A Polar Explorer

Related poetry:

1. The Naked And The Nude For me, the naked and the nude (By lexicographers construed As synonyms that should express The same deficiency of dress Or shelter) stand as wide apart As love from lies, or truth from art. Lovers without reproach will gaze On bodies naked and ablaze; The Hippocratic eye will see In nakedness, anatomy; And naked shines […]...
2. The Explorer There’s no sense in going further it’s the edge of cultivation,” So they said, and I believed it broke my land and sowed my crop Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop. Till a voice, as bad as […]...
3. Cocoon For A Skeleton Clothes: to compose The furtive, lone Pillar of bone To some repose. To let hands shirk Utterance behind A pocket’s blind Deceptive smirk. To mask, belie The undue haste Of breast for breast Or thigh for thigh. To screen, conserve The pose, when death Half strips the sheath And leaves the nerve. To edit, glose […]...
4. Thanksgiving The man who stands above the bird, his knife Sharp as a Turkish scimitar, first removes A thigh and leg, half the support On which the turkey used to stand. This Leg and thigh he sets on an extra Plate. All his weight now on One leg, he lunges for the wing, the wing On […]...
5. 1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because ’tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not […]...
6. Her Kind I have gone out, a possessed witch, Haunting the black air, braver at night; Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch Over the plain houses, light by light: Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in […]...
7. "It Might Have Been&quot We will be what we could be. Do not say, “It might have been, had not this, or that, or this.” No fate can keep us from the chosen way; He only might who is. We will do what we could do. Do not dream Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve. I hold, […]...
8. ENGLAND’S OPENERS A blackbird lands A good beer-barrel A man sits in a cave knitting A theatre in Copenhagen Abask the sea-wall Alice was demure and O All the way to Bury Amid the heather Among the lupins And after little suzie And it was his grief that kept him travelling And the baby miscarried And the […]...
9. 4:02 p. m poem supposed to be about One minute and the lives of three women in it Writing it and up The block a woman killed By her husband Poem now about one minute And the lives of four women In it Haitian mother She walks through Town carrying her son’s Head-banging it against Her thigh calling […]...
10. These tested Our Horizon These tested Our Horizon Then disappeared As Birds before achieving A Latitude. Our Retrospection of Them A fixed Delight, But our Anticipation A Dice a Doubt...
11. Whatever Happened? At once whatever happened starts receding. Panting, and back on board, we line the rail With trousers ripped, light wallets, and lips bleeding. Yes, gone, thank God! Remembering each detail We toss for half the night, but find next day All’s kodak-distant. Easily, then (though pale), ‘Perspective brings significance,’ we say, Unhooding our photometers, and, […]...
12. Loneliness Being apart and lonely is like rain. It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains; From flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs To heaven, which is its old abode. And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city. It rains down on us in those twittering Hours when the streets turn their faces to […]...
13. The Lake The yard half a yard, Half a lake blue as a corpse. The lake will tell things you long to hear: Get away from here. Three o’clock. Dry leaves rat-tat like maracas. Whisky-colored grass Breaks at every step and trees Are slowly realizing they are nude. How long will you stay? For the lake asks […]...
14. Conjecturing a Climate Conjecturing a Climate Of unsuspended Suns Adds poignancy to Winter The Shivering Fancy turns To a fictitious Country To palliate a Cold Not obviated of Degree Nor erased of Latitude...
15. The Ripest Peach The ripest peach is highest on the tree And so her love, beyond the reach of me, Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow Her heart down to me where I worship now! She looms aloft where every eye may see The ripest peach is highest on the tree. Such fruitage as her love […]...
16. TO DAISY ABEY In sleep I dream the gratitude I know I cannot say Now you are in a latitude where palm trees hold the sway There are always things between us that keep getting in the way And stop me from expressing the things I mean to say In a night of wind and weathers love will […]...
17. Sunset Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors Which it passes to a row of ancient trees. You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you One part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth. Leaving you, not really belonging to either, Not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent, Not […]...
18. Washerwife The aged Queen who passed away Had sixty servants, so they say; Twice sixty hands her shoes to tie: Two soapy ones have I. The old Queen had of beds a score; A cot have I and ask no more. For when the last is said and done One can but die in one. The […]...
19. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
20. When I Was Young the Silk When I was young the silk Of my mind Hard as a peony head Unfurled And wind bloomed the parachute: The air-head tugged me Up, Tore my roots loose and drove High, so high I want to touch down now And taste the ground I want to take in My silk And ask where I […]...
21. The Painter on Silk There was a man Who made his living By painting roses Upon silk. He sat in an upper chamber And painted, And the noises of the street Meant nothing to him. When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums, He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses Bursting in the sunshine, And smiled as […]...
22. Forever it composed of Nows Forever it composed of Nows ‘Tis not a different time Except for Infiniteness And Latitude of Home From this experienced Here Remove the Dates to These Let Months dissolve in further Months And Years exhale in Years Without Debate or Pause Or Celebrated Days No different Our Years would be From Anno Domini’s...
23. Bank Robber I much admire, I must admit, The man who robs a Bank; It takes a lot of guts and grit, For lack of which I thank The gods: a chap ‘twould make of me You wouldn’t ask to tea. I do not mean a burglar cove Who climbs into a house, From room to room […]...
24. FACES IN A CROWD The women are all wearing imitation silk scarves, Blackpool or Biarritz, sipping Woman, masticating The morning’s post, new babies and bathrooms, going To file, snip, fiddle and smile through fish-eyes, Crinkly green gloss, store it in stocking-tops For next year abroad, that Pill, so perfect! Flashing smiles from shiny domes and polished eye-lenses, The men […]...
25. 'Tis not that Dying hurts us so ‘Tis not that Dying hurts us so ‘Tis Living hurts us more But Dying is a different way A Kind behind the Door The Southern Custom of the Bird That ere the Frosts are due Accepts a better Latitude We are the Birds that stay. The Shrivers round Farmers’ doors For whose reluctant Crumb We […]...
26. The Great Western Plains The little voices of the prairie dogs Are tireless. . . They will give three hurrahs Alike to stage, equestrian, and pullman, And all unstingingly as to the moon. And Fifi’s bows and poodle ease Whirl by them centred on the lap Of Lottie Honeydew, movie queen, Toward lawyers and Nevada. And how much more […]...
27. September We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold: No clock counts this. When kisses are repeated and the arms hold There is no telling where time is. It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still: Behind the eye a star, Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell Time is nowhere. We stand; […]...
28. On the Hills Through the pungent hours of the afternoon, On the autumn slopes we have lightly wandered Where the sunshine lay in a golden swoon And the lingering year all its sweetness squandered. Oh, it was blithesome to roam at will Over the crest of each westering hill, Over those dreamy, enchanted lands Where the trees held […]...
29. Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as […]...
30. A Mien to move a Queen A Mien to move a Queen Half Child Half Heroine An Orleans in the Eye That puts its manner by For humbler Company When none are near Even a Tear Its frequent Visitor A Bonnet like a Duke And yet a Wren’s Peruke Were not so shy Of Goer by And Hands so slight They […]...
31. The Idealist Oh you who have daring deeds to tell! And you who have felt Ambition’s spell! Have you heard of the louse who longed to dwell In the golden hair of a queen? He sighed all day and he sighed all night, And no one could understand it quite, For the head of a slut is […]...
32. Modern Love XXXIII: In Paris, at the Louvre ‘In Paris, at the Louvre, there have I seen The sumptuously-feathered angel pierce Prone Lucifer, descending. Looked he fierce, Showing the fight a fair one? Too serene! The young Pharsalians did not disarray Less willingly their locks of floating silk: That suckling mouth of his, upon the milk Of heaven might still be feasting through […]...
33. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
34. Upper Lambourne Up the ash tree climbs the ivy, Up the ivy climbs the sun, With a twenty-thousand pattering, Has a valley breeze begun, Feathery ash, neglected elder, Shift the shade and make it run – Shift the shade toward the nettles, And the nettles set it free, To streak the stained Carrara headstone, Where, in nineteen-twenty-three, […]...
35. 391. A Tippling Ballad-When Princes and Prelates, etc WHEN Princes and Prelates, And hot-headed zealots, A’ Europe had set in a low, a low, The poor man lies down, Nor envies a crown, And comforts himself as he dow, as he dow, And comforts himself as he dow. The black-headed eagle, As keen as a beagle, He hunted o’er height and o’er howe, […]...
36. Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
37. Village in Late Summer LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers....
38. Behind the Scenes The actor struts his little hour, Between the limelight and the band; The public feel the actor’s power, Yet nothing do they understand Of all the touches here and there That make or mar the actor’s part, They never see, beneath the glare, The artist striving after art. To them it seems a labour slight […]...
39. I had a daily Bliss I had a daily Bliss I half indifferent viewed Till sudden I perceived it stir It grew as I pursued Till when around a Height It wasted from my sight Increased beyond my utmost scope I learned to estimate....
40. On my Aunt Mrs A. K. Drown'd under London-Bridge, in the QUEENS Bardge, Anno 1641 THe Darling of a Father Good and Wise, The Vertue, which a Vertuous Age did prize; The Beauty Excellent even to those were Faire, Subscrib’d unto, by such as might compare; The Star that ‘bove her Orb did always move, And yet the Noblest did not Hate, but Love; And those who most upon their […]...