Tic Douloureux

Related poetry:

1. Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, Which may not happen. I would like to watch you, Sleeping. I would like to sleep With you, to enter Your sleep as its smooth dark wave Slides over my head And walk with you through that lucent Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves With its watery sun & […]...
2. Small Wire My faith Is a great weight Hung on a small wire, As doth the spider Hang her baby on a thin web, As doth the vine, Twiggy and wooden, Hold up grapes Like eyeballs, As many angels Dance on the head of a pin. God does not need Too much wire to keep Him there, […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. On The Wire O God, take the sun from the sky! It’s burning me, scorching me up. God, can’t You hear my cry? Water! A poor, little cup! It’s laughing, the cursed sun! See how it swells and swells Fierce as a hundred hells! God, will it never have done? It’s searing the flesh on my bones; It’s […]...
5. To Fly In Just Your Suit Humans are flown, or fall; Humans can’t fly. We’re down with the gravity-stemmers, Rare, thick-boned, often basso. Most animals above the tides are airborne. Typically tuned keen, they Throw the ground away with wire feet And swoop rings round it. Magpies, listening askance For their food in and under lawn, Strut so hair-trigger they almost […]...
6. Snow & Ice ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place Space as keys that turn in tight, trigger Pain of situations Where we move ever so slowly So gently into time – traced agony The bright turning of imagination So slowly Grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter Mountains where spirits walk voices, ever so slowly […]...
7. To Madame Garschine WHAT is the face, the fairest face, till Care, Till Care the graver – Care with cunning hand, Etches content thereon and makes it fair, Or constancy, and love, and makes it grand?...
8. A Domestic Tragedy Clorinda met me on the way As I came from the train; Her face was anything but gay, In fact, suggested pain. “Oh hubby, hubby dear!” she cried, “I’ve awful news to tell. . . .” “What is it, darling?” I replied; “Your mother is she well?” “Oh no! oh no! it is not that, […]...
9. Poor Devil! Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk, The tiresome noises, all the common things I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke. I longed for the cool quiet and the dark, Under the common sod where louts and kings Lie down, serene, unheeding, careless, stark, Never to rise or move or feel […]...
10. Pull A String, A Puppet Moves each man must realize That it can all disappear very Quickly: The cat, the woman, the job, The front tire, The bed, the walls, the Room; all our necessities Including love, Rest on foundations of sand – And any given cause, No matter how unrelated: The death of a boy in Hong Kong Or a […]...
11. The Window She looks out in the blue morning And sees a whole wonderful world She looks out in the morning And sees a whole world She leans out of the window And this is what she sees A wet rose singing to the sun With a chorus of red bees She leans out of the window […]...
12. Lord, what a Beloved is mine! Lord, what a Beloved is mine! I have a sweet quarry; I possess In my breast a hundred meadows from his reed. When in anger the messenger comes and repairs towards me, He says, “Whither are you fleeing? I have business with you.” Last night I asked the new moon concerning my Moon. The Moon […]...
13. Cruelty and Love What large, dark hands are those at the window Lifted, grasping in the yellow light Which makes its way through the curtain web At my heart to-night? Ah, only the leaves! So leave me at rest, In the west I see a redness come Over the evening’s burning breast For now the pain is numb. […]...
14. Pickle Belt The fruit rolled by all day. They prayed the cogs would creep; They thought about Saturday pay, And Sunday sleep. Whatever he smelled was good: The fruit and flesh smells mixed. There beside him she stood, And he, perplexed; He, in his shrunken britches, Eyes rimmed with pickle dust, Prickling with all the itches Of […]...
15. Late, Late, So Late Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for that we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light: so late! […]...
16. Face Stolen From a Bird Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman. I don’t know who you’re hiding Behind your mask, Your face stolen from a bird, Imprisoned by red ashes. I will love you the way one dies. I will keep you For years to come, You will be so tame, So unbelievable, My strange animal, With your […]...
17. Under A Telephone Pole I AM a copper wire slung in the air, Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow. Night and day I keep singing humming and thrumming: It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the Tears, the work and want, Death and laughter of men and […]...
18. The Spirit Medium Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet Because of those new dead That come into my soul and escape Confusion of the bed, Or those begotten or unbegotten Perning in a band, I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand. Or those begotten or unbegotten, For I would not recall […]...
19. "Daddy" Warbucks In Memoriam What’s missing is the eyeballs In each of us, but it doesn’t matter Because you’ve got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks. You let me touch them, fondle the green faces Lick at their numbers and it lets you be My “Daddy!” “Daddy!” and though I fought all alone With molesters and crooks, […]...
20. A Girdle Whene’er the wast makes too much hast, That hast againe makes too much wast. I here stand keeper while ’tis light, ‘Tis theft to enter when ’tis night. This girdle doth the wast embrace To keepe all others from that place. This circle here is drawne about To keepe all tempting spiritts out. Whoe’er the […]...
21. In A Gondola The moth’s kiss, first! Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed Its petals up; so, here and there You brush it, till I grow aware Who wants me, and wide open I burst. The bee’s kiss, now! Kiss me as if you […]...
22. Hymn 50 The song of Zacharias. Lk. 1:68ff; John 1:29,32. Now be the God of Isr’el blessed, Who makes his truth appear; His mighty hand fulfils his word, And all the oaths he sware. Now he bedews old David’s root With blessings from the skies; He makes the Branch of Promise grow, The promised Horn arise. [John […]...
23. Teddy Bear O Teddy Bear! with your head awry And your comical twisted smile, You rub your eyes do you wonder why You’ve slept such a long, long while? As you lay so still in the cupboard dim, And you heard on the roof the rain, Were you thinking. . . what has become of him? And […]...
24. The Man to the Angel I HAVE wept a million tears: Pure and proud one, where are thine, What the gain though all thy years In unbroken beauty shine? All your beauty cannot win Truth we learn in pain and sighs: You can never enter in To the circle of the wise. They are but the slaves of light Who […]...
25. The Oldest Drama “It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And. . . he sat on her knees till noon, And then died. And she went up, and laid […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. Departure Oh, why are you shining so bright, big Sun, And why is the garden so gay? Do you know that my days of delight are done, Do you know I am going away? If you covered your face with a cloud, I ‘d dream You were sorry for me in my pain, And the heads […]...
28. Epistle to Neruda Superb, Like a seasoned lion, Neruda buys bread in the shop. He asks for it to be wrapped in paper And solemly puts it under his arm: “Let someone at least think That at some time I bought a book…” Waving his hand in farewell, Like a Roman rather dreamily royal, In the air scented […]...
29. Recovering Amid The Farms Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep And two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley, Past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze. She turned twelve last year and it was legal For the father to take her out of school. She knows Her life is over. The sadness […]...
30. THE GOLDSMITH'S APPRENTICE My neighbour, none can e’er deny, Is a most beauteous maid; Her shop is ever in mine eye, When working at my trade. To ring and chain I hammer then The wire of gold assay’d, And think the while: “For Kate, oh when Will such a ring be made?” And when she takes her shutters […]...
31. The Return Suddenly the window will open And Mother will call It’s time to come in The wall will part I will enter heaven in muddy shoes I will come to the table And answer questions rudely I am all right leave me Alone. Head in hand I Sit and sit. How can I tell them About […]...
32. The Dream Dear love, for nothing less than thee Would I have broke this happy dream; It was a theme For reason, much too strong for phantasy: Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it. Thou art so truth that thoughts of thee suffice To make dreams truths, and fables histories. […]...
33. Hymn 31 Christ’s presence makes death easy. Why should we start, and fear to die What timorous worms we mortals are! Death is the gate of endless joy, And yet we dread to enter there. The pains, the groans, and dying strife, Fright our approaching souls away; Still we shrink back again to life, Fond of our […]...
34. On Pain Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses Your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its Heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the Daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem Less […]...
35. The wind drew off The wind drew off Like hungry dogs Defeated of a bone Through fissures in Volcanic cloud The yellow lightning shone The trees held up Their mangled limbs Like animals in pain When Nature falls upon herself Beware an Austrian....
36. Ein Yahav A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert, A drive in the rain. Yes, in the rain. There I met people who grow date palms, There I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees, There I saw hope barbed as barbed wire. And I said to myself: That’s true, hope needs to be Like […]...
37. Judgment Day Saint Peter stood, at Heaven’s gate, All souls claims to adjudicate Saying to some souls, “Enter in!” “Go to Hell,” to others, “you are steeped in sin.” When up from earth, with a great hubbub, Came all the members of the Tuscarora Club. The angel Gabriel, peering out, Said, “What, the devil, is this noise […]...
38. One Sweeps By ONE sweeps by, attended by an immense train, All emblematic of peace-not a soldier or menial among them. One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair, He has the simple magnificence of health and strength, His face strikes as with flashes of lightning whoever it turns toward. Three old men slowly pass, […]...
39. He scanned it staggered He scanned it staggered Dropped the Loop To Past or Period Caught helpless at a sense as if His Mind were going blind Groped up, to see if God was there Groped backward at Himself Caressed a Trigger absently And wandered out of Life....
40. Life and Art Not while the fever of the blood is strong, The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless The poet-sould to help and soothe with song. Not then she bids his trembling lips express The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain. Life is his poem then; […]...