In a Disused Graveyard

Related poetry:

1. From The Graveyard By The Sea (After Valery) This hushed surface where the doves parade Amid the pines vibrates, amid the graves; Here the noon’s justice unites all fires when The sea aspires forever to begin again and again. O what a gratification comes after long meditation O satisfaction, after long meditation or ratiocination Upon the calm of the gods Upon […]...
2. The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket (For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea) Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. I A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket The sea was still breaking violently and night Had […]...
3. Too scanty 'twas to die for you Too scanty ’twas to die for you, The merest Greek could that. The living, Sweet, is costlier I offer even that The Dying, is a trifle, past, But living, this include The dying multifold without The Respite to be dead....
4. Dead Cow Farm An ancient saga tells us how In the beginning the First Cow (For nothing living yet had birth But Elemental Cow on earth) Began to lick cold stones and mud: Under her warm tongue flesh and blood Blossomed, a miracle to believe: And so was Adam born, and Eve. Here now is chaos once again, […]...
5. O Living Always-Always Dying O LIVING always-always dying! O the burials of me, past and present! O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever! O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not-I am content;) O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at, where I cast […]...
6. Withered Grave Forever yours My dearly beloved one Carved in stone, many years ago. Underneath those loving words, a resting body Far too young, left by it’s soul. A few lonely flowers come back every year, But it’s apparent, no living soul is tending here. From the date, by now, forever must also be gone. But where […]...
7. 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. […]...
8. Hate I had a bitter enemy, His heart to hate he gave, And when I died he swore that he Would dance upon my grave; That he would leap and laugh because A livid corpse was I, And that’s the reason why I was In no great haste to die. And then – such is the […]...
9. The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter After Li Po While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played at the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. […]...
10. The Pity of the Leaves Vengeful across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce, Words out of lips that were no more to speak – Words of the past that shook the old […]...
11. A Man In His Life A man doesn’t have time in his life To have time for everything. He doesn’t have seasons enough to have A season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that. A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, To laugh and cry with the same eyes, With the same hands to […]...
12. Salvage GUNS on the battle lines have pounded now a year Between Brussels and Paris. And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on The great arches and naves and little whimsical Corners of the Churches of Northern France Brr-rr! I’m glad you’re a dead man, William Morris, I’m glad You’re down in the damp […]...
13. The White Lady I cannot rest, I cannot rest In straight and shiny wood, My woven hands upon my breast The dead are all so good! The earth is cool across their eyes; They lie there quietly. But I am neither old nor wise; They do not welcome me. Where never I walked alone before, I wander in […]...
14. Sonnet XIX: You Cannot Love To Humor You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why? There was a time you told me that you would; But now again you will the same deny, If it might please you, would to God you could. What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not, neither. Nor love nor hate, how then? What […]...
15. Wild Swans I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. And what did I see I had not seen before? Only a question less or a question more: Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild […]...
16. My Feud I hate my neighbour Widow Green; I’d like to claw her face; But if I did she’d make a scene And run me round the place: For widows are in way of spleen A most pugnacious race. And yet I must do something quick To keep the hag in line, Since her red rooster chose […]...
17. Dow Kritt Samuel is forever talking of his elm But I did not need to die to learn about roots: I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. Look at my elm! Sprung from as good a seed as his, Sown at the same time, It is dying at the top: Not from lack of life, […]...
18. Losses It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had died before In the routine crashes and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us. We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on […]...
19. The Truth the Dead Know For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 And my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, Refusing the stiff procession to the grave, Letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I […]...
20. 'Twas comfort in her Dying Room ‘Twas comfort in her Dying Room To hear the living Clock A short relief to have the wind Walk boldly up and knock Diversion from the Dying Theme To hear the children play But wrong the more That these could live And this of ours must die....
21. Pensive and Faltering PENSIVE and faltering, The words, the dead, I write; For living are the Dead; (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition-I the spectre.) 5...
22. THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS L’eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans Cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux: “Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!” JACQUES BRIDAINE. Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; And from its station in the hall An ancient […]...
23. The Jewish Cemetery at Newport How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down! The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the southwind’s breath, While underneath these leafy tents […]...
24. Unit, like Death, for Whom? Unit, like Death, for Whom? True, like the Tomb, Who tells no secret Told to Him The Grave is strict Tickets admit Just two the Bearer And the Borne And seat just One The Living tell The Dying but a Syllable The Coy Dead None No Chatter here no tea So Babbler, and Bohea stay […]...
25. The Painter on Silk There was a man Who made his living By painting roses Upon silk. He sat in an upper chamber And painted, And the noises of the street Meant nothing to him. When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums, He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses Bursting in the sunshine, And smiled as […]...
26. The Line-Gang Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread. They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought […]...
27. The Hyaenas After the burial-parties leave And the baffled kites have fled; The wise hyaenas come out at eve To take account of our dead. How he died and why he died Troubles them not a whit. They snout the bushes and stones aside And dig till they come to it. They are only resolute they shall […]...
28. Come On In, The Senility Is Fine People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa, But you don’t have to live forever to become a grampa. The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild, You only have to live until your child has a child. From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder, Because sometimes you […]...
29. Death sets a Thing significant Death sets a Thing significant The Eye had hurried by Except a perished Creature Entreat us tenderly To ponder little Workmanships In Crayon, or in Wool, With “This was last Her fingers did” Industrious until The Thimble weighed too heavy The stitches stopped by themselves And then ’twas put among the Dust Upon the Closet […]...
30. Yes, the Dead Speak to Us YES, the Dead speak to us. This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness. Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the […]...
31. One Morning Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter Rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage Valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes Came echoing through the rocky cove Where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay And a heron rose off a boulder where he’d […]...
32. 'Tis not that Dying hurts us so ‘Tis not that Dying hurts us so ‘Tis Living hurts us more But Dying is a different way A Kind behind the Door The Southern Custom of the Bird That ere the Frosts are due Accepts a better Latitude We are the Birds that stay. The Shrivers round Farmers’ doors For whose reluctant Crumb We […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. Nothing To Be Said For nations vague as weed, For nomads among stones, Small-statured cross-faced tribes And cobble-close families In mill-towns on dark mornings Life is slow dying. So are their separate ways Of building, benediction, Measuring love and money Ways of slow dying. The day spent hunting pig Or holding a garden-party, Hours giving evidence Or birth, advance […]...
35. The Poets O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns […]...
36. From One Who Stays How empty seems the town now you are gone! A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls Eery, distorted, as it long had shone On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone. The whir of motors, stricken through with calls Of playing boys, floats up at intervals; But […]...
37. To Himself Now will you rest forever, My tired heart. Dead is the last Deception, That I thought eternal. Dead. Well I Feel In us the sweet illusions, Nothing but ash, desire burned out. Rest forever. You have Trembled enough. Nothing is worth Thy beats, nor does the earth Deserve Thy sighs. Bitter and dull Is life, […]...
38. Memorial Day For The War Dead Memorial day for the war dead. Add now The grief of all your losses to their grief, Even of a woman that has left you. Mix Sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history, Which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning On one day for easy, convenient memory. Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread, In sweet milk […]...
39. An Angel in the House How sweet it were, if without feeble fright, Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight, An angel came to us, and we could bear To see him issue from the silent air At evening in our room, and bend on ours His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers News of dear friends, and […]...
40. Another Dark Lady Think not, because I wonder where you fled, That I would lift a pin to see you there; You may, for me, be prowling anywhere, So long as you show not your little head: No dark and evil story of the dead Would leave you less pernicious or less fair- Not even Lilith, with her […]...