A Hole In The Floor

Related poetry:

1. The Floor The floor is something we must fight against. Whilst seemingly mere platform for the human Stance, it is that place that men fall to. I am not dizzy. I stand as a tower, a lighthouse; The pale ray of my sentiency flowing from my face. But should I go dizzy I crash down into the […]...
2. Dream Song 123: Daples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north, I have nothing to say except that it dapples my floor And it would dapple me If I lay on that floor, as-well-forthwith I have done, trying well to mount a thought Not carelessly In times forgotten, except by the New York Times Which can’t […]...
3. A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor The hands of the clock were reaching high In an old midtown hotel; I name no name, but its sordid fame Is table talk in hell. I name no name, but hell’s own flame Illumes the lobby garish, A gilded snare just off Times Square For the maidens of the parish. The revolving door swept […]...
4. The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall: “We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew’s Ball. Yon squakin’ saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes. I’m sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes.” “Alas! it’s true,” said Tam MacCall. “The young folk of to-day Are fox-trot mad and dinna […]...
5. Sonnet 04 – Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here […]...
6. Letter To N. Y For Louise Crane In your next letter I wish you’d say Where you are going and what you are doing; How are the plays and after the plays What other pleasures you’re pursuing: Taking cabs in the middle of the night, Driving as if to save your soul Where the road gose round and round […]...
7. The Old Swimmin'-Hole OH! the old swimmin’-hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc’t ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin’ out […]...
8. Grumpy Grandpa Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails, As if they had been dipped in gore, I’d like to set you lugging pails And make you scrub the kitchen floor. I’m old and crotchety of course, And on this point my patience fails; I’d sue my old girl for divorce If she showed up with painted nails. Grand-daughter […]...
9. How News must feel when travelling How News must feel when travelling If News have any Heart Alighting at the Dwelling ‘Twill enter like a Dart! What News must think when pondering If News have any Thought Concerning the stupendousness Of its perceiveless freight! What News will do when every Man Shall comprehend as one And not in all the Universe […]...
10. In Bertram's Garden Jane looks down at her organdy skirt As if it somehow were the thing disgraced, For being there, on the floor, in the dirt, And she catches it up about her waist, Smooths it out along one hip, And pulls it over the crumpled slip. On the porch, green-shuttered, cool, Asleep is Bertram that bronze […]...
11. Full of Life, Now FULL of life, now, compact, visible, I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States, To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence, To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you. When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible; Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking […]...
12. Mockingbirds This morning Two mockingbirds In the green field Were spinning and tossing The white ribbons Of their songs Into the air. I had nothing Better to do Than listen. I mean this Seriously. In Greece, A long time ago, An old couple Opened their door To two strangers Who were, It soon appeared, Not men […]...
13. Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof Out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross Surveys the city’s blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers ‘ll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I’m taking Your picture, pigeons. I’m writing you down, Dawn. I’m immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus. O […]...
14. 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. […]...
15. Now I sit here on the 2nd floor Hunched over in yellow Pajamas Still pretending to be A writer. Some damned gall, At 71, My brain cells eaten Away by Life. Rows of books Behind me, I scratch my thinning Hair And search for the Word. For decades now I have infuriated the Ladies, The critics, […]...
16. The Last Supper Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, And the mouth so mocking gay, A wanton you to the finger-tips, Who break men’s hearts in play; A thing of dust I have striven for, Honour and manhood given for, Headlong to ruin driven for, And this is the last, you say. . . . Drinking your wine […]...
17. The Piper AGAIN I hear you piping, for I know the tune so well, – You rouse the heart to wander and be free, Tho’ where you learned your music, not the God of song can tell, For you pipe the open highway and the sea. O piper, lightly footing, lightly piping on your way, Tho’ your […]...
18. My Madonna I haled me a woman from the street, Shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model’s seat And I painted her sitting there. I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been […]...
19. Alone In The Woods Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures At man So […]...
20. LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES This winter air is keen and cold, And keen and cold this winter sun, But round my chair the children run Like little things of dancing gold. Sometimes about the painted kiosk The mimic soldiers strut and stride, Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide In the bleak tangles of the bosk. And sometimes, while the old […]...
21. My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to me more – Oh bed that taked the weight of the world – all the lost dreams laid on you Oh bed […]...
22. Pipe Smoker Because I love the soothing weed And am of sober type, I’d choose me for a friend in need A man who smokes a pipe. A cove who hasn’t much to say, And spits into the fire, Puffing like me a pipe of clay, Corn-cob or briar. A chap original of thought, With cheery point […]...
23. The Things that never can come back, are several The Things that never can come back, are several Childhood some forms of Hope the Dead Though Joys like Men may sometimes make a Journey And still abide We do not mourn for Traveler, or Sailor, Their Routes are fair But think enlarged of all that they will tell us Returning here “Here!” There are […]...
24. In a Southern Garden WHEN the tall bamboos are clicking to the restless little breeze, And bats begin their jerky skimming flight, And the creamy scented blossoms of the dark pittosporum trees, Grow sweeter with the coming of the night. And the harbour in the distance lies beneath a purple pall, And nearer, at the garden’s lowest fringe, Loud […]...
25. Repression of War Experience Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth; What silly beggars they are to blunder in And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame – No, no, not that,-it’s bad to think of war, When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you; And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad […]...
26. Butterfly Laughter In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the Butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor Butterfly.” That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. […]...
27. Autobiography At An Air-Station Delay, well, travellers must expect Delay. For how long? No one seems to know. With all the luggage weighed, the tickets checked, It can’t be long… We amble too and fro, Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets And tea, unfold the papers. Ought we to smile, Perhaps make friends? No: in the race […]...
28. With Tenure If Ezra Pound were alive today (and he is) He’d be teaching At a small college in the Pacific Northwest And attending the annual convention Of writing instructors in St. Louis And railing against tenure, Saying tenure Is a ladder whose rungs slip out From under the scholar as he climbs Upwards to empty heaven […]...
29. The Pile of Years is not so high The Pile of Years is not so high As when you came before But it is rising every Day From recollection’s Floor And while by standing on my Heart I still can reach the top Efface the mountain with your face And catch me ere I drop...
30. Dreams Nascent My world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm; An endless tapestry the past has women drapes The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform. The surface of dreams is broken, The picture of the past is shaken and scattered. Fluent, active figures of men […]...
31. 251. Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell YOUR News and Review, sir. I’ve read through and through, sir, With little admiring or blaming; The Papers are barren Of home-news or foreign, No murders or rapes worth the naming. Our friends, the Reviewers, Those chippers and hewers, Are judges of mortar and stone, sir; But of meet or unmeet, In a fabric complete, […]...
32. Looking, Walking, Being “The World is not something to Look at, it is something to be in.” Mark Rudman I look and look. Looking’s a way of being: one becomes, Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes Dig and burrow into the world. They touch Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the […]...
33. At Great Pond At Great Pond The sun, rising, Scrapes his orange breast On the thick pines, And down tumble A few orange feathers into The dark water. On the far shore A white bird is standing Like a white candle – Or a man, in the distance, In the clasp of some meditation – While all around […]...
34. In No Strange Land The kingdom of God is within you O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air That we ask of the stars in motion If they have […]...
35. Everybody Tells Me Everything I find it very difficult to enthuse Over the current news. Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens, And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so […]...
36. 543. Song-News, lassies, news THERE’S news, lassies, news, Gude news I’ve to tell! There’s a boatfu’ o’ lads Come to our town to sell. Chorus.-The wean wants a cradle, And the cradle wants a cod: I’ll no gang to my bed, Until I get a nod. Father, quo’ she, Mither, quo she, Do what you can, I’ll no gang […]...
37. Manufactured Gods THEY put up big wooden gods. Then they burned the big wooden gods And put up brass gods and Changing their minds suddenly Knocked down the brass gods and put up A doughface god with gold earrings. The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads, They didn’t know a little tin god Is as good as […]...
38. The Only News I know The Only News I know Is Bulletins all Day From Immortality. The Only Shows I see Tomorrow and Today Perchance Eternity The Only One I meet Is God The Only Street Existence This traversed If Other News there be Or Admirable Show I’ll tell it You...
39. Hear the Voice HEAR the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk’d among the ancient trees; Calling the lapsed soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might control The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! ‘O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the […]...
40. Intorduction to the Songs of Experience Hear the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walked among the ancient tree; Calling the lapsed soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might control The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! ‘O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the […]...