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1. Light Light, my light, the world-filling light, The eye-kissing light, Heart-sweetening light! Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life; The light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; The sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth. The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. […]...
2. Come Out with Me There’s sun on the river and sun on the hill. . . You can hear the sea if you stand quite still! There’s eight new puppies at Roundabout Farm- And I saw an old sailor with only one arm! But everyone says, “Run along!” (Run along, run along!) All of them say, “Run along! I’m […]...
3. Paula NOTHING else in this song-only your face. Nothing else here-only your drinking, night-gray eyes. The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel. I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings. It is not your eyes, your face, I remember. It is not your dancing, race-horse feet. It is […]...
4. The Little Turtle A Recitation for Martha Wakefield, Three Years Old There was a little turtle. He lived in a box. He swam in a puddle. He climbed on the rocks. He snapped at a mosquito. He snapped at a flea. He snapped at a minnow. And he snapped at me. He caught the mosquito. He caught the […]...
5. How To Kill Under the parabola of a ball, A child turning into a man, I looked into the air too long. The ball fell in my hand, it sang In the closed fist: Open Open Behold a gift designed to kill. Now in my dial of glass appears The soldier who is going to die. He smiles, […]...
6. Bat His awful skin Stretched out by some tradesman Is like my skin, here between my fingers, A kind of webbing, a kind of frog. Surely when first born my face was this tiny And before I was born surely I could fly. Not well, mind you, only a veil of skin From my arms to […]...
7. I have fallen into unconsciousness I have got out of my own control, I have fallen into unconsciousness; in my utter unconsciousness how joyful I am with myself! The darling sewed up my eyes so that I might not see other than him, so that suddenly I opened my eyes on his face. My soul fought with me saying, “Do […]...
8. The Kingfisher The kingfisher rises out of the black wave Like a blue flower, in his beak He carries a silver leaf. I think this is The prettiest world so long as you don’t mind A little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life That doesn’t have its splash of happiness? There are […]...
9. The Mourners I look into the aching womb of night; I look across the mist that masks the dead; The moon is tired and gives but little light, The stars have gone to bed. The earth is sick and seems to breathe with pain; A lost wind whimpers in a mangled tree; I do not see the […]...
10. Porphyria's Lover The rain set early in tonight, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze […]...
11. Elegy It’s not that the Muse feels like clamming up, It’s more like high time for the lad’s last nap. And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best Drives a steamroller across his chest. And the words won’t rise either like that rod Or like logs to rejoin their old grove’s sweet rot, And, like […]...
12. Swing Shift Blues What is better than leaving a bar In the middle of the afternoon Besides staying in it or not Having gone into it in the first place Because you had a decent woman to be with? The air smells particularly fresh After the stale beer and piss smells. You can stare up at the whole […]...
13. Grace Darling As the night was beginning to close in one rough September day In the year of 1838, a steamer passed through the Fairway Between the Farne Islands and the coast, on her passage northwards; But the wind was against her, and the steamer laboured hard. There she laboured in the heavy sea against both wind […]...
14. Loam IN the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pass And the break of stars, From the loam, then, The soft warm loam, We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder. We stand, then, To a whiff of life, Lifted to the silver of the […]...
15. The Recall The night was dark when she went away, and the slept. The night is dark now, and I call for her, “Come back, my Darling; the world is asleep; and no one would know, if you came For a moment while stars are gazing at stars.” She went away when the trees were in bud […]...
16. Rich Days Welcome to you rich Autumn days, Ere comes the cold, leaf-picking wind; When golden stocks are seen in fields, All standing arm-in-arm entwined; And gallons of sweet cider seen On trees in apples red and green. With mellow pears that cheat our teeth, Which melt that tongues may suck them in; With blue-black damsons, yellow […]...
17. The Passing Of The Year My glass is filled, my pipe is lit, My den is all a cosy glow; And snug before the fire I sit, And wait to feel the old year go. I dedicate to solemn thought Amid my too-unthinking days, This sober moment, sadly fraught With much of blame, with little praise. Old Year! upon the […]...
18. Dream Girl YOU will come one day in a waver of love, Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, The tan of the sun will be on your skin, The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech, You will pose with a hill-flower grace. You will come, with your slim, expressive arms, A poise of the head […]...
19. The Beautiful Changes One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes. The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s […]...
20. The Weakest Thing Which is the weakest thing of all Mine heart can ponder? The sun, a little cloud can pall With darkness yonder? The cloud, a little wind can move Where’er it listeth? The wind, a little leaf above, Though sere, resisteth? What time that yellow leaf was green, My days were gladder; But now, whatever Spring […]...
21. A Spell before Winter After the red leaf and the gold have gone, Brought down by the wind, then by hammering rain Bruised and discolored, when October’s flame Goes blue to guttering in the cusp, this land Sinks deeper into silence, darker into shade. There is a knowledge in the look of things, The old hills hunch before the […]...
22. Les Silhouettes The sea is flecked with bars of grey, The dull dead wind is out of tune, And like a withered leaf the moon Is blown across the stormy bay. Etched clear upon the pallid sand Lies the black boat: a sailor boy Clambers aboard in careless joy With laughing face and gleaming hand. And overhead […]...
23. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
24. Elegy Let them bury your big eyes In the secret earth securely, Your thin fingers, and your fair, Soft, indefinite-colored hair,- All of these in some way, surely, From the secret earth shall rise; Not for these I sit and stare, Broken and bereft completely; Your young flesh that sat so neatly On your little bones […]...
25. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 05: Melody In A Restaurant The cigarette-smoke loops and slides above us, Dipping and swirling as the waiter passes; You strike a match and stare upon the flame. The tiny fire leaps in your eyes a moment, And dwindles away as silently as it came. This melody, you say, has certain voices- They rise like nereids from a river, singing, […]...
26. Sea Rose Rose, harsh rose, Marred and with stint of petals, Meagre flower, thin, Sparse of leaf, More precious Than a wet rose Single on a stem You are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, You are flung on the sand, You are lifted In the crisp sand That drives in the wind. Can the […]...
27. The Fawn There it was I saw what I shall never forget And never retrieve. Monstrous and beautiful to human eyes, hard to believe, He lay, yet there he lay, Asleep on the moss, his head on his polished cleft small ebony hoves, The child of the doe, the dappled child of the deer. Surely his mother […]...
28. Mating Round clouds roll in the arms of the wind, The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky, And see, where the budding hazels are thinned, The wild anemones lie In undulating shivers beneath the wind. Over the blue of the waters ply White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud; And, look you, floating […]...
29. I’m A Fool To Love You Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman, Some type of supernatural creature. My mother would tell you, if she could, About her life with my father, A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman. She would tell you about the choices A young black woman faces. Is falling in love with some man A […]...
30. Voices of the Air But then there comes that moment rare When, for no cause that I can find, The little voices of the air Sound above all the sea and wind. The sea and wind do then obey And sighing, sighing double notes Of double basses, content to play A droning chord for the little throats The little […]...
31. The Captured Goddess Over the housetops, Above the rotating chimney-pots, I have seen a shiver of amethyst, And blue and cinnamon have flickered A moment, At the far end of a dusty street. Through sheeted rain Has come a lustre of crimson, And I have watched moonbeams Hushed by a film of palest green. It was her wings, […]...
32. Some time Last night, my darling, as you slept, I thought I heard you sigh, And to your little crib I crept, And watched a space thereby; And then I stooped and kissed your brow, For oh! I love you so You are too young to know it now, But some time you shall know! Some time […]...
33. Mammy Hums THIS is the song I rested with: The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on. The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat. The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under. The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot […]...
34. Wedding Wind The wind blew all my wedding-day, And my wedding-night was the night of the high wind; And a stable door was banging, again and again, That he must go and shut it, leaving me Stupid in candlelight, hearing rain, Seeing my face in the twisted candlestick, Yet seeing nothing. When he came back He said […]...
35. Meeting Among the Mountains The little pansies by the road have turned Away their purple faces and their gold, And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme, And all the scent is shed away by the cold. Against the hard and pale blue evening sky The mountain’s new-dropped summer snow is clear Glistening in steadfast stillness: like […]...
36. The Ballad Of The Northern Lights One of the Down and Out that’s me. Stare at me well, ay, stare! Stare and shrink say! you wouldn’t think that I was a millionaire. Look at my face, it’s crimped and gouged one of them death-mask things; Don’t seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the pal of kings? Slouching […]...
37. The Room Through that window-all else being extinct Except itself and me-I saw the struggle Of darkness against darkness. Within the room It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw How order might-if chaos wished-become: And saw the darkness crush upon itself, Contracting powerfully; it was as if It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain. […]...
38. 461. Song-Charlie, he's my Darling ‘TWAS on a Monday morning, Right early in the year, That Charlie came to our town, The young Chevalier. Chorus.-An’ Charlie, he’s my darling, My darling, my darling, Charlie, he’s my darling, The young Chevalier. As he was walking up the street, The city for to view, O there he spied a bonie lass The […]...
39. Next Time Next time what I’d do is look at The earth before saying anything. I’d stop Just before going into a house And be an emperor for a minute And listen better to the wind or to the air being still. When anyone talked to me, whether Blame or praise or just passing time, I’d watch […]...
40. 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 […]...