The Surface

Related poetry:

1. The Old Swimmin'-Hole OH! the old swimmin’-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc’t ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin’ out […]...
2. Blue Evening My restless blood now lies a-quiver, Knowing that always, exquisitely, This April twilight on the river Stirs anguish in the heart of me. For the fast world in that rare glimmer Puts on the witchery of a dream, The straight grey buildings, richly dimmer, The fiery windows, and the stream With willows leaning quietly over, […]...
3. Underneath (9) Spring Up, up you go, you must be introduced. You must learn belonging to (no-one) Drenched in the white veil (day) The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger. Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see In. Missing: corners, fields, Completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest. Below, his […]...
4. My Love Is in a Light Attire My love is in a light attire Among the apple-trees, Where the gay winds do most desire To run in companies. There, where the gay winds stay to woo The young leaves as they pass, My love goes slowly, bending to Her shadow on the grass; And where the sky’s a pale blue cup Over […]...
5. The Song of the Darling River The skies are brass and the plains are bare, Death and ruin are everywhere And all that is left of the last year’s flood Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud; The salt-springs bubble and the quagmires quiver, And this is the dirge of the Darling River: ‘I rise in the drought from the […]...
6. Conjugal A man is bending his wife. He is bending her Around something that she has bent herself Around. She is around it, bent as he has bent Her. He is convincing her. It is all so private. He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he Is bending her around the tripod of his camera. […]...
7. A Wanderer's Song A WIND’S in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels, I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels; I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limit of the land, Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. Oh I’ll be going, leaving the noises of the street, To where […]...
8. A Musical Instrument What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river. He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of […]...
9. Absence Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool, Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool. Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb, Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim. But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties Now, […]...
10. Without Looking Either at my friend’s daughter’s Sixteen-year-old body dumped On the morgue slab, T-shirt Stuck fast to one ripped Breast I identified quick, and then Got out of there Or at the old gentleman With tubes in the living room, spittle Stained in his wispy Beard, out of The corner of my eye I hardly Notice […]...
11. Pomona I am the ancient apple-queen, As once I was so am I now. For evermore a hope unseen, Betwixt the blossom and the bough. Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold! And where the windy grave of Troy? Yet come I as I came of old, From out the heart of Summer’s joy....
12. Puritans Sidling upon the river, the white boat Has volleyed with its cannon all the morning, Shaken the shore towns like a Judgment warning, Telling the palsied water its demand That the crime come to the top again, and float, That the sunk murder rise to the light and land. Blam! In the noon’s perfected brilliance […]...
13. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
14. Resurrection Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river Where in the early fall long grasses wave, Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver And sigh as if just blown across a grave. And then I pause and listen to this sighing. I look with strange eyes on the well-known stream. I hear wild birth-cries […]...
15. River Moons THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face, The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head. I saw them last […]...
16. Me prove it now Whoever doubt Me prove it now Whoever doubt Me stop to prove it now Make haste the Scruple! Death be scant For Opportunity The River reaches to my feet As yet My Heart be dry Oh Lover Life could not convince Might Death enable Thee The River reaches to My Breast Still still My Hands above Proclaim […]...
17. Moving Forward The deep parts of my life pour onward, As if the river shores were opening out. It seems that things are more like me now, That I can see farther into paintings. I feel closer to what language can’t reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb Into the windy heaven, out of the […]...
18. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
19. Poem In the early evening, a now, as man is bending Over his writing table. Slowly he lifts his head; a woman Appears, carrying roses. Her face floats to the surface of the mirror, Marked with the green spokes of rose stems. It is a form Of suffering: then always the transparent page Raised to the […]...
20. Kinsey Keene Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank; Coolbaugh Wedon, editor of the Argus; Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church; A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River; And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club Your attention to Cambronne’s dying words, Standing with heroic remnant Of Napoleon’s guard on […]...
21. The Art Of Drowning I wonder how it all got started, this business About seeing your life flash before your eyes While you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence, Could startle time into such compression, crushing Decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds. After falling off a steamship or being swept away In a […]...
22. Leaving and Leaving You When I leave you postcode and your commuting station, When I left undone all the things we planned to do You may feel you have been left by association But there is leaving and leaving you. When I leave your town and the club that you belong to, When I leave without much warning or […]...
23. Eternity for C. G. Macdonald, 1956-2006 Charlie, sunrise is a three-legged mongrel dog, Going deaf, already blind in one eye, Answering to the unlikely name, ‘Lucky.’ The sky, at gray-blue dawn, is a football field painted By smiling artists. Each artist has 3 arms, 3 hands, 3 legs. One leg drags behind, leaving a trail, leaving […]...
24. Martha Washington Written for the “Martha Washington Court Journal”. Down cold snow-stretches of our bitter time, When windy shams and the rain-mocking sleet Of Trade have cased us in such icy rime That hearts are scarcely hot enough to beat, Thy fame, O Lady of the lofty eyes, Doth fall along the age, like as a lane […]...
25. The Wild Iris At the end of my suffering There was a door. Hear me out: that which you call death I remember. Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun Flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive As consciousness Buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which […]...
26. Jack – beyond the digits so here we are at last at the ten-boy Never to be the single-figure-aged-again boy And all the trailing clouds that cling to the not-big child Can be blown away – you’re up in your own sky now Clear-blue on some days (if on others windy and wild) Now you’ll have to see yourself as […]...
27. Out in the Garden Out in the garden, Out in the windy, swinging dark, Under the trees and over the flower-beds, Over the grass and under the hedge border, Someone is sweeping, sweeping, Some old gardener. Out in the windy, swinging dark, Someone is secretly putting in order, Someone is creeping, creeping....
28. Like Barley Bending Like barley bending In low fields by the sea, Singing in hard wind Ceaselessly; Like barley bending And rising again, So would I, unbroken, Rise from pain; So would I softly, Day long, night long, Change my sorrow Into song....
29. The Blessed Cumhal called out, bending his head, Till Dathi came and stood, With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth, Between the wind and the wood. And Cumhal said, bending his knees, ‘I have come by the windy way To gather the half of your blessedness And learn to pray when you pray. ‘I can […]...
30. Daughter leaves and leaving call october home Her daughter releases wood Smoke from her skin Rich in scorpio Blood survived the first Flood each new year marks A circle around her Thick bark middle This the month summer and Winter fall into each Other and leave orange Yellow ashes The vibrancy of death Carry it all […]...
31. The Night is Darkening Around Me The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow ; But a tyrant spell has bound me, And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow ; The storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below […]...
32. The Paroo It was a week from Christmas-time, As near as I remember, And half a year since, in the rear, We’d left the Darling timber. The track was hot and more than drear; The day dragged out for ever; But now we knew that we were near Our camp – the Paroo River. With blighted eyes […]...
33. Rip It can’t be the passing of time that casts That white shadow across the waters Just offshore. I shiver a little, with the evening. I turn down the steep path to find What’s left of the river gold. I whistle a dog lazily, and lazily A bird whistles me. Close by a big river, I […]...
34. THE INDIAN GIPSY IN tattered robes that hoard a glittering trace Of bygone colours, broidered to the knee, Behold her, daughter of a wandering race, Tameless, with the bold falcon’s agile grace, And the lithe tiger’s sinuous majesty. With frugal skill her simple wants she tends, She folds her tawny heifers and her sheep On lonely meadows when […]...
35. Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember. I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage. Then the almost unnameable lust returns. Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention, The furniture you have placed under the sun. But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they […]...
36. The Yukoner He burned a hole in frozen muck, He pierced the icy mould, And there in six-foot dirt he struck A sack or so of gold. He burned holes in the Decalogue, And then it cam about, For Fortune’s just a lousy rogue, His “pocket” petered out. And lo! ’twas but a year all told, When […]...
37. Introductory Verses Oh, you who read some song that I have sung – What know you of the soul from whence it sprung? Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud His secret thought unto the listening crowd? Go take the murmuring sea-shell from the shore- You have its shape, its colour – and no more. It tells […]...
38. The Gardener XIX: You Walked You walked by the riverside path With the full pitcher upon your hip. Why did you swiftly turn your face And peep at me through your fluttering Veil? That gleaming look from the dark Came upon me like a breeze that sends A shiver through the rippling water And sweeps away to the shadowy Shore. […]...
39. A Green Stream I have sailed the River of Yellow Flowers, Borne by the channel of a green stream, Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains On a journey of less than thirty miles…. Rapids hum over heaped rocks; But where light grows dim in the thick pines, The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns And weeds […]...
40. Mercian Hymns VII Gasholders, russet among fields. Milldams, marlpools that lay Unstirring. Eel-swarms. Coagulations of frogs: once, with branches and Half-bricks, he battered a ditchful; then sidled away from the stillness And silence. Ceolred was his friend and remained so, even after the day of the lost Fighter: a biplane, already obsolete and irreplaceable, two inches of Heavy […]...