For Hans Carossa

Related poetry:

1. One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; So many things seem filled with the intent To be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster Of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: Places, […]...
2. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
3. ROLLICKING HANS HALLO there! A glass! Ha! the draught’s truly sweet! If for drink go my shoes, I shall still have my feet. A maiden and wine, With sweet music and song, I would they were mine, All life’s journey along! If I depart from this sad sphere, And leave a will behind me here, A suit […]...
4. Last Night As I Was Sleeping Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That a spring was breaking Out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, Water of a new life That I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvelous error!- That I had a beehive […]...
5. Flight Of Stairs Stairs fly as straight as hawks; Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching. Stairs sway at the height of their flight Like a melody in Tristan; Or swoop to the ground with glad spread of their feathers Before they close them. They curiously investigate […]...
6. HANS SACHS' POETICAL MISSION [I feel considerable hesitation in venturing To offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be ‘a Beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character And style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.’ The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel – Cobbler of […]...
7. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
8. These Things these things that we support most well Have nothing to do with up, And we do with them Out of boredom or fear or money Or cracked intelligence; Our circle and our candle of light Being small, So small we cannot bear it, We heave out with Idea And lose the Center: All wax without […]...
9. Out of sight? What of that? Out of sight? What of that? See the Bird reach it! Curve by Curve Sweep by Sweep Round the Steep Air Danger! What is that to Her? Better ’tis to fail there Than debate here Blue is Blue the World through Amber Amber Dew Dew Seek Friend and see Heaven is shy of Earth that’s […]...
10. The Window She looks out in the blue morning And sees a whole wonderful world She looks out in the morning And sees a whole world She leans out of the window And this is what she sees A wet rose singing to the sun With a chorus of red bees She leans out of the window […]...
11. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
12. Does It Matter? Does it matter?-losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?-losing you sight? There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace […]...
13. The Man to the Angel I HAVE wept a million tears: Pure and proud one, where are thine, What the gain though all thy years In unbroken beauty shine? All your beauty cannot win Truth we learn in pain and sighs: You can never enter in To the circle of the wise. They are but the slaves of light Who […]...
14. Portrait A child draws the outline of a body. She draws what she can, but it is white all through, She cannot fill in what she knows is there. Within the unsupported line, she knows That life is missing; she has cut One background from another. Like a child, She turns to her mother. And you […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. Revulsion THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss. For winning love we win the risk of losing, And losing love is as one’s life were riven; It cuts […]...
18. The watchers against their beliefs a blue spot came slowly Out of the green Nobody expected such a thing to occur On a thursday The watchers switched over from their electronic Eye to their notes The evidence undeniably placed thursday as the day Of the pink circle They recorded having seen another pink circle In a strange […]...
19. The Abnormal Is Not Courage The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question The bravery. Say it’s not courage. Call it a passion. Would say courage isn’t that. Not at its best. […]...
20. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
21. The Testimony Of Light Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone. Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple. Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women shimmered. They held their arms in front of them like ghosts. The coal bones […]...
22. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
23. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
24. A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign I LOOK on the specious electrical light Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, Wickedly red or malignantly green Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary […]...
25. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
26. Cruisers As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine, Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line; So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire, Accost and decoy to our masters’ desire. Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure, Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure; Since half of our trade […]...
27. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
28. Blank Joy She who did not come, wasn’t she determined Nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart? If we had to exist to become the one we love, What would the heart have to create? Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are The center of all my labors and my loves. If I’ve wept for you so […]...
29. Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, Which may not happen. I would like to watch you, Sleeping. I would like to sleep With you, to enter Your sleep as its smooth dark wave Slides over my head And walk with you through that lucent Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves With its watery sun & […]...
30. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
31. The Poet O hour of my muse: why do you leave me, Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight? Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter? How shall I pass my days? And how my nights? I have no one to love. I have no home. There is no center to sustain my life. […]...
32. Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee Joyful, joyful we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love, Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, hail Thee as the sun above. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away; Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day. All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth […]...
33. The Fury Of Sundays Moist, moist, The heat leaking through the hinges, Sun baking the roof like a pie And I and thou and she Eating, working, sweating, Droned up on the heat. The sun as read as the cop car siren. The sun as red as the algebra marks. The sun as red as two electric eyeballs. She […]...
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. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
36. HIS GRANGE, OR PRIVATE WEALTH Though clock, To tell how night draws hence, I’ve none, A cock I have to sing how day draws on: I have A maid, my Prue, by good luck sent, To save That little, Fates me gave or lent. A hen I keep, which, creeking day by day, Tells when She goes her long white […]...
37. Celestial Music I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God. She thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth she’s unusually competent. Brave too, able to face unpleasantness. We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. I’m always […]...
38. Narcissus Encircled by her arms as by a shell, She hears her being murmur, While forever he endures The outrage of his too pure image… Wistfully following their example, Nature re-enters herself; Contemplating its own sap, the flower Becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens… It’s the return of all desire that enters Toward all life […]...
39. The Empty Quatrain A flawless cup: how delicate and fine The flowing curve of every jewelled line! Look, turn it up or down, ‘t is perfect still, But holds no drop of life’s heart-warming wine....
40. Man Listening To Disc This is not bad Ambling along 44th Street With Sonny Rollins for company, His music flowing through the soft calipers Of these earphones, As if he were right beside me On this clear day in March, The pavement sparkling with sunlight, Pigeons fluttering off the curb, Nodding over a profusion of bread crumbs. In fact, […]...