Boxer's Wife

Related poetry:

1. A Poetry Reading At West Point I read to the entire plebe class, In two batches. Twice the hall filled With bodies dressed alike, each toting A copy of my book. What would my Shrink say, if I had one, about Such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. “Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony, And […]...
2. The Wife “Tell Annie I’ll be home in time To help her with her Christmas-tree.” That’s what he wrote, and hark! the chime Of Christmas bells, and where is he? And how the house is dark and sad, And Annie’s sobbing on my knee! The page beside the candle-flame With cruel type was overfilled; I read and […]...
3. Nature As a fond mother, when the day is o’er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which though […]...
4. To My Wife – With A Copy Of My Poems I can write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It […]...
5. The Hill Wife I. LONELINESS Her Word One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come back With whatever it is they sing; The truth being we are as much Too glad for the […]...
6. The Woman and the Wife I THE EXPLANATION “You thought we knew,” she said, “but we were wrong. This we can say, the rest we do not say; Nor do I let you throw yourself away Because you love me. Let us both be strong, And we shall find in sorrow, before long, Only the price Love ruled that we […]...
7. Letter To My Wife 11-11-1933 Bursa Prison My one and only! Your last letter says: “My head is throbbing, my heart is stunned!” You say: “If they hang you, if I lose you, I’ll die!” You’ll live, my dear My memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart: In […]...
8. Rearrange a "Wife's" affection! Rearrange a “Wife’s” affection! When they dislocate my Brain! Amputate my freckled Bosom! Make me bearded like a man! Blush, my spirit, in thy Fastness Blush, my unacknowledged clay Seven years of troth have taught thee More than Wifehood every may! Love that never leaped its socket Trust entrenched in narrow pain Constancy thro’ fire […]...
9. The Faithless Wife So I took her to the river Believing she was a maiden, But she already had a husband. It was on St. James night And almost as if I was obliged to. The lanterns went out And the crickets lighted up. In the farthest street corners I touched her sleeping breasts And they opened to […]...
10. The Quip The merry world did on a day With his train-bands and mates agree To meet together where I lay, And all in sport to jeer at me. First, Beauty crept into a rose, Which when I plucked not, “Sir,” said she, “Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?” But thou shalt answer, Lord, for […]...
11. Roadways ONE road leads to London, One road leads to Wales, My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails. One road leads to the river, And it goes singing slow; My road leads to shipping, Where the bronzed sailors go. Leads me, lures me, calls me To salt green tossing sea; A road without […]...
12. Paul's Wife To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, “How is the wife, Paul?” and he’d disappear. Some said it was because be bad no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject; Others because he’d come within a day Or so of having one, and […]...
13. Message Jill. Fred phoned. He can’t make tonight. He said he’d call again, as soon as poss. I said (on your behalf) OK, no sweat. He said to tell you he was fine, Only the crap, he said, you know, it sticks, The crap you have to fight. You’re sometimes nothing but a walking shithouse. I […]...
14. For My Lover, Returning To His Wife She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you And cast up from your childhood, Cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February And as real as a cast-iron pot. Let’s face it, I […]...
15. His Wife, The Painter There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks, And outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like Insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev, Says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too. “I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are At work.” He […]...
16. On My Wife's Birth-Day ‘Tis Nancy’s birth-day raise your strains, Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains, And sing with more than usual glee To Nancy, who was born for me. Tell the blythe Graces as they bound, Luxuriant in the buxom round; They’re not more elegantly free, Than Nancy, who was born for me. Tell royal Venus, tho’ she […]...
17. Breton Wife A Wintertide we had been wed When Jan went off to sea; And now the laurel rose is red And I wait on the quay. His berthing boat I watch with dread, For where, oh where is he? “Weep not, brave lass,” the Skipper said; “Return to you he will; In hospital he lies abed […]...
18. Any Wife To Any Husband I My love, this is the bitterest, that thou Who art all truth and who dost love me now As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say – Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still A whole long life through, had but love its will, Would death that leads me from […]...
19. 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. […]...
20. The Pig In England once there lived a big And wonderfully clever pig. To everybody it was plain That Piggy had a massive brain. He worked out sums inside his head, There was no book he hadn’t read. He knew what made an airplane fly, He knew how engines worked and why. He knew all this, but […]...
21. The Lone Trail Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it, Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit. Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by; The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die. The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; […]...
22. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
23. Enemy Conscript What are we fighting for, We fellows who go to war? Fighting for Freedom’s sake! (You give me the belly-ache.) Freedom to starve or slave! Freedom! aye, in the grave. Fighting for “hearth and home,” Who haven’t an inch of loam? Hearth? Why even a byre Can only be ours for hire. Dying for future […]...
24. DEATH-LAMENT OF THE NOBLE WIFE OF ASAN AGA [From the Morlack.) WHAT is yonder white thing in the forest? Is it snow, or can it swans perchance be? Were it snow, ere this it had been melted, Were it swans, they all away had hastend. Snow, in truth, it is not, swans it is not, ‘Tis the shining tents of Asan Aga. He […]...
25. The Wife of Bath's Tale THE PROLOGUE. 1 Experience, though none authority* *authoritative texts Were in this world, is right enough for me To speak of woe that is in marriage: For, lordings, since I twelve year was of age, (Thanked be God that *is etern on live),* *lives eternally* Husbands at the church door have I had five,2 For […]...
26. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
27. The Avaricious Wife And Tricking Gallant WHO knows the world will never feel surprise, When men are duped by artful women’s eves; Though death his weapon freely will unfold; Love’s pranks, we find, are ever ruled by gold. To vain coquettes I doubtless here allude; But spite of arts with which they’re oft endued; I hope to show (our honour to […]...
28. Poets to Come POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse-for you must justify me-you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance […]...
29. Land Mine A grey gull hovered overhead, Then wisely flew away. ‘In half a jiffy you’ll be dead,’ I thought I heard it say; As there upon the railway line, Checking an urge to cough, I laboured to de-fuse the mine That had not yet gone off. I tapped around the time-clock rim, Then something worried me. […]...
30. When Ida Puts Her Armor On The Cowboy had a sterling heart, The Maiden was from Boston, The Rancher saw his wealth depart- The Steers were what he lost on. The Villain was a banker’s limb, His spats and cane were nifty; The Maiden needs must marry him- Her father was not thrifty. The Sheepmen were as foul as pitch, The […]...
31. High Conspiratorial Person OUT of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars, out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to the white sun before all men, Out of a rag saturated with smears and smuts gathered from the footbaths of kings and the loin cloths of whores, from […]...
32. The Ivy-Wife I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech And be as high as he: I stretched an arm within his reach, And signalled unity. But with his drip he forced a breach, And tried to poison me. I gave the grasp of partnership To one of other race A plane: he barked him strip by strip […]...
33. Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God’s shining agent, Over a black mountain, in his giant track, While a restless voice kept harrying his woman: “It’s not too late, you can still look back At the red towers of your native Sodom, The square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, At the empty windows set in […]...
34. Lot's Wife How simple the pleasures of those childhood days, Simple but filled with exquisite satisfactions. The iridescent labyrinth of the spider, Its tethered tensor nest of polygons Puffed by the breeze to a little bellying sail Merely observing this gave infinite pleasure. The sound of rain. The gentle graphite veil Of rain that makes of the […]...
35. Man And Wife Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother’s bed; The rising sun in war paint dyes us red; In broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine, Abandoned, almost Dionysian. At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street, Blossoms on our magnolia ignite The morning with their murderous five days’ white. All night I’ve held your hand, […]...
36. The Wife's Will SIT still­a word­a breath may break (As light airs stir a sleeping lake,) The glassy calm that soothes my woes, The sweet, the deep, the full repose. O leave me not! for ever be Thus, more than life itself to me! Yes, close beside thee, let me kneel­ Give me thy hand that I may […]...
37. Poet And Peer They asked the Bard of Ayr to dine; The banquet hall was fit and fine, With gracing it a Lord; The poet came; his face was grim To find the place reserved for him Was at the butler’s board. So when the gentry called him in, He entered with a knavish grin And sipped a […]...
38. To My Wife Choice of you shuts up that peacock-fan The future was, in which temptingly spread All that elaborative nature can. Matchless potential! but unlimited Only so long as I elected nothing; Simply to choose stopped all ways up but one, And sent the tease-birds from the bushes flapping. No future now. I and you now, alone. […]...
39. The Sea-Wife There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate, And a wealthy wife is she; She breeds a breed o’ rovin’ men And casts them over sea. And some are drowned in deep water, And some in sight o’ shore, And word goes back to the weary wife And ever she sends more. For since that […]...
40. TO MY WIFE I You buy my freedom with your love. With every book you catalogue or stamp My imagination hacks a strand from the hawser That for three years has held it In the grubbing estuary of mud and time. Your early waking with tired eyes And late return at evening, all Contribute to the store of […]...