He Made This Screen

Related poetry:

1. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
2. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 02: The Screen Maiden You read-what is it, then that you are reading? What music moves so silently in your mind? Your bright hand turns the page. I watch you from my window, unsuspected: You move in an alien land, a silent age. . . . . . The poet-what was his name-? Tokkei-Tokkei- The poet walked alone in […]...
3. What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space What birds plunge through is not the intimate space, In which you see all Forms intensified. (In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself, Would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and translates Things: To become the very essence of a tree, Throw inner space around it, from that space That lives in […]...
4. Advice to a young sylv-i-an dragon on going to school when you step out of the wood and go first time to school You have to be so specially careful if you’re really a dragon To put the most innocent expression on your face you can find And not flip your flappers (unless the others don’t mind) You must be very strict with yourself – […]...
5. Cinema Screen Light’s patterns freeze: Frost on our faces. Light’s pollen sifts Through the lids of our eyes… Light sinks and rusts In water; is broken By glass… rests On deserted dust. Light lies like torn Paper in corners: A rock-pool’s pledge Of the sea’s return. Light, wrenched at the edges By wind, looks down At itself […]...
6. Tsushima Screen The perilous yellow sun follows with its slant eyes Masts of the shuddered grove steaming up to capsize In the frozen straits of Epiphany. February has fewer Days than the other months; therefore, it’s more cruel Than the rest. Dearest, it’s more sound To wrap up our sailing round The globe with habitual naval grace, […]...
7. On A Picture Screen Whence these twelve peaks of Wu-shan! Have they flown into the gorgeous screen From heaven’s one corner? Ah, those lonely pines murmuring in the wind! Those palaces of Yang-tai, hovering yonder- Oh, the melancholy of it!- Where the jeweled couch of the king With brocade covers is desolate,- His elfin maid voluptuously fair Still haunting […]...
8. The Storm I Ran to the forest for shelter, Breathless, half sobbing; I put my arms round a tree, Pillowed my head against the rough bark. “Protect me,” I said. “I am a lost child.” But the tree showered silver drops on my face and hair. A wind sprang up from the ends of the earth; It […]...
9. On a Tree Fallen Across the Road (To hear us talk) The tree the tempest with a crash of wood Throws down in front of us is not bar Our passage to our journey’s end for good, But just to ask us who we think we are Insisting always on our own way so. She likes to halt us in our runner […]...
10. Historion No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and […]...
11. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
12. The Rose of Midnight THE moon is now an opening flower, The sky a cliff of blue. The moon is now a silver rose; Her pollen is the dew. Her pollen is the mist that swings Across her face of dreams: Her pollen is the April rain, Filling the April streams. Her pollen is eternal life, Endless ambrosial foam. […]...
13. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
14. THE HAWTHORN TREE ACROSS the shimmering meadows Ah, when he came to me! In the spring-time, In the night-time, In the starlight, Beneath the hawthorn tree. Up from the misty marsh-land Ah, when he climbed to me! To my white bower, To my sweet rest, To my warm breast, Beneath the hawthorn tree. Ask of me what the […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sat gossiping with Robert. (She was really a raving beauty in her day. With Mary Pickford curls in clouds and whirls.) She was trying to think of something nice to say, So she pointed to a page by her fellow star and sage, And said: “I wish that I could write that […]...
17. The Englishman St George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon He drank a pint of English ale Out of an English flagon. For though he fast right readily In hair-shirt or in mail, It isn’t safe to give him cakes Unless you give him ale. St George he was for England, And right […]...
18. Rosemary Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – Born of the sea supposedly, At Christmas each, in company, Braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary – Since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, Its flowers – white originally – […]...
19. Shakespeare Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came Visible emperor of the deeds of Time, With Justice still the genius of his rhyme, Giving each man his due, each passion grace, Impartial as the rain from Heaven’s face Or sunshine from the heaven-enthroned sun. Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again. Teach us to […]...
20. Room 4: The Painter Chap He gives me such a bold and curious look, That young American across the way, As if he’d like to put me in a book (Fancies himself a poet, so they say.) Ah well! He’ll make no “document” of me. I lock my door. Ha! ha! Now none shall see. . . . Pictures, just […]...
21. Reason and Passion XV And the priestess spoke again and said: “Speak to us of Reason and Passion.” And he answered saying: Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and […]...
22. The Sky is an Immortal Tent Built by the Sons of Los (from The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los: And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe: And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds […]...
23. The Traveller They pointed me out on the highway, and they said ‘That man has a curious way of holding his head.’ They pointed me out on the beach; they said ‘That man Will never become as we are, try as he can.’ They pointed me out at the station, and the guard Looked at me twice, […]...
24. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far; Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen The silver strings of heavenly harp atween: And let there glide by many a pearly car Pink robes, and wavy hair, and […]...
25. The Copernican System The Sun revolving on his axis turns, And with creative fire intensely burns; Impell’d by forcive air, our Earth supreme, Rolls with the planets round the solar gleam. First Mercury completes his transient year, Glowing, refulgent, with reflected glare; Bright Venus occupies a wider way, The early harbinger of night and day; More distant still […]...
26. Stopping at Incense Storing Temple Not know incense store temple Few enter cloud peaks Ancient trees no person path Deep hills what place bell Spring sound choke sheer rock Sun colour cold green pines Dusk empty pool bend Peace meditation control fierce dragon I did not know the incense storing temple, I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks. […]...
27. Poet And Peer They asked the Bard of Ayr to dine; The banquet hall was fit and fine, With gracing it a Lord; The poet came; his face was grim To find the place reserved for him Was at the butler’s board. So when the gentry called him in, He entered with a knavish grin And sipped a […]...
28. 33. Song-"Indeed will I," quo' Findlay “WHA is that at my bower-door?” “O wha is it but Findlay!” “Then gae your gate, ye’se nae be here:” “Indeed maun I,” quo’ Findlay; “What mak’ ye, sae like a thief?” “O come and see,” quo’ Findlay; “Before the morn ye’ll work mischief:” “Indeed will I,” quo’ Findlay. “Gif I rise and let you […]...
29. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
30. Silver Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon; This way, and that, she peers, and sees Silver fruit upon silver trees; One by one the casements catch Her beams beneath the silvery thatch; Couched in his kennel, like a log, With paws of silver sleeps the dog; From their shadowy cote […]...
31. It's Ours there is always that space there Just before they get to us That space That fine relaxer The breather While say Flopping on a bed Thinking of nothing Or say Pouring a glass of water from the Spigot While entranced by Nothing That Gentle pure Space It’s worth Centuries of Existence Say Just to scratch […]...
32. To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
33. Her Triumph I did the dragon’s will until you came Because I had fancied love a casual Improvisation, or a settled game That followed if I let the kerchief fall: Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings And heavenly music if they gave it wit; And then you stood among the dragon-rings. I mocked, being […]...
34. Arbolй, Arbolй Tree, tree Dry and green. The girl with the pretty face Is out picking olives. The wind, playboy of towers, Grabs her around the waist. Four riders passed by On Andalusian ponies, With blue and green jackets And big, dark capes. “Come to Cordoba, muchacha.” The girl won’t listen to them. Three young bullfighters passed, […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. The Song of the Oak The Druids waved their golden knives And danced around the Oak When they had sacrificed a man; But though the learned search and scan No single modern person can Entirely see the joke. But though they cut the throats of men They cut not down the tree, And from the blood the saplings spring Of […]...
37. The Gladness of Nature Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his […]...
38. The Masked Face I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and […]...
39. I Know My Soul I plucked my soul out of its secret place, And held it to the mirror of my eye, To see it like a star against the sky, A twitching body quivering in space, A spark of passion shining on my face. And I explored it to determine why This awful key to my infinity Conspires […]...
40. A Celebration of Charis: I. His Excuse for Loving Let it not your wonder move, Less your laughter, that I love. Though I now write fifty years, I have had, and have, my peers; Poets, though divine, are men, Some have lov’d as old again. And it is not always face, Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace; Or the feature, or the youth. But […]...