Cacoethes Scribendi

Related poetry:

1. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
2. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
3. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
4. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
5. With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
6. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
7. The Genesis of the Butterfly The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings, That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide, With muffled music, murmured far and wide. Ah, the Spring time, when we […]...
8. A Scrap of Paper “Will you go to war just for a scrap of paper?” Question Of the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador, August 5, 1914. A mocking question! Britain’s answer came Swift as the light and searching as the flame. “Yes, for a scrap of paper we will fight Till our last breath, and God defend the […]...
9. Paper Boats Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running Stream. In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of The village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and Know who I am. I load my little boats […]...
10. Gravelly Run I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient To see and hear whatever coming and going is, Losing the self to the victory of stones and trees, Of bending sandpit lakes, crescent Round groves of dwarf pine: For it is not so much to know the self As to know it as it is known by […]...
11. Sonnet III THe souerayne beauty which I doo admyre, Witnesse the world how worthy to be prayzed: The light wherof hath kindled heauenly iyre, In my fraile spirit by her from basenesse raysed. That being now with her huge brightnesse dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view: But looking still on her I stand […]...
12. Jasmines Your scent is in the room. Swiftly it overwhelms and conquers me! Jasmines, night jasmines, perfect of perfume, Heavy with dew before the dawn of day! Your face was in the mirror. I could see You smile and vanish suddenly away, Leaving behind the vestige of a tear. Sad suffering face, from parting grown so […]...
13. How In All Wonder How in all wonder Columbus got over, That is a marvel to me, I protest, Cabot, and Raleigh too, that well-read rover, Frobisher, Dampier, Drake and the rest. Bad enough all the same, For them that after came, But, in great Heaven’s name, How he should ever think That on the other brink Of this […]...
14. Amoretti III: The Sovereign Beauty The sovereign beauty which I do admire, Witness the world how worthy to be praised: The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised; That being now with her huge brightness dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view; But looking still on her, I stand […]...
15. October O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts […]...
16. Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel Light spreads darkly downwards from the high Clusters of lights over empty chairs That face each other, coloured differently. Through open doors, the dining-room declares A larger loneliness of knives and glass And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads An unsold evening paper. Hours pass, And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds, […]...
17. The Children The children are all crying in their pens And the surf carries their cries away. They are old men who have seen too much, Their mouths are full of dirty clothes, The tongues poverty, tears like puss. The surf pushes their cries back. Listen. They are bewitched. They are writing down their life On the […]...
18. These Little Songs These little Songs, Found here and there, Floating in air By forest and lea, Or hill-side heather, In houses and throngs, Or down by the sea – Have come together, How, I can’t tell: But I know full well No witty goose-wing On an inkstand begot ’em; Remember each place And moment of grace, In […]...
19. Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers Ye poets ragged and forlorn, Down from your garrets haste; Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born, Not yet consign’d to paste; I know a trick to make you thrive; O, ’tis a quaint device: Your still-born poems shall revive, And scorn to wrap up spice. Get all your verses printed fair, Then let them […]...
20. A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness The tall camels of the spirit Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the Arid Sun. They are slow, proud, And move with a stilted stride To the land of sheer horizon, hunting Traherne’s Sensible emptiness, there where the brain’s lantern-slide […]...
21. The Human Face I. Soon Of all the springtimes of the world This one is the ugliest Of all of my ways of being To be trusting is the best Grass pushes up snow Like the stone of a tomb But I sleep within the storm And awaken eyes bright Slowness, brief time ends Where all streets must […]...
22. I Wonder What It Feels Like to be Drowned? Look at my knees, That island rising from the steamy seas! The candles a tall lightship; my two hands Are boats and barges anchored to the sands, With mighty cliffs all round; They’re full of wine and riches from far lands…. I wonder what it feels like to be drowned? I can make caves, By […]...
23. The Poet Of Ignorance Perhaps the earth is floating, I do not know. Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups Made by some giant scissors, I do not know. Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear, I do not know. Perhaps God is only a deep voice Heard by the deaf, I do not know. Perhaps I am no […]...
24. Oh fair enough are sky and plain Oh fair enough are sky and plain, But I know fairer far: Those are as beautiful again That in the water are; The pools and rivers wash so clean The trees and clouds and air, The like on earth was never seen, And oh that I were there. These are the thoughts I often think […]...
25. You Begin You begin this way: This is your hand, This is your eye, This is a fish, blue and flat On the paper, almost The shape of an eye This is your mouth, this is an O Or a moon, whichever You like. This is yellow. Outside the window Is the rain, green Because it is […]...
26. I Have Started To Say I have started to say “A quarter of a century” Or “thirty years back” About my own life. It makes me breathless It’s like falling and recovering In huge gesturing loops Through an empty sky. All that’s left to happen Is some deaths (my own included). Their order, and their manner, Remain to be learnt....
27. It Is Later Than You Think Lone amid the cafe’s cheer, Sad of heart am I to-night; Dolefully I drink my beer, But no single line I write. There’s the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It is later than you think! Hello! there’s a pregnant phrase. Bravo! let me […]...
28. In the Black Forest I lay beneath the pine trees, And looked aloft, where, through The dusky, clustered tree-tops, Gleamed rent, gay rifts of blue. I shut my eyes, and a fancy Fluttered my sense around: “I lie here dead and buried, And this is churchyard ground. “I am at rest for ever; Ended the stress and strife.” Straight […]...
29. The Paper Windmill The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane And looked out At the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of The square Glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and Pranced, And shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown Water Of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long […]...
30. LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES This winter air is keen and cold, And keen and cold this winter sun, But round my chair the children run Like little things of dancing gold. Sometimes about the painted kiosk The mimic soldiers strut and stride, Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide In the bleak tangles of the bosk. And sometimes, while the old […]...
31. South Country After the whey-faced anonymity Of river-gums and scribbly-gums and bush, After the rubbing and the hit of brush, You come to the South Country As if the argument of trees were done, The doubts and quarrelling, the plots and pains, All ended by these clear and gliding planes Like an abrupt solution. And over the […]...
32. At the Window The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter; While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters. Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede, Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after The street lamps in the […]...
33. To The Commissioners Of Northern Lights I SEND to you, commissioners, A paper that may please ye, sirs (For troth they say it might be worse An’ I believe’t) And on your business lay my curse Before I leav’t. I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince, But I’ve thocht better of it since; The maitter I will nowise mince, But […]...
34. "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 […]...
35. Song of Fortune VI Man and I are sweethearts He craves me and I long for him, But alas! Between us has appeared A rival who brings us misery. She is cruel and demanding, Possessing empty lure. Her name is Substance. She follows wherever we go And watches like a sentinel, bringing Restlessness to my lover. I ask for […]...
36. The Wounded Breakfast A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, Squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, Even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda Is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost The size of the night. . . He looks up and sees a huge shoe Ponderously mounting out of the earth. Up […]...
37. Bottle 'O&#039 I ain’t the kind of bloke as takes to any steady job; I drives me bottle cart around the town; A bloke what keeps ‘is eyes about can always make a bob I couldn’t bear to graft for every brown. There’s lots of handy things about in everybody’s yard, There’s cocks and hens a-runnin’ to […]...
38. The Song Of The Soldier-Born Give me the scorn of the stars and a peak defiant; Wail of the pines and a wind with the shout of a giant; Night and a trail unknown and a heart reliant. Give me to live and love in the old, bold fashion; A soldier’s billet at night and a soldier’s ration; A heart […]...
39. LEFTOVERS Empty chocolate boxes, a pillowcase with an orange at the bottom, Nuts and tinsel with its idiosyncratic rustle and brilliant sheen And the reflection in it of paper-chains hand-made and stuck with Flour-paste stretching from the light-bowl to every corner of the room. Father Christmas himself was plastic and his vast stomach painted red With […]...
40. Homing Swallows Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main, O rain-birds racing merrily away From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say When at the noon-hour from the chapel school The children dash and scamper down the dale, Scornful of teacher’s rod and binding rule Forever broken and without avail, […]...