MCMXIV

Related poetry:

1. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
2. Lethargy of leaden wings I hadn’t had the ‘flu in ages, avoided all those awful places Fraught of gritty eyes and splitting heads, patrons ringed In lethargy of leaden wings, deafened by the roaring chills And still-life flushes, weakened in their clumsy trusses, Trodden on through breached defences, sore diseased And barely breathing; now I can’t decline a cough […]...
3. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
4. Making It Work 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro Along a conveyor belt, slow fish Speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator Patching the asbestos gas lines As big around as the thick waist Of an oak tree. “These here are The veins of the place, stuff Inside’s the blood.” We work in rain, […]...
5. The Quids The little quids, the million quids, The everywhere, everything, always quids, The atoms of the Monoton- Each turned three essences where it stood And ground a gisty dust from its neighbors’ edges Until a powdery thoughtfall stormed in and out, The cerebration of a slippery quid enterprise. Each quid stirred. The united quids Waved through […]...
6. 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, […]...
7. Aaron Holiness on the head, Light and perfection on the breast, Harmonious bells below, raising the dead To led them unto life and rest. Thus are true Aarons dressed. Profaneness in my head, Defects and darkness in my breast, A noise of passions ringing me for dead Unto a place where is no rest. Poor priest […]...
8. An English Breeze UP with the sun, the breeze arose, Across the talking corn she goes, And smooth she rustles far and wide Through all the voiceful countryside. Through all the land her tale she tells; She spins, she tosses, she compels The kites, the clouds, the windmill sails And all the trees in all the dales. God […]...
9. The good soldier on someone else’s place It seems to him the land Slings distance way out The dirt is dead and The sky seems twisted The beat of the stones is wrong He doesn’t know how to say it There are no words no opportunity And anyway What would you say That you’re a stranger And this […]...
10. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
11. In Mind There’s in my mind a woman Of innocence, unadorned but Fair-featured and smelling of Apples or grass. She wears A utopian smock or shift, her hair Is light brown and smooth, and she Is kind and very clean without Ostentation- But she has No imagination And there’s a Turbulent moon-ridden girl Or old woman, or […]...
12. The Civil War I am torn in two But I will conquer myself. I will dig up the pride. I will take scissors And cut out the beggar. I will take a crowbar And pry out the broken Pieces of God in me. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, I will put Him together again With the patience of […]...
13. A Poetry Reading At West Point I read to the entire plebe class, In two batches. Twice the hall filled With bodies dressed alike, each toting A copy of my book. What would my Shrink say, if I had one, about Such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. “Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony, And […]...
14. "I have heard the sunset song of the birches,&quot “I have heard the sunset song of the birches, A white melody in the silence, I have seen a quarrel of the pines. At nightfall The little grasses have rushed by me With the wind men. These things have I lived,” quoth the maniac, “Possessing only eyes and ears. But you You don green spectacles […]...
15. Vanity My tangoing seemed to delight her; With me it was love at first sight. I mentioned That I was a writer: She asked me: “What is it you write?” “Oh, only best-sellers,” I told her. Their titles? . . . She shook her blonde head; The atmosphere seemed to grow colder: Not one of my […]...
16. Merry Autumn It’s all a farce,-these tales they tell About the breezes sighing, And moans astir o’er field and dell, Because the year is dying. Such principles are most absurd,- I care not who first taught ’em; There’s nothing known to beast or bird To make a solemn autumn. In solemn times, when grief holds sway With […]...
17. The Dumb Soldier When the grass was closely mown, Walking on the lawn alone, In the turf a hole I found And hid a soldier underground. Spring and daisies came apace; Grasses hid my hiding-place; Grasses run like a green sea O’er the lawn up to my knee. Under grass alone he lies, Looking up with leaden eyes, […]...
18. Preface This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry […]...
19. Arrival Morning, a glass door, flashes Gold names off the new city, Whose white shelves and domes travel The slow sky all day. I land to stay here; And the windows flock open And the curtains fly out like doves And a past dries in a wind. Now let me lie down, under A wide-branched indifference, […]...
20. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
21. Aftermath When the summer fields are mown, When the birds are fledged and flown, And the dry leaves strew the path; With the falling of the snow, With the cawing of the crow, Once again the fields we mow And gather in the aftermath. Not the sweet, new grass with flowers Is this harvesting of ours; […]...
22. The Silence Though the air is full of singing My head is loud With the labor of words. Though the season is rich With fruit, my tongue Hungers for the sweet of speech. Though the beech is golden I cannot stand beside it Mute, but must say “It is golden,” while the leaves Stir and fall with […]...
23. Jungheimer's In western fields of corn and northern timber lands, They talk about me, a saloon with a soul, The soft red lights, the long curving bar, The leather seats and dim corners, Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham, And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of […]...
24. To His Two Children In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. In East Luh where my family stay, I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours. I cannot be back in time for the spring doings, Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. The south […]...
25. The Waiting Silence has no zen today. Ambient freeway noise From ј mile away, The occasional Friday nighter Coming home 2:00 a. m. Saturday, The appliances with two-tone hums, The bumping and grinding Of an old swamp cooler, A distant train, Forces what has been pushed back To break through. My father needs O 2 All the […]...
26. The power of the Lake The power of the Lake lingers still So many years beyond its fascination Ending; it was there in the beginning, An unveiling of towering sensitivities, A flowering of gentle obsession. The town that grew in the lee Of the Lake expressed the same Thoughts although hard head bastards Bartered and fought for land, Trying to […]...
27. The Song Of Empedocles And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines! Have you, too, survived yourselves? Are you, too, what I fear to become? You, too, once lived; You too moved joyfully Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by Gods, In a mightier […]...
28. The beekeeper the population controller Slips into disguise His charming suit His veil of words Conceals his gaze He has laid out the fields And filled them with blossoms And counted the money jars In his SimCity slim city Androgyn sharp Bodies are worry perfect Slicked back souped up Cool as drones The neutered ones Will dance […]...
29. Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba I heard their young hearts crying Loveward above the glancing oar And heard the prairie grasses sighing: No more, return no more! O hearts, O sighing grasses, Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn! No more will the wild wind that passes Return, no more return....
30. Clearing at Dawn The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped; The colours of Spring teem on every side. With leaping fish the blue pond is full; With singing thrushes the green boughs droop. The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks; The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist. By the bamboo stream […]...
31. In the Highlands IN the highlands, in the country places, Where the old plain men have rosy faces, And the young fair maidens Quiet eyes; Where essential silence cheers and blesses, And for ever in the hill-recesses Her more lovely music Broods and dies O to mount again where erst I haunted; Where the old red hills are […]...
32. Sonnet XLIX: Thou Leaden Brain Thou leaden brain, which censur’st what I write, And say’st my lines be dull and do not move, I marvel not thou feel’st not my delight, Which never felt’st my fiery touch of love. But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse serv’d, Whose stomach unto gall hath turn’d thy food, Whose senses, like poor […]...
33. The Naming Of Cats The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or […]...
34. Art school each sunset is unique So others tell us Fools – with flowers Of envy pushing Through their teeth I think differently A feeble skill that Can’t repeat itself I’ll have the sun in For a spell to make A proper artist of him By time i finish with This yellow fickle lout His sunset will […]...
35. The Swing How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do! Up in the air and over the wall, Till I can see so wide, River and trees and cattle and all Over the countryside Till I […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. The Man from Goondiwindi, Q I This is the sunburnt bushman who Came down from Goondiwindi, Q. II This is the Push from Waterloo That spotted the sunburnt bushman who Came down from Goondiwindi, Q. III These are the wealthy uncles two, Part of the Push from Waterloo That spotted the sunburnt bushman who Came down from Goondiwindi, Q. IV […]...
38. I went to Heaven I went to Heaven ‘Twas a small Town Lit with a Ruby Lathed with Down Stiller than the fields At the full Dew Beautiful as Pictures No Man drew. People like the Moth Of Mechlin frames Duties of Gossamer And Eider names Almost contented I could be ‘Mong such unique Society...
39. Abou Ben Adhem Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold:- Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room […]...
40. 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 […]...