THE FREEBOOTER

Related poetry:

1. Aspiration When I was daft (as urchins are), And full if fairy lore, I aimed an arrow at a star And hit – the barnyard door. I’ve shot at heaps of stars since then, But always it’s the same – A barnyard door has mocked me when Uranus was my aim. So, I’ll shoot starward as […]...
2. I. The Witch of Coös I stayed the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountains, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking. MOTHER: Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She could call up to pass a winter evening, But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn’t […]...
3. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
4. VALEDICTION I ONCE was fond of fools, And bid them come each day; Then each one brought his tools The carpenter to play; The roof to strip first choosing, Another to supply, The wood as trestles using, To move it by-and-by, While here and there they ran, And knock’d against each other; To fret I soon […]...
5. Grass The living room is overgrown with grass. It has Come up around the furniture. It stretches through The dining room, past the swinging door into the Kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the Walls. . . There’s treasure in grass, things dropped or put There; a stick of rust that was once a […]...
6. The Flower Boat The fisherman’s swapping a yarn for a yarn Under the hand of the village barber, And her in the angle of house and barn His deep-sea dory has found a harbor. At anchor she rides the sunny sod As full to the gunnel of flowers growing As ever she turned her home with cod From […]...
7. The Fury Of Cooks Herbs, garlic, Cheese, please let me in! Souffles, salad, Parker House rolls, Please let me in! Cook Helen, Why are you so cross, Why is your kitchen verboten? Couldn’t you just teach me To bake a potato, To bake a potato, That charm, That young prince? No! No! This is my county! You shout silently. […]...
8. Coffee Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee Affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you; It stimulates all the organs. I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but As time […]...
9. Remembrance has a Rear and Front Remembrance has a Rear and Front ‘Tis something like a House It has a Garret also For Refuse and the Mouse. Besides the deepest Cellar That ever Mason laid Look to it by its Fathoms Ourselves be not pursued...
10. Low-Tide These wet rocks where the tide has been, Barnacled white and weeded brown And slimed beneath to a beautiful green, These wet rocks where the tide went down Will show again when the tide is high Faint and perilous, far from shore, No place to dream, but a place to die,- The bottom of the […]...
11. Ghost House I DWELL in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight falls, And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field; The orchard tree has grown […]...
12. The House In The Woods At the back of the houses there is the wood. While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song, Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House In the Wood. It is […]...
13. BURNT SHIPS TO skies that were brighter Turned he his prows; To gods that were lighter Made he his vows. The snow-land’s mountains Sank in the deep; Sunnier fountains Lulled him to sleep. He burns his vessels, The smoke flung forth On blue cloud-trestles A bridge to the north. From the sun-warmed lowland Each night that betides, […]...
14. Autumn Whoever has no house now will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening And wander on the boulevards, up and down… – from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke Its stain is everywhere. The sharpening air Of late afternoon Is now the colour of tea. […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further Not that it was beautiful, But that, in the end, there was A certain sense of order there; Something worth learning In that narrow diary of my mind, In the commonplaces of the asylum Where the cracked mirror Or my own selfish death Outstared me. And if I tried To give you something else, Something […]...
17. The Kitchen Chimney Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear […]...
18. A Farm-Picture THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away....
19. Camping in a kitchen To say we’ve done it all before is not to bend The truth and though we’ve lost our youth The vision of the bright contemporary kitchen Draws us on, sustaining us beyond our strength. It’s all the donkey work that palls upon the weary joints, The stripping off of stubborn tiles, the cupboards With reviled […]...
20. God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop The summer and autumn had been so wet, That in winter the corn was growing yet, ‘Twas a piteous sight to see all around The grain lie rotting on the ground. Every day the starving poor Crowded around Bishop Hatto’s door, For he had a plentiful last-year’s store, And all the neighbourhood could tell His […]...
21. MORNING LAMENT OH thou cruel deadly-lovely maiden, Tell me what great sin have I committed, That thou keep’st me to the rack thus fasten’d, That thou hast thy solemn promise broken? ‘Twas but yestere’en that thou with fondness Press’d my hand, and these sweet accents murmured: “Yes, I’ll come, I’ll come when morn approacheth, Come, my friend, […]...
22. PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast returning empty. The coal office manager was a dwarf With sixty year old skin On a ten year old’s body and Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face. The enormous shire horses neighed In warning if […]...
23. Another barbeque tonight It rained throughout the night, a truly welcome sound That eases sleep although we barely slept – we were Distressed by other things. Today the kitchen’s centre ring, The kitchen of Anita’s dreams. It’s had a long gestation, Twenty years it’s taken just to reach this actual day (that’s in This iteration, there’s been some […]...
24. Like Brooms of Steel Like Brooms of Steel The Snow and Wind Had swept the Winter Street The House was hooked The Sun sent out Faint Deputies of Heat Where rode the Bird The Silence tied His ample plodding Steed The Apple in the Cellar snug Was all the one that played....
25. Flare 1. Welcome to the silly, comforting poem. It is not the sunrise, Which is a red rinse, Which is flaring all over the eastern sky; It is not the rain falling out of the purse of God; It is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward, Or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into […]...
26. THE MOUNTAIN CASTLE THERE stands on yonder high mountain A castle built of yore, Where once lurked horse and horseman In rear of gate and of door. Now door and gate are in ashes, And all around is so still; And over the fallen ruins I clamber just as I will. Below once lay a cellar, With costly […]...
27. To the Pay Toilet You strop my anger, especially When I find you in restaurant or bar And pay for the same liquid, coming and going. In bus depots and airports and turnpike plazas Some woman is dragging in with three kids hung off her Shrieking their simple urgency like gulls. She’s supposed to pay for each of them […]...
28. Before The Game Shut one eye then the other Peek into every corner of yourself See that there are no nails no thieves See that there are no cuckoo’s eggs Shut then the other eye Squat and jump Jump high high high On top of yourself Fall then with all your weight Fall for days on end deep […]...
29. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
30. Shocked the cupboard was done up On the outside In the brightest of colours The house it was part of Was filled each day With its loud exclamations The sun looked in gladly One morning and Fled (incredibly) dazzled Puzzled the people stared Up at the sun Nursing cursing its blindness And many rumours spread….. A […]...
31. ANNIVERSARY SONG [This little song describes the different members Of the party just spoken of.] WHY pacest thou, my neighbour fair, The garden all alone? If house and land thou seek’st to guard, I’d thee as mistress own. My brother sought the cellar-maid, And suffered her no rest; She gave him a refreshing draught, A kiss, too, […]...
32. Transcription Of Organ Music The flower in the glass peanut bottle formerly in the kitchen crooked to take a place in the light, The closet door opened, because I used it before, it kindly stayed open waiting for me, its owner. I began to feel my misery in pallet on floor, listening to music, my misery, that’s why I […]...
33. SPIRIT SONG OVER THE WATERS THE soul of man Resembleth water: From heaven it cometh, To heaven it soareth. And then again To earth descendeth, Changing ever. Down from the lofty Rocky wall Streams the bright flood, Then spreadeth gently In cloudy billows O’er the smooth rock, And welcomed kindly, Veiling, on roams it, Soft murmuring, Tow’rd the abyss. Cliffs […]...
34. What the Coal-Heaver Said The moon’s an open furnace door Where all can see the blast, We shovel in our blackest griefs, Upon that grate are cast Our aching burdens, loves and fears And underneath them wait Paper and tar and pitch and pine Called strife and blood and hate. Out of it all there comes a flame, A […]...
35. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
36. Dan EARLY May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind. Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door, all sun and no wind, Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep, Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off against each other on his […]...
37. Directions You know the brick path in the back of the house, The one you see from the kitchen window, The one that bends around the far end of the garden Where all the yellow primroses are? And you know how if you leave the path And walk into the woods you come To a heap […]...
38. I cautious, scanned my little life I cautious, scanned my little life I winnowed what would fade From what would last till Heads like mine Should be a-dreaming laid. I put the latter in a Barn The former, blew away. I went one winter morning And lo – my priceless Hay Was not upon the “Scaffold” Was not upon the “Beam” […]...
39. The Judge is like the Owl The Judge is like the Owl I’ve heard my Father tell And Owls do build in Oaks So here’s an Amber Sill That slanted in my Path When going to the Barn And if it serve You for a House Itself is not in vain About the price ’tis small I only ask a Tune […]...
40. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...