In the Beck

Related poetry:

1. Long For This World I settle for less than snow, Try to go gracefully like seasons go Which will regain their ground – Ditch, hill and field – when a new year comes round. Now I know everything: How winter leaves without resenting spring, Lives in a safe time frame, Gives up so much but knows he can reclaim […]...
2. A Wreath To The Fish Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth, Flat on my drainboard, dead asleep, Its suit of mail proof only against the stream? What is it to live in a stream, To dwell forever in a tunnel of cold, Never to leave your shining birthsuit, Never to spend your inheritance of thin coins? And who […]...
3. The River In my first sleep I came to the river And looked down Through the clear water – Only in dream Water so pure, Laced and undulant Lines of flow On its rocky bed Water of life Streaming for ever. A house was there Beside the river And I, arrived, An expected guest About to explore […]...
4. A Baby Running Barefoot When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin’s song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle […]...
5. The Soul selects her own Society The Soul selects her own Society Then shuts the Door To her divine Majority Present no more Unmoved she notes the Chariots pausing At her low Gate Unmoved an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat I’ve known her from an ample nation Choose One Then close the Valves of her attention Like Stone...
6. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
7. Northern Pike All right. Try this, Then. Every body I know and care for, And every body Else is going To die in a loneliness I can’t imagine and a pain I don’t know. We had To go on living. We Untangled the net, we slit The body of this fish Open from the hinge of the […]...
8. PUBLISHERS And then they pretend like owls With marble eyes and wizened stupidity I do not know why they cannot perceive True art But I will write Until sand evaporates And the moon consumes the sun I will write Even for the sake of art For myself and for those who feel Reading could lift them […]...
9. In the Matter of One Compass When, foot to wheel and back to wind, The helmsman dare not look behind, But hears beyond his compass-light, The blind bow thunder through the night, And, like a harpstring ere it snaps, The rigging sing beneath the caps; Above the shriek of storm in sail Or rattle of the blocks blown free, Set for […]...
10. Silence Since I lost you I am silence-haunted, Sounds wave their little wings A moment, then in weariness settle On the flood that soundless swings. Whether the people in the street Like pattering ripples go by, Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs With a loud, hoarse sigh: Or the wind shakes a ravel of light […]...
11. A Grain Of Sand If starry space no limit knows And sun succeeds to sun, There is no reason to suppose Our earth the only one. ‘Mid countless constellations cast A million worlds may be, With each a God to bless or blast And steer to destiny. Just think! A million gods or so To guide each vital stream, […]...
12. Heaven Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June, Dawdling away their wat’ry noon) Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear, Each secret fishy hope or fear. Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond? This life cannot be All, they swear, For how unpleasant, if it were! One may not doubt that, somehow, […]...
13. December 30 At 1:30 in the morning a fart Smells like a marriage between An avocado and a fish head. I have to get out of bed To write this down without My glasses on....
14. Song: Memory, hither come Memory, hither come, And tune your merry notes; And, while upon the wind Your music floats, I’ll pore upon the stream Where sighing lovers dream, And fish for fancies as they pass Within the watery glass. I’ll drink of the clear stream, And hear the linnet’s song; And there I’ll lie and dream The day […]...
15. The Bait Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove, Of golden sand, and crystal brooks, With silken lines and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run, Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun. And there the enamoured fish will stay. Begging themselves they may betray. When wilt […]...
16. GAUGUIN IN THE SOUTH SEAS They have my own fear of the dark, Tupapau – spirits of the dead they call it; Returning late with oil I found fear of it Had spread my vabine naked on the bed. Manao-Taipapau means ‘she thinks of the spectre’ Or ‘the spectre is thinking of her’, either way She is afraid; I marvel […]...
17. Sonnet XIII: Letters and Lines To the Shadow Letters and lines we see are soon defac’d, Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust, The diamond shall once consume to dust, And freshest colors with foul stains disgrac’d; Paper and ink can paint but naked words, To write with blood of force offends the sight; And if with tears I […]...
18. Low Tide on Grand Pré The sun goes down, and over all These barren reaches by the tide Such unelusive glories fall, I almost dream they yet will bide Until the coming of the tide. And yet I know that not for us, By any ecstasy of dream, He lingers to keep luminous A little while the grievous stream, Which […]...
19. Back From Australia Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height, The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay, We never seem to catch the running day But travel on in everlasting night With all the chic accoutrements of flight: Lotions and essences in neat array And yet another plastic cup and tray. “Thank you so much. Oh no, I’m […]...
20. Buddha at Kamakura 1892 “And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura” Oye who treated the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, Be gentle when “the heathen” pray To Buddha at Kamakura! To him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart, Ananda’s Lord, the Bodhisat, The Buddha of Kamakura. For though he neither […]...
21. The Truth of Woman Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust – Write the characters in the dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon’s pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean. I have strain’d the spider’s thread ‘Gainst the promise of […]...
22. For Lucy, Who Came First She simply settled down in one piece right where she was, in the sand of a long-vanished lake edge or stream and died. -Donald C. Johanson, paleoanthropologist When I put my hand up to my face I can trace her heavy jawbone and the sockets Of her eyes under my skin. And in the dark […]...
23. Sestina I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, To the short day and to the whitening hills, When the colour is all lost from the grass, Though my desire will not lose its green, So rooted is it in this hardest stone, That speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And […]...
24. Mesopotamia 1917 They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young, The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave: But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung, Shall they come with years and honour to the grave? They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain In sight of […]...
25. He parts Himself like Leaves He parts Himself like Leaves And then He closes up Then stands upon the Bonnet Of Any Buttercup And then He runs against And oversets a Rose And then does Nothing Then away upon a Jib He goes And dangles like a Mote Suspended in the Noon Uncertain to return Below Or settle in the […]...
26. Lines Draw a line. Write a line. There. Stay in line, hold the line, a glance Between the lines is fine but don’t Turn corners, cross, cut in, go over Or out, between two points of no Return’s a line of flight, between Two points of view’s a line of vision. But a line of thought […]...
27. Roscoe Purkapile She loved me. Oh! how she loved me! I never had a chance to escape From the day she first saw me. But then after we were married I thought She might prove her mortality and let me out, Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. Then I ran away and was […]...
28. The Sea Hold THE SEA is large. The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men. Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land… five white dice rolled from a tube. Not so long […]...
29. Ears In The Turrets Hear Ears in the turrets hear Hands grumble on the door, Eyes in the gables see The fingers at the locks. Shall I unbolt or stay Alone till the day I die Unseen by stranger-eyes In this white house? Hands, hold you poison or grapes? Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And […]...
30. LOVER IN ALL SHAPES To be like a fish, Brisk and quick, is my wish; If thou cam’st with thy line. Thou wouldst soon make me thine. To be like a fish, Brisk and quick, is my wish. Oh, were I a steed! Thou wouldst love me indeed. Oh, were I a car Fit to bear thee afar! Oh, […]...
31. Dogfish Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing Kept flickering in with the tide And looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, With a white belly. If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile Under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, Which was rough As a thousand sharpened nails. […]...
32. The Glutton A STURGEON, once, a glutton famed was led To have for supper all, except the head. With wond’rous glee he feasted on the fish; And quickly swallowed down the royal dish. O’ercharged, howe’er, his stomach soon gave way; And doctors were required without delay. THE danger imminent, his friends desired He’d settle ev’ry thing affairs […]...
33. To Beachey, 1912 RIDING against the east, A veering, steady shadow Purrs the motor-call Of the man-bird Ready with the death-laughter In his throat And in his heart always The love of the big blue beyond. Only a man, A far fleck of shadow on the east Sitting at ease With his hands on a wheel And around […]...
34. The Sands of Dee 1 “O Mary, go and call the cattle home, 2 And call the cattle home, 3 And call the cattle home 4 Across the sands of Dee”; 5 The western wind was wild and dank with foam, 6 And all alone went she. 7 The western tide crept up along the sand, 8 And o’er […]...
35. The Banyan Tree O you shaggy-headed banyan tree standing on the bank of the pond, Have you forgotten the little chile, like the birds that have Nested in your branches and left you? Do you not remember how he sat at the window and wondered at The tangle of your roots and plunged underground? The women would come […]...
36. The Golden Hook Two fish float: One slowly downstream Into the warm Currents of the known The other tugging Against the stream, Disconsolate twin, The golden Marriage hook Tearing its throat....
37. For Joseph Your ears will never hear sounds that to me are ordinary as air. From the hour that you were born the tight white shell of silence closed around you. You edged away from friendship. Silence clung and stung like sand, smothering words before they could break free. Sand has a brittle sound as it stutters […]...
38. Psalm 90 part 1 v.1-5 C. M. Man frail, and God eternal. Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home. Under the shadow of thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is thine arm alone, And our defence is sure. Before the hills […]...
39. Tell Me Tell me, dear beauty of the dusk, When purple ribbons bind the hill, Do dreams your secret wish fulfill, Do prayers, like kernels from the husk Come from your lips? Tell me if when The mountains loom at night, giant shades Of softer shadow, swift like blades Of grass seeds come to flower. Then Tell […]...
40. Well I Remember How You Smiled Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand. . . “O! what a child! You think you’re writing upon stone!” I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o’er ocean wide And find Ianthe’s name again....