Civic Centre (for Kathryn)

Related poetry:

1. Title divine is mine! Title divine is mine! The Wife without the Sign! Acute Degree conferred on me Empress of Calvary! Royal all but the Crown! Betrothed without the swoon God sends us Women When you hold Garnet to Garnet Gold to Gold Born Bridalled Shrouded In a Day Tri Victory “My Husband” women say Stroking the Melody Is […]...
2. Each Life Converges to some Centre Each Life Converges to some Centre Expressed or still Exists in every Human Nature A Goal Embodied scarcely to itself it may be Too fair For Credibility’s presumption To mar Adored with caution as a Brittle Heaven To reach Were hopeless, as the Rainbow’s Raiment To touch Yet persevered toward sure for the Distance How […]...
3. Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, My sinful earth these rebel powers array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy […]...
4. Edmonton, thy cemetery Edmonton, thy cemetery In which I love to tread Has roused in me a dreary thought For all the countless dead, Ah me, the countless dead. Yet I believe that one is one And shall for ever be, And while I hold to this belief I walk, oh cemetery, Thy footpaths happily. And I believe […]...
5. Scholfield Huxley God! ask me not to record your wonders, I admit the stars and the suns And the countless worlds. But I have measured their distances And weighed them and discovered their substances. I have devised wings for the air, And keels for water, And horses of iron for the earth. I have lengthened the vision […]...
6. Song Of The Jade Cup A jade cup was broken because old age came Too soon to give fulfilment to hopes; after drinking Three cups of wine I wiped my sword and Started to dance under an autumn moon first Singing in a high voice then unable to halt Tears coming; I remember the day when first I was summoned […]...
7. To Live We both have our hands to give Take mine I shall lead you afar I have lived several times my face hasw changed With every threshold I have crossed and every hand clasped Familial springtime was reborn Keeping for itself and for me its perishable snow Death and the betrothed The future with five fingers […]...
8. At the grave of Anastasia Baluk – Cross Stone Anastasia And the sad snow falling A toiling sky And a long white line of hills A distant birthplace Short span and early dying Pain from what heaven Sorrowed your slope of life? Through valley’s throat Run double veins of water Feverish river Somnolent canal – the vein of the metal rail And the trundling […]...
9. Conversation We smile at each other And I lean back against the wicker couch. How does it feel to be dead? I say. You touch my knees with your blue fingers. And when you open your mouth, A ball of yellow light falls to the floor And burns a hole through it. Don’t tell me, I […]...
10. Soliloquy in Circles Being a father Is quite a bother. You are as free as air With time to spare, You’re a fiscal rocket With change in your pocket, And then one morn A child is born. Your life has been runcible, Irresponsible, Like an arrow or javelin You’ve been constantly travelin’. But mostly, I daresay, Without a […]...
11. In The Beginning Ever since those wondrous days of Creation Our Lord God sleeps: we are His sleep. And He accepted this in His indulgence, Resigned to rest among the distant stars. Our actions stopped Him from reacting, For His fist-tight hand is numbed by sleep, And the times brought in the age of heroes During which our […]...
12. The Silken Tent She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease, And its supporting central cedar pole, That is its pinnacle to heavenward And signifies the sureness of the soul, Seems to […]...
13. You Will Hear Thunder You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire. That day in Moscow, it will all come true, When, for the last time, I take my leave, And hasten […]...
14. Post-Vacation Tristesse The Jumbo Jet has barely shuddered off The ground, and I’m depressed. My scuba mask And fins, my fly rod and beach hat Crush each other in an overhead locker Dark as the bedroom closet they’re returning to. Already the week’s good times melt Together like caramels in a hot car. My vow to “Do […]...
15. The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir Ye sons of Great Britain, come join with me, And sing in praise of Sir Garnet Wolseley; Sound drums and trumpets cheerfully, For he has acted most heroically. Therefore loudly his praises sing Until the hills their echoes back doth ring; For he is a noble hero bold, And an honour to his Queen and […]...
16. On Kusu Terrace The old gardens of Kusu Terrace Are a wilderness, yet the willows That remain still put out new branches; Lasses gathering water chestnuts Sing so loudly and with such Clarity, that the feeling of spring Returns to us; but where once stood The palace of the King of Wu, now Only the moon over the […]...
17. Thunder There will be thunder then. Remember me. Say ‘ She asked for storms.’ The entire World will turn the colour of crimson stone, And your heart, as then, will turn to fire. That day, in Moscow, a true prophecy, When for the last time I say goodbye, Soaring to the heavens that I longed to […]...
18. 493. Song-Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair CONTENTED wi’ little, and cantie wi’ mair, Whene’er I forgather wi’ Sorrow and Care, I gie them a skelp as they’re creeping alang, Wi’ a cog o’ gude swats and an auld Scottish sang. Chorus.-Contented wi’ little, &c. I whiles claw the elbow o’ troublesome thought; But Man is a soger, and Life is a […]...
19. This Dust, and its Feature This Dust, and its Feature Accredited Today Will in a second Future Cease to identify This Mind, and its measure A too minute Area For its enlarged inspection’s Comparison appear This World, and its species A too concluded show For its absorbed Attention’s Remotest scrutiny...
20. Compass Rose I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart, And brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams, Were Russia and our land not laid apart By ocean so much deeper than it seems. I have an oval pin, though glossy lacquer Hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came, With fine, deft roses on a background blacker Perhaps, […]...
21. Pi The admirable number pi: Three point one four one. All the following digits are also just a start, Five nine two because it never ends. It can’t be grasped, six five three five, at a glance, Eight nine, by calculation, Seven nine, through imagination, Or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison […]...
22. Those Images What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There’s better exercise In the sunlight and wind. I never bade you go To Moscow or to Rome. Renounce that drudgery, Call the Muses home. Seek those images That constitute the wild, The lion and the virgin, The harlot and the child. Find in […]...
23. Resentment Near the Jade Stairs Dew whitens the jade stairs. This late, it soaks her gauze stockings. She lowers her crystal blind to watch The breaking, glass-clear moon of autumn....
24. Farewell to Hsin Chien at Hibiscus Pavilion A cold rain mingled with the river At evening, when I entered Wu; In the clear dawn I bid you farewell, Lonely as Ch’u Mountain. My kinsfolk in Loyang, Should they ask about me, Tell them: “My heart is a piece of ice In a jade cup!”...
25. Self-Knowledge XVII And a man said, “Speak to us of Self-Knowledge.” And he answered, saying: Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always know in thought. You would touch with your […]...
26. Ridden Down When I taught Ida how to ride a Bicycle that night, I ran beside her, just to guide her Erring wheel aright; And many times there in the street She rode upon my weary feet. But now can Ida mount and ride a Wheel with graceful ease, And I, untiring in admiring, Fall upon my […]...
27. Vacant Lot With Pokeweed Tufts, follicles, grubstake Biennial rosettes, a low- Life beach-blond scruff of Couch grass: notwithstanding The interglinting dregs Of wholesale upheaval and Dismemberment, weeds do not Hesitate, the wheeling Rise of the ailanthus halts At nothing-and look! here’s A pokeweed, sprung up from seed Dropped by some vagrant, that’s Seized a foothold: a magenta- Girdered bower, […]...
28. A Flower-Piece By Fantin Heart’s ease or pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart’s ease. Surely by glad and divine degrees The heart impelling the hand that wrought Wrought comfort here for a soul’s disease. Deep flowers, with lustre and darkness fraught, From glass that gleams […]...
29. Sorrow Why does the thin grey strand Floating up from the forgotten Cigarette between my fingers, Why does it trouble me? Ah, you will understand; When I carried my mother downstairs, A few times only, at the beginning Of her soft-foot malady, I should find, for a reprimand To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs […]...
30. Ziyi Song Chang-an one slip of moon; In ten thousand houses, the sound of fulling mallets. Autumn winds keep on blowing, All things make me think of Jade Pass! When will they put down the barbarians And my good man come home from his far campaign?...
31. Little Willie When Willie was a little boy, No more than five or six, Right constantly he did annoy His mother with his tricks. Yet not a picayune cared I For what he did or said, Unless, as happened frequently, The rascal wet the bed. Closely he cuddled up to me, And put his hands in mine, […]...
32. A Song of a Girl from Loyang There’s a girl from Loyang in the door across the street, She looks fifteen, she may be a little older. …While her master rides his rapid horse with jade bit an bridle, Her handmaid brings her cod-fish in a golden plate. On her painted pavilions, facing red towers, Cornices are pink and green with peach-bloom […]...
33. I held a Jewel in my fingers I held a Jewel in my fingers And went to sleep The day was warm, and winds were prosy I said “‘Twill keep” I woke and chid my honest fingers, The Gem was gone And now, an Amethyst remembrance Is all I own...
34. Renunciation It’s a jade branch on the floor, broken in two, love, Or a stain raised on the lapped grains of a suede glove. It’s the lace, blown by a strong breeze, of an old gown With the cranes crying at night, lost in their long sound. It’s a vase made from the noon light in […]...
35. FLOWER-SALUTE THIS nosegay, ’twas I dress’d it, Greets thee a thousand times! Oft stoop’d I, and caress’d it, Ah! full a thousand times, And ‘gainst my bosom press’d it A hundred thousand times! 1815.*...
36. The Artist as an Old Man If you ask him he will talk for hours How at fourteen he hammered signs, fingers Raw with cold, and later painted bowers In ladies’ boudoirs; how he played checkers For two weeks in jail, and lived on dark bread; How he fled the border to a country Which disappeared wars ago; unfriended Crossed a […]...
37. Spring Night in Lo-yang Hearing a Flute In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting, Scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang? Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song, Who could help but long for the gardens of home?...
38. Dream Song 51: Our wounds to time, from all the other times Our wounds to time, from all the other times, Sea-times slow, the times of galaxies Fleeing, the dwarfs’ dead times, Lessen so little that if here in his crude rimes Henry them mentions, do not hold it, please, For a putting of man down. Ol’ Marster, being bound you do your best Versus we coons, […]...
39. Statistics NAPOLEON shifted, Restless in the old sarcophagus And murmured to a watchguard: “Who goes there?” “Twenty-one million men, Soldiers, armies, guns, Twenty-one million Afoot, horseback, In the air, Under the sea.” And Napoleon turned to his sleep: “It is not my world answering; It is some dreamer who knows not The world I marched in […]...
40. What does it take? Is the current rate of global warming A serious and cogent warning? Do we need to think about the fact That higher tides will drown Pacific island states Within a year or two, or do we listen to The loosely spewed claptrap backed By pseudo-scientists (who say with fervent ease That it’s all happened before, […]...