August

Related poetry:

1. Blackberry Eating I love to go out in late September Among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries To eat blackberries for breakfast, The stalks very prickly, a penalty They earn for knowing the black art Of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries Fall almost unbidden to my […]...
2. Dark August So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky Of this black August. My sister, the sun, Broods in her yellow room and won’t come out. Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume Like a kettle, rivers overrun; still, She will not rise and turn off the rain. She is in her room, fondling […]...
3. The Lane Some day, I think, there will be people enough In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight Broad lane where now September hides herself In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse. To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway Of […]...
4. Summer In The Country One shows me how to lie down in a field of clover. Another how to slip my hand under her Sunday skirt. Another how to kiss with a mouth full of blackberries. Another how to catch fireflies in jar after dark. Here is a stable with a single black mare And the proof of God’s […]...
5. August 17th Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health. Surely I will be disquieted By the hospital, that body zone Bodies wrapped in elastic bands, Bodies cased in wood or used like telephones, Bodies crucified up onto their crutches, Bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs, Bodies vomiting up […]...
6. Happiness In the afternoon I watched The she-bear; she was looking For the secret bin of sweetness – Honey, that the bees store In the trees’ soft caves. Black block of gloom, she climbed down Tree after tree and shuffled on Through the woods. And then She found it! The honey-house deep As heartwood, and dipped […]...
7. A Calendar of Sonnets: August Silence again. The glorious symphony Hath need of pause and interval of peace. Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease, Save hum of insects’ aimless industry. Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-aged […]...
8. Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond So heavy Is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, Always it is a surprise When her smoke-colored wings Open And she turns From the thick water, From the black sticks Of the summer pond, And slowly Rises into the air And is gone. Then, not for the first or the last time, I take the deep breath […]...
9. August When my eyes are weeds, And my lips are petals, spinning Down the wind that has beginning Where the crumpled beeches start In a fringe of salty reeds; When my arms are elder-bushes, And the rangy lilac pushes Upward, upward through my heart; Summer, do your worst! Light your tinsel moon, and call on Your […]...
10. Garden Wireless HOW many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air? What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles, Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman’s mouth of passion kisses, a nun’s mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem? Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?-nodding […]...
11. The School In August The cloakroom pegs are empty now, And locked the classroom door, The hollow desks are lined with dust, And slow across the floor A sunbeam creeps between the chairs Till the sun shines no more. Who did their hair before this glass? Who scratched ‘Elaine loves Jill’ One drowsy summer sewing-class With scissors on the […]...
12. August Why should this Negro insolently stride Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, Lie heaps of smouldering daisies, sombre-eyed, Their copper petals shriveled up with pride, Hot with a superfluity of heat, Like a great brazier borne along the street By captive leopards, black and burning pied. […]...
13. 30. Song-Composed in August NOW westlin winds and slaught’ring guns Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather; The moorcock springs on whirring wings Amang the blooming heather: Now waving grain, wide o’er the plain, Delights the weary farmer; And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night, To muse upon my charmer. The partridge loves the fruitful fells, The plover loves […]...
14. Music I tied together A few slender reeds, cut Notches to breathe across and made Such music you stood Shock still and then Followed as I wandered growing Moment by moment Slant-eyes and shaggy, my feet Slamming over the rocks, growing Hard as horn, and there You were behind me, drowning In the music, letting The […]...
15. My Bees: An Allegory “O bees, sweet bees!” I said, “that nearest field Is shining white with fragrant immortelles. Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells.” Then, spicy pines the sunny hive to shield, I set, and patient for the autumn’s yield Of sweet I waited. When the village bells Rang frosty clear, and from their satin cells […]...
16. Rita And The Rifle Between Rita and my eyes There is a rifle And whoever knows Rita Kneels and plays To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes And I kissed Rita When she was young And I remember how she approached And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids And I remember Rita The way a sparrow remembers […]...
17. Buckwheat 1THERE was a late autumn cricket, And two smoldering mountain sunsets Under the valley roads of her eyes. There was a late autumn cricket, A hangover of summer song, Scraping a tune Of the late night clocks of summer, In the late winter night fireglow, This in a circle of black velvet at her neck. […]...
18. Dreaming The Breasts Mother, Strange goddess face Above my milk home, That delicate asylum, I ate you up. All my need took You down like a meal. What you gave I remember in a dream: The freckled arms binding me, The laugh somewhere over my woolly hat, The blood fingers tying my shoe, The breasts hanging like two […]...
19. About My Poetry I have no silver-saddled horse to ride, No inheritance to live on, Neither riches no real-estate A pot of honey is all I own. A pot of honey red as fire! My honey is my everything. I guard My riches and my real-estate my honey pot, I mean From pests of every species, Brother, just […]...
20. The Old Prison The rows of cells are unroofed, A flute for the wind’s mouth, Who comes with a breath of ice From the blue caves of the south. O dark and fierce day: The wind like an angry bee Hunts for the black honey In the pits of the hollow sea. Waves of shadow wash The empty […]...
21. August 15 My new Web site is dropdead. com It’s interactive you get to choose how You’ll die, where, and at what age And it’ll still come as a complete Surprise to you I guarantee But let’s not get morbid it’s a game It’s more fun than bullshit. com and a lot less Narcissistic than kissmyass. com […]...
22. A Negro Love Song Seen my lady home las’ night, Jump back, honey, jump back. Hel’ huh han’ an’ sque’z it tight, Jump back, honey, jump back. Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh, Seen a light gleam f’om huh eye, An’ a smile go flittin’ by Jump back, honey, jump back. Hyeahd de win’ blow thoo de pine, Jump […]...
23. This Beautiful Black Marriage Photograph negative Her black arm: a diving porpoise, Sprawled across the ice-banked pillow. Head: a sheet of falling water. Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light. This woman, Photographed sleeping. The man, Making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain. Sleep stain them both, As if cloudy semen Rubbed shiningly over the surface […]...
24. August 8th And do not be indiscreet or unconventional. Play it safe. Listen here. I’ve never played it safe In spite of what the critics say. Ask my imaginary brother, that waif, That childhood best friend who comes to play Dress-up and stick-up and jacks and Pick-Up-Sticks, Bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics. Or form […]...
25. Letter To My Wife 11-11-1933 Bursa Prison My one and only! Your last letter says: “My head is throbbing, my heart is stunned!” You say: “If they hang you, if I lose you, I’ll die!” You’ll live, my dear My memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart: In […]...
26. Examples (August 27) The last Campbell’s tomato soup can Of the twentieth century is going to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh That is an example of a sentence Another is this from a CEO in Fortune “You die in either case, but this way you get To do it proactively,” where the adverb Makes the sentence I’m […]...
27. I See The Boys Of Summer I I see the boys of summer in their ruin Lay the gold tithings barren, Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils; There in their heat the winter floods Of frozen loves they fetch their girls, And drown the cargoed apples in their tides. These boys of light are curdlers in their folly, Sour […]...
28. An August Midnight I A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter winged, horned, and spined – A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While ‘mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands. . . II Thus meet we five, […]...
29. Incantation A white well In a black cave; A bright shell In a dark wave. A white rose Black brambles hood; Smooth bright snows In a dark wood. A flung white glove In a dark fight; A white dove On a wild black night. A white door In a dark lane; A bright core To bitter […]...
30. Love and Sleep Lying asleep between the strokes of night I saw my love lean over my sad bed, Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head, Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite, Too wan for blushing and too warm for white, But perfect-colored without white or red. And her lips opened amorously, and said […]...
31. Poem (The spirit likes to dress up…) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, Shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning In the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather Plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, […]...
32. Lightning The oaks shone Gaunt gold On the lip Of the storm before The wind rose, The shapeless mouth Opened and began Its five-hour howl; The lights Went out fast, branches Sidled over The pitch of the roof, bounced Into the year That grew black Within minutes, except For the lightening – the landscape Bulging forth […]...
33. The Country Of Marriage I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams Of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs Of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep. II. This comes after silence. Was it something I said That bound me […]...
34. The Relapse My God, how gracious art thou! I had slipt Almost to hell, And on the verge of that dark, dreadful pit Did hear them yell, But O thy love! thy rich, almighty love That sav’d my soul, And checkt their fury, when I saw them move, And heard them howl; O my sole comfort, take […]...
35. The best days of my life What is it about Bryan Adams and his song ‘Summer of 69’? Why do the lyrics linger? Was it 90° in the shade and the harbinger of the end Of the golden weather, or the impending closure Of a glorious decade? He should have called it ‘The best days of my life’, it would have […]...
36. The Wedding O marriage-bells, your clamor tells Two weddings in one breath. SHE marries whom her love compels: And I wed Goodman Death! My brain is blank, my tears are red; Listen, O God: “I will,” he said: And I would that I were dead. Come groomsman Grief and bridesmaid Pain Come and stand with a ghastly […]...
37. This Compost 1 SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other […]...
38. Joy-Bells Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells To the green-vista’d gladness of the past That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells To a joyful chime; but let it be the last. What means this metal in windy belfries hung When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells Whose tones are tuned […]...
39. The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, And frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words Get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according To which nation. French has no word for home, And we have no word […]...
40. The Cuckoo The cuckoo, like a hawk in flight, With narrow pointed wings Whews o’er our heads-soon out of sight And as she flies she sings: And darting down the hedgerow side She scares the little bird Who leaves the nest it cannot hide While plaintive notes are heard. I’ve watched it on an old oak tree […]...