A Summer Afternoon

Related poetry:

1. Schoolroom On A Wet Afternoon The unrelated paragraphs of morning Are forgotten now; the severed heads of kings Rot by the misty Thames; the roses of York And Lancaster are pressed between the leaves Of history; Negroes sleep in Africa. The complexities of simple interest lurk In inkwells and the brittle sticks of chalk: Afternoon is come and English Grammar. […]...
2. On the Idle Hill of Summer On the idle hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a noise in dreams. Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for powder, Soldiers marching, all to die. East and west on fields […]...
3. Summer Evening The frog half fearful jumps across the path, And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath; My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive, Till past, and then the cricket sings more strong, And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear The short night weary with their fretting song. […]...
4. Late Summer Fires The paddocks shave black With a foam of smoke that stays, Welling out of red-black wounds. In the white of a drought This happens. The hardcourt game. Logs that fume are mostly cattle, Inverted, stubby. Tree stumps are kilns. Walloped, wiped, hand-pumped, Even this day rolls over, slowly. At dusk, a family drives sheep Out […]...
5. Summer Dawn Pray but one prayer for me ‘twixt thy closed lips, Think but one thought of me up in the stars. The summer night waneth, the morning light slips, Faint and grey ‘twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold Waits […]...
6. All In The Golden Afternoon All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretense Our wanderings to guide. Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour, Beneath such dreamy weather, To beg a tale of breath too weak To stir the tiniest feather! […]...
7. Afternoon When I am old, and comforted, And done with this desire, With Memory to share my bed And Peace to share my fire, I’ll comb my hair in scalloped bands Beneath my laundered cap, And watch my cool and fragile hands Lie light upon my lap. And I will have a sprigged gown With lace […]...
8. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
9. Afternoon Poem a lion at the door Swallowed the day Broken with spite At the inevitable chorus of pop songs Sutured for soft light I burdened siesta With a thousand little earthquakes I listened where you suffered vertigo Flowers have faded Bellies betray Caught the wistful eye That curved beneath my eyelids Something slime And panic strewn […]...
10. I met a King this afternoon! I met a King this afternoon! He had not on a Crown indeed, A little Palmleaf Hat was all, And he was barefoot, I’m afraid! But sure I am he Ermine wore Beneath his faded Jacket’s blue And sure I am, the crest he bore Within that Jacket’s pocket too! For ’twas too stately for […]...
11. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
12. A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the […]...
13. It Is A Spring Afternoon Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, The bone dry voices of the peepers As they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods Are carrying their deathmasks Into a narrow winter cave. The scarecrow has plucked out His two eyes like diamonds And walked into the village. The […]...
14. AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY The day is ending, The night is descending; The marsh is frozen, The river dead. Through clouds like ashes The red sun flashes On village windows That glimmer red. The snow recommences; The buried fences Mark no longer The road o’er the plain; While through the meadows, Like fearful shadows, Slowly passes A funeral train. […]...
15. Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer I’d walk her home after work Buying roses and talking of Bechsteins. She was full of soul. Her small room was gorged with heat And there were no windows. She’d take off everything But her pants And take the pins from her hair Throwing them on the floor With a great noise. Like Crete. We […]...
16. To Summer O thou who passest thro’ our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer, Oft pitched’st here thy goldent tent, and oft Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair. Beneath our thickest shades we […]...
17. St. Martin's Summer AS swallows turning backward When half-way o’er the sea, At one word’s trumpet summons They came again to me – The hopes I had forgotten Came back again to me. I know not which to credit, O lady of my heart! Your eyes that bade me linger, Your words that bade us part – I […]...
18. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
19. Summer See what delights in sylvan scenes appear! Descending Gods have found Elysium here. In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray’d, And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade. Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours, When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow’rs; When weary reapers quit the sultry field, And crown’d with corn, their […]...
20. Question And Answer he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer night, running the blade of the knife under his fingernails, smiling, thinking of all the letters he had received telling him that the way he lived and wrote about that it had kept them going when all seemed truly hopeless. putting the blade on the […]...
21. Let It Be Forgotten Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold. Let it be forgotten forever and ever, Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. If anyone asks, say it was forgotten Long and long ago, As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed […]...
22. Afternoon On A Hill I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show Up from the town, I will mark which must […]...
23. One Lonely Afternoon Since the fern can’t go to the sink for a drink of Water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two Glasses from the sink. And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together. Of course I’m more complex than a fern, full of deep Thoughts as I am. But I lay […]...
24. An Afternoon In The Stacks Closing the book, I find I have left my head Inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open Their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound, Words adjusting themselves to their meaning. Long passages open at successive pages. An echo, Continuous from the title onward, hums Behind me. From in here, the world […]...
25. Kemang Afternoon Blues 1/ Had it not been for the traffic jam You’d have thought being elsewhere Most the niceties seemed so foreign Speaking a tongue so unfamiliar 2/ The bookstore you were in Saw a sea of printed words Of books beyond reach So beautiful they were doomed 3/ Even a minute you were denied A meeting […]...
26. Tri-Colour Poppies, you try to tell me, glowing there in the wheat; Poppies! Ah no! You mock me: It’s blood, I tell you, it’s blood. It’s gleaming wet in the grasses; it’s glist’ning warm in the wheat; It dabbles the ferns and the clover; it brims in an angry flood; It leaps to the startled heavens; […]...
27. Late Afternoon: The Onslaught Of Love For William and Emily Maxwell At this time of day One could hear the caulking irons sound Against the hulls in the dockyard. Tar smoke rose between trees And large oily patches floated on the water, Undulating unevenly In the purple sunlight Like the surfaces of Florentine bronze. At this time of day Sounds carried […]...
28. Afternoon Rain in State Street Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of […]...
29. Flame-Heart So much have I forgotten in ten years, So much in ten brief years! I have forgot What time the purple apples come to juice, And what month brings the shy forget-me-not. I have forgot the special, startling season Of the pimento’s flowering and fruiting; What time of year the ground doves brown the fields […]...
30. Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle Celebrate Pullman embedded Lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float In an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat Are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned In […]...
31. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
32. Summer Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come, For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom, And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest, And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast; She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair, And […]...
33. Love What’s wrong with you, with us, What’s happening to us? Ah our love is a harsh cord That binds us wounding us And if we want To leave our wound, To separate, It makes a new knot for us and condemns us To drain our blood and burn together. What’s wrong with you? I look […]...
34. Between the Dusk of a Summer Night Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, […]...
35. The Summer I Was Sixteen The turquoise pool rose up to meet us, Its slide a silver afterthought down which We plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles. We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy. Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted Up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool Lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated, We […]...
36. A something in a summer's Day A something in a summer’s Day As slow her flambeaux burn away Which solemnizes me. A something in a summer’s noon A depth an Azure a perfume Transcending ecstasy. And still within a summer’s night A something so transporting bright I clap my hands to see Then veil my too inspecting face Lets such a […]...
37. Letter To N. Y For Louise Crane In your next letter I wish you’d say Where you are going and what you are doing; How are the plays and after the plays What other pleasures you’re pursuing: Taking cabs in the middle of the night, Driving as if to save your soul Where the road gose round and round […]...
38. A Night-Rain in Summer Open the window, and let the air Freshly blow upon face and hair, And fill the room, as it fills the night, With the breath of the rain’s sweet might. Hark! the burthen, swift and prone! And how the odorous limes are blown! Stormy Love’s abroad, and keeps Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps. Not a […]...
39. RAIN IN SUMMER How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs, Like the tramp of hoofs How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout! Across the window-pane It pours and […]...
40. Bed in Summer In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people’s feet Still going past me in the street. And […]...