Snake

Related poetry:

1. Snake I saw a young snake glide Out of the mottled shade And hang, limp on a stone: A thin mouth, and a tongue Stayed, in the still air. It turned; it drew away; Its shadow bent in half; It quickened and was gone I felt my slow blood warm. I longed to be that thing. […]...
2. Snake A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before Me. […]...
3. To the Snake Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck And stroked your cold, pulsing throat As you hissed to me, glinting Arrowy gold scales, and I felt The weight of you on my shoulders, And the whispering silver of your dryness Sounded close at my ears Green Snake I swore to my companions that certainly […]...
4. The Song Of The Jellicles Jellicle Cats come out tonight, Jellicle Cats come one come all: The Jellicle Moon is shining bright Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball. Jellicle Cats are black and white, Jellicle Cats are rather small; Jellicle Cats are merry and bright, And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul. Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces, Jellicle Cats have […]...
5. The Lobster Here at the Super Duper, in a glass tank Supplied by a rill of cold fresh water Running down a glass washboard at one end And siphoned off at the other, and so Perpetually renewed, a herd of lobster Is made available to the customer Who may choose whichever one he wants To carry home […]...
6. The Bone that has no Marrow The Bone that has no Marrow, What Ultimate for that? It is not fit for Table For Beggar or for Cat. A Bone has obligations A Being has the same A Marrowless Assembly Is culpabler than shame. But how shall finished Creatures A function fresh obtain? Old Nicodemus’ Phantom Confronting us again!...
7. June Light Your voice, with clear location of June days, Called me outside the window. You were there, Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare Of uncontested summer all things raise Plainly their seeming into seamless air. Then your love looked as simple and entire As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face […]...
8. Mirage The hope I dreamed of was a dream, Was but a dream; and now I wake, Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old, For a dream’s sake. I hang my harp upon a tree, A weeping willow in a lake; I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped For a dream’s sake. Lie still, lie […]...
9. 'Tis Anguish grander than Delight ‘Tis Anguish grander than Delight ‘Tis Resurrection Pain The meeting Bands of smitten Face We questioned to, again. ‘Tis Transport wild as thrills the Graves When Cerements let go And Creatures clad in Miracle Go up by Two and Two....
10. Bone-fable one morning the bone was there Set in the centre of waste ground Against the early morning sun The frost along its concave rim Sparkled – raised a hundredfold The price a passing dog Would place on it but the dogs Who came (barking amongst themselves About the food shining at them Across the rubbled […]...
11. As The Sparrow To give life you must take life, And as our grief falls flat and hollow Upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed With white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures Lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes. Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow Did to you; I am old when […]...
12. The Scholars Would I could cast a sad on the water Where many a king has gone And many a king’s daughter, And alight at the comely trees and the lawn, The playing upon pipes and the dancing, And learn that the best thing is To change my loves while dancing And pay but a kiss for […]...
13. Mud Soup 1. Had the ham bone, had the lentils, Got to meat store for the salt pork, Got to grocery for the celery. Had the onions, had the garlic, Borrowed carrots from the neighbor. Had the spices, had the parsley. One big kettle I had not got; Borrowed pot and lid from landlord. 2. Dice the […]...
14. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter That only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise Into the seamless life proclaimed in your […]...
15. A Hedge Of Rubber Trees The West Village by then was changing; before long The rundown brownstones at its farthest edge Would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived, Impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of Rubber trees, with three cats, a canary-refuse From whose cage kept sifting down and then Germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around The saucers […]...
16. THE INVITATION To sup with thee thou didst me home invite, And mad’st a promise that mine appetite Should meet and tire, on such lautitious meat, The like not Heliogabalus did eat: And richer wine would’st give to me, thy guest, Than Roman Sylla pour’d out at his feast. I came, ’tis true, and look’d for fowl […]...
17. Conscious His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed. His eyes come open with a pull of will, Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head. A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill. . . How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug! And who’s that talking, somewhere out of sight? Why are they […]...
18. Good-by and Keep Cold This saying good-by on the edge of the dark And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don’t want it girdled by rabbit […]...
19. UPON JULIA'S RECOVERY Droop, droop no more, or hang the head, Ye roses almost withered; Now strength, and newer purple get, Each here declining violet. O primroses! let this day be A resurrection unto ye; And to all flowers allied in blood, Or sworn to that sweet sisterhood. For health on Julia’s cheek hath shed Claret and cream […]...
20. Full Moon and Little Frieda A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket – And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with […]...
21. Bird of fire – a caution the dream of the white bird flying Offers a freedom as tasty as nectar How our lips purse to the goddess’s pap At the want of such swoops through the air To be rid of the drag on our legs The sloshing through drudgery and mire The daily entangling with bramble The hurt of our […]...
22. Father and Son Now in the suburbs and the falling light I followed him, and now down sandy road Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet Curdle of fields, where the plums Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by one. Mile after mile I followed, with skimming feet, After the secret master of my blood, Him, steeped in […]...
23. A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten To be intoned, all but the two italicized lines, which are to be spoken in a snappy, matter-of-fact way. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. Here lies a kitten good, who kept A kitten’s proper place. He stole no pantry eatables, Nor scratched the baby’s face. He let the alley-cats alone. He had no yowling vice. His shirt […]...
24. To a Fish You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced, Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea, Gulping salt-water everlastingly, Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced, And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste; And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be, Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry, Legless, unloving, infamously chaste: O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring […]...
25. The Cut Well, what’s the matter? there’s a face What! has it cut a vein? And is it quite a shocking place? Come, let us look again. I see it bleeds, but never mind That tiny little drop; I don’t believe you’ll ever find That crying makes it stop. ‘Tis sad indeed to cry at pain, For […]...
26. The Owl When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells […]...
27. An Autumn Reverie Alas! Beautiful Summer now hath fled, And the face of Nature doth seem dead, And the leaves are withered, and falling off the trees, By the nipping and chilling autumnal breeze. The pleasures of the little birds are all fled, And with the cold many of them will be found dead, Because the leaves of […]...
28. A MISSAL LIKE A BONE Link by link I can disown No link.(R. Duncan) I search the passage Someone sends & find a missal Like a bone. My hands are white with sweat. I lay my burden down The ground below me Shrinking. The more my fingers ply These keys the more Words daunt me. I am what a haunt […]...
29. Hamlet Off-Stage: The Magnolia Closet “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations Of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight.” Whoever “Thy” is, that’s the prayer to breathe, Words that chimed in my head while I stood under The first magnolia blossom of the year, Gift of God? Elvis? Allah? or Liberace? Who provides the rococo razzledazzle? What’s […]...
30. Exiles Her brown falcon perches above the sink As steaming water forks over my hands. Below the wrists they shrivel and turn pink. I am in exile in my own land. Her half-grown cats scuffle across the floor Trailing a slime of blood from where they fed. I lock the door. They claw under the door. […]...
31. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
32. Hot she was hot, she was so hot I didn’t want anybody else to have her, And if I didn’t get home on time She’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that- I’d go mad. . . It was foolish I know, childish, But I was caught in it, I was caught. I delivered all the […]...
33. Traveling Dream I am packing to go to the airport But somehow I am never packed. I keep remembering more things I keep forgetting. Secretly the clock is bolting Forward ten minutes at a click Instead of one. Each time I look away, it jumps. Now I remember I have to find The cats. I have four […]...
34. I often passed the village I often passed the village When going home from school And wondered what they did there And why it was so still I did not know the year then In which my call would come Earlier, by the Dial, Than the rest have gone. It’s stiller than the sundown. It’s cooler than the dawn The […]...
35. Towards Break Of Day Was it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: “There is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side That all my childhood counted dear; Were I to travel far and wide I could not find a […]...
36. Sixteen Dead Men O but we talked at large before The sixteen men were shot, But who can talk of give and take, What should be and what not While those dead men are loitering there To stir the boiling pot? You say that we should still the land Till Germany’s overcome; But who is there to argue […]...
37. Picnic Boat SUNDAY night and the park policemen tell each other it Is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan. A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach Farms of Saugatuck. Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night’s darkness, a Flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill. […]...
38. Though the Last Glimpse of Erin With Sorrow I See Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see, Yet wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me; In exile thy bosom shall still be my home, And thine eyes make my climate wherever we roam. To the gloom of some desert or cold rocky shore, Where the eye of the stranger can haunt […]...
39. She dealt her pretty words like Blades She dealt her pretty words like Blades How glittering they shone And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone She never deemed she hurt That is not Steel’s Affair A vulgar grimace in the Flesh How ill the Creatures bear To Ache is human not polite The Film upon the eye Mortality’s […]...
40. Promises Like Pie-Crust Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know? You, so warm, may once have been Warmer towards […]...