To keep the ambience alive
When you thanked me for the day I felt ashamed,
I couldn’t say it wasn’t much because it was for you,
I had enjoyed it too although it was another day
Like any other day we’ve had before in our association.
Most days are good, a few we do regret, perhaps we
Would forget in time those we let to shrivel with neglect;
In that respect I cherish all the days we have together,
The clearly lesser days enhance the really better days.
It seems I nearly made the wrong connection once again,
It wasn’t just the day concerned, and in the manner of
Your special way you meant your thanks for my behaving
Well, your words discerned my keeping calm and staying cool.
I hadn’t spoiled the atmosphere you cherish in your quest
For light and harmony, you enjoyed my company
And felt the gentle vibes; the pointed lance and acid barbs
Were curbed and tied to keep the ambience alive.
Related poetry:
- FIRST LOSS AH! who’ll e’er those days restore, Those bright days of early love Who’ll one hour again concede, Of that time so fondly cherish’d! Silently my wounds I feed, And with wailing evermore Sorrow o’er each joy now perish’d. Ah! who’ll e’er the days restore Of that time so fondly cherish’d. 1789.*...
- Said The Poet To The Analyst My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget who one words is able […]...
- A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention They amputated Your thighs off my hips. As far as I’m concerned They are all surgeons. All of them. They dismantled us Each from the other. As far as I’m concerned They are all engineers. All of them. A pity. We were such a good And loving invention. An aeroplane made from a man and […]...
- While it is alive While it is alive Until Death touches it While it and I lap one Air Dwell in one Blood Under one Sacrament Show me Division can split or pare Love is like Life merely longer Love is like Death, during the Grave Love is the Fellow of the Resurrection Scooping up the Dust and chanting […]...
- Thank you Ambrose Thank you Ambrose for the kitchen door ajar, A sign your friendship never closed on me, an amity extended From afar although it was a distant glow I didn’t really know. Thank you Ambrose for staying staunch and true, A fellowship renewed in time of need, reviewed each time indeed Concentric paths of earthy spheres […]...
- Alive Together Speaking of marvels, I am alive Together with you, when I might have been Alive with anyone under the sun, When I might have been Abelard’s woman Or the whore of a Renaissance pop Or a peasant wife with not enough food And not enough love, with my children Dead of the plague. I might […]...
- To be alive is Power To be alive is Power Existence in itself Without a further function Omnipotence Enough To be alive and Will! ‘Tis able as a God The Maker of Ourselves be what Such being Finitude!...
- He is alive, this morning He is alive, this morning He is alive and awake Birds are resuming for Him Blossoms dress for His Sake. Bees to their Loaves of Honey Add an Amber Crumb Him to regale Me Only Motion, and am dumb....
- I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead I don’t know if you’re alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, Or only when the sunsets fade Be mourned serenely in my thought? All is for you: the daily prayer, The sleepless heat at night, And of my verses, the white Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire. No-one was more […]...
- It feels a shame to be Alive It feels a shame to be Alive When Men so brave are dead One envies the Distinguished Dust Permitted such a Head The Stone that tells defending Whom This Spartan put away What little of Him we possessed In Pawn for Liberty The price is great Sublimely paid Do we deserve a Thing That lives […]...
- If I shouldn't be alive If I shouldn’t be alive When the Robins come, Give the one in Red Cravat, A Memorial crumb. If I couldn’t thank you, Being fast asleep, You will know I’m trying Why my Granite lip!...
- I am alive I guess I am alive I guess The Branches on my Hand Are full of Morning Glory And at my finger’s end The Carmine tingles warm And if I hold a Glass Across my Mouth it blurs it Physician’s proof of Breath I am alive because I am not in a Room The Parlor Commonly it is […]...
- O Dull Cold Northern Sky O DULL cold northern sky, O brawling sabbath bells, O feebly twittering Autumn bird that tells The year is like to die! O still, spoiled trees, O city ways, O sun desired in vain, O dread presentiment of coming rain That cloys the sullen days! Thee, heart of mine, I greet. In what hard mountain […]...
- If He Were Alive Today, Mayhap, Mr. Morgan Would Sit on the Midget's Lap “Beep-beep. BANKERS TRUST AUTOMOBILE LOAN You’ll find a banker at Bankers Trust” Advertisement in N. Y. Times When comes my second childhood, As to all men it must, I want to be a banker Like the banker at Bankers Trust. I wouldn’t ask to be president Or even assistant veep, I’d only ask for a […]...
- In soothing, sweetened words No, she said, I never knew it was your first. It doesn’t Matter anyway. I always had an inkling that we’d find A way. And then we did. I’m glad about it just for that. Whether it was good or bad, or would have happened Had we made a pact or that it should have […]...
- So Many Blood-Lakes We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were Slipped in. We have levelled the powers Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and Dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming. This one will not be so easy. We were at ease while […]...
- Friendship After Love After the fierce midsummer all ablaze Has burned itself to ashes, and expires In the intensity of its own fires, There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze. So after Love has led us, till he tires Of his own throes, and torments, and desires, […]...
- Suum Cuique The rain has spoiled the farmer’s day; Shall sorrow put my books away? Thereby are two days lost: Nature shall mind her own affairs, I will attend my proper cares, In rain, or sun, or frost....
- Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think Praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting For paintings to sigh is science. In another […]...
- Birthdays Let us have birthdays every day, (I had the thought while I was shaving) Because a birthday should be gay, And full of grace and good behaving. We can’t have cakes and candles bright, And presents are beyond our giving, But let lt us cherish with delight The birthday way of lovely living. For I […]...
- I Hardly Remember I hardly remember your voice, but the pain of you Floats in some remote current of my blood. I carry you in my depths, trapped in the sludge Like one of those corpses the sea refuses to give up. It was a spoiled remnant of the South. A beach Without fishing boats, where the sun […]...
- Uncommon common sense The other day I listened to a man on the radio Who made uncommon common sense, ‘specially since It was an interview on ABC’s noon talk-back show. He was a Professor, of what I hadn’t heard, But for once the words were plain and clear – the host, Bless the dear, didn’t interfere or ask […]...
- Why He Was There Much as he left it when he went from us Here was the room again where he had been So long that something oh him should be seen, Or felt-and so it was. Incredulous, I turned about, loath to be greeted thus, And there he was in his old chair, serene As ever, and as […]...
- Pretty Words Poets make pets of pretty, docile words: I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swish, And tender ones, like downy-feathred birds: Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds, Come to my hand, and playful if I wish, Or purring softly at a silver dish, Blue Persian kittens fed […]...
- Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple As false dawn. Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels. Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses, Some are in smocks: but truly there they are. Now […]...
- JIMMY ( A Poem in Remembrance) Bhaskar Roy Barman Jimmy, A black, snub-nosed bitch, a jaw shoved out, Your eyes throwing forward a wrinkled reproachful look, Your fur so brindled as to give one to understand You were not pure, Receded into oblivion. Suddenly you intruded into our memory When we were observing the third death […]...
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro’ the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground: Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze. And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold: Calm and […]...
- Good neighbours To my shame I’ve been mending fences again… A quaint habit I inherited from my father; He would rather fix a fence than parley Repair, and that it is where our views diverged. He said fences were meant to make good Neighbours. In the intervening years I had it Wrong, believing a fence was a […]...
- Walking With God (Genesis, v.24) Oh! for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame; A light to shine upon the road That leads me to the Lamb! Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refershing view Of Jesus and his word? What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! […]...
- When I was a Bird I climbed up the karaka tree Into a nest all made of leaves But soft as feathers. I made up a song that went on singing all by itself And hadn’t any words, but got sad at the end. There were daisies in the grass under the tree. I said just to try them: “I’ll […]...
- Soon Our Friends Perish SOON our friends perish, Soon all we cherish Fades as days darken – goes as flowers go. Soon in December Over an ember, Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow....
- THE WRANGLER ONE day a shameless and impudent wight Went into a shop full of steel wares bright, Arranged with art upon ev’ry shelf. He fancied they were all meant for himself; And so, while the patient owner stood by, The shining goods needs must handle and try, And valued, for how should a fool better know? […]...
- The Burning Book OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN TO the lore of no manner of men Would his vision have yielded When he found what will never again From his vision be shielded,- Though he paid with as much of his life As a nun could have given, And to-night would have been as a knife, Devil-drawn, devil-driven. For […]...
- Of Such Simplicity You and me, The proof is there to see, Our lives are held within the spell of great simplicity, We’re free of all the shadows dwelling in the hall, Seen in awe like pretty pictures hanging on the wall; Was it meant to be, intentionally, Of such simplicity? The pace of Life Is not predictably […]...
- We talked as Girls do We talked as Girls do Fond, and late We speculated fair, on every subject, but the Grave Of ours, none affair We handled Destinies, as cool As we Disposers be And God, a Quiet Party To our Authority But fondest, dwelt upon Ourself As we eventual be When Girls to Women, softly raised We occupy […]...
- De M. Antonio NOW Antoninus, in a smiling age, Counts of his life the fifteenth finished stage. The rounded days and the safe years he sees, Nor fears death’s water mounting round his knees. To him remembering not one day is sad, Not one but that its memory makes him glad. So good men lengthen life; and to […]...
- Virtue Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky, The dew shall weep thy fall tonight; For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of […]...
- Symbolically concerned dodona oak (the tree of life) sheds leaves Nutritious-which feeds blood and mind today There’s not a jot (from which the present cleaves) Can be dispensed with – all life’s array From first to last has leaf-mould in its clay Eve is that apple she took her bite from The best and worst can’t thwart […]...
- Sonnet CXL Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit, better it were, Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so; As testy sick men, when their […]...
- The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, […]...