Knife

Related poetry:

1. The Bread-Knife Ballad A little child was sitting Up on her mother’s knee And down down her cheeks the bitter tears did flow. And as I sadly listened I heard this tender plea, ‘Twas uttered in a voice so soft and low. “Not guilty” said the Jury And the Judge said “Set her free, But remember it must […]...
2. Mack The Knife Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear And he shows them pearly white. Just a jack knife has Macheath, dear And he keeps it out of sight. When the shark bites with his teeth, dear Scarlet billows start to spread. Fancy gloves, though, wears Macheath, dear So there’s not a trace of red. On the […]...
3. The Knife Can I explain this to you? Your eyes Are entrances the mouths of caves I issue from wonderful interiors Upon a blessed sea and a fine day, From inside these caves I look and dream. Your hair explicable as a waterfall In some black liquid cooled by legend Fell across my thought in a moment […]...
4. Sonnet 24 – Let the world's sharpness, like a clasping knife Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife, Shut in upon itself and do no harm In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm, And let us hear no sound of human strife After the click of the shutting. Life to life- I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm, And feel as safe […]...
5. Contraband The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason. That’s why the taste of it Drove us from Eden. That fruit Was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder For use a pinch at a time, a condiment. God had probably planned to tell us later About this new pleasure. We stuffed […]...
6. Wolf Knife In the mid August, in the second year Of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter Almost upon us, Kantiuk and I Attempted to dash the sledge Along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics Of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew, And we turned back, and we struggled slowly In snow, […]...
7. Reflections of caernarvon i I shall die yearning A hand Reaching out to A face that isn’t there A face Seeking a hand A stone Leaving its mountain- Wall in a wind Anxious to be a bird A bird Crying to be a wall Ii North wales The goat pisses The hawk hangs The mountain leans forward out […]...
8. Beyond Siberia Again Siberia Beyond Siberia again Siberia, Beyond impenetrable forest again forest. And beyond it waste ground, Where a blizzard of snow breaks loose. The blizzard has handcuffs, and the snow- Storm has a knife which kills at once…. I will die, pay a debt For others who live somewhere, Out of spite, out of fear and terror, […]...
9. Last Night Last Night Thin Rain, Gusty Wind. Dense Sleep Doesn’t Fade A wine Hangover. I’m talking To her Who Rolled up The curtains. Are you Blind! I Say. By now They’re Fat Green And skimpy Red....
10. Litany You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine… – Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass And the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, And the marsh […]...
11. Hayeswater A region desolate and wild. Black, chafing water: and afloat, And lonely as a truant child In a waste wood, a single boat: No mast, no sails are set thereon; It moves, but never moveth on: And welters like a human thing Amid the wild waves weltering. Behind, a buried vale doth sleep, Far down […]...
12. Youth and Art 1 It once might have been, once only: 2 We lodged in a street together, 3 You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, 4 I, a lone she-bird of his feather. 5 Your trade was with sticks and clay, 6 You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished, 7 Then laughed ‘They will see some day 8 […]...
13. Balbus I’ll tell you the story of Balbus, You know, him as builded a wall; I’ll tell you the reason he built it, And the place where it happened an’ all. This ‘ere Balbus, though only a Tackler, Were the most enterprising of men; He’d heard Chicken Farms were lucrative, So he went out and purchased […]...
14. Conqueror I was a gulp of high air – A bird breathing in, A black dot on blue paper, A privileged recipient Of finite sacrament Of souls of flying saints. That all happened the moment You taught me splendid roundness As defined by the touch of your lips. The other mysteries fell, one by one, Cities […]...
15. Now let no charitable hope Now let no charitable hope Confuse my mind with images Of eagle and of antelope: I am by nature none of these. I was, being human, born alone; I am, being woman, hard beset; I live by squeezing from a stone What little nourishment I get. In masks outrageous and austere The years go by […]...
16. Mending Wall Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulder in the sun, And make gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, […]...
17. At Blackwater Pond At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled After a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink A long time. It tastes Like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold Into my body, waking the bones. I hear them Deep inside me, whispering Oh what is that beautiful thing That just happened?...
18. Indian Boyhood What happened to the boy I was? Why did he run away? And leave me old and thinking, like There’d been no yesterday? What happened then? Was I that boy? Who laughed and swam in the bund* I there no going back? No recompense? Is there nothing? No refund?...
19. The Winners What the moral? Who rides may read. When the night is thick and the tracks are blind A friend at a pinch is a friend, indeed, But a fool to wait for the laggard behind. Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone. White hands cling to the […]...
20. Unfulfilled to Observation Unfulfilled to Observation Incomplete to Eye But to Faith a Revolution In Locality Unto Us the Suns extinguish To our Opposite New Horizons they embellish Fronting Us with Night....
21. Lost Kitten Two men I saw reel from a bar And stumble down the street; Coarse and uncouth as workmen are, They walked with wobbly feet. I watched them, thinking sadly as I heard their hobnails clink, The only joy a toiler has Is to get drowned in drink. A kitten on a wall, A skinny, starving […]...
22. An Army Corps on the March WITH its cloud of skirmishers in advance, With now the sound of a single shot, snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley, The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on; Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun-the dust-cover’d men, In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground, […]...
23. Shelley Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love’s immortal fire In mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast! What wonder, Shelley, if the […]...
24. De Ligurra YOU fear, Ligurra – above all, you long – That I should smite you with a stinging song. This dreadful honour you both fear and hope – Both all in vain: you fall below my scope. The Lybian lion tears the roaring bull, He does not harm the midge along the pool. Lo! if so […]...
25. Gazing at the Cascade on Lu Mountain Where crowns a purple haze Ashimmer in sunlight rays The hill called Incense-Burner Peak, from far To see, hung o’er the torrent’s wall, That waterfall Vault sheer three thousand feet, you’d say The Milky Way Was tumbling from the high heavens, star on star...
26. Non Dolet It does not hurt. She looked along the knife Smiling, and watched the thick drops mix and run Down the sheer blade; not that which had been done Could hurt the sweet sense of the Roman wife, But that which was to do yet ere the strife Could end for each for ever, and the […]...
27. Easter Morning a stone at dawn Cold water in the basin These walls’ rough plaster Imageless After the hammering Of so much insistence On the need for naming After the travesties That passed as faces, Grace: the unction Of sheer nonexistence Upwelling in this Hyacinthine freshet Of the unnamed The faceless...
28. Sestina I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, To the short day and to the whitening hills, When the colour is all lost from the grass, Though my desire will not lose its green, So rooted is it in this hardest stone, That speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And […]...
29. Heart O' The North And when I come to the dim trail-end, I who have been Life’s rover, This is all I would ask, my friend, Over and over and over: A little space on a stony hill With never another near me, Sky o’ the North that’s vast and still, With a single star to cheer me; Star […]...
30. Rune of the Finland Woman For Sára Karig “You are so wise,” the reindeer said, “you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand.”-H. C. Andersen, “The Snow Queen” She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand. She could find the world’s words in a singing wind. She could lend a weird will to a […]...
31. Sparkles from The Wheel 1 WHERE the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day, Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching-I pause aside with them. By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging, A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife; Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone-by foot and knee, With […]...
32. Song of the Builders On a summer morning I sat down On a hillside To think about God – A worthy pastime. Near me, I saw A single cricket; It was moving the grains of the hillside This way and that way. How great was its energy, How humble its effort. Let us hope It will always be like […]...
33. Flophouse you haven’t lived Until you’ve been in a Flophouse With nothing but one Light bulb And 56 men Squeezed together On cots With everybody Snoring At once And some of those Snores So Deep and Gross and Unbelievable- Dark Snotty Gross Subhuman Wheezings From hell Itself. Your mind Almost breaks Under those Death-like Sounds And […]...
34. Passer-By, These Are Words Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading I want you to listen: to this frail Voice like that of letters eaten by grass. Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names. It flits between two sprays of leaves, Carrying the sound of branches that are real […]...
35. I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice&quot And I start wondering how they came to be blind. If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, And I think of the poor mother Brooding over her sightless young triplets. Or was it a common accident, all three caught In a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? If not, If each came to […]...
36. The Bean-Stalk Ho, Giant! This is I! I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky! La,-but it’s lovely, up so high! This is how I came,-I put Here my knee, there my foot, Up and up, from shoot to shoot- And the blessed bean-stalk thinning Like the mischief all the time, Till it took me rocking, […]...
37. The Winter's Spring The winter comes; I walk alone, I want no bird to sing; To those who keep their hearts their own The winter is the spring. No flowers to please-no bees to hum- The coming spring’s already come. I never want the Christmas rose To come before its time; The seasons, each as God bestows, Are […]...
38. Abuse of the Gospel Too many, Lord, abuse Thy grace In this licentious day, And while they boast they see Thy face, They turn their own away. Thy book displays a gracious light That can the blind restore; But these are dazzled by the sight, And blinded still the more. The pardon such presume upon, They do not beg […]...
39. Telegram I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist’s tube to a whispering pinch of salt. Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he […]...
40. THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY I sat on a low stone wall Watching the blue blood of the azaleas Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles. A seamless transparency of rain Lowering over the turning trees My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s ‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker To the swathes of heather. I stood on the moor top Where the tracks cross […]...