Fear Is What Quickens Me

Related poetry:

1. The Fear A lantern light from deeper in the barn Shone on a man and woman in the door And threw their lurching shadows on a house Near by, all dark in every glossy window. A horse’s hoof pawed once the hollow floor, And the back of the gig they stood beside Moved in a little. The […]...
2. Beginning The moon drops one or two feathers into the fiels. The dark wheat listens. Be still. Now. There they are, the moon’s young, trying Their wings. Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone Wholly, into the air. I […]...
3. Not yet 40, my beard is already white Not yet 40, my beard is already white. Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red, Like a child who has cried too much. What is more disagreeable Than last night’s wine? I’ll shave. I’ll stick my head in the cold spring and Look around at the pebbles. Maybe I can eat a can […]...
4. I Do Not Fear To Own Me Kin I DO not fear to own me kin To the glad clods in which spring flowers begin; Or to my brothers, the great trees, That speak with pleasant voices in the breeze, Loud talkers with the winds that pass; Or to my sister, the deep grass. Of such I am, of such my body is, […]...
5. Look not in my eyes, for fear Look not in my eyes, for fear Thy mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me. One the long nights through must lie Spent in star-defeated sighs, But why should you as well as I Perish? gaze not in my eyes. […]...
6. We Meet at the Judgment and I Fear It Not Though better men may fear that trumpet’s warning, I meet you, lady, on the Judgment morning, With golden hope my spirit still adorning. Our God who made you all so fair and sweet Is three times gentle, and before his feet Rejoicing I shall say:-“The girl you gave Was my first Heaven, an angel bent […]...
7. Storm Fear WHEN the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lowest chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast, ‘Come out! Come out!’ It costs no inward struggle not to go, Ah, no! I count our strength, Two and a child, Those of us […]...
8. Hope and Fear Beneath the shadow of dawn’s aërial cope, With eyes enkindled as the sun’s own sphere, Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, And makes for joy the very darkness dear That gives her wide […]...
9. One Inch Tall If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school. The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool. A crumb of cake would be a feast And last you seven days at least, A flea would be a frightening beast If you were one inch tall. If you were […]...
10. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
11. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
12. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
13. Whenever I Go There Whenever I go there everything is changed The stamps on the bandages the titles Of the professors of water The portrait of Glare the reasons for The white mourning In new rocks new insects are sitting With the lights off And once more I remember that the beginning Is broken No wonder the addresses are […]...
14. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
15. The Crescent Moon Slipping softly through the sky Little horned, happy moon, Can you hear me up so high? Will you come down soon? On my nursery window-sill Will you stay your steady flight? And then float away with me Through the summer night? Brushing over tops of trees, Playing hide and seek with stars, Peeping up through […]...
16. Symbol The winter apples have been picked, the garden turned. Rain and wind have picked the maple leaves and gone. The last of them now bank the house or have been burned. None are left upon the trees or on the lawn. Green and tall as ever it grew in spring the grass Grows not too […]...
17. The Breath Of Night The moon rises. The red cubs rolling In the ferns by the rotten oak Stare over a marsh and a meadow To the farm’s white wisp of smoke. A spark burns, high in heaven. Deer thread the blossoming rows Of the old orchard, rabbits Hop by the well-curb. The cock crows From the tree by […]...
18. Cuckoo Song (Spring begins in southern England on the 14th April, on which date the Old Woman lets the Cuckoo out of her basket at Heathfield Fair locally known as Heffle Cuckoo Fair.) Tell it to the locked-up trees, Cuckoo, bring your song here! Warrant, Act and Summons, please, For Spring to pass along here! Tell old […]...
19. The End Of Your Life First light. This misted field is the world, that man slipping the greased bolt Back and forth, that man tunneled with blood the dark smudges of whose eyes Call for sleep, calls for quiet, and the woman down your line, The woman who screamed the loudest, will be quiet. The rushes, the grassless shale, The […]...
20. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
21. Not Fear Not fear. Maybe, out there somewhere, The possibility of fear; the wall That might tumble down, because it’s for sure That behind it is the sea. Not fear. Fear has a countenance; It’s external, concrete, Like a rifle, a shot bolt, A suffering child, Like the darkness that’s hidden In every human mouth. Not fear. […]...
22. Moon Fishing When the moon was full they came to the water. Some with pitchforks, some with rakes, Some with sieves and ladles, And one with a silver cup. And they fished til a traveler passed them and said, “Fools, To catch the moon you must let your women Spread their hair on the water Even the […]...
23. Fear The host, he says that all is well And the fire-wood glow is bright; The food has a warm and tempting smell,- But on the window licks the night. Pile on the logs… Give me your hands, Friends! No,- it is not fright… But hold me… somewhere I heard demands… And on the window licks […]...
24. Fear I know how father’s strap would feel, If ever I were caught, So mother’s jam I did not steal, Though theft was in my thought. Then turned fourteen and full of pitch, Of love I was afraid, And did not dare to dally with Our pretty parlour maid. And so it is and always was, […]...
25. Fear No More Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney sweepers come to dust. Fear no more the frown of the great, Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke: Care no more […]...
26. Cups of Coffee THE HAGGARD woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white Flowers… in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel. The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones… and The woman who sold to many men and saw her breasts shrivel… […]...
27. Fear Not God Or Love God is love and love is not Something you should fear. Respect love? Yes! Honour love? Yes! Embrace love? Yes! But fear love? No! For when you fear love you Fear life. And when you fear life what Do you have but death. Death of all that is good and pure And wonderful in the […]...
28. Don't fear death Don’t fear death in earthly travels. Don’t fear enemies or friends. Just listen to the words of prayers, To pass the facets of the dreads. Your death will come to you, and never You shall be, else, a slave of life, Just waiting for a dawn’s favor, From nights of poverty and strife. She’ll build […]...
29. The Fear Of Burial In the empty field, in the morning, The body waits to be claimed. The spirit sits beside it, on a small rock Nothing comes to give it form again. Think of the body’s loneliness. At night pacing the sheared field, Its shadow buckled tightly around. Such a long journey. And already the remote, trembling lights […]...
30. I fear a Man of frugal Speech I fear a Man of frugal Speech I fear a Silent Man Haranguer I can overtake Or Babbler entertain But He who weigheth While the Rest Expend their furthest pound Of this Man I am wary I fear that He is Grand...
31. Lively Hope and Gracious Fear I was a grovelling creature once, And basely cleaved to earth: I wanted spirit to renounce The clod that gave me birth. But God hath breathed upon a worm, And sent me from above Wings such as clothe an angel’s form, The wings of joy and love. With these to Pisgah’s top I fly And […]...
32. To His Heart, Bidding It Have No Fear Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; Remember the wisdom out of the old days: Him who trembles before the flame and the flood, And the winds that blow through the starry ways, Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood Cover over and hide, for he has no part With the […]...
33. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. Sonnet 9: Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, That thou consum’st thy self in single life? Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife. The world will be thy widow and still weep, That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private […]...
36. Transit of the Gods Strange that the self’s continuum should outlast The Virgin, Aphrodite, and the Mourning Mother, All loves and griefs, successive deities That hold their kingdom in the human breast. Abandoned by the gods, woman with an ageing body That half remembers the Annunciation The passion and the travail and the grief That wore the mask of […]...
37. Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours 1 YET, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also; Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles! Earth to a chamber of mourning turns-I hear the o’erweening, mocking voice, Matter is conqueror-matter, triumphant only, continues onward. 2 Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, […]...
38. Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage How this woman came by the courage, how she got The courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot Night of the eight of July, Where it came from, did once the Lord frown down Upon her ancient cradle thinking ‘This one Will do before she die For two and seventy years of chipped indignities […]...
39. Nursing You On the first night Of the full moon, The primeval sack of ocean Broke, & I gave birth to you Little woman, Little carrot top, Little turned-up nose, Pushing you out of myself As my mother Pushed Me out of herself, As her mother did, & her mother’s mother before her, All of us born […]...
40. Elizabeth Leaves A Letter For Dr. Frankenstein Whether the clouds had abandoned Geneva that evening No one can say now, but what I remember are roses Bruised at their edges, and china cups yellowed with age. “I am too sick of interior vapors,” I told you, “Find us a corner of sunlight, and hammer it down… Tell me again I’m so lovely […]...