Frederick Douglass

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1. Frederick Douglass A hush is over all the teeming lists, And there is pause, a breath-space in the strife; A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists And vapors that obscure the sun of life. And Ethiopia, with bosom torn, Laments the passing of her noblest born. She weeps for him a mother’s burning tears She loved […]...
2. Lyman, frederick, and jim (FOR THE FELLOWSHIP CLU Lyman and Frederick and Jim, one day, Set out in a great big ship Steamed to the ocean adown the bay Out of a New York slip. “Where are you going and what is your game?” The people asked those three. “Darned if we know; but all the same Happy as […]...
3. The New Poetry Handbook 1 If a man understands a poem, he shall have troubles. 2 If a man lives with a poem, he shall die lonely. 3 If a man lives with two poems, he shall be unfaithful to one. 4 If a man conceives of a poem, he shall have one less child. 5 If a man […]...
4. The Planet On The Table Ariel was glad he had written his poems. They were of a remembered time Or of something seen that he liked. Other makings of the sun Were waste and welter And the ripe shrub writhed. His self and the sun were one And his poems, although makings of his self, Were no less makings of […]...
5. Douglass Ah, Douglass, we have fall’n on evil days, Such days as thou, not even thou didst know, When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways, And all the country heard thee with amaze. Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow, The awful tide that battled […]...
6. The adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama) (i) introduction his home in ruins his parents gone frederick seeks to reclaim his throne to the golden mountain he sets his path the enchantress listening schemes with wrath four desperate trials which she takes from store to silence frederick for ever more (ii) the mist softly mist suppress all sight swirling stealthily as night […]...
7. Never Again The Same Speaking of sunsets, Last night’s was shocking. I mean, sunsets aren’t supposed to frighten you, are they? Well, this one was terrifying. Sure, it was beautiful, but far too beautiful. It wasn’t natural. One climax followed another and then another Until your knees went weak And you couldn’t breathe. The colors were definitely not of […]...
8. Thought OF what I write from myself-As if that were not the resumé; Of Histories-As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding poems; As if those shreds, the records of nations, could possibly be as lasting as the preceding poems; As if here were not the amount of all nations, and of […]...
9. Reunion For more than thirty years we hadn’t met. I remembered the bright query of your face, That single-minded look, intense and stern, Yet most important – how could I forget?- Was what your taught me inadvertantly (tutored by books and parents, even more By my own awe at what was yet to learn): The finest […]...
10. So Much I Gazed So much I gazed on beauty, That my vision is replete with it. Contours of the body. Red lips. Voluptuous limbs. Hair as if taken from greek statues; Always beautiful, even when uncombed, And it falls, slightly, over white foreheads. Faces of love, as my poetry Wanted them…. in the nights of my youth, In […]...
11. Ionian Just because we’ve torn their statues down, And cast them from their temples, Doesn’t for a moment mean the gods are dead. Land of Ionia, they love you yet, Their spirits still remember you. When an August morning breaks upon you A vigour from their lives stabs through your air; And sometimes an ethereal and […]...
12. Clenched Soul We have lost even this twilight. No one saw us this evening hand in hand While the blue night dropped on the world. I have seen from my window The fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops. Sometimes a piece of sun Burned like a coin in my hand. I remembered you with my […]...
13. Sailing Barges off Southend Drifting on a tide from long ago, They swing at anchor silently Wreathed in early morning mist, Like ghosts grown mellow with antiquity. With names like Gladys, Will and Edith May Heroic legends motionless on ancient bows, They are waiting for the breeze, patiently Submissive to the whims of air and ebb. Later, with windlass […]...
14. Egrets Where the path closed down and over, through the scumbled leaves, fallen branches, Through the knotted catbrier, I kept going. Finally I could not save my arms from thorns; soon The mosquitoes smelled me, hot and wounded, and came wheeling and whining. And that’s how I came To the edge of the pond: black and […]...
15. Love Lives Beyond The Tomb Love lives beyond the tomb, And earth, which fades like dew! I love the fond, The faithful, and the true. Love lives in sleep: ‘Tis happiness of healthy dreams: Eve’s dews may weep, But love delightful seems. ‘Tis seen in flowers, And in the morning’s pearly dew; In earth’s green hours, And in the heaven’s […]...
16. Nightclub You are so beautiful and I am a fool To be in love with you Is a theme that keeps coming up In songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful And you are a fool to be in love with me, […]...
17. Birthday (Autobiography) Seventy years ago my mother labored to bear me, A twelve-pound baby with a big head, Her first, it was plain torture. Finally they used the forceps And dragged me out, with one prong In my right eye, and slapped and banged me until I breathed. I am not particularly grateful for it. As to […]...
18. Balmoral Castle Beautiful Balmoral Castle, Most handsome to be seen, Highland home of the Empress of India, Great Britain’s Queen. Your woods and waters and Mountains high are most Beautiful to see, Near by Balmoral Castle And the dark river Dee. Then there’s the hill of Cairngorm To be seen from afar, And the beautiful heathery hills […]...
19. Of The Shop He wrapped them carefully, neatly In costly green silk. Roses of ruby, lilies of pearl, Violets of amethyst. As he himself judged, As he wanted them, they look beautiful to him; not as he saw Or studied them in nature. He will leave them in the safe, A sample of his daring and skillful craft. […]...
20. Makers And Creatures It is a curious experience And one you”re bound to know, though probably In other realms than that of literature, Though I speak of poems now, assuming That you are interested, otherwise, Of course, you wouldn”t be reading this. It is strange to come across a poem In an old magazine, perhaps, and fail At […]...
21. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
22. Mountain Drinking Song To drown the ancient sorrows, We drank a hundred jugs of wine There in the beautiful night. We couldn’t go to bed with the moon so bright. The finally the wine overcame us And we lay down on the empty mountain The earth for a pillow, And a blanket made of heaven...
23. 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 […]...
24. The Left Bank Don’t walk away, Renee, I’m just getting warmed up Your body is like a river And I’m going to swim across I want to explore the left Bank of you then the right You’re the only woman in This room with a sunflower In her hair and you take Forever in the bathroom Making me […]...
25. Vegetable Swallow two smiles meet towards The child-wheel of my zeal The bloody baggage of creatures Made flesh in physical legends-lives The nimble stags storms cloud over Rain falls under the scissors of The dark hairdresser-furiously Swimming under the clashing arpeggios In the machine’s sap grass Grows around with sharp eyes Here the share of our caresses […]...
26. To E I have remembered beauty in the night, Against black silences I waked to see A shower of sunlight over Italy And green Ravello dreaming on her height; I have remembered music in the dark, The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach’s, And running water singing on the rocks When once in English woods […]...
27. To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with John Donne's Satires Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are Life of the Muses’ day, their morning star! If works, not th’ author’s, their own grace should look, Whose poems would not wish to be your book? But these, desir’d by you, the maker’s ends Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends. Yet satires, since […]...
28. The Spring (After Rilke) Spring has returned! Everything has returned! The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes Poems, so many poems. … Look, she has learned So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes! Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white Of the old man’s beard, bright like the snow’s: Now we may ask […]...
29. The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day. And then, of a sudden, it up and bust, And all that was left was a mound of dust? Holmes-O. W.-told it well In a rhyme of his-what there was to […]...
30. Mediums THEY shall arise in the States, They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness; They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos; They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive; They shall be complete women and men-their pose brawny and supple, their drink water, their blood clean and clear; They shall enjoy materialism and the sight of products-they […]...
31. A Map Of Love Your face more than others’ faces Maps the half-remembered places I have come to I while I slept- Continents a dream had kept Secret from all waking folk Till to your face I awoke, And remembered then the shore, And the dark interior....
32. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
33. Kemang Afternoon Blues 1/ Had it not been for the traffic jam You’d have thought being elsewhere Most the niceties seemed so foreign Speaking a tongue so unfamiliar 2/ The bookstore you were in Saw a sea of printed words Of books beyond reach So beautiful they were doomed 3/ Even a minute you were denied A meeting […]...
34. 3 Ls Of love, Logic, And libido I cryingly Thank you, God, Ever, For making me A doubter With millions of Insteads And exceptions Humanunkind Flouts like Mockingbirds They only know From ancestry You let me Know of Experiences For those Complete About-face Infinite Colours Of desire...
35. Ad Martialem GO(D) knows, my Martial, if we two could be To enjoy our days set wholly free; To the true life together bend our mind, And take a furlough from the falser kind. No rich saloon, nor palace of the great, Nor suit at law should trouble our estate; On no vainglorious statues should we look, […]...
36. Selecting A Reader First, I would have her be beautiful, And walking carefully up on my poetry At the loneliest moment of an afternoon, Her hair still damp at the neck From washing it. She should be wearing A raincoat, an old one, dirty From not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, […]...
37. Judson Stoddard On a mountain top above the clouds That streamed like a sea below me I said that peak is the thought of Budda, And that one is the prayer of Jesus, And this one is the dream of Plato, And that one there the song of Dante, And this is Kant and this is Newton, […]...
38. Edinburgh Beautiful city of Edinburgh! Where the tourist can drown his sorrow By viewing your monuments and statues fine During the lovely summer-time. I’m sure it will his spirits cheer As Sir Walter Scott’s monument he draws near, That stands in East Prince’s Street Amongst flowery gardens, fine and neat. And Edinburgh Castle is magnificent to […]...
39. Beautiful Edinburgh Beautiful city of Edinburgh, most wonderful to be seen, With your ancient palace of Holyrood and Queen’s Park Green, And your big, magnificent, elegant New College, Where people from all nations can be taught knowledge. The New College of Edinburgh is certainly very grand Which I consider to be an honour to fair Scotland, Because […]...
40. For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further Not that it was beautiful, But that, in the end, there was A certain sense of order there; Something worth learning In that narrow diary of my mind, In the commonplaces of the asylum Where the cracked mirror Or my own selfish death Outstared me. And if I tried To give you something else, Something […]...