Requiem

Related poetry:

1. Visits To St. Elizabeths This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man That lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the time Of the tragic man That lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a wristwatch Telling the time Of the talkative man That lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a sailor Wearing […]...
2. Requiem for the Croppies The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley… No kitchens on the run, no striking camp… We moved quick and sudden in our own country. The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp. A people hardly marching… on the hike… We found new tactics happening each day: We’d cut through reins and rider with the […]...
3. Requiem Not under foreign skies Nor under foreign wings protected – I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us. [1961] INSTEAD OF A PREFACE During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I Spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone ‘picked me out’. On […]...
4. Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores, Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good, To sound the constitution of just wards, Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood. Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust, Their usage, pride, admitted within doors; At home, under caved chantries, set in trust, With well-dressed alabaster and proved […]...
5. Longings I have longed to hit the quill And hear the faithful tick-tock Of a perishing machine I have longed to bear witness Of encounters of words and meanings Long sunk in man’s memory I have long prepared this soul To find the truths, lies and doubts Buried deep in man’s mystery...
6. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
7. Requiem There was a young belle of Natchez Whose garments were always in patchez. When comment arose On the state of her clothes, She drawled, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez!...
8. 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 […]...
9. CALM AT SEA SILENCE deep rules o’er the waters, Calmly slumb’ring lies the main, While the sailor views with trouble Nought but one vast level plain. Not a zephyr is in motion! Silence fearful as the grave! In the mighty waste of ocean Sunk to rest is ev’ry wave. 1795....
10. Sonnet XXXV: Some, Misbelieving To Miracle Some, misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say, that thou art flattered by me, Who only write my skill in verse to prove. See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born Muse made t’express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One […]...
11. Taxi Suite (excerpt: 1. After Anacreon) When I drive cab I am moved by strange whistles and wear a hat When I drive cab I am the hunter. My prey leaps out from where it Hid, beguiling me with gestures When I drive cab All may command me, yet I am in command of all who do When I drive cab […]...
12. Escape at Bedtime The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out Through the blinds and the windows and bars; And high overhead and all moving about, There were thousands of millions of stars. There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree, Nor of people in church or the Park, As the crowds of the stars […]...
13. From the Bush The Channel fog has lifted – And see where we have come! Round all the world we’ve drifted, A hundred years from “home”. The fields our parents longed for – Ah! we shall ne’er know how – The wealth that they were wronged for We’ll see as strangers now! The Dover cliffs have passed on […]...
14. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
15. THANKS HER griefs were the hours When my struggle was sore, Her joys were the powers That the climber upbore. Her home is the boundless Free ocean that seems To rock, calm and soundless, My galleon of dreams. Half hers are the glancing Creations that throng With pageant and dancing The ways of my song. My […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. I Have Longed To Move Away I have longed to move away From the hissing of the spent lie And the old terrors’ continual cry Growing more terrible as the day Goes over the hill into the deep sea; I have longed to move away From the repetition of salutes, For there are ghosts in the air And ghostly echoes on […]...
18. Sonnet 86: Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor […]...
19. Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come Who will believe my verse in time to come If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
20. Sonnet LXXXVI Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither […]...
21. Sonnet XVII Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
22. Longing I am not sorry for my soul That it must go unsatisfied, For it can live a thousand times, Eternity is deep and wide. I am not sorry for my soul, But oh, my body that must go Back to a little drift of dust Without the joy it longed to know....
23. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
24. Rose Leaves When they shall close my careless eyes And look their last upon my face, I fear that some will say: “her lies A man of deep disgrace; His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, He dreamed so much, he did so little. When they shall seal y coffin lid And this worn mask I […]...
25. The Land of Story-Books At evening when the lamp is lit, Around the fire my parents sit; They sit at home and talk and sing, And do not play at anything. Now, with my little gun, I crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back. There, in the […]...
26. The Song of the Little Hunter Ere Mor the Peacock flutters, ere the Monkey People cry, Ere Chil the Kite swoops down a furlong sheer, Through the Jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear! Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade, And the whisper spreads and widens […]...
27. In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen Five-and-twenty years have gone Since old William pollexfen Laid his strong bones down in death By his wife Elizabeth In the grey stone tomb he made. And after twenty years they laid In that tomb by him and her His son George, the astrologer; And Masons drove from miles away To scatter the Acacia spray […]...
28. Song We know where deepest lies the snow, And where the frost-winds keenest blow, O’er every mountain’s brow, We long have known and learnt to bear The wandering outlaw’s toil and care, But where we late were hunted, there Our foes are hunted now. We have their princely homes, and they To our wild haunts are […]...
29. 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 […]...
30. The Yarn of the Loch Achray The Loch Achray was a clipper tall With seven-and-twenty hands in all. Twenty to hand and reef and haul, A skipper to sail and mates to bawl ‘Tally on to the tackle-fall, Heave now ‘n’ start her, heave ‘n’ pawl!’ Hear the yarn of a sailor, An old yarn learned at sea. Her crew were […]...
31. The Terrible Abstractions The naked hunter’s fist, bunched round his spear, Was tight and wet inside with sweat of fear; He heard behind him what the hunted hear. The silence in the undergrowth crept near; Its mischief tickled in his nervous ear And he became the prey, the quivering deer. The naked hunter feared the threat he knew: […]...
32. These Fought in Any Case These fought in any case, And some believing Pro domo, in any case….. Died some, pro patria, Walked eye-deep in hell Believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving Came home, home to a lie, Home to many deceits, Home to old lies and new infamy; Usury age-old and age-thick And liars in public places. Daring […]...
33. Hostel Beach, Oneroa The cliff sprang from the sea at end of Hostel Beach, If the tide was out you’d reach a tiny bay beyond The cape without wet feet, an easy stroll but too effete For blood as hot as ours. We watched it at full flood; A risky place to contemplate the games we planned, We […]...
34. Except to Heaven, she is nought Except to Heaven, she is nought. Except for Angels lone. Except to some wide-wandering Bee A flower superfluous blown. Except for winds provincial. Except by Butterflies Unnoticed as a single dew That on the Acre lies. The smallest Housewife in the grass, Yet take her from the Lawn And somebody has lost the face That […]...
35. Will there really be a "Morning"? Will there really be a “Morning”? Is there such a thing as “Day”? Could I see it from the mountains If I were as tall as they? Has it feet like Water lilies? Has it feathers like a Bird? Is it brought from famous countries Of which I have never heard? Oh some Scholar! Oh […]...
36. Refuge TWILIGHT, a timid fawn, went glimmering by, And Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast, Ceaseless pursuit and flight were in the sky, But the long chase had ceased for us at last. We watched together while the driven fawn Hid in the golden thicket of the day. We, from whose hearts pursuit and flight were […]...
37. Young Munro the Sailor ‘Twas on a sunny morning in the month of May, I met a pretty damsel on the banks o’ the Tay; I said, My charming fair one, come tell to me I pray, Why do you walk alone on the banks o’ the Tay. She said, Kind sir, pity me, for I am in great […]...
38. The Convict's Return Ye mountains and glens of fair Scotland I’m with ye once again, During my absence from ye my heart was like to break in twain; Oh! How I longed to see you and the old folks at home, And with my lovely Jeannie once more in the green woods to roam. Now since I’ve returned […]...
39. TO SIR CLIPSBY CREW Since to the country first I came, I have lost my former flame; And, methinks, I not inherit, As I did, my ravish’d spirit. If I write a verse or two, ‘Tis with very much ado; In regard I want that wine Which should conjure up a line. Yet, though now of Muse bereft, I […]...
40. The Wind Blew Shrill And Smart THE wind blew shrill and smart, And the wind awoke my heart Again to go a-sailing o’er the sea, To hear the cordage moan And the straining timbers groan, And to see the flying pennon lie a-lee. O sailor of the fleet, It is time to stir the feet! It’s time to man the dingy […]...