The Woman in the Ordinary

Related poetry:

1. When Lovely Woman Stoops To Folly When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, is-to die....
2. Phenomenal Woman Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m […]...
3. When Man Enters Woman When man, Enters woman, Like the surf biting the shore, Again and again, And the woman opens her mouth with pleasure And her teeth gleam Like the alphabet, Logos appears milking a star, And the man Inside of woman Ties a knot So that they will Never again be separate And the woman Climbs into […]...
4. An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow The word goes round Repins, The murmur goes round Lorenzinis, At Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers, The Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands And men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club: There’s a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can’t stop him. The traffic in George […]...
5. Ordinary Love Indescribable our love and still we say With eyes averted, turning out the light, “I love you,” in the ordinary way And tug the coverlet where once we lay, All suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white… Indescribably in love. Or so we say. Your hair’s blonde thicket now is tangle-gray; You turn your back; you murmur […]...
6. Curse of the Cat Woman It sometimes happens That the woman you meet and fall in love with Is of that strange Transylvanian people With an affinity for cats. You take her to a restuarant, say, or a show, On an ordinary date, being attracted By the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk, And afterwards of course […]...
7. A Precise Woman A precise woman with a short haircut brings order To my thoughts and my dresser drawers, Moves feelings around like furniture Into a new arrangement. A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided Into upper and lower, With weather-forecast eyes Of shatterproof glass. Even her cries of passion follow a certain […]...
8. Sonnet 20: A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all hues in his controlling, […]...
9. Modern Love III: This Was the Woman This was the woman; what now of the man? But pass him. If he comes beneath a heel, He shall be crushed until he cannot feel, Or, being callous, haply till he can. But he is nothing: nothing? Only mark The rich light striking out from her on him! Ha! what a sense it is […]...
10. Woman with a Past THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry. There was a woman spoke six short words And quit a life that was old to her For a life that was new. There was a woman […]...
11. Cold-Blooded Creatures Man, the egregious egoist (In mystery the twig is bent) Imagines, by some mental twist, That he alone is sentient Of the intolerable load That on all living creatures lies, Nor stoops to pity in the toad The speechless sorrow of his eyes. He asks no questions of the snake, Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom […]...
12. Medallion THE BRASS medallion profile of your face I keep always. It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets. It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall. I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day And it is under my pillow at night. The brass came […]...
13. I SEE A WOMAN MAKING UP I see a woman any woman making up and change First she is thinking of something else (because when a woman Begins to make up she hasn’t yet separated this act from the rest of the day). But when arranging the various objects that the ceremony Preciously determines in the exact place around her hands […]...
14. For largest Woman's Hearth I knew For largest Woman’s Hearth I knew ‘Tis little I can do And yet the largest Woman’s Heart Could hold an Arrow too And so, instructed by my own, I tenderer, turn Me to....
15. Stone Villages The stone-built villages of England. A cathedral bottled in a pub window. Cows dispersed across fields. Monuments to kings. A man in a moth-eaten suit Sees a train off, heading, like everything here, for the sea, Smiles at his daughter, leaving for the East. A whistle blows. And the endless sky over the tiles Grows […]...
16. The Ever-Patient Woman In the flowing sap In her growing fever Parting her veils Cracking out of her shells Sliding out of her skins The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Life In her volcanoes In her orchards Seeking solidity and measure Clasping her most tender flesh Straining every fine-honed fiber The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Light....
17. The Gardener LIX: O Woman O woman, you are not merely the Handiwork of God, but also of men; These are ever endowing you with Beauty from their hearts. Poets are weaving for you a web With threads of golden imagery; Painters are giving your form ever New immortality. The sea gives its pearls, the mines Their gold, the summer […]...
18. The Power Of Woman Mighty art thou, because of the peaceful charms of thy presence; That which the silent does not, never the boastful can do. Vigor in man I expect, the law in its honors maintaining, But, through the graces alone, woman e’er rules or should rule. Many, indeed, have ruled through the might of the spirit and […]...
19. Song from The Silent Woman Still to be neat, still to be dressed, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed: Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; […]...
20. When I was small, a Woman died When I was small, a Woman died Today her Only Boy Went up from the Potomac His face all Victory To look at her How slowly The Seasons must have turned Till Bullets clipt an Angle And He passed quickly round If pride shall be in Paradise Ourself cannot decide Of their imperial Conduct No […]...
21. The Woman At The Gate “Where is your little boy to-day?” I asked her at the gate. “I used to see him at his play, And often I would wait: He was so beautiful, so bright, I watched him with delight. “He had a tiny motor-car And it was painted red; He wound it up; it ran so far, So […]...
22. A Pretty Woman I That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers, And the blue eye Dear and dewy, And that infantine fresh air of hers! II To think men cannot take you, Sweet, And enfold you, Ay, and hold you, And so keep you what they make you, Sweet! III You like us for a glance, you know – For […]...
23. The Woman And The Angel An angel was tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street; His halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at his feet; So the Master stooped in His pity, and gave him a pass to go, For the space of a moon, to the earth-world, to mix with the men below. […]...
24. There was a man and a woman i There was a man and a woman Who sinned. Then did the man heap the punishment All upon the head of her, And went away gaily. Ii There was a man and a woman Who sinned. And the man stood with her. As upon her head, so upon his, Fell blow and blow, And […]...
25. When A Woman Loves A Man When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, “I’ll never speak to you again,” She means, “Put your arms around me from behind As I stand disconsolate at the window.” He’s supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New […]...
26. Any Woman I am the pillars of the house; The keystone of the arch am I. Take me away, and roof and wall Would fall to ruin me utterly. I am the fire upon the hearth, I am the light of the good sun, I am the heat that warms the earth, Which else were colder than […]...
27. Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage How this woman came by the courage, how she got The courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot Night of the eight of July, Where it came from, did once the Lord frown down Upon her ancient cradle thinking ‘This one Will do before she die For two and seventy years of chipped indignities […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Honor To Woman Honor to woman! To her it is given To garden the earth with the roses of heaven! All blessed, she linketh the loves in their choir In the veil of the graces her beauty concealing, She tends on each altar that’s hallowed to feeling, And keeps ever-living the fire! From the bounds of truth careering, […]...
30. Dreams Are Best I just think that dreams are best, Just to sit and fancy things; Give your gold no acid test, Try not how your silver rings; Fancy women pure and good, Fancy men upright and true: Fortressed in your solitude, Let Life be a dream to you. For I think that Thought is all; Truth’s a […]...
31. What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner Or Later Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with. And with whom they breakfast with and sup with. They interfere with the discipline of nurseries, And forget anniversaries, And when they have been particularly remiss They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss, And when you tell them […]...
32. The ordinary again (1) the ordinary You are not interested in me A receiver of food and a giver of shit My brain knuckled under I have rendered the skills of my Limbs to generations of caesars And caesar’s gods have siphoned off my spirit By day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers My own […]...
33. The Ordinary Man If you and I should chance to meet, I guess you wouldn’t care; I’m sure you’d pass me in the street As if I wasn’t there; You’d never look me in the face, My modest mug to scan, Because I’m just a commonplace And Ordinary Man. But then, it may be, you are too A […]...
34. The Most Beautiful Woman In Town Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl In town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes To go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stuck into a form that Would not hold […]...
35. Ordinary Miracles Spring, rainbows, Ordinary miracles About which Nothing new can be said. The stars on a clear night Of a New England winter; The soft air of the islands Along the old Spanish Main; Pirate gold shining In the palm; The odor of roses To the lover’s nose. . . There is no more poetry To […]...
36. A Light Woman I. So far as our story approaches the end, Which do you pity the most of us three?- My friend, or the mistress of my friend With her wanton eyes, or me? II. My friend was already too good to lose, And seemed in the way of improvement yet, When she crossed his path with […]...
37. Thought for the ordinary be moved by your own time But move it too The sun hasn’t all the answers It can be made to listen to you However adamant the pavement It’s a book of feet Though they need it to take them through town People control the street From the irreproachable mountain Wisdom drips down Spray it […]...
38. To a Childless Woman You think I cannot understand. Ah, but I do… I have been wrung with anger and compassion for you. I wonder if you’d loathe my pity, if you knew. But you shall know. I’ve carried in my heart too long This secret burden. Has not silence wrought your wrong— Brought you to dumb and wintry […]...
39. The Celebrated Woman – An Epistle By A Married Man Can I, my friend, with thee condole? Can I conceive the woes that try men, When late repentance racks the soul Ensnared into the toils of hymen? Can I take part in such distress? Poor martyr, most devoutly, “Yes!” Thou weep’st because thy spouse has flown To arms preferred before thine own; A faithless wife, […]...
40. The Virtue Of Woman Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges, Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife; But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shining Lovingly forth to the heart; so let it shine to the eye!...