The Sonnets To Orpheus: IV

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1. Sisters Sisters – Heaviness and Tenderness – you look the same. Wasps and bees both suck the heavy rose. Man dies, and the hot sand cools again. Carried off on a black stretcher, yesterday’s sun goes. Oh, honeycombs’ heaviness, nets’ tenderness, It’s easier to lift a stone than to say your name! I have one purpose […]...
2. The Sonnets To Orpheus: I A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence A new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright Unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; And it was not from any dullness, not From […]...
3. The Sonnets To Orpheus: X You who are close to my heart always, I welcome you, ancient coffins of stone, Which the cheerful water of Roman days Still flows through, like a wandering song. Or those other ones that are open wide Like the eyes of a happily waking shepard -with silence and bee-suck nettle inside, From which ecstatic butterflies […]...
4. The Sonnets To Orpheus: XIX Though the world keeps changing its form As fast as a cloud, still What is accomplished falls home To the Primeval. Over the change and the passing, Larger and freer, Soars your eternal song, God with the lyre. Never has grief been possesed, Never has love been learned, And what removes us in death Is […]...
5. The Sonnets To Orpheus: XXV But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose name I didn’t know, you who so early were taken away: I will once more call up your image and show it to them, Beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry. Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate, Pausing, as though your young […]...
6. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: VI Rose, you majesty-once, to the ancients, you were Just a calyx with the simplest of rims. But for us, you are the full, the numberless flower, The inexhaustible countenance. In your wealth you seem to be wearing gown upon gown Upon a body of nothing but light; Yet each seperate petal is at the same […]...
7. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas- Space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been Inside me. There are winds that seem like My […]...
8. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter That only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise Into the seamless life proclaimed in your […]...
9. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XXIII Call to me to the one among your moments That stands against you, ineluctably: Intimate as a dog’s imploring glance But, again, forever, turned away When you think you’ve captured it at last. What seems so far from you is most your own. We are already free, and were dismissed Where we thought we soon […]...
10. Song The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, Under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, The weight we carry is love. Who can deny? In dreams It touches the body, In thought constructs A miracle, in imagination Anguishes till born In human Looks out of the heart burning with purity For […]...
11. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
12. When Orpheus Sweetly Did Complayne When Orpheus sweetly did complayne Upon his lute with heavy strayne How his Euridice was slayne, The trees to heare Obtayn’d an eare, And after left it off againe. At every stroake and every stay The boughs kept time, and nodding lay, And listened bending all one way: The aspen tree As well as hee […]...
13. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
14. A Tree Telling of Orpheus White dawn. Stillness. When the rippling began I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog Didn’t stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving. Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if […]...
15. Sonnets xx POOR soul, the centre of my sinful earth My sinful earth these rebel powers array Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy […]...
16. Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember […]...
17. Sonnets From An Ungrafted Tree XLI I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear you body’s weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clairfy the pulse and cloud the […]...
18. Sonnets xviii LET me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth ‘s unknown, […]...
19. Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
20. Sonnets xvii O NEVER say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify! As easy might I from myself depart, As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love; if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, not […]...
21. A Calendar of Sonnets: February Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still; No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, And willow stems grow daily red and bright. These are days when ancients held a rite Of expiation for the old year’s ill, And prayer to purify the new year’s will: […]...
22. ORPHEUS Orpheus he went, as poets tell, To fetch Eurydice from hell; And had her, but it was upon This short, but strict condition; Backward he should not look, while he Led her through hell’s obscurity. But ah! it happen’d, as he made His passage through that dreadful shade, Revolve he did his loving eye, For […]...
23. Orpheus ? or John Fletcher. ORPHEUS with his lute made trees And the mountain tops that freeze Bow themselves when he did sing: To his music plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads […]...
24. Sappho I sigh at day-dawn, and I sigh When the dull day is passing by. I sigh at evening, and again I sigh when night brings sleep to men. Oh! it were far better to die Than thus forever mourn and sigh, And in death’s dreamless sleep to be Unconscious that none weep for me; Eased […]...
25. Le Gout du Néant Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L’Espoir, dont l’éperon attisait ton ardeur, Ne veut plus t’enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur, Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle bute. Résigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute. Esprit vaincu, fourbu! Pour toi, vieux maraudeur, L’amour n’a plus de gout, non plus que la dispute; Adieu […]...
26. Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves, when he did sing: To his music plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Everything that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. WREATH OF SONNETS To Jena Woodhouse This way of minutes miserably mixed With their own blinks misunderstood By birds and trees, this eye-born sisterhood, Whose lisps and whispers ripen in betwixt, While nature hastens to complete a list Of symbols that pull down a dusty hood O’er wrinkled worlds that lately love to brood On past, not having […]...
29. The Kingdom Now we are come to our Kingdom, And the State is thus and thus; Our legions wait at the Palace gate Little it profits us. Now we are come to our Kingdom! Now we are come to our Kingdom, And the Crown is ours to take With shame and fear for our daily cheer, And […]...
30. Cotton Song Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Cant blame God if we dont roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! Cotton bales are the fleecy way, Weary sinner’s bare feet […]...
31. SONNETS TO EUROPA Frost apple on a knotted whirling bough Of dark becoming where it cannot be. So much both for the soil and for the tree, So much for things that are becoming now. You’re melting, slowly dripping from the prow Of a proud sphere pointing right at me, So leaves caught in the cobweb, endlessly Rotate […]...
32. Someone Is Harshly Coughing As Before Someone is harshly coughing on the next floor, Sudden excitement catching the flesh of his throat: Who is the sick one? Who will knock at the door, Ask what is wrong and sweetly pay attention, The shy withdrawal of the sensitive face Embarrassing both, but double shame is tender We will mind our ignorant business, […]...
33. Make Bright The Arrows Make bright the arrows Gather the shields: Conquest narrows The peaceful fields. Stock well the quiver With arrows bright: The bowman feared Need never fight. Make bright the arrows, O peaceful and wise! Gather the shields Against surprise....
34. O Sun of Real Peace O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend! O so amazing and broad-up there resplendent, darting and burning! O vision prophetic, stagger’d with […]...
35. Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets 1 Lo dм che han detto a’ dolci amici addio. – Dante Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci! – Petrarca Come back to me, who wait and watch for you: Or come not yet, for it is over then, And long it is before you come again, So far between my pleasures are and […]...
36. Mariposa Butterflies are white and blue In this field we wander through. Suffer me to take your hand. Death comes in a day or two. All the things we ever knew Will be ashes in that hour, Mark the transient butterfly, How he hangs upon the flower. Suffer me to take your hand. Suffer me to […]...
37. Holy Sonnet III: O Might Those Sighs And Tears Return Again O might those sighs and tears return again Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent, That I might in this holy discontent Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain; In mine Idolatry what showers of rain Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent! That sufferance was my […]...
38. Afraid! Of whom am I afraid? Afraid! Of whom am I afraid? Not Death for who is He? The Porter of my Father’s Lodge As much abasheth me! Of Life? ‘Twere odd I fear [a] thing That comprehendeth me In one or two existences As Deity decree Of Resurrection? Is the East Afraid to trust the Morn With her fastidious forehead? […]...
39. Mangroves These black bush-waters, heavy with crusted boughs Like plumes above dead captains, wake the mind…. Uncounted kissing, unremembered vows, Nights long forgotten, moons too dark to find, Or stars too cold…all quick things that have fled Whilst these old bubbles uprise in older stone, Return like pale dead faces of children dead, Staring unfelt through […]...
40. The Only Child Lest he miss other children, lo! His angel is his playfellow. A riotous angel two years old, With wings of rose and curls of gold. There on the nursery floor together They play when it is rainy weather, Building brick castles with much pain, Only to knock them down again. Two golden heads together look […]...