My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer
1
When the moon appears
And a few wind-stricken barns stand out
In the low-domed hills
And shine with a light
That is veiled and dust-filled
And that floats upon the fields,
My mother, with her hair in a bun,
Her face in shadow, and the smoke
From their cigarette coiling close
To the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
Stands hear the house
And watches the seepage of late light
Down through the sedges
The last gray islands of cloud
Taken from view, and the wind
Ruffling the moon’s ash-colored coat
On the black bay.
2
Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send
Small carpets of lampglow
Into the haze and the bay
Will begin its loud heaving
And the pines, frayed finials
Climbing the hill, will seem to graze
The dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the starlanes,
The endless tunnels of nothing,
And as she gazes,
Under the hour’s spell,
She will think how we yield each night
To the soundless storms of decay
That tear at the folding flesh,
And she will not know
Why she is here
Or what she is prisoner of
If not the conditions of love that brought her to this.
3
My mother will go indoors
And the fields, the bare stones
Will drift in peace, small creatures
The mouse and the swift will sleep
At opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
Repeating its one shrill note
To the rotten boards of the porch,
To the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
To the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
About to be turned. The stars
Are not yet bells that ring
At night for the lost.
It is much too late.
Related poetry:
- Late, Late, So Late Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for that we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light: so late! […]...
- Mother, Summer, I My mother, who hates thunder storms, Holds up each summer day and shakes It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there; But when the August weather breaks And rains begin, and brittle frost Sharpens the bird-abandoned air, Her worried summer look is lost, And I her son, though summer-born And summer-loving, none […]...
- A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the […]...
- Late, O Miller LATE, O miller, The birds are silent, The darkness falls. In the house the lights are lighted. See, in the valley they twinkle, The lights of home. Late, O lovers, The night is at hand; Silence and darkness Clothe the land....
- Dream Song 11: His mother goes. The mother comes & goes His mother goes. The mother comes & goes. Chen Lung’s too came, came and crampt & then That dragoner’s mother was gone. It seem we don’t have no good bed to lie on, Forever. While he drawing his first breath, While skinning his knees, While he was so beastly with love for Charlotte Coquet He […]...
- Late Evening Song For a while Let it be enough: The responsive smile, Though effort goes into it. Across the warm room Shared in candlelight, This look beyond shame, Possible now, at night, Goes out to yours. Hidden by day And shaped by fires Grown dead, gone gray, That burned in other rooms I knew Too long ago […]...
- Tho' I get home how late how late Tho’ I get home how late how late So I get home – ’twill compensate Better will be the Ecstasy That they have done expecting me When Night descending dumb and dark They hear my unexpected knock Transporting must the moment be Brewed from decades of Agony! To think just how the fire will burn […]...
- Late Summer (ALCAICS) Confused, he found her lavishing feminine Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors Be as they were, without end, her playthings? And why were dead years hungrily telling her Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? If now she knew, there might be […]...
- Let Evening Come Let the light of late afternoon Shine through chinks in the barn, moving Up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing As a woman takes up her needles And her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned In long grass. Let the stars appear And […]...
- Summer Evening The frog half fearful jumps across the path, And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath; My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive, Till past, and then the cricket sings more strong, And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear The short night weary with their fretting song. […]...
- The Late Singer Here it is spring again And I still a young man! I am late at my singing. The sparrow with the black rain on his breast Has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past: What is it that is dragging at my heart? The grass by the back door Is stiff with sap. The […]...
- My Mother I Reg wished me to go with him to the field, I paused because I did not want to go; But in her quiet way she made me yield Reluctantly, for she was breathing low. Her hand she slowly lifted from her lap And, smiling sadly in the old sweet way, She pointed to the […]...
- Late Summer Fires The paddocks shave black With a foam of smoke that stays, Welling out of red-black wounds. In the white of a drought This happens. The hardcourt game. Logs that fume are mostly cattle, Inverted, stubby. Tree stumps are kilns. Walloped, wiped, hand-pumped, Even this day rolls over, slowly. At dusk, a family drives sheep Out […]...
- Village in Late Summer LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers....
- Prisoner ‘Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?’ ‘It was my master,’ said the prisoner. ‘I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, And I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king. When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my […]...
- Evening in a Sugar Orchard From where I lingered in a lull in march Outside the sugar-house one night for choice, I called the fireman with a careful voice And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch: ‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke, And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’ I thought a few might […]...
- Mother o' Mine If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother […]...
- Late Autumn October – and the skies are cool and gray O’er stubbles emptied of their latest sheaf, Bare meadow, and the slowly falling leaf. The dignity of woods in rich decay Accords full well with this majestic grief That clothes our solemn purple hills to-day, Whose afternoon is hush’d, and wintry brief Only a robin sings […]...
- Mother's Loss If I could clasp my little babe Upon my breast to-night, I would not mind the blowing wind That shrieketh in affright. Oh, my lost babe! my little babe, My babe with dreamful eyes; Thy bed is cold; and night wind bold Shrieks woeful lullabies. My breast is softer than the sod; This room, with […]...
- November Evening Come, for the dusk is our own; let us fare forth together, With a quiet delight in our hearts for the ripe, still, autumn weather, Through the rustling valley and wood and over the crisping meadow, Under a high-sprung sky, winnowed of mist and shadow. Sharp is the frosty air, and through the far hill-gaps […]...
- Written On A Summer Evening The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely bound In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs, And converse high of […]...
- A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother At four years Nature is mountainous, Mysterious, and submarine. Even A city child knows this, hearing the subway’s Rumor underground. Between the grate, Dropping his penny, he learned out all loss, The irretrievable cent of fate, And now this newest of the mysteries, Confronts his honest and his studious eyes His mother much too fat […]...
- Someone's Mother Someone’s Mother trails the street Wrapt in rotted rags; Broken slippers on her feet Drearily she drags; Drifting in the bitter night, Gnawing gutter bread, With a face of tallow white, Listless as the dead. Someone’s Mother in the dim Of the grey church wall Hears within a Christmas hymn, One she can recall From […]...
- To My Mother Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you- You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death […]...
- O Germany, Pale Mother! Let others speak of her shame, I speak of my own. O Germany, pale mother! How soiled you are As you sit among the peoples. You flaunt yourself Among the besmirched. The poorest of your sons Lies struck down. When his hunger was great. Your other sons Raised their hands against him. This is notorious. […]...
- The Negro Mother Children, I come back today To tell you a story of the long dark way That I had to climb, that I had to know In order that the race might live and grow. Look at my face dark as the night Yet shining like the sun with love’s true light. I am the dark […]...
- Late Late have I called & Late my Beloved Was blessing me I was covering My breasts with my arms “Those doves” you said In the sun I took my arms away...
- Late September Tang of fruitage in the air; Red boughs bursting everywhere; Shimmering of seeded grass; Hooded gentians all a’mass. Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind Tearing off the husky rind, Blowing feathered seeds to fall By the sun-baked, sheltering wall. Beech trees in a golden haze; Hardy sumachs all ablaze, Glowing through the silver birches. How […]...
- A Summer Day I The dawn laughs out on orient hills And dances with the diamond rills; The ambrosial wind but faintly stirs The silken, beaded gossamers; In the wide valleys, lone and fair, Lyrics are piped from limpid air, And, far above, the pine trees free Voice ancient lore of sky and sea. Come, let us fill […]...
- Evening Star ‘Twas noontide of summer, And mid-time of night; And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, thro’ the light Of the brighter, cold moon, ‘Mid planets her slaves, Herself in the Heavens, Her beam on the waves. I gazed awhile On her cold smile; Too cold – too cold for me- There pass’d, as a shroud, […]...
- Late Moon 2 a. m. December, and still no mon Rising from the river. My mother Home from the beer garden Stands before the open closet Her hands still burning. She smooths the fur collar, The scarf, opens the gloves Crumpled like letters. Nothing is lost She says to the darkness, nothing. The moon finally above the […]...
- Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? Then crouch within the door Red is the Fire’s common tint But when the vivid Ore Has vanquished Flame’s conditions, It quivers from the Forge Without a color, but the light Of unanointed Blaze. Least Village has its Blacksmith Whose Anvil’s even ring Stands symbol for […]...
- The Funeral of the Late Ex-Provost Rough, Dundee ‘Twas in the year of 1888, and on the 19th of November, Which the friends of the late Ex-Provost Rough will long remember, Because ’twas on the 19th of November his soul took its flight To the happy land above, the land of pure delight. Take him for all in all, he was a very […]...
- Spartan Mother My mother loved her horses and Her hounds of pedigree; She did not kiss the baby hand I held to her in glee. Of course I had a sweet nou-nou Who tended me with care, And mother reined her nag to view Me with a critic air. So I went to a famous school, But […]...
- My Mother Would Be a Falconress My mother would be a falconress, And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist, Would fly to bring back From the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize, Where I dream in my little hood with many bells Jangling when I’d turn my head. My mother would be a falconress, And she sends […]...
- A Stone Is Nobody's A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner. Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the Rest of his life. His mother asked why. He said, because it’s held captive, because it is Captured. Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know Whether it’s […]...
- Summer Dawn Pray but one prayer for me ‘twixt thy closed lips, Think but one thought of me up in the stars. The summer night waneth, the morning light slips, Faint and grey ‘twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold Waits […]...
- Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening After a Print by George Cruikshank It was a gusty night, With the wind booming, and swooping, Looping round corners, Sliding over the cobble-stones, Whipping and veering, And careering over the roofs Like a thousand clattering horses. Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city, Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait, And […]...
- Poems Done on a Late Night Car I. CHICKENS I am The Great White Way of the city: When you ask what is my desire, I answer: “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, With young faces tired of the cows and barns, Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, Slender supple girls with shapely legs, Lure in the […]...
- HERODIAS Daughter presenting to her Mother St. JOHN's Head in a Charger, also Painted by her self BEhold, dear Mother, who was late our Fear, Disarm’d and Harmless, I present you here; The Tongue ty’d up, that made all Jury quake, And which so often did our Greatness shake; No Terror sits upon his Awful Brow, Where Fierceness reign’d, there Calmness triumphs now; As Lovers use, he gazes on my Face, With […]...