In Childhood

Related poetry:

1. Second Childhood When I go on my morning walk, Because I’m mild, If I be in the mood to talk I choose a child. I’d rather prattle with a lass Of tender age Than converse in the high-brow class With college sage. I love the touch of silken hand That softly clings; In old of age I […]...
2. Childhood I The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood Put me out of love with God. I can’t believe in God’s goodness; I can believe In many avenging gods. Most of all I believe In gods of bitter dullness, Cruel local gods Who scared my childhood. II I’ve seen people put A chrysalis in a […]...
3. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
4. On such a night, or such a night On such a night, or such a night, Would anybody care If such a little figure Slipped quiet from its chair So quiet Oh how quiet, That nobody might know But that the little figure Rocked softer to and fro On such a dawn, or such a dawn Would anybody sigh That such a little […]...
5. Hiawatha's Childhood Downward through the evening twilight, In the days that are forgotten, In the unremembered ages, From the full moon fell Nokomis, Fell the beautiful Nokomis, She a wife, but not a mother. She was sporting with her women, Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, When her rival the rejected, Full of jealousy and hatred, Cut […]...
6. The Table And The Chair Said the table to the chair, “You can scarcely be aware How I suffer from the heat And from blisters on my feet! If we took a little walk We might have a little talk. Pray, let us take the air!” Said the table to the chair. Said the chair unto the table, “Now you […]...
7. Introduction To Poetry I ask them to take a poem And hold it up to the light Like a color slide Or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem And watch him probe his way out, Or walk inside the poem’s room And feel the walls for a light switch. I […]...
8. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
9. Saints In our family, there were two saints, My aunt and my grandmother. But their lives were different. My grandmother’s was tranquil, even at the end. She was like a person walking in calm water; For some reason The sea couldn’t bring itself to hurt her. When my aunt took the same path, The waves broke […]...
10. Taken from men this morning Taken from men this morning Carried by men today Met by the Gods with banners Who marshalled her away One little maid from playmates One little mind from school There must be guests in Eden All the rooms are full Far as the East from Even Dim as the border star Courtiers quaint, in Kingdoms […]...
11. The Happy Child I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick But not one like the child did pick. I heard the packhounds in green park But no dog like the child heard bark. I heard this day bird after bird But not one like the child has heard. A hundred butterflies saw I But not one like […]...
12. AFRICAN WRITINGS If you meet literature from Africa Or even their mentors In such works You realize a trait of madness Pumping into the throbbing poetics. There is a knack in it that sparks alight The nearest shrubs; Intrigue and sensation incomparable. The heart of African literature Pumping wordy blood into fragile young minds. Rejuvenating the African […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. Rita Matlock Gruenberg Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys, And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six, Here is your little Rita at last Grown old, grown forty-nine; Here stretched on your grave under the winter stars, With the rustle of oak leaves over my head; Piecing together strength for the act, Last thoughts, memories, asking how […]...
15. Old Sweethearts Oh Maggie, do you mind the day We went to school together, And as we stoppit by the way I rolled you in the heather? My! but you were the bonny lass And we were awfu’ late for class. Your locks are now as white as snow, And you are ripe and wrinkled, A grandmother […]...
16. Easter Morning I have a life that did not become, That turned aside and stopped, Astonished: I hold it in me like a pregnancy or As on my lap a child Not to grow old but dwell on It is to his grave I most Frequently return and return To ask what is wrong, what was Wrong, […]...
17. Worm Either Way If you live along with all the other people And are just like them, and conform, and are nice You’re just a worm And if you live with all the other people And you don’t like them and won’t be like them and won’t conform Then you’re just the worm that has turned, In either […]...
18. I have a Bird in spring I have a Bird in spring Which for myself doth sing The spring decoys. And as the summer nears And as the Rose appears, Robin is gone. Yet do I not repine Knowing that Bird of mine Though flown Learneth beyond the sea Melody new for me And will return. Fast is a safer hand […]...
19. My Childhood God When I was small the Lord appeared Unto my mental eye A gentle giant with a beard Who homed up in the sky. But soon that vasty vision blurred, And faded in the end, Till God is just another word I cannot comprehend. I envy those of simple faith Who bend the votive knee; Who […]...
20. Childhood It would be good to give much thought, before You try to find words for something so lost, For those long childhood afternoons you knew That vanished so completely and why? We’re still reminded : sometimes by a rain, But we can no longer say what it means; Life was never again so filled with […]...
21. Childhood HOW I could see through and through you! So unconscious, tender, kind, More than ever was known to you Of the pure ways of your mind. We who long to rest from strife Labour sternly as a duty; But a magic in your life Charms, unknowing of its beauty. We are pools whose depths are […]...
22. Last Word To Childhood Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my sinews crumble As God-the-headmaster’s fingers fumble At the other side of unopening doors Which I watch for a hundred thousand years. […]...
23. Discord in Childhood Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips, And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously. Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound Of […]...
24. On The Death Of Friends In Childhood We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell; If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight, Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands In games whose very names we have forgotten. Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows....
25. 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 […]...
26. My playmates The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush’s evening song and the robin’s morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know […]...
27. Le Gout du Néant Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L’Espoir, dont l’éperon attisait ton ardeur, Ne veut plus t’enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur, Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle bute. Résigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute. Esprit vaincu, fourbu! Pour toi, vieux maraudeur, L’amour n’a plus de gout, non plus que la dispute; Adieu […]...
28. Dust is the only Secret Dust is the only Secret Death, the only One You cannot find out all about In his “native town.” Nobody know “his Father” Never was a Boy Hadn’t any playmates, Or “Early history” Industrious! Laconic! Punctual! Sedate! Bold as a Brigand! Stiller than a Fleet! Builds, like a Bird, too! Christ robs the Nest Robin […]...
29. Walking With God (Genesis, v.24) Oh! for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame; A light to shine upon the road That leads me to the Lamb! Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refershing view Of Jesus and his word? What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! […]...
30. Widows My mother’s playing cards with my aunt, Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game My grandmother taught all her daughters. Midsummer: too hot to go out. Today, my aunt’s ahead; she’s getting the good cards. My mother’s dragging, having trouble with her concentration. She can’t get used to her own bed this summer. She […]...
31. Snow In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast!” And still it fell through that dusky brightness On the child crying for the bird of the snow....
32. Cotton Song Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Cant blame God if we dont roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! Cotton bales are the fleecy way, Weary sinner’s bare feet […]...
33. Butterfly Laughter In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the Butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor Butterfly.” That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. […]...
34. Magellanic Penguin Neither clown nor child nor black Nor white but verticle And a questioning innocence Dressed in night and snow: The mother smiles at the sailor, The fisherman at the astronaunt, But the child child does not smile When he looks at the bird child, And from the disorderly ocean The immaculate passenger Emerges in snowy […]...
35. PROPERTIUS Desine, Paulle, meum lacrimis urgere sepulcrum: nempe tuas lacrimas litora surda bibent. Propertius, IV.11 Don’t cry for me, for only The senseless stones will drink your tears, I’ll never see you cry, for tears are No more than splinters of a lurid globe Which only knows its orb and nothing more. The dead don’t know […]...
36. Snow Day Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, Its white flag waving over everything, The landscape vanished, Not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, And beyond these windows The government buildings smothered, Schools and libraries buried, the post office lost Under the noiseless drift, The paths of trains softly blocked, The world fallen […]...
37. Elizabeth Childers Dust of my dust, And dust with my dust, O, child who died as you entered the world, Dead with my death! Not knowing breath, though you tried so hard, With a heart that beat when you lived with me, And stopped when you left me for Life. It is well, my child. For you […]...
38. Freedom I WILL not follow you, my bird, I will not follow you. I would not breathe a word, my bird, To bring thee here anew. I love the free in thee, my bird, The lure of freedom drew; The light you fly toward, my bird, I fly with thee unto. And there we yet will […]...
39. Helga THE WISHES on this child’s mouth Came like snow on marsh cranberries; The tamarack kept something for her; The wind is ready to help her shoes. The north has loved her; she will be A grandmother feeding geese on frosty Mornings; she will understand Early snow on the cranberries Better and better then....
40. Of Death I try to think like this Of Death I try to think like this The Well in which they lay us Is but the Likeness of the Brook That menaced not to slay us, But to invite by that Dismay Which is the Zest of sweetness To the same Flower Hesperian, Decoying but to greet us I do remember when a […]...