Les Grands Mutiles

Related poetry:

1. Dedication To Providence I loved to toy with tuneful rhyme, My fancies into verse to weave; For as I walked my words would chime So bell-like I could scarce believe; My rhymes rippled like a brook, My stanzas bloomed like blossoms gay: And that is why I dream this book A verseman’s holiday. The palm-blades brindle in the […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. To My Fairy Fancies NAY, no longer I may hold you, In my spirit’s soft caresses, Nor like lotus-leaves enfold you In the tangles of my tresses. Fairy fancies, fly away To the white cloud-wildernesses, Fly away! Nay, no longer ye may linger With your laughter-lighted faces, Now I am a thought-worn singer In life’s high and lonely places. […]...
5. Prelude They say that rhyme and rhythm are Outmoded now. I do not know, for I am far From high of brow. But if the twain you take away, Since basely bred, Proud Poetry, I dare to say, Would scarce be read. With humble heart I thus define My rôle in rhyme: Oh may I never […]...
6. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
7. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
8. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
9. Merlin II The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king’s affairs, Balance-loving nature Made all things in pairs. To every foot its antipode, Each color with its counter glowed, To every tone beat answering tones, Higher or graver; Flavor gladly blends with flavor; Leaf answers leaf upon the bough, And match the paired cotyledons. Hands to hands, […]...
10. Room 4: The Painter Chap He gives me such a bold and curious look, That young American across the way, As if he’d like to put me in a book (Fancies himself a poet, so they say.) Ah well! He’ll make no “document” of me. I lock my door. Ha! ha! Now none shall see. . . . Pictures, just […]...
11. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
12. Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day If thou survive my well-contented day When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover, Compare them with the bett’ring of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...
13. E TENEBRIS Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee: The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in […]...
14. Sonnet XXXII If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp’d by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...
15. Gargoyle I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth. A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm. The fist hit […]...
16. Facility So easy ’tis to make a rhyme, That did the world but know it, Your coachman might Parnassus climb, Your butler be a poet. Then, oh, how charming it would be If, when in haste hysteric You called the page, you learned that he Was grappling with a lyric. Or else what rapture it would […]...
17. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
18. Lowly Laureate O Sacred Muse, my lyre excuse! – My verse is vagrant singing; Rhyme I invoke for simple folk Of penny-wise upbringing: For Grannies grey to paste away Within an album cover; For maids in class to primly pass, And lads to linger over. I take the clay of every day And mould it in my […]...
19. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
20. Rhyme Builder I envy not those gay galoots Who count on dying in their boots; For that, to tell the sober truth Sould be the privilege of youth; But aged bones are better sped To heaven from a downy bed. So prop me up with pillows two, And serve me with the barley brew; And put a […]...
21. MACTAVISH I do not write for love of pelf, Nor lust for phantom fame; I do not rhyme to please myself, Nor yet to win acclaim: No, strange to say it is my plan, What gifts I have, to lavish Upon a simple working man MACTAVISH. For that’s the rather smeary name, Of dreary toil a […]...
22. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
23. Mummia As those of old drank mummia To fire their limbs of lead, Making dead kings from Africa Stand pandar to their bed; Drunk on the dead, and medicined With spiced imperial dust, In a short night they reeled to find Ten centuries of lust. So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme, Stuffed love’s infinity, […]...
24. The Old Armchair In all the pubs from Troon to Ayr Grandfather’s father would repair With Bobby Burns, a drouthy pair, The glass to clink; And oftenwhiles, when not too “fou,” They’d roar a bawdy stave or two, From midnight muk to morning dew, And drink and drink. And Grandfather, with eye aglow And proper pride, would often […]...
25. Belated Bard The songs I made from joy of earth In wanton wandering, Are rapturous with Maytime mirth And ectasy of Spring. But all the songs I sing today Take tediously the ear: Novemberishly dark are they With mortuary fear. For half a century has gone Since first I rang a rhyme; And that is long to […]...
26. The wounded angel (from a painting by hugo simberg) Those who bear the wounded angel Are they honoured or destroyed Far beyond their comprehension Are the warfares of the void Angels have a sheen to lift them Well above the bloody battles Human beings give their hurts to Divines don’t need such tittle-tattles Yet this angel has been […]...
27. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
30. Song from Arcadia My true love hath my heart, and I have his, By Just Exchange, one for the other given. I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss, There never was a better bargain driven. His heart in me keeps me and him in one, My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides; He loves […]...
31. My True Love Hath My Heart, And I Have His My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange, one for the other giv’n. I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a better bargain driv’n. His heart in me keeps me and him in one, My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides; He loves my […]...
32. The Leaning Tower Having an aged hate of height I forced myself to climb the Tower, Yet paused at every second flight Because my heart is scant of power; Then when I gained the sloping summit Earthward I stared, straight as a plummet. When like a phantom by my side I saw a man cadaverous; At first I […]...
33. The Robe of Christ (For Cecil Chesterton) At the foot of the Cross on Calvary Three soldiers sat and diced, And one of them was the Devil And he won the Robe of Christ. When the Devil comes in his proper form To the chamber where I dwell, I know him and make the Sign of the Cross Which […]...
34. The Chances I mind as ‘ow the night afore that show Us five got talking, we was in the know, “Over the top to-morrer; boys, we’re for it, First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that’s tore it.” “Ah well,” says Jimmy, an’ ‘e’s seen some scrappin’ “There ain’t more nor five things as can ‘appen; Ye […]...
35. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
36. 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 […]...
37. Eurydice – To Victor Hugo Orpheus, the night is full of tears and cries, And hardly for the storm and ruin shed Can even thine eyes be certain of her head Who never passed out of thy spirit’s eyes, But stood and shone before them in such wise As when with love her lips and hands were fed, And with […]...
38. 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, […]...
39. Forward I’ve tinkered at my bits of rhymes In weary, woeful, waiting times; In doleful hours of battle-din, Ere yet they brought the wounded in; Through vigils of the fateful night, In lousy barns by candle-light; In dug-outs, sagging and aflood, On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood; By ragged grove, by ruined road, By hearths […]...
40. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...