You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop

Related poetry:

1. Because I could not stop for Death Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the School, where Children strove At recess in the ring We passed […]...
2. Foreign Lands Up into the cherry tree Who should climb but little me? I held the trunk with both my hands And looked abroad in foreign lands. I saw the next door garden lie, Adorned with flowers, before my eye, And many pleasant places more That I had never seen before. I saw the dimpling river pass […]...
3. Non-Stop It seemed as if the enormous journey Was finally approaching its conclusion. From the window of the train The last trees were dissipating, A child-like sailor waved once, A seal-like dog barked and died. The conductor entered the lavatory And was not seen again, although His harmonica-playing was appreciated. He was not without talent, some […]...
4. Bus Stop Lights are burning In quiet rooms Where lives go on Resembling ours. The quiet lives That follow us – These lives we lead But do not own – Stand in the rain So quietly When we are gone, So quietly. . . And the last bus Comes letting dark Umbrellas out – Black flowers, black […]...
5. If I can stop one Heart from breaking If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in Vain....
6. Rondeau at the Train Stop It bothers me: the genital smell of the bay Drifting toward me on the T stop, the train Circling the city like a dingy, year-round Christmas display. The Puritans were right! Sin Is everywhere in Massachusetts, hell-bound In the population. it bothers me Because it’s summer now and sticky – no rain To cool things […]...
7. Fleeing Away My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar, Higher and higher on soul-lent wings; But ever and often and more and more They are dragged down earthward by little things, By little troubles and little needs, As a lark might be tangled among the weeds. My purpose is not what it ought to be, […]...
8. Da Gama returns I have taken refuge In travelogues, Bare silk-screen images of Evening cityscapes Giving in to a garish-clad sky; A tourist romance, Postcard edges feathered By the contents Of the bottle I lay with With increasing faithfulness. Cigar smoke spills From the balcony, its flight That of a skulking dog, Guilty tail between its legs. Vasco […]...
9. Cockroach Roach, foulest of creatures, Who attacks with yellow teeth And an army of cousins big as shoes, You are lumps of coal that are mechanized And when I turn on the light you scuttle Into the corners and there is this hiss upon the land. Yet I know you are only the common angel Turned […]...
10. To Marcus YOU have been far, and I Been farther yet, Since last, in foul or fair An impecunious pair, Below this northern sky Of ours, we met. Now winter night shall see Again us two, While howls the tempest higher, Sit warmly by the fire And dream and plan, as we Were wont to do. And, […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn This is a poem I wrote before I died and was reborn: – After the years of the apples ripening and the eagles soaring, After the festival here the small flowers gleamed like the first stars, And the horses cantered and romped away like the experience of skill; mastered and serene Power, grasped and governed […]...
13. Song From Marriage-A-La-Mode Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now, When passion is decayed? We loved, and we loved, as long as we could, Till our love was loved out in us both; But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled: ‘Twas pleasure first made it […]...
14. The Space Heater On the then-below-zero day, it was on, Near the patients’ chair, the old heater Kept by the analyst’s couch, at the end, Like the infant’s headstone that was added near the foot Of my father’s grave. And it was hot, with the almost Laughing satire of a fire’s heat, The little coils like hairs in […]...
15. A Man's Requirements I Love me Sweet, with all thou art, Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the lightest part, Love me in full being. II Love me with thine open youth In its frank surrender; With the vowing of thy mouth, With its silence tender. III Love me with thine azure eyes, Made for earnest grantings; Taking […]...
16. Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears The first speaker said Fear fire. Fear furnaces Incinerators, the city dump The faint scratch of a match. The second speaker said Fear water. Fear drenching rain Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp Day and the flush toilet. The third speaker said Fear wind. And it needn’t be A hurricane. Drafts, open Windows, electric fans. The […]...
17. Rosalind's Scroll I LEFT thee last, a child at heart, A woman scarce in years: I come to thee, a solemn corpse Which neither feels nor fears. I have no breath to use in sighs; They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes To seal them safe from tears. Look on me with thine own calm look: I […]...
18. Ah, Moon and Star! Ah, Moon and Star! You are very far But were no one Farther than you Do you think I’d stop For a Firmament Or a Cubit or so? I could borrow a Bonnet Of the Lark And a Chamois’ Silver Boot And a stirrup of an Antelope And be with you Tonight! But, Moon, and […]...
19. Insufficiency When I attain to utter forth in verse Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly Along my pulses, yearning to be free And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse To the individual, true, and the universe, In consummation of right harmony: But, like a wind-exposed distorted tree, We are blown against for ever by the curse […]...
20. The Night-Fire No engines shrieking rescue storm the night, And hose and hydrant cannot here avail; The flames laugh high and fling their challenging light, And clouds turn gray and black from silver-pale. The fire leaps out and licks the ancient walls, And the big building bends and twists and groans. A bar drops from its place; […]...
21. The Whole Soul Is it long as a noodle Or fat as an egg? Is it Lumpy like a potato or Ringed like an oak or an Onion and like the onion The same as you go toward The core? That would be Suitable, for is it not The human core and the rest Meant either to keep […]...
22. Dream Barker We met for supper in your flat-bottomed boat. I got there first: in a white dress: I remember Wondering if you’d come. Then you shot over the bank, A Virgilian Nigger Jim, and poled us off To a little sea-food barker’s cave you knew. What’ll you have? you said. Eels hung down, Bamboozled claws hung […]...
23. Critic and Poet: an Epilogue No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define what is a bird, To classify by rote and book, nor fail To mark its structure and to note the scale Whereon its song might possibly be heard. Thus far, no farther; so he spake the word. […]...
24. I Sit By The Window I said fate plays a game without a score, And who needs fish if you’ve got caviar? The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass And turn you on no need for coke, or grass. I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen. When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn’t often. I […]...
25. The Whipping The old woman across the way is whipping the boy again And shouting to the neighborhood her goodness and his wrongs. Wildly he crashes through elephant ears, pleads in dusty zinnias, While she in spite of crippling fat pursues and corners him. She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks In […]...
26. Adlestrop Yes, I remember Adlestrop The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and […]...
27. I should have been too glad, I see I should have been too glad, I see Too lifted for the scant degree Of Life’s penurious Round My little Circuit would have shamed This new Circumference have blamed The homelier time behind. I should have been too saved I see Too rescued Fear too dim to me That I could spell the Prayer I […]...
28. The Wood-Pile Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day I paused and said, ‘I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther – and we shall see’. The hard snow held me, save where now and then One foot went through. The view was all in lines Straight up and down of […]...
29. A Child's Nightmare Through long nursery nights he stood By my bed unwearying, Loomed gigantic, formless, queer, Purring in my haunted ear That same hideous nightmare thing, Talking, as he lapped my blood, In a voice cruel and flat, Saying for ever, “Cat! … Cat! … Cat!…” That one word was all he said, That one word through […]...
30. Climbing High up in the apple tree climbing I go, With the sky above me, the earth below. Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair Which leads to the town I see shining up there. Climbing, climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the […]...
31. Afternoon Rain in State Street Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of […]...
32. The Self-Unseeing Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a […]...
33. My Papa's Waltz The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed […]...
34. MOTIF Three notes I allowed Aloud to sum the August Beachiness of Herring gull Railway pigeon Otherwise birdless Fishless conjoin – Rust cliff and water world Beneath reflected sky; That order/disorder/chaos Of iron colony salinity In all its erosive pungency. Which instrument to choose Bowed blown plucked Or shell-smash hammered? One two or three? Which pitch […]...
35. Poetry Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower, And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee. Bowing my head in deep humility Before the silent thunder of thy power. Sometimes I flee before thy blazing light, As from the specter of pursuing death; Intimidated lest thy mighty breath, Windways, will sweep me into utter night. […]...
36. Joy and Pleasure Now, joy is born of parents poor, And pleasure of our richer kind; Though pleasure’s free, she cannot sing As sweet a song as joy confined. Pleasure’s a Moth, that sleeps by day And dances by false glare at night; But Joy’s a Butterfly, that loves To spread its wings in Nature’s light. Joy’s like […]...
37. Trouvйe Oh, why should a hen Have been run over On West 4th Street In the middle of summer? She was a white hen red-and-white now, of course. How did she get there? Where was she going? Her wing feathers spread Flat, flat in the tar, All dirtied, and thin As tissue paper. A pigeon, yes, […]...
38. Belly Good A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs But I’ve never seen wheat in a pile. Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots Make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek As a seal hauled out in the winter sun. I can see you as a great goose egg Or a single juicy and fully ripe peach. You […]...
39. The Deepest Dream The deepest dream is of mad governors, Down, down we feel it, till the very crust Of the world cracks, and where there was no dust, Atoms of ruin rise. Confusion stirs, And fear; and all our thoughts dark scavengers Feed on the center’s refuse. Hope is thrust Like wind away, and love sinks into […]...
40. A Child in the Garden When to the garden of untroubled thought I came of late, and saw the open door, And wished again to enter, and explore The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought, And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught, It seemed some purer voice must speak before I dared to tread that garden loved of yore, […]...