The Helmet

Related poetry:

1. Fog Portrait RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail… and a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the […]...
2. Reconciliation Some may have blamed you that you took away The verses that could move them on the day When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind With lightning, you went from me, and I could find Nothing to make a song about but kings, Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things That were […]...
3. Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think Praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting For paintings to sigh is science. In another […]...
4. Lichtenberg Smells are surer than sounds or sights To make your heart-strings crack They start those awful voices o’ nights That whisper, ” Old man, come back! “ That must be why the big things pass And the little things remain, Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg, Riding in, in the rain. There was […]...
5. Population Drifts NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her A woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in Them and her hands were tough for work and there Was passion for life in her womb. She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that Marked their faces saw them haggling […]...
6. The Orient Express One looks from the train Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight What I see still seems to me plain, I am safe; but at evening As the lands darken, a questioning Precariousness comes over everything. Once after a day of rain I lay longing to be cold; after a while I […]...
7. Story A woman’s taking her late-afternoon walk On Chestnut where no sidewalk exists And houses with gravel driveways Sit back among the pines. Only the house With the vicious dog is close to the road. An electric fence keeps him in check. When she comes to that house, the woman Always crosses to the other side. […]...
8. Old Engine Driver For five and twenty years I’ve run A famous train; But now my spell of speed is done, No more I’ll strain My sight along the treadless tracks, The gleamy rails: My hand upon the throttle slacks, My vision fails. No more I’ll urge my steed of steel Through hostile nights; No more the mastery […]...
9. Train Train. Distant Train. Praise the glorious distance of Train. Dogs bark, reply to the mournful echo of Train’s whistle. Train looks back, keeps moving. Train carries its boxcars of secrets further and further away (and even further still) from those who profess to love Train, but who do not run after him. Eyes brimmed with […]...
10. To Christina, Queen of Sweden Verses to accompany a portrait of Cromwell Bright Martial Maid, Queen of the frozen zone, The northern pole supports thy shining throne. Behold what furrows age and steel can plough; The helmet’s weight oppressed this wrinkled brow. Through fate’s untrodden paths I move; my hands Still act my free-born people’s bold commands; Yet this stern […]...
11. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
12. Epilogue “Why can’t you say what you mean straight out in prose?” Well, say it yourself: then say “It’s that, but more, Or less perhaps, or not that way, or not That after all.” The meaning of a song Might be an undernote; this tree might mean That leaf as much as trunk, branch, other leaves. […]...
13. Dedication MY first gift and my last, to you I dedicate this fascicle of songs – The only wealth I have: Just as they are, to you. I speak the truth in soberness, and say I had rather bring a light to your clear eyes, Had rather hear you praise This bosomful of songs Than that […]...
14. En-Dor “Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor.” I Samuel, xxviii. 7. The road to En-dor is easy to tread For Mother or yearning Wife. There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead As they were even in life. Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store For desolate […]...
15. The Negro Mother Children, I come back today To tell you a story of the long dark way That I had to climb, that I had to know In order that the race might live and grow. Look at my face dark as the night Yet shining like the sun with love’s true light. I am the dark […]...
16. Pennsylvania I HAVE been in Pennsylvania, In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys. In the blue Susquehanna On a Saturday morning I saw the mounted constabulary go by, I saw boys playing marbles. Spring and the hills laughed. And in places Along the Appalachian chain, I saw steel arms handling coal and iron, And I saw […]...
17. William Shakespeare Not if men’s tongues and angels’ all in one Spake, might the word be said that might speak thee. Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea, the sea, What power is in them all to praise the sun? His praise is this he can be praised of none. Man, woman, child, praise God for him; […]...
18. September 1961 This is the year the old ones, The old great ones Leave us alone on the road. The road leads to the sea. We have the words in our pockets, Obscure directions. The old ones Have taken away the light of their presence, We see it moving away over a hill Off to one side. […]...
19. Dear Colette Dear Colette, I want to write to you About being a woman For that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face Enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . Hangs above my desk Like my own muse. I want to tell you how your hands Reach out from your […]...
20. Praise (I) To write a verse or two is all the praise That I can raise: Mend my estate in any ways, Thou shalt have more. I go to Church; help me to wings, and I Will thither fly; Or, if I mount unto the sky, I will do more. Man is all weakness; there is no […]...
21. 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, […]...
22. Pick Offs THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust On the clean steel sky and sends it to me. The telephone picks off my voice and Sends it cross country a thousand miles. The eyes in my head pick off pages of Napoleon memoirs… a rag handler, A head of dreams walks in a sheet of Mist… the […]...
23. Guilt The clock is frozen in the tower, The thickening fog with sooty smell Has blanketed the motor power Which turns the London streets to hell; And footsteps with their lonely sound Intensify the silence round. I haven’t hope. I haven’t faith. I live two lives and sometimes three. The lives I live make life a […]...
24. A Curse For A Nation I heard an angel speak last night, And he said ‘Write! Write a Nation’s curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.’ I faltered, taking up the word: ‘Not so, my lord! If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother. ‘For I am bound by gratitude, By love […]...
25. Against Unworthy Praise O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What’s not for their applause, Being for a woman’s sake. Enough if the work has seemed, So did she your strength renew, A dream that a lion had dreamed Till the wilderness cried aloud, A secret between you two, Between the proud and […]...
26. The Fury Of Abandonment Someone lives in a cave Eating his toes, I know that much. Someone little lives under a bush Pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against His starving bloated stomac, I know that much. A monkey had his hands cut off For a medical experiment And his claws wept. I know tht much. I know that it […]...
27. Psalm 146 Praise to God for his goodness and truth. Praise ye the Lord, my heart shall join In work so pleasant, so divine; Now, while the flesh is mine abode, And when my soul ascends to God. Praise shall employ my noblest powers, While immortality endures; My days of praise shall ne’er be past, While life, […]...
28. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
29. The house where I was born (04) Another time. It was still night. Water slid Silently on the black ground, And I knew that my only task would be To remember, and I laughed, I bent down, I took from the mud A pile of branches and leaves, I lifted up the whole dripping mass In arms I held close to my […]...
30. General Review Of The Sex Situation Woman wants monogamy; Man delights in novelty. Love is woman’s moon and sun; Man has other forms of fun. Woman lives but in her lord; Count to ten, and man is bored. With this the gist and sum of it, What earthly good can come of it?...
31. It's This Way I stand in the advancing light, My hands hungry, the world beautiful. My eyes can’t get enough of the trees They’re so hopeful, so green. A sunny road runs through the mulberries, I’m at the window of the prison infirmary. I can’t smell the medicines Carnations must be blooming nearby. It’s this way: Being captured […]...
32. The Appology ‘Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule I am alone forbid to play the fool To follow through the Groves a wand’ring Muse And fain’d Idea’s for my pleasures chuse Why shou’d it in my Pen be held a fault Whilst Mira paints her face, to paint a thought Whilst Lamia to […]...
33. Psalm 150 v.1,2,6 C. M. A song of praise. In God’s own house pronounce his praise, His grace he there reveals; To heav’n your joy and wonder raise, For there his glory dwells. Let all your sacred passions move, While you rehearse his deeds; But the great work of saving love Your highest praise exceeds. All that […]...
34. The Song of Quoodle They haven’t got no noses, The fallen sons of Eve; Even the smell of roses Is not what they supposes; But more than mind discloses And more than men believe. They haven’t got no noses, They cannot even tell When door and darkness closes The park a Jew encloses, Where even the law of Moses […]...
35. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
36. Letter Home New Orleans, November 1910 Four weeks have passed since I left, and still I must write to you of no work. I’ve worn down The soles and walked through the tightness Of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, Their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking My plain English and good writing would […]...
37. Psalm 84 part 1 The pleasure of public worship. How pleasant, how divinely fair, O Lord of hosts, thy dwellings are! With long desire my spirit faints To meet th’ assemblies of thy saints. My flesh would rest in thine abode, My panting heart cries out for God; My God! my King! why should I be So far from […]...
38. 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 […]...
39. The Color of the Grave is Green The Color of the Grave is Green The Outer Grave I mean You would not know it from the Field Except it own a Stone To help the fond to find it Too infinite asleep To stop and tell them where it is But just a Daisy deep The Color of the Grave is white […]...
40. You Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which Is simply a path leading through an archway called Adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life Lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future […]...