Losses

Related poetry:

1. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
2. Smoke I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers. Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages sent up in smoke, and children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like finger-rings of smoke in a north wind. I sit in a chair […]...
3. Her Losses make our Gains ashamed Her Losses make our Gains ashamed She bore Life’s empty Pack As gallantly as if the East Were swinging at her Back. Life’s empty Pack is heaviest, As every Porter knows In vain to punish Honey It only sweeter grows....
4. Old David Smail He dreamed away his hours in school; He sat with such an absent air, The master reckoned him a fool, And gave him up in dull despair. When other lads were making hay You’d find him loafing by the stream; He’d take a book and slip away, And just pretend to fish. . . and […]...
5. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
6. The Absence I speak to you across cities I speak to you across plains My mouth is upon your pillow Both faces of the walls come meeting My voice discovering you I speak to you of eternity O cities memories of cities Cities wrapped in our desires Cities come early cities come lately Cities strong and cities […]...
7. A Dream I dreamed that I ws dead and crossed the heavens, Heavens after heavens with burning feet and swift, And cried: “O God, where art Thou?” I left one On earth, whose burden I would pray Thee lift.” I was so dead I wondered at no thing, Not even that the angels slowly turned Their faces, […]...
8. At the Vietnam War Memorial Black granite stretches its harsh, tapering wings Up to pedestrian-level grass But sucks me down, here, at the intersection of names. I forgive, I must, though I wish something Could heal this wound in the earth. Behold, all theorists, the price of theory: Extreme unction by napalm and blood, Vets shipped home whole or in […]...
9. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
10. End Of The World When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War, We used to take it for known that the human race Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore Of […]...
11. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
12. Campo di Fiori In Rome on the Campo di Fiori Baskets of olives and lemons, Cobbles spattered with wine And the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles With rose-pink fish; Armfuls of dark grapes Heaped on peach-down. On this same square They burned Giordano Bruno. Henchmen kindled the pyre Close-pressed by the mob. Before the flames had […]...
13. Autumn Whoever has no house now will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening And wander on the boulevards, up and down… – from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke Its stain is everywhere. The sharpening air Of late afternoon Is now the colour of tea. […]...
14. Errata Where it says snow Read teeth-marks of a virgin Where it says knife read You passed through my bones Like a police-whistle Where it says table read horse Where it says horse read my migrant’s bundle Apples are to remain apples Each time a hat appears Think of Isaac Newton Reading the Old Testament Remove […]...
15. Accidents The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like Something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair. Oops, says the barber, but it musn’t’ve been a very good Ear, it came off with very little complaint. It wasn’t, says the customer, it was always overly waxed. I tried putting a wick […]...
16. Towards Break Of Day Was it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: “There is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side That all my childhood counted dear; Were I to travel far and wide I could not find a […]...
17. Fight to a Finish The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying, And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, And hear the music of returning feet. ‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought, This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.) Snapping their bayonets on to charge the […]...
18. Removed from Accident of Loss Removed from Accident of Loss By Accident of Gain Befalling not my simple Days Myself had just to earn Of Riches as unconscious As is the Brown Malay Of Pearls in Eastern Waters, Marked His What Holiday Would stir his slow conception Had he the power to dream That put the Dower’s fraction Awaited even […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. A Woman Unconscious Russia and America circle each other; Threats nudge an act that were without doubt A melting of the mould in the mother, Stones melting about the root. The quick of the earth burned out: The toil of all our ages a loss With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought (Not to be thought ridiculous) Shies […]...
21. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
22. A Western Ballad When I died, love, when I died My heart was broken in your care; I never suffered love so fair As now I suffer and abide When I died, love, when I died. When I died, love, when I died I wearied in an endless maze That men have walked for centuries, As endless as […]...
23. Elizabeth Elizabeth, it surely is most fit [Logic and common usage so commanding] In thy own book that first thy name be writ, Zeno and other sages notwithstanding; And I have other reasons for so doing Besides my innate love of contradiction; Each poet – if a poet – in pursuing The muses thro’ their bowers […]...
24. Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13 In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces, Of liberations, and beloved faces, Such as now ere dawn he sings. It would not be easy, accustomed to these things, To give up the old world, but he could try; Let it all rest, have a good cry. Let Randall rest, whom your self-torturing Cannot restore […]...
25. Success is counted sweetest Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory As he defeated dying On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!...
26. Kings (For the Rev. James B. Dollard) The Kings of the earth are men of might, And cities are burned for their delight, And the skies rain death in the silent night, And the hills belch death all day! But the King of Heaven, Who made them all, Is fair and gentle, and very small; He […]...
27. Dream Song 53: He lay in the middle of the world, and twicht He lay in the middle of the world, and twicht. More Sparine for Pelides, Human (half) & down here as he is, With probably insulting mail to open And certainly unworthy words to hear And his unforgiving memory. €”I seldom go to films. They are too exciting, Said the Honourable Possum. €”It takes me so […]...
28. Ode For Mrs. William Settle In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago, A woman sits at her desk to write Me a letter. She holds a photograph Of me up to the light, one taken 17 years ago in a high school class In Providence. She sighs, and the sigh Smells of mouthwash and tobacco. If she were writing by […]...
29. Castile Orange blossoms blowing over Castile Children begging for coins I met my love under an orange tree Or was it an acacia tree Or was he not my love? I read this, then I dreamed this: Can waking take back what happened to me? Bells of San Miguel Ringing in the distance His hair in […]...
30. San Francisco This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown. By accident, you put Your money in my Machine (#4) By accident, I put My money in another Machine (#6) On purpose, I put Your clothes in the Empty machine full Of water […]...
31. Winter Night It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. As during summer midges swarm To beat their wings against a flame Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed To beat against the window pane The blizzard sculptured on the […]...
32. The Theory The big one went to sleep as to die and dreamed he Became a tiny one. So tiny as to have lost all substance. To have Become as theoretical as a point. Then someone said, get up, big one, you’re not doing Yourself any good. You puddle and stagnate in your weight. Best to be […]...
33. The Yukoner He burned a hole in frozen muck, He pierced the icy mould, And there in six-foot dirt he struck A sack or so of gold. He burned holes in the Decalogue, And then it cam about, For Fortune’s just a lousy rogue, His “pocket” petered out. And lo! ’twas but a year all told, When […]...
34. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
35. The Last Judgment With beating heart and lagging feet, Lord, I approach the Judgment-seat. All bring hither the fruits of toil, Measures of wheat and measures of oil; Gold and jewels and precious wine; No hands bare like these hands of mine. The treasure I have nor weighs nor gleams: Lord, I can bring you only dreams. In […]...
36. Scots of the Riverina The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime. The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned, And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife’s back was turned. A […]...
37. Easter, 1916 I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe […]...
38. 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 […]...
39. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
40. We dream it is good we are dreaming We dream it is good we are dreaming It would hurt us were we awake But since it is playing kill us, And we are playing shriek What harm? Men die externally It is a truth of Blood But we are dying in Drama And Drama is never dead Cautious We jar each other And […]...