Melpomene

Related poetry:

1. Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
2. The Sleepout Childhood sleeps in a verandah room In an iron bed close to the wall Where the winter over the railing Swelled the blind on its timber boom And splinters picked lint off warm linen And the stars were out over the hill; Then one wall of the room was forest And all things in there […]...
3. Horace to Melpomene Lofty and enduring is the monument I’ve reared, Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing; And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared, Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing! I shall not altogether die; by far my greater part Shall mock man’s common fate in realms infernal; My works shall live as […]...
4. The Mist I AM the mist, the impalpable mist, Back of the thing you seek. My arms are long, Long as the reach of time and space. Some toil and toil, believing, Looking now and again on my face, Catching a vital, olden glory. But no one passes me, I tangle and snare them all. I am […]...
5. Bone-fable one morning the bone was there Set in the centre of waste ground Against the early morning sun The frost along its concave rim Sparkled – raised a hundredfold The price a passing dog Would place on it but the dogs Who came (barking amongst themselves About the food shining at them Across the rubbled […]...
6. The wind drew off The wind drew off Like hungry dogs Defeated of a bone Through fissures in Volcanic cloud The yellow lightning shone The trees held up Their mangled limbs Like animals in pain When Nature falls upon herself Beware an Austrian....
7. Jonathan Swift Somers After you have enriched your soul To the highest point, With books, thought, suffering, the understanding of many personalities, The power to interpret glances, silences, The pauses in momentous transformations, The genius of divination and prophecy; So that you feel able at times to hold the world In the hollow of your hand; Then, if, […]...
8. SYMBOLS PALM Sunday at the Vatican They celebrate with palms; With reverence bows each holy man, And chaunts the ancient psalms. Those very psalms are also sung With olive boughs in hand, While holly, mountain wilds among, In place of palms must stand: In fine, one seeks some twig that’s green, And takes a willow rod, […]...
9. Song from Aella O SING unto my roundelay, O drop the briny tear with me; Dance no more at holyday, Like a running river be: My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree. Black his cryne as the winter night, White his rode as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, […]...
10. Amateurs of Heaven Two lovers to a midnight meadow came High in the hills, to lie there hand and hand Like effigies and look up at the stars, The never-setting ones set in the North To circle the Pole in idiot majesty, And wonder what was given them to wonder. Being amateurs, they knew some of the names […]...
11. Summer Remember the days of our first happiness, How strong we were, how dazed by passion, Lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed, Sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer, It seemed everything had ripened At once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered. Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the […]...
12. Kallundborg Church ( From The Tent on the Beach) “Tie stille, barn min! Imorgen kommer Fin, Fa’er din, Og gi’er dich Esbern Snares öine og hjerte at lege med!” Zealand Rhyme. “BUILD at Kallundborg by the sea A church as stately as church may be, And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,” Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare. And the Baron […]...
13. North Country North Country, filled with gesturing wood, With trees that fence, like archers’ volleys, The flanks of hidden valleys Where nothing’s left to hide But verticals and perpendiculars, Like rain gone wooden, fixed in falling, Or fingers blindly feeling For what nobody cares; Or trunks of pewter, bangled by greedy death, Stuck with black staghorns, quietly […]...
14. Nor We Of Her To Him He said no word of her to us Nor we of her to him, But oh it saddened us to see How wan he grew and thin. We said: she eats him day and night And draws the blood from him, We did not know but said we thought This was why he grew thin. […]...
15. The Fury Of Beautiful Bones Sing me a thrush, bone. Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather. Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love. Oh sing, bone bag man, sing. Your head is what I remember that Augusty You were in love with another woman but […]...
16. THE OLIVE BRANCH Sadly I walk’d within the field, To see what comfort it would yield; And as I went my private way, An olive-branch before me lay; And seeing it, I made a stay, And took it up, and view’d it; then Kissing the omen, said Amen; Be, be it so, and let this be A divination […]...
17. The Willow On sweet young earth where the myrtle presses, Long we lay, when the May was new; The willow was winding the moon in her tresses, The bud of the rose was told with dew. And now on the brittle ground I’m lying, Screaming to die with the dead year’s dead; The stem of the rose […]...
18. The Touchstone A man there came, whence none could tell, Bearing a Touchstone in his hand; And tested all things in the land By its unerring spell. Quick birth of transmutation smote The fair to foul, the foul to fair; Purple nor ermine did he spare, Nor scorn the dusty coat. Of heirloom jewels, prized so much, […]...
19. Captivity The lion remembers the forest, The lion in chains; To the bird that is captive a vision Of woodland remains. One strains with his strength at the fetter, In impotent rage; One flutters in flights of a moment, And beats at the cage. If the lion were loosed from the fetter, To wander again; He […]...
20. Sonnet IV Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town’s tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars […]...
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. I VENT MY WRATH ON ANIMALS I came alive When things went Crazy. I pulled the plug on The reports of Sturm & drang When someone Signaled I Left open What I Could not close. I broke a Covenant that Was more fierce Than murder. I vent my wrath On animals Pretending they will turn Divine. I open up Rare certainties […]...
23. Good and Evil XXII And one of the elders of the city said, “Speak to us of Good and Evil.” And he answered: Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in […]...
24. The Well of St. Keyne A Well there is in the west country, And a clearer one never was seen; There is not a wife in the west country But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne. An oak and an elm-tree stand beside, And behind doth an ash-tree grow, And a willow from the bank above Droops to […]...
25. Tristia I have studied the Science of departures, In night’s sorrows, when a woman’s hair falls down. The oxen chew, there’s the waiting, pure, In the last hours of vigil in the town, And I reverence night’s ritual cock-crowing, When reddened eyes lift sorrow’s load and choose To stare at distance, and a woman’s crying Is […]...
26. A Coin YOUR western heads here cast on money, You are the two that fade away together, Partners in the mist. Lunging buffalo shoulder, Lean Indian face, We who come after where you are gone Salute your forms on the new nickel. You are To us: The past. Runners On the prairie: Good-by....
27. Willow Poem It is a willow when summer is over, A willow by the river From which no leaf has fallen nor Bitten by the sun Turned orange or crimson. The leaves cling and grow paler, Swing and grow paler Over the swirling waters of the river As if loth to let go, They are so cool, […]...
28. Refrain The air is dark, the night is sad, I lie sleepless and I groan. Nobody cares when a man goes mad: He is sorry, God is glad. Shadow changes into bone. Every shadow has a name; When I think of mine I moan, I hear rumors of such fame. Not for pride, but only shame, […]...
29. Wide Spaces When the man I was denounces all the things that I was not, When the true souls stand like granite, while the souls of liars not – When the quids I gave are counted, and the trays I cadged forgot; Shall my spirit see the country that it wrote for once again? Shall it see […]...
30. The Ballad Of One-Eyed Mike This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye, As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky; As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of “hooch” was dry. A man once aimed that my life be shamed, […]...
31. Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart Push in their tides; And, broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads, The things of light File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones. A candle in the thighs Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of […]...
32. Morning Rain A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light. I hear it among treetop leaves before mist Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and, Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened Colors grace thatch homes for a moment. Flocks and herds of things wild glisten Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across Half a mountain and lingers […]...
33. Dream Song 116: Through the forest, followed, Henry made his silky way Through the forest, followed, Henry made his silky way, No chickadee was troubled, small moss smiled On his swift passage. But there were those ahead when at midday They met in a clearing and lookt at each other awhile. To kill was not the message. He only could go with them—odds? 20 to one-and-a-half; Pointless. […]...
34. Calvin Campbell Ye who are kicking against Fate, Tell me how it is that on this hill-side, Running down to the river, Which fronts the sun and the south-wind, This plant draws from the air and soil Poison and becomes poison ivy? And this plant draws from the same air and soil Sweet elixirs and colors and […]...
35. Mist Forms THE SHEETS of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all? How many times can death come and pay back what we saw? In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore, In the oath […]...
36. Jazzanatomy EVERYTHING is jazz: Snails, jails, rails, tails, males, females, Snow-white cotton bales. Knee-bone, thigh, hip-bone. Jazz slips you percussion bone Classified “unknown.” Slick lizard rhythms, Cigar-smoke tunes, straight-gin sky Laced with double moons. Second-chance rhythms, Don’t-give-up riffs: jazz gets HIGH Off can’ts, buts, and ifs....
37. My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to me more – Oh bed that taked the weight of the world – all the lost dreams laid on you Oh bed […]...
38. The Long Love The long love that in my thought doth harbour, And in mine heart doth keep his residence, Into my face presseth with bold pretence, And therein campeth, spreading his banner. She that me learneth to love and suffer, And wills that my trust and lust’s negligence Be reined by reason, shame, and reverence, With his […]...
39. Three Things ‘O cruel Death, give three things back,’ Sang a bone upon the shore; ‘A child found all a child can lack, Whether of pleasure or of rest, Upon the abundance of my breast’: A bone wave-whitened and dried in the wind. ‘Three dear things that women know,’ Sang a bhone upon the shore; ‘A man […]...
40. Benjamin Painter Together in this grave lie Benjamin Painter, attorney at law, And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend. Down the grey road, friends, children, men and women, Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone With Nig for partner, bed fellow, comrade in drink. In the morning of life […]...