Stable society

Related poetry:

1. How To Get On In Society Phone for the fish knives, Norman As cook is a little unnerved; You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes And I must have things daintily served. Are the requisites all in the toilet? The frills round the cutlets can wait Till the girl has replenished the cruets And switched on the logs in the grate. It’s […]...
2. In the Stable What! you don’t like him; well, maybe we all have our fancies, of course: Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he’s a thoroughbred horse; Sired by a son of old Panic look at his ears and his head Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain’t he? well, that’s how the Panics are bred. Gluttonous, ugly and […]...
3. Never for Society Never for Society He shall seek in vain Who His own acquaintance Cultivate Of Men Wiser Men may weary But the Man within Never knew Satiety Better entertain Than could Border Ballad Or Biscayan Hymn Neither introduction Need You unto Him...
4. Best Society When I was a child, I thought, Casually, that solitude Never needed to be sought. Something everybody had, Like nakedness, it lay at hand, Not specially right or specially wrong, A plentiful and obvious thing Not at all hard to understand. Then, after twenty, it became At once more difficult to get And more desired […]...
5. Walking the Dog Two universes mosey down the street Connected by love and a leash and nothing else. Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves While he mooches along with tail up and snout down, Getting a secret knowledge through the nose Almost entirely hidden from my sight. We stand while he’s enraptured by a bush Till […]...
6. The Soul selects her own Society The Soul selects her own Society Then shuts the Door To her divine Majority Present no more Unmoved she notes the Chariots pausing At her low Gate Unmoved an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat I’ve known her from an ample nation Choose One Then close the Valves of her attention Like Stone...
7. The New Mistress “Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be? You may be good for something, but you are not good for me. Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here. And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear. “I will go where I […]...
8. Horses and Men in Rain LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window, And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys. Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches-and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks. […]...
9. Circles of Doors I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips And she formed his name on her tongue and sang And she sent him word she loved him so much, So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home, All was nothing if her love for him was not first Of all; the […]...
10. 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 […]...
11. Laws for Creations LAWS for Creations, For strong artists and leaders-for fresh broods of teachers, and perfect literats for America, For noble savans, and coming musicians. All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world; There shall be no subject too pronounced-All works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections. […]...
12. EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE Desks are straining on all fours, flanks Heaving to hurl the hunched riders Down crack and cranny, buck Finger-snapping lids, consume Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth. The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me, Making my neck prick as it scatters dust Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clichй, Anoints its carved channels […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. Heights Of Folly O crows circling over my head and cawing! I admit to being, at times, Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, Exceedingly happy. On a morning otherwise sunless, Strolling arm in arm Past some gallows-shaped trees With my dear Helen, Who is also a strange bird, With a feeling of being summoned Urgently, but by a […]...
15. Peleg Poague Horses and men are just alike. There was my stallion, Billy Lee, Black as a cat and trim as a deer, With an eye of fire, keen to start, And he could hit the fastest speed Of any racer around Spoon River. But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose, With his lead of fifty […]...
16. 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...
17. Understanding lemons lemons don’t let you admire yourself too much They stick from their tree like awkward thoughts Demanding a truth be told even if the tongue Would prefer a far more sickly explanation Lemons are perfect though for the need to jump Straight out of bed on the eagerest of mornings Into the task that must […]...
18. 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...
19. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. The Christmas Night Wrapped was the world in slumber deep, By seaward valley and cedarn steep, And bright and blest were the dreams of its sleep; All the hours of that wonderful night-tide through The stars outblossomed in fields of blue, A heavenly chaplet, to diadem The King in the manger of Bethlehem. Out on the hills the […]...
22. 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!...
23. 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 […]...
24. Last Word To Childhood Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my sinews crumble As God-the-headmaster’s fingers fumble At the other side of unopening doors Which I watch for a hundred thousand years. […]...
25. 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...
26. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
27. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
28. Outside Fargo, North Dakota Along the sprawled body of the derailed Great Northern freight car, I strike a match slowly and lift it slowly. No wind. Beyond town, three heavy white horses Wade all the way to their shoulders In a silo shadow. Suddenly the freight car lurches. The door slams back, a man with a flashlight Calls me […]...
29. Dogfish Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing Kept flickering in with the tide And looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, With a white belly. If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile Under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, Which was rough As a thousand sharpened nails. […]...
30. The Three Kings Three Kings came riding from far away, Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar; Three Wise Men out of the East were they, And they travelled by night and they slept by day, For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. The star was so beautiful, large, and clear, That all the other stars of the sky […]...
31. 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....
32. I look at the swaling sunset I look at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar. I wish that I could go Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of […]...
33. The Masked Face I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and […]...
34. Arlo Will Did you ever see an alligator Come up to the air from the mud, Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? Have you seen the stabled horses at night Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? Have you ever walked in darkness When an unknown door was open before you And […]...
35. Come down, O Maid COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love […]...
36. By the Lake The old fellow from Shao-ling weeps with stifled sobs as he walks furtively by the bends of the Sepentine on a day in spring. In The waterside palaces the thousands of doors are locked. For whom have the willows and rushed put on their fresh greenery? I remember how formerly, when the Emperor’s rainbow banner […]...
37. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
38. This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn This is a poem I wrote before I died and was reborn: – After the years of the apples ripening and the eagles soaring, After the festival here the small flowers gleamed like the first stars, And the horses cantered and romped away like the experience of skill; mastered and serene Power, grasped and governed […]...
39. The Huntsmen Three jolly gentlemen, In coats of red, Rode their horses Up to bed. Three jolly gentlemen Snored till morn, Their horses champing The golden corn. Three jolly gentlemen At break of day, Came clitter-clatter down the stairs And galloped away....
40. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...