Main Street

Related poetry:

1. Faces In The Street They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown; For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet My window-sill is level with the faces in the street Drifting past, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet While I sorrow […]...
2. Straw in the Street Straw in the street where I pass to-day Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet. ‘Tis for a failing life they lay Straw in the street. Here, where the pulses of London beat, Someone strives with the Presence grey; Ah, is it victory or defeat? The hurrying people go their way, Pause and jostle […]...
3. Good-Children Street There’s a dear little home in Good-Children street – My heart turneth fondly to-day Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet Make sweetest of music at play; Where the sunshine of love illumines each face And warms every heart in that old-fashioned place. For dear little children go romping about With dollies and tin […]...
4. Street Cries WHEN dawn’s first cymbals beat upon the sky, Rousing the world to labour’s various cry, To tend the flock, to bind the mellowing grain, From ardent toil to forge a little gain, And fasting men go forth on hurrying feet, Buy bread, buy bread, rings down the eager street. When the earth falters and the […]...
5. Harlem Shadows I hear the halting footsteps of a lass In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass To bend and barter at desire’s call. Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet Go prowling through the night from street to street! Through the long night until […]...
6. Halsted Street Car COME you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o’clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, That pig-sticker in one corner his mouth That overall factory girl her loose cheeks. Find for your pencils A […]...
7. On Rabbi Kook's Street On Rabbi Kook’s Street I walk without this good man A streiml he wore for prayer A silk top hat he wore to govern, Fly in the wind of the dead Above me, float on the water Of my dreams. I come to the Street of Prophets there are none. And the Street of Ethiopians […]...
8. Afternoon Rain in State Street Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of […]...
9. In the Street Where the needle-woman toils Through the night with hand and brain, Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain – Till her eyes seem to crawl, And her brain seems to creep – And her limbs are all a-tremble for the want of rest and sleep! It is there the fire-brand blazes […]...
10. 45 Mercy Street In my dream, Drilling into the marrow Of my entire bone, My real dream, I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill Searching for a street sign Namely MERCY STREET. Not there. I try the Back Bay. Not there. Not there. And yet I know the number. 45 Mercy Street. I know the stained-glass window Of […]...
11. Read Your Fate A world’s disappearing. Little street, You were too narrow, Too much in the shade already. You had only one dog, One lone child. You hid your biggest mirror, Your undressed lovers. Someone carted them off In an open truck. They were still naked, travelling On their sofa Over a darkening plain, Some unknown Kansas or […]...
12. MacDougal Street AS I went walking up and down to take the evening air, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?) I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair; (“Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!”) The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat, (Lay me […]...
13. The Wizard in the Street [Concerning Edgar Allan Poe] Who now will praise the Wizard in the street With loyal songs, with humors grave and sweet – This Jingle-man, of strolling players born, Whom holy folk have hurried by in scorn, This threadbare jester, neither wise nor good, With melancholy bells upon his hood? The hurrying great ones scorn his […]...
14. Clark Street Bridge DUST of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now. . . . . Only stars and mist A lonely policeman, Two cabaret dancers, Stars and mist again, No more feet or wheels, No more dust and wagons. Voices of dollars And drops of blood . […]...
15. The Street Sounds to the Soldiers' Tread The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread, And out we troop to see: A single redcoat turns his head, He turns and looks at me. My man, from sky to sky’s so far, We never crossed before; Such leagues apart the world’s ends are, We’re like to meet no more; What thoughts at heart have […]...
16. Glass was the Street in tinsel Peril Glass was the Street in tinsel Peril Tree and Traveller stood Filled was the Air with merry venture Hearty with Boys the Road Shot the lithe Sleds like shod vibrations Emphasized and gone It is the Past’s supreme italic Makes this Present mean...
17. Blue Island Intersection SIX street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles […]...
18. Harrison Street Court I heard a woman’s lips Speaking to a companion Say these words: “A woman what hustles Never keeps nothin’ For all her hustlin’. Somebody always gets What she goes on the street for. If it ain’t a pimp It’s a bull what gets it. I been hustlin’ now Till I ain’t much good any more. […]...
19. A March Day in London The east wind blows in the street to-day; The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey. ‘Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire, Of cold despair and of hot desire, Which chills the flesh to aches and pains, And sends a fever through all the veins. From end to end, with aimless […]...
20. On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show they talk down through The centuries to us, And this we need more and more, The statues and paintings In midnight age As we go along Holding dead hands. And we would say Rather than delude the knowing: A damn good show, But hardly enough for a horse to eat, And out on the sunshine […]...
21. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
22. Hildebrand Who was frightened by a Passing Motor, and was brought to Reason “Oh murder! What was that, Papa!” “My child, It was a Motor-Car, A most Ingenious Toy! Designed to Captivate and Charm Much rather than to rouse Alarm In any English Boy. “What would your Great Grandfather who Was Aide-de-Camp to General Brue, And […]...
23. The Drunkards in the Street The Drunkards in the street are calling one another, Heeding not the night-wind, great of heart and gay, – Publicans and wantons – Calling, laughing, calling, While the Spirit bloweth Space and Time away. Why should I feel the sobbing, the secrecy, the glory, This comforter, this fitful wind divine? I the cautious Pharisee, the […]...
24. Street in Agrigentum There is still the wind that I remember Firing the manes of horses, racing, Slanting, across the plains, The wind that stains and scours the sandstone, And the heart of gloomy columns, telamons, Overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey With rancour, return on the wind, Breathe in that feather-light moss That covers […]...
25. Devonshire Street W.1 The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet. The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene With Edwardian faience adornment Devonshire Street. No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by. The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm […]...
26. Lingering by the doorway of the woods I was picking blackberries when I thought of the strange girl at the mental hospital. Beautiful she was – quietly beautiful. Yes – and apparently nothing the matter with Her – except that she was scared to go outside, and scared to go indoors. And so she just sat there in a chair by the […]...
27. Memories of West Street and Lepke Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming In pajamas fresh from the washer each morning, I hog a whole house on Boston’s “hardly passionate Marlborough Street,” Where even the man Scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans, Has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate, And is “a young Republican.” I have a nine months’ daughter, […]...
28. Bless 'em beggars, buskers, street vendors bless ’em beggars, buskers, street vendors Breastfeeding mothers, fathers weather- Beaten, misplaced babies, outofschoolboys&girls Enduring with furious fidelity Everyday musk of japanese/german carfumery Bless ’em by-products of national antigress Fretful souls on the brims of sanity&civility However they might have depreciated thin Our soles of mercy Each with a pair of nike shoes, before we […]...
29. A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street While the sun stops, or Seems to, to define a term For the indeterminable, The human aspect, here In the West Village, spindles To a mutilated dazzle- Niched shards of solitude Embedded in these brownstone Walkups such that the Hudson At the foot of Twelfth Street Might be a thing that’s Done with mirrors: definition […]...
30. Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!” And yet within these ruins’ […]...
31. The Time Around Scars A girl whom I’ve not spoken to Or shared coffee with for several years Writes of an old scar. On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white, The size of a leech. I gave it to her Brandishing a new Italian penknife. Look, I said turning, And blood spat onto her shirt. My wife has […]...
32. America, America! I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it, the lights, the stars, and the bridges I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic – of the peoples’ hearts, crossing it to new America. I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope, acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage […]...
33. Tarantella Do you remember an Inn, Miranda? Do you remember an Inn? And the tedding and the bedding Of the straw for a bedding, And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees, And the wine that tasted of tar? And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers (Under the vine of the dark […]...
34. A London Thoroughfare. 2 A. M They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another. Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is […]...
35. Siren Song This is the one song everyone Would like to learn: the song That is irresistible: The song that forces men To leap overboard in squadrons Even though they see the beached skulls The song nobody knows Because anyone who has heard it Is dead, and the others can’t remember. Shall I tell you the secret […]...
36. Five Haiku The wind Undecided Rolls a cigarette of air The mute girl talks: It is art’s imperfection. This impenetrable speech. The motor car is truly launched: Four martyrs’ heads Roll under the wheels. Ah! a thousand flames, a fire, The light, a shadow! The sun is following me. A feather gives to a hat A touch […]...
37. The Little Match Girl It was biting cold, and the falling snow, Which filled a poor little match girl’s heart with woe, Who was bareheaded and barefooted, as she went along the street, Crying, “Who’ll buy my matches? for I want pennies to buy some meat!” When she left home she had slippers on; But, alas! poor child, now […]...
38. 366. Song-The weary Pund o' Tow Chorus.-The weary pund, the weary pund, The weary pund o’ tow; I think my wife will end her life, Before she spin her tow. I BOUGHT my wife a stane o’ lint, As gude as e’er did grow, And a’ that she has made o’ that Is ae puir pund o’ tow. The weary pund, […]...
39. Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City ONCE I pass’d through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and traditions; Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain’d me for love of me; Day by day and night by night we were together, All else has […]...
40. Now At Liberty Little white love, your way you’ve taken; Now I am left alone, alone. Little white love, my heart’s forsaken. (Whom shall I get by telephone?) Well do I know there’s no returning; Once you go out, it’s done, it’s done. All of my days are gray with yearning. (Nevertheless, a girl needs fun.) Little white […]...