A Cabbage Patch

Related poetry:

1. Futility Dusting my books I spent a busy day: Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread, But modern volumes, classics in their way, Whose makers now are numbered with the dead; Men of a generation more than mine, With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine. I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success, Grudging them not the […]...
2. Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
3. Ernie Pyle I wish I had a simple style In writing verse, As in his prose had Ernie Pyle, So true and terse; Springing so forthright from the heart With guileless art. I wish I could put back a dram As Ernie could; I wish that I could cuss and damn As soldier should; And fain with […]...
4. Horace to Melpomene Lofty and enduring is the monument I’ve reared, Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing; And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared, Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing! I shall not altogether die; by far my greater part Shall mock man’s common fate in realms infernal; My works shall live as […]...
5. A Patch of Old Snow There’s a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten If I ever read it....
6. Book Lover I keep collecting books I know I’ll never, never read; My wife and daughter tell me so, And yet I never head. “Please make me,” says some wistful tome, “A wee bit of yourself.” And so I take my treasure home, And tuck it in a shelf. And now my very shelves complain; They jam […]...
7. CABBAGE KEY Once Hemingway Sat across this bay And touched the endless sea The gulf-stretched sun Guides everyone Who dreams the dreams like he Through the tropical heat You can hear the beat That sings God’s poetry Just close your eyes Beneath the bright skies On beautiful Cabbage Key And if by chance The ospreys dance Across […]...
8. Skunk Cabbage And now as the iron rinds over The ponds start dissolving, You come, dreaming of ferns and flowers And new leaves unfolding, Upon the brash Turnip-hearted skunk cabbage Slinging its bunches leaves up Through the chilling mud. You kneel beside it. The smell Is lurid and flows out in the most Unabashed way, attracting Into […]...
9. The Lost Master “And when I come to die,” he said, “Ye shall not lay me out in state, Nor leave your laurels at my head, Nor cause your men of speech orate; No monument your gift shall be, No column in the Hall of Fame; But just this line ye grave for me: ‘He played the game.'” […]...
10. Adelgitha The ordeal’s fatal trumpet sounded, And sad pale Adelgitha came, When forth a valiant champion bounded, And slew the slanderer of her fame. She wept, delivered from her danger; But when he knelt to claim her glove- “Seek not!” she cried, “oh, gallant stranger, For hapless Adelgitha’s love. For he is dead and in a […]...
11. Two Graves First Ghost To sepulcher my mouldy bones I bough a pile of noble stones, And half a year a sculptor spent To hew my marble monument, The stateliest to rear its head In all this city of the dead. And generations passing through Will gape, and ask: What did he do To earn this tomb […]...
12. Herman Altman Did I follow Truth wherever she led, And stand against the whole world for a cause, And uphold the weak against the strong? If I did I would be remembered among men As I was known in life among the people, And as I was hated and loved on earth, Therefore, build no monument to […]...
13. Four-Foot Shelf ‘Come, see,’ said he, ‘my four-foot shelf, A forty volume row; And every one I wrote myself, But that, of course, you know.’ I stared, I searched a memory dim, For though an author too, Somehow I’d never heard of him, None of his books I knew. Said I: ‘I’d like to borrow one, Fond […]...
14. Bahnhofstrasse The eyes that mock me sign the way Whereto I pass at eve of day. Grey way whose violet signals are The trysting and the twining star. Ah star of evil! star of pain! Highhearted youth comes not again Nor old heart’s wisdom yet to know The signs that mock me as I go....
15. Song's Eternity What is song’s eternity? Come and see. Can it noise and bustle be? Come and see. Praises sung or praises said Can it be? Wait awhile and these are dead – Sigh, sigh; Be they high or lowly bred They die. What is song’s eternity? Come and see. Melodies of earth and sky, Here they […]...
16. Longevity Said Brown: ‘I can’t afford to die For I have bought annuity, And every day of living I Have money coming in to me: While others toil to make their bread I make mine by not being dead.’ Said Jones: ‘I can’t afford to die, For I have books and books to write. I do […]...
17. Sonnet CVII: Not Mine Own Fears, Nor the Prophetic Soul Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d And peace […]...
18. Sonnet 107: Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace […]...
19. The Fever Monument I walked across the park to the fever monument. It was in the center of a glass square surrounded By red flowers and fountains. The monument Was in the shape of a sea horse and the plaque read We got hot and died....
20. My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
21. To The Stone-Cutters Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind and […]...
22. The One Before the Last I dreamt I was in love again With the One Before the Last, And smiled to greet the pleasant pain Of that innocent young past. But I jumped to feel how sharp had been The pain when it did live, How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten Were Hell in Nineteen-five. The boy’s woe was as […]...
23. Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau; Mock on, mock on; ’tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel’s paths they shine. The Atoms […]...
24. On The Death Of Sir Rowland Cotton Seconding That Of Sir Robert More Cottons yet? O let not envious Fate Attempt the Ruine of our growing State. O had it spar’d Sir Rowland, then might wee Have almost spar’d Sir Robert’s Library. His Life and th’ others bookes taught but the same; Death kils us twice in blotting twice one Name. Give Him, and take those Reliques […]...
25. Olmecs rule The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to Mesoamericans! Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue, Reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum Of everything […]...
26. Book Borrower I am a mild man, you’ll agree, But red my rage is, When folks who borrow books from me Turn down their pages. Or when a chap a book I lend, And find he’s loaned it Without permission to a friend – As if he owned it. But worst of all I hate those crooks […]...
27. Class-Mates Bob Briggs went in for Government, And helps to run the State; Some day they say he’ll represent His party in debate: But with punk politics his job, I do not envy Bob. Jim Jones went in for writing books, Best sellers were his aim; He’s ten years younger than he looks, And licks the […]...
28. COMING TO TERMS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA Why our son, why? Every morning the same dark chorus wakes me And I wonder how I am still alive. “Balance the forces of life and death” Is the Kleinian recipe for survival. “It is God’s will, life is meant to test us” My Christian heritage tells me. “Life is a vale of soul making” […]...
29. The Man Who Knew The Dreamer visioned Life as it might be, And from his dream forthright a picture grew, A painting all the people thronged to see, And joyed therein till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: “‘Tis bad! Why do ye gape, ye fools! He painteth not according to the schools.” The Dreamer probed Life’s mystery of […]...
30. The End of Love Now he is dead How should I know My true love’s arms From wind and snow? No man I meet In field or house Though in the street A hundred pass. The hurrying dust Has never a face, No longer human In man or woman. Now he is gone Why should I mourn My true […]...
31. All Lovely Things All lovely things will have an ending, All lovely things will fade and die, And youth, that’s now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by. Fine ladies soon are all forgotten, And goldenrod is dust when dead, The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten And cobwebs tent the brightest head. Come back, […]...
32. Familiarity Familiarity some claim Can breed contempt, So from it let it be your aim To be exempt. Let no one exercise his brawn To slap your back, Lest he forget your name is John, And call you Jack. To those who crash your private pew Be sour as krout; Don’t let them see the real […]...
33. A Pict Song Rome never looks where she treads. Always her heavy hooves fall On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; And Rome never heeds when we bawl. Her sentries pass on that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And plot to reconquer the Wall, With only our tongues for our swords. We are […]...
34. The Dauber In stilly grove beside the sea He mingles colours, measures space; A bronze and breezy man is he, Yet peace is in his face. Behold him stand and longly stare, Till deft of hand and deep of eye He captures on a canvas square The joy of earth and sky. Aloof from servitude and strife, […]...
35. TO LIDA THE only one whom, Lida, thou canst love, Thou claim’st, and rightly claim’st, for only thee; He too is wholly thine; since doomed to rove Far from thee, in life’s turmoils nought I see Save a thin veil, through which thy form I view, As though in clouds; with kindly smile and true, It cheers […]...
36. Robert William Service – Laughter I Laugh at Life: its antics make for me a giddy games, Where only foolish fellows take themselves with solemn aim. I laugh at pomp and vanity, at riches, rank and pride; At social inanity, at swager, swank and side. At poets, pastry-cooks and kings, at folk sublime and small, Who fuss about a thousand […]...
37. Bed Sitter He stared at me with sad, hurt eyes, That drab, untidy man; And though my clients I despise I do the best I can To comfort them with cheerful chat; (Quite comme il faut, of course) And furnish evidence so that Their wives may claim divorce. But as this chap sobbed out his woes I […]...
38. Modern Love III: This Was the Woman This was the woman; what now of the man? But pass him. If he comes beneath a heel, He shall be crushed until he cannot feel, Or, being callous, haply till he can. But he is nothing: nothing? Only mark The rich light striking out from her on him! Ha! what a sense it is […]...
39. At The Abbey Theatre (Imitated from Ronsard) Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case. When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things, So bitterly, you’d dream they longed to look All their lives […]...
40. The Harlequin Of Dreams Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found, Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep, Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap Upon my spirit’s stage. Then Sight and Sound, Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound, And all familiar Forms that firmly keep Man’s reason in the road, change faces, peep […]...