Habitation

Related poetry:

1. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
2. Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
3. Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
6. Sonnets xviii LET me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth ‘s unknown, […]...
7. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
8. 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....
9. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
10. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
11. The Survivor I am twenty-four Led to slaughter I survived. The following are empty synonyms: Man and beast Love and hate Friend and foe Darkness and light. The way of killing men and beasts is the same I’ve seen it: Truckfuls of chopped-up men Who will not be saved. Ideas are mere words: Virtue and crime Truth […]...
12. Call It a Good Marriage Call it a good marriage – For no one ever questioned Her warmth, his masculinity, Their interlocking views; Except one stray graphologist Who frowned in speculation At her h’s and her s’s, His p’s and w’s. Though few would still subscribe To the monogamic axiom That strife below the hip-bones Need not estrange the heart, […]...
13. Silver Wedding Silver Wedding The party is over and I sit among The flotsam that its passing leaves, The dirty glasses and fag-ends: Outside, a black wind grieves. Two decades and a half of marriage; It does not really seem as long, Of youth’s ebullient song. David, my son, my loved rival, And Julia, my tapering daughter, […]...
14. Cartoon Physics, Part 1 Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know That the universe is ever-expanding, Inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies Swallowed by galaxies, whole Solar systems collapsing, all of it Acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning The rules of cartoon animation, That if a man draws a door on a rock Only he can […]...
15. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
16. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
17. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
18. My Centenarian A hundred years is a lot of living I’ve often thought. and I’ll know, maybe, Some day if the gods are good in giving, And grant me to turn the century. Yet in all my eighty years of being I’ve never known but one ancient man Who actively feeling, hearing, seeing, Survived t beyond the […]...
19. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
20. I Do, I Will, I Have How wise I am to have instructed the butler To instruct the first footman to instruct the second Footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage; I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage. Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen, I know that marriage is a legal […]...
21. The Great Black Heron Since I stroll in the woods more often Than on this frequented path, it’s usually Trees I observe; but among fellow humans What I like best is to see an old woman Fishing alone at the end of a jetty, Hours on end, plainly content. The Russians mushroom-hunting after a rain Trail after themselves a […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
24. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
25. Innocence The height of wisdom seems to me That of a child; So let my ageing vision be Serene and mild. The depth of folly, I aver, Is to fish deep In that dark pool of science where Truth-demons sleep. Let me not be a bearded sage Seeing too clear; In issues of the atom age […]...
26. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
27. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
28. You love the Lord you cannot see You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the Day. An Ample Letter How you miss And would delight to see But then His House is but a Step And Mine’s in Heaven You see....
29. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
30. To Say Before Going To Sleep I would like to sing someone to sleep, Have someone to sit by and be with. I would like to cradle you and softly sing, Be your companion while you sleep or wake. I would like to be the only person In the house who knew: the night outside was cold. And would like to […]...
31. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
32. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
33. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
34. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
35. The Pact We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of Cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to Kill herself. We kneeled over the Rubber bodies, gave them baths Carefully, scrubbed their little Orange hands, wrapped them up tight, Said goodnight, never […]...
36. Why Should A Foolish Marriage Vow Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now When passion is decay’d? We lov’d, and we lov’d, as long as we could, Till our love was lov’d out in us both: But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled: ‘Twas pleasure first made it […]...
37. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
38. The Having To Love Something Else There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his Father for his mother’s hand in marriage, and was told he could Not marry his mother’s hand because it was attached to all The rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that He’d have to love something else. . . […]...
39. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
40. Somehow myself survived the Night Somehow myself survived the Night And entered with the Day That it be saved the Saved suffice Without the Formula. Henceforth I take my living place As one commuted led A Candidate for Morning Chance But dated with the Dead....