The Swan

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1. Rememberance And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing Which would infinitely enrich your life: The powerful, uniquely uncommon, The awakening of dormant stones, Depths that would reveal you to yourself. In the dusk you notice the book shelves With their volumes in gold and in brown; And you think of far lands you journeyed, […]...
2. THE SWAN ANDROMACHE, I think of you! The stream, The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, The lying Simoпs flooded by your tears, Made all my fertile memory blossom forth As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, Changes more quickly […]...
3. On The Picture Of Two Dolphins In A Fountayne These dolphins twisting each on either side For joy leapt upp, and gazing there abide; And whereas other waters fish doe bring, Here from the fishes doe the waters spring, Who think it is more glorious to give Than to receive the juice whereby they live: And by this milk-white bason learne you may That […]...
4. The Land Of Dreams Awake, awake my little Boy! Thou wast thy Mother’s only joy: Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep? Awake! thy Father does thee keep. “O, what land is the Land of Dreams? What are its mountains, and what are its streams? O Father, I saw my Mother there, Among the lillies by waters fair. […]...
5. Complaint They call me and I go. It is a frozen road Past midnight, a dust Of snow caught In the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and Shake off the cold. Here is a great woman On her side in the bed. She is sick, Perhaps vomiting, Perhaps laboring To give birth to […]...
6. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
7. The Loss of Love All through an empty place I go, And find her not in any room; The candles and the lamps I light Go down before a wind of gloom. Thick-spraddled lies the dust about, A fit, sad place to write her name Or draw her face the way she looked That legendary night she came. The […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Sonnet XLVII: In Pride of Wit In pride of wit when high desire of fame Gave life and courage to my laboring pen, And first the sound and virtue of my name Won grace and credit in the ears of men, With those the thronged theatres that press I in the circuit for the laurel strove, Where the full praise, I […]...
10. The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned Into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air […]...
11. Love The Wild Swan “I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting Flash, of the splendor of things. Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets […]...
12. The Swan At Edgewater Park Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms in its tidal fringe Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck into the body of a Great Lake, Swilling whatever it is swans swill, Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud, […]...
13. Swan Song A bunch of old snakeheads down by the pond Carrying on the swan tradition hissing Inside their white bodies, raising and lowering their heads Like ostriches, regretting only the sad ritual That forced them to waddle back into the water After their life under the rocks, wishing they could lie again in the sun And […]...
14. No Swan So Fine “No water so still as the Dead fountains of Versailles.” No swan, With swart blind look askance And gondoliering legs, so fine As the chinz china one with fawn- Brown eyes and toothed gold Collar on to show whose bird it was. Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth Candelabrum-tree of cockscomb- Tinted buttons, dahlias, Sea-urchins, and […]...
15. The Black Swan When the swans turned my sister into a swan I would go to the lake, at night, from milking: The sun would look out through the reeds like a swan, A swan’s red beak; and the beak would open And inside there was darkness, the stars and the moon. Out on the lake, a girl […]...
16. Turtle, Swan Because the road to our house Is a back road, meadowlands punctuated By gravel quarry and lumberyard, There are unexpected travelers Some nights on our way home from work. Once, on the lawn of the Tool And Die Company, a swan; The word doesn’t convey the shock Of the thing, white architecture Rippling like a […]...
17. Leda And The Swan A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white […]...
18. To Make A Dadist Poem Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. […]...
19. At Sea As night hath stars, more rare than ships In ocean, faint from pole to pole, So all the wonder of her lips Hints her innavigable soul. Such lights she gives as guide my bark; But I am swallowed in the swell Of her heart’s ocean, sagely dark, That holds my heaven and holds my hell. […]...
20. The Stolen Child Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water-rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For […]...
21. The Lovers See how in their veins all becomes spirit; Into each other they mature and grow. Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit, Round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow. Thirsters, and they receive drink, Watchers, and see: they receive sight. Let them into one another sink So as to endure each other outright....
22. Sonnet 03 Not to thee Bedford mournful is the tale Of days departed. Time in his career Arraigns not thee that the neglected year Has past unheeded onward. To the vale Of years thou journeyest. May the future road Be pleasant as the past! and on my friend Friendship and Love, best blessings! still attend, ‘Till full […]...
23. The Naked Land A beast stands at my eye. I cook my senses in a dark fire. The old wombs rot and the new mother Approaches with the footsteps of a world. Who are the people of this unscaled heaven? What beckons? Whose blood hallows this grim land? What slithers along the watershed of my human sleep? The […]...
24. Behavior BEHAVIOR-fresh, native, copious, each one for himself or herself, Nature and the Soul expressed-America and freedom expressed-In it the finest art, In it pride, cleanliness, sympathy, to have their chance, In it physique, intellect, faith-in it just as much as to manage an army or a city, or to write a book-perhaps more, The youth, […]...
25. To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
26. This Consciousness that is aware This Consciousness that is aware Of Neighbors and the Sun Will be the one aware of Death And that itself alone Is traversing the interval Experience between And most profound experiment Appointed unto Men How adequate unto itself Its properties shall be Itself unto itself and none Shall make discovery. Adventure most unto itself The […]...
27. The Hidden Life To tell the Saviour all my wants, How pleasing is the task! Nor less to praise Him when He grants Beyond what I can ask. My laboring spirit vainly seeks To tell but half the joy, With how much tenderness He speaks, And helps me to reply. Nor were it wise, nor should I choose, […]...
28. Destiny LIKE winds or waters were her ways: The flowing tides, the airy streams, Are troubled not by any dreams; They know the circle of their days. Like winds or waters were her ways: They heed not immemorial cries; They move to their high destinies Beyond the little voice that prays. She passed into her secret […]...
29. My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in […]...
30. There Be None of Beauty's Daughters There be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like Thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmйd ocean’s pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull’d winds seem dreaming: And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain […]...
31. For Music THERE be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean’s pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull’d winds seem dreaming: And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain […]...
32. Sorrow of Departure Red lotus incense fades on The jeweled curtain. Autumn Comes again. Gently I open My silk dress and float alone On the orchid boat. Who can Take a letter beyond the clouds? Only the wild geese come back And write their ideograms On the sky under the full Moon that floods the West Chamber. Flowers, […]...
33. Stanzas For Music There be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean’s pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lulled winds seem dreaming; And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain […]...
34. 342. Song-Sweet Afton FLOW gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes, Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, […]...
35. Two Rivulets TWO Rivulets side by side, Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. For the Eternal Ocean bound, These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life, Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by, The Real and Ideal, Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights, (Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, […]...
36. SPIRIT SONG OVER THE WATERS THE soul of man Resembleth water: From heaven it cometh, To heaven it soareth. And then again To earth descendeth, Changing ever. Down from the lofty Rocky wall Streams the bright flood, Then spreadeth gently In cloudy billows O’er the smooth rock, And welcomed kindly, Veiling, on roams it, Soft murmuring, Tow’rd the abyss. Cliffs […]...
37. The City In The Sea Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by […]...
38. An Astrologer's Song To the Heavens above us O look and behold The Planets that love us All harnessed in gold! What chariots, what horses Against us shall bide While the Stars in their courses Do fight on our side? All thought, all desires, That are under the sun, Are one with their fires, As we also are […]...
39. At last, to be identified! At last, to be identified! At last, the lamps upon thy side The rest of Life to see! Past Midnight! Past the Morning Star! Past Sunrise! Ah, What leagues there were Between our feet, and Day!...
40. Duino Elegies: The First Elegy Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ Hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly Pressed me against his heart, I would perish In the embrace of his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror Which we are barely able to endure and are awed Because it […]...