Mockingbirds

Related poetry:

1. On On yardbird corners of embryonic hopes, drowned in a heroin tear. On yardbird corners of parkerflights to sound filled pockets in space. On neuro-corners of striped brains & desperate electro-surgeons. On alcohol corners of pointless discussion & historical hangovers. On television corners of cornflakes & rockwells impotent America. On university corners of tailored intellect & […]...
2. Sonnet 03 Why should you be astonished that my heart, Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth, Should be revived by you, and stir and start As by warm April now, reviving Earth? I am the field of undulating grass And you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring, And all my lyric being, when you […]...
3. Kingdom of Love In the dawn of the day when the sea and the earth Reflected the sunrise above, I set forth with a heart full of courage and mirth To seek for the Kingdom of Love. I asked of a Poet I met on the way Which cross-road would lead me aright. And he said: “Follow me, […]...
4. Toward The Space Age We must begin to catch hold of everything Around us, for nobody knows what we May need. We have to carry along The air, even; and the weight we once Thought a burden turns out to form The pulse of our life and the compass for our brain. Colors balance our fears, and existence Begins […]...
5. The Last of the Light Brigade 1891 There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might, There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night. They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade; They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade. They felt that life was fleeting; they kuew not […]...
6. Any Man Speaks I, after difficult entry through my mother’s blood And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world); I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned; Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking A dialect shared by you, but not you and you; I, strangely undeft, bereft; I searching always For my lost rib (clothed in laughter yet […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. The Buddha's Last Instruction “Make of yourself a light” Said the Buddha, Before he died. I think of this every morning As the east begins To tear off its many clouds Of darkness, to send up the first Signal-a white fan Streaked with pink and violet, Even green. An old man, he lay down Between two sala trees, And […]...
9. Villanelle: The Psychological Hour I had over prepared the event, That much was ominous. With middle-ageing care I had laid out just the right books. I had almost turned down the pages. Beauty is so rare a thing. So few drink of my fountain. So much barren regret, So many hours wasted! And now I watch, from the window, […]...
10. A Country Life A bird that I don’t know, Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow, Looks sideways out into the wheat The wind waves under the waves of heat. The field is yellow as egg-bread dough Except where (just as though they’d let It live for looks) a locust billows In leaf-green and shade-violet, A standing mercy. […]...
11. The White Room The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret Which they were about to Make known to me And then didn’t. Summer came. Each tree On my street had its own Scheherazade. My nights Were a part of their wild Storytelling. We […]...
12. Listen, Lord: A Prayer O Lord, we come this morning Knee-bowed and body-bent Before Thy throne of grace. O Lord this morning Bow our hearts beneath our knees, And our knees in some lonesome valley. We come this morning Like empty pitchers to a full fountain, With no merits of our own. O Lord open up a window of […]...
13. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
14. Infelice Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess, He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand, He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming, Leaving my alone with a private meaning, He loves me so much, my heart is singing. Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening They said: […]...
15. The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside She dwelt on the hillside by edge Of a maize-field, near the spring that Flows in laughing rills through the Solemn shadows of ancient trees. The Women came there to fill their jars, And travellers would sit there to rest And talk. She worked and dreamed Daily to the tune of the bubbling Stream. One […]...
16. Hiawathas' photographing ( Part IV) Next to him the eldest daughter: She suggested very little Only asked if he would take her With her look of ‘passive beauty-‘ Her idea of passive beauty Was a squinting of the left-eye, Was a drooping of the right-eye, Was a smile that went up Sideways To the corner of the nostrils. Hiawatha, when […]...
17. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not As Christ the Lord was passing by, He came, one night, to a cottage door. He came, a poor man, to the poor; He had no bed whereon to lie. He asked in vain for a crust of bread, Standing there in the frozen blast. The door was locked and bolted fast. ‘Only a beggar!’ […]...
18. When Death Comes When death comes Like the hungry bear in autumn; When death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse To buy me, and snaps the purse shut; When death comes Like the measle-pox When death comes Like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, […]...
19. White Night All night I float In the shallow ponds While the moon wanders Burning, Bone white, Among the milky stems. Once I saw her hand reach To touch the muskrat’s Small sleek head And it was lovely, oh, I don’t want to argue anymore About all the things I thought I could not Live without! Soon […]...
20. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
21. Teaching XVIII Then said a teacher, “Speak to us of Teaching.” And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith […]...
22. A New Broom I bought a new broom today And swept the cobwebs down, A thick accumulation of dregs, A mass of tangles and smut. I whisked a conglomeration of dust That forever stuck-inaccessible. Lifted the rug under which was hidden Years of grime that Made traversing treacherous with things that trip you up. I rolled that rug […]...
23. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
24. "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 […]...
25. Waiting WHEN the dawn comes forth I wonder Will our sad, sad hearts awaken, And the grief we laboured under From the new-in-joy be shaken? If the night be long in going, All our souls will fix in sadness; And the light of morning glowing Waken in our eyes no gladness. All unschooled in mirth we […]...
26. Far Rockaway Night till Morning WHAT can we say of the night? The fog night, the moon night, the fog moon night last night? There swept out of the sea a song. There swept out of the sea-torn white plungers. There came on the coast wind drive In the spit of a driven spray, On the boom of foam and […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. Snow Walking through a field with my little brother Seth I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow. For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels Had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground. He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer. Then […]...
29. LETTER FROM LEEDS Would ‘any woman’ find me difficult to live with? My tastes are simple: space for several thousand books, The smoke from my pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sobranie, A leftover from the Sixties, frequent brief absences to fulfil My duties as a carer, unending phone calls And the unenviable reputation as England’s worst or best […]...
30. I reckon when I count it all I reckon when I count it all First Poets Then the Sun Then Summer Then the Heaven of God And then the List is done But, looking back the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show So I write Poets All Their Summer lasts a Solid Year They can […]...
31. From The Long Sad Party Someone was saying Something about shadows covering the field, about How things pass, how one sleeps towards morning And the morning goes. Someone was saying How the wind dies down but comes back, How shells are the coffins of wind But the weather continues. It was a long night And someone said something about the […]...
32. A Little Song When you, my Dear, are away, away, How wearily goes the creeping day. A year drags after morning, and night Starts another year of candle light. O Pausing Sun and Lingering Moon! Grant me, I beg of you, this boon. Whirl round the earth as never sun Has his diurnal journey run. And, Moon, slip […]...
33. Well I Remember How You Smiled Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand. . . “O! what a child! You think you’re writing upon stone!” I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o’er ocean wide And find Ianthe’s name again....
34. Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning And spread it over the fields And into the faces of the tulips And the nodding morning glories, And into the windows of, even, the Miserable and the crotchety – Best preacher that ever was, Dear star, that just happens To be where you […]...
35. At The Railway Station, Upways ‘There is not much that I can do, For I’ve no money that’s quite my own!’ Spoke up the pitying child A little boy with a violin At the station before the train came in, ‘But I can play my fiddle to you, And a nice one ’tis, and good in tone!’ The man in […]...
36. A Greeting Good morning, Life and all Things glad and beautiful. My pockets nothing hold, But he that owns the gold, The Sun, is my great friend His spending has no end. Hail to the morning sky, Which bright clouds measure high; Hail to you birds whose throats Would number leaves by notes; Hail to you shady […]...
37. Horace iii. 13 O fountain of Bandusia, Whence crystal waters flow, With garlands gay and wine I’ll pay The sacrifice I owe; A sportive kid with budding horns I have, whose crimson blood Anon shall dye and sanctify Thy cool and babbling flood. O fountain of Bandusia, The dog-star’s hateful spell No evil brings unto the springs That […]...
38. It was given to me by the Gods It was given to me by the Gods When I was a little Girl They given us Presents most you know When we are new and small. I kept it in my Hand I never put it down I did not dare to eat or sleep For fear it would be gone I heard such […]...
39. The City's Love For one brief golden moment rare like wine, The gracious city swept across the line; Oblivious of the color of my skin, Forgetting that I was an alien guest, She bent to me, my hostile heart to win, Caught me in passion to her pillowy breast; The great, proud city, seized with a strange love, […]...
40. The Fountain Oh in the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart Of a satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang But the satyr never stirred Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard. The fountain sang and sang And on the marble rim The milk-white peacocks […]...