Personal request

Related poetry:

1. Essay On The Personal Because finally the personal Is all that matters, We spend years describing stones, Chairs, abandoned farmhouses- Until we’re ready. Always It’s a matter of precision, What it feels like To kiss someone or to walk Out the door. How good it was To practice on stones Which were things we could love Without weeping over. […]...
2. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
3. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
4. Personal Helicon As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. I savoured the rich crash when a bucket Plummeted down at the end […]...
5. A Request When I am dead I would that ye make my bed On that low-lying, windy waste by the sea, Where the silvery grasses rustle and lisp; There, where the crisp Foam-flakes shall fly over me, And murmurs creep From the ancient heart of the deep, Lulling me ever, I shall most sweetly sleep. While the […]...
6. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
7. 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 […]...
8. Request to a Year If the year is meditating a suitable gift, I should like it to be the attitude Of my great – great – grandmother, Legendary devotee of the arts, Who having eight children And little opportunity for painting pictures, Sat one day on a high rock Beside a river in Switzerland And from a difficult distance […]...
9. Just Once! Oh least Request! Just Once! Oh least Request! Could Adamant refuse So small a Grace So scanty put, Such agonizing terms? Would not a God of Flint Be conscious of a sigh As down His Heaven dropt remote “Just Once” Sweet Deity?...
10. HIS REQUEST TO JULIA Julia, if I chance to die Ere I print my poetry, I most humbly thee desire To commit it to the fire: Better ’twere my book were dead, Than to live not perfected....
11. A REQUEST TO THE GRACES Ponder my words, if so that any be Known guilty here of incivility; Let what is graceless, discomposed, and rude, With sweetness, smoothness, softness be endued: Teach it to blush, to curtsey, lisp, and show Demure, but yet full of temptation, too. Numbers ne’er tickle, or but lightly plea{e, Unless they have some wanton carriages: […]...
12. HIS LAST REQUEST TO JULIA I have been wanton, and too bold, I fear, To chafe o’er-much the virgin’s cheek or ear; Beg for my pardon, Julia! he doth win Grace with the gods who’s sorry for his sin. That done, my Julia, dearest Julia, come, And go with me to chuse my burial room: My fates are ended; when […]...
13. In Answer to a Request You ask me for a sonnet. Ah, my Dear, Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon? Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere? For your sake, I would go and seek the year, Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune, Blown sands of […]...
14. To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the N Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, Wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre; Landscape-lover, lord of language More than he that sang the “Works and Days,” All the chosen coin of fancy Flashing out from many a golden phrase; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, Tilth […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. Teaching XVIII Then said a teacher, “Speak to us of Teaching.” And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith […]...
17. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
18. Do you know who is thinking of you? If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way It’s little wonder what other people think of you, but The ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close In their hearts, who’re always thinking of you; Do you know, do you know, Do you know who is thinking of […]...
19. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
20. Song and dance do you think an old heart can’t sing Do you think an old heart can’t dance With a love that belongs to spring – Nor i – till i took this glance In a mirror long put-by – denied The least touch of light (there being No cause but to let it hide) Yet now […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. Resolutions Resolutions I have made, Kept, I have none, Why do I have to make, Resolutions anymore? I pause through endless time, For this year to pass, And the lights of celebration to die, On this New Year day. Remember those magical days, When the promise of togetherness, Held us together, tentatively, Alas! No more! Years […]...
23. Psalm 119 part 5 Delight in Scripture; or, The word of God dwelling in us. Ver. 97 O how I love thy holy law! ‘Tis daily my delight; And thence my meditations draw Divine advice by night. Ver. 148 My waking eyes prevent the day To meditate thy word; My soul with longing melts away To hear thy gospel, […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. 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...
26. Shells (Morecombe Bay February 2004) Grey skies, cold and bitter wind A share of a damp mattress In an unheated room. You follow orders from the brother To the man who let your cousin die In a truck approaching Dover. Your parents wait back home With nothing but pain and a photo of you Smiling through […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. Dark Prophecy: I Sing Of Shine And, yeah brothers While white America sings about the unsinkable molly brown (who was hustling the titanic When it went down) I sing to thee of Shine The stoker who was hip enough to flee the fucking ship And let the white folks drown With screams on their lips (jumped his black ass into the […]...
29. To May I have no heart to write verses to May; I have no heart-yet I’m cheerful today; I have no heart-she has won mine away So-I have no heart to write verses to May....
30. Resolve Build on resolve, and not upon regret, The structure of thy future. Do not grope Among the shadows of old sins, but let Thine own soul’s light shine on the path of hope And dissipate the darkness. Waste no tears Upon the blotted record of lost years, But turn the leaf, and smile, oh! smile, […]...
31. 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...
32. The Comet at Valbury or Yell'ham I It bends far over Yell’ham Plain, And we, from Yell’ham Height, Stand and regard its fiery train, So soon to swim from sight. II It will return long years hence, when As now its strange swift shine Will fall on Yell’ham; but not then On that sweet form of thine....
33. A SIMPLE POEM I want you to continue writing Because I will not always be around With lips that will never touch mine Read your poems out loud So that the words are left engraved On the wall Make me feel your voice rush through me Like a breeze from Oyá I want to hear about Puerto Rico […]...
34. The Light and Glory of the Word The Spirit breathes upon the word, And brings the truth to sight; Precepts and promises afford A sanctifying light. A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun; It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none. The hand that gave it still supplies The gracious light and heat; His truths […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. The Ape And God Son put a poser up to me That made me scratch my head: “God made the whole wide world,” quoth he; “That’s right, my boy,” I said. Said son: “He mad the mountains soar, And all the plains lie flat; But Dad, what did he do before He did all that? Said I: “Creation was […]...
37. Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
38. A House upon the Height A House upon the Height That Wagon never reached No Dead, were ever carried down No Peddler’s Cart approached Whose Chimney never smoked Whose Windows Night and Morn Caught Sunrise first and Sunset last Then held an Empty Pane Whose fate Conjecture knew No other neighbor did And what it was we never lisped Because […]...
39. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
40. 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!...