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf! Just like a fragile bell of silver rime, It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief In […]...
39. Baby Sitter From torrid heat to frigid cold I’ve rovered land and sea; And now, with halting heart I hold My grandchild on my knee: Yet while I’ve eighty years all told, Of moons she has but three. She sleeps, that fragile miniature Of future maidenhood; She will be wonderful, I’m sure, As over her I brood; […]...
40. Time Long Past Like the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last, Was Time long past. There were sweet dreams in the night Of Time long past: And, was it sadness or delight, […]...