Thing Language

Related poetry:

1. 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 […]...
2. THE SINGING SCHOOL The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You know its flim-flam on the ether, grants for Jack-the-lads Of both sexes, poets who’ve never been seen in a little magazine […]...
3. Forgotten Language Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understood each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, And shared a conversation with the housefly In my bed. Once I heard and answered all the questions Of the crickets, And joined the crying of each falling […]...
4. Love's Language How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye – The smile that proves the parent to a sigh – Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak Of bounding […]...
5. Translation From the Gull Language ‘Twas grav’d on the Stone of Destiny, In letters four, and letters three; And ne’er did the King of the Gulls go by But those awful letters scar’d his eye; For he knew that a Prophet Voice had said “As long as those words by man were read, The ancient race of the Gulls should […]...
6. It does not matter in what language one writes It does not matter in what language one writes. All language is foreign, incomprehensible. Every word, as soon as pronounced, Flees far away, where nothing or nobody can reach it. It does not matter how much is known. Nobody can read. Nobody knows what a lightning is And even less when it is reflected In […]...
7. Many a phrase has the English language Many a phrase has the English language I have heard but one Low as the laughter of the Cricket, Loud, as the Thunder’s Tongue Murmuring, like old Caspian Choirs, When the Tide’s a’ lull Saying itself in new inflection Like a Whippoorwill Breaking in bright Orthography On my simple sleep Thundering its Prospective Till I […]...
8. Music, In A Foreign Language In a cafe, once more I heard Your voice – those sparse and frugal notes. Do they not say that you spoke your native Greek With an English accent? Briefest of visions: eyes meet across the cafe; A man of about my age – eyelids heavy, Perhaps from recent pleasures. I begin the most innocent […]...
9. The Universal Language Of Love There is a universal language that is spoken by all – Both on earth and in the heavens above. It’s a beautiful language that flows from the heart And it’s universal name is love. The language of love uses thoughts and feelings To express what it wants to say, It’s the language that God uses […]...
10. The Consecrating Mother I stand before the sea And it rolls and rolls in its green blood Saying, “Do not give up one god For I have a handful.” The trade winds blew In their twelve-fingered reversal And I simply stood on the beach While the ocean made a cross of salt And hung up its drowned And […]...
11. Jerome Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon. Der heilige Hieronymus his lion is at the zoo Listens, listens. All the long, soft, summer day Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot. As the sun sets, the last patient rises, Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away. Often, to the lion, […]...
12. RESURRECTION I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’ As of the eye The bream or white-bait showed In its hysterical dance of death When the receding tide Left it asleep In a shallow pool on the shore. Why did I fail to take it? Was I strangely compassionate Or merely afraid to touch The jerking spasm […]...
13. At a Poetry Party I Am Given the Rhyme Chih Although I’ve studied poetry for thirty years I try to keep my mouth shut and avoid reputation. Now who is this nosy gentleman talking about my poetry Like Yang Ching-chih Who spoke of Hsiang Ssu everywhere he went....
14. On the World you colored On the World you colored Morning painted rose Idle his Vermillion Aimlessly crept the Glows Over Realms of Orchards I the Day before Conquered with the Robin Misery, how fair Till your wrinkled Finger Shored the sun away Midnight’s awful Pattern In the Goods of Day...
15. Young Sea The sea is never still. It pounds on the shore Restless as a young heart, Hunting. The sea speaks And only the stormy hearts Know what it says: It is the face of a rough mother speaking. The sea is young. One storm cleans all the hoar And loosens the age of it. I hear […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. Natural Music The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers, (Winter has given them gold for silver To stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their banks) >From different throats intone one language. So I believe if we were strong enough to listen without Divisions of desire and terror To the […]...
18. Poetry And Religion Religions are poems. They concert Our daylight and dreaming mind, our Emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture Into the only whole thinking: poetry. Nothing’s said till it’s dreamed out in words And nothing’s true that figures in words only. A poem, compared with an arrayed religion, May be like a soldier’s one short marriage night […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. HAPPY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY CARCANET BOOKS Sorry, I almost forgot, but I don’t think Its worth the effort to become a Carcanet poet With my mug-shot on art gloss paper In your catalogue as big as Mont Blanc Easier to imagine, as Benjamin Peret did, A wind that would unscrew the mountain Or stars like apricot tarts strolling Aimlessly along the […]...
21. Sonnet LXVI: The Night-Flood Rakes The night-flood rakes upon the stony shore; Along the rugged cliffs and chalky caves Mourns the hoarse Ocean, seeming to deplore All that are buried in his restless waves- Mined by corrosive tides, the hollow rock Falls prone, and rushing from its turfy height, Shakes the broad beach with long-resounding shock, Loud thundering on the […]...
22. At Night The wind is singing through the trees to-night, A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences And crashing intervals. No summer breeze Is this, though hot July is at its height, Gone is her gentler music; with delight She listens to this booming like the seas, These elemental, loud necessities Which call to her to answer their […]...
23. The Future A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he […]...
24. Lost Anchors Like a dry fish flung inland far from shore, There lived a sailor, warped and ocean-browned, Who told of an old vessel, harbor-drowned, And out of mind a century before, Where divers, on descending to explore A legend that had lived its way around The world of ships, in the dark hulk had found Anchors, […]...
25. Love's Apparition and Evanishment: An Allegoric Romance Like a lone Arab, old and blind, Some caravan had left behind, Who sits beside a ruin’d well, Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell; And now he hangs his ag{‘e}d head aslant, And listens for a human sound in vain! And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant, Upturns his eyeless face from […]...
26. Five-Per-Cent Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern, And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn. For in some procreative way that isn’t very clear, Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year. So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife, I mean to stand […]...
27. Preface This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry […]...
28. William Goode To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, To go this way and that way, aimlessly. But here by the river you can see at twilight The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there They must fly so to catch their food. And if you have ever lost your way at night, In the […]...
29. Portrait Of A Lady Your thighs are appletrees Whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky Where Watteau hung a lady’s Slipper. Your knees Are a southern breeze-or A gust of snow. Agh! what Sort of man was Fragonard? -As if that answered Anything.-Ah, yes. Below The knees, since the tune Drops that way, it is One of […]...
30. April 19 We have too much exhibitionism And not enough voyeurism In poetry we have plenty of bass And not enough treble, more amber Beer than the frat boys can drink but Less red wine than meets the lip In this beaker of the best Bordeaux, Too much thesis, too little antithesis And way too much New […]...
31. 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...
32. Cruisers As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine, Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line; So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire, Accost and decoy to our masters’ desire. Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure, Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure; Since half of our trade […]...
33. Hatteras Calling Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane Shivers and moans upon its dripping pin, Ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain Howls at the flues and windows to get in, The golden rooster claps his golden wings And from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more, The golden arrow in the southeast sings And hears on […]...
34. In Excelsis It is half winter, half spring, And Barbara and I are standing Confronting the ocean. Its mouth is open very wide, And it has dug up its green, Throwing it, throwing it at the shore. You say it is angry. I say it is like a kicked Madonna. Its womb collapses, drunk with its fever. […]...
35. 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...
36. Once By The Pacific The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore That water never did to land before. The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. You could not tell, and yet it looked […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. July Fourth By The Ocean The continent’s a tamed ox, with all its mountains, Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here is for park and playground, this helpless Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel All docile between this ocean and the other. If flood troubles the lowlands, or earthquake Cracks walls, it is only a slave’s […]...
39. Short Order I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading, She said. Yes, yes? I asked. She’s young and pretty, she said. And? I asked. She hated your Guts. Then she stretched out on the couch And pulled off her Boots. I don’t have very good legs, She said. All right, I thought, I don’t have […]...
40. 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!...