My Childhood God

Related poetry:

1. Corn Grinders O little mouse, why dost thou cry While merry stars laugh in the sky? Alas! alas! my lord is dead! Ah, who will ease my bitter pain? He went to seek a millet-grain In the rich farmer’s granary shed; They caught him in a baited snare, And slew my lover unaware: Alas! alas! my lord […]...
2. Last Word To Childhood Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my sinews crumble As God-the-headmaster’s fingers fumble At the other side of unopening doors Which I watch for a hundred thousand years. […]...
3. In Childhood things don’t die or remain damaged But return: stumps grow back hands, A head reconnects to a neck, A whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. Later this vision is not True: The grandmother remains dead Not hibernating in a wolf’s belly. Or the blue parakeet does not return From the little grave in the […]...
4. 373. Song-The Slave's Lament IT was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral, For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O. All on […]...
5. Second Childhood When I go on my morning walk, Because I’m mild, If I be in the mood to talk I choose a child. I’d rather prattle with a lass Of tender age Than converse in the high-brow class With college sage. I love the touch of silken hand That softly clings; In old of age I […]...
6. Childhood I The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood Put me out of love with God. I can’t believe in God’s goodness; I can believe In many avenging gods. Most of all I believe In gods of bitter dullness, Cruel local gods Who scared my childhood. II I’ve seen people put A chrysalis in a […]...
7. A single Clover Plank A single Clover Plank Was all that saved a Bee A Bee I personally knew From sinking in the sky ‘Twixt Firmament above And Firmament below The Billows of Circumference Were sweeping him away The idly swaying Plank Responsible to nought A sudden Freight of Wind assumed And Bumble Bee was not This harrowing event […]...
8. Childhood HOW I could see through and through you! So unconscious, tender, kind, More than ever was known to you Of the pure ways of your mind. We who long to rest from strife Labour sternly as a duty; But a magic in your life Charms, unknowing of its beauty. We are pools whose depths are […]...
9. Childhood It would be good to give much thought, before You try to find words for something so lost, For those long childhood afternoons you knew That vanished so completely and why? We’re still reminded : sometimes by a rain, But we can no longer say what it means; Life was never again so filled with […]...
10. Discord in Childhood Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips, And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously. Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound Of […]...
11. Hiawatha's Childhood Downward through the evening twilight, In the days that are forgotten, In the unremembered ages, From the full moon fell Nokomis, Fell the beautiful Nokomis, She a wife, but not a mother. She was sporting with her women, Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, When her rival the rejected, Full of jealousy and hatred, Cut […]...
12. On The Death Of Friends In Childhood We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell; If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight, Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands In games whose very names we have forgotten. Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows....
13. Innocence The height of wisdom seems to me That of a child; So let my ageing vision be Serene and mild. The depth of folly, I aver, Is to fish deep In that dark pool of science where Truth-demons sleep. Let me not be a bearded sage Seeing too clear; In issues of the atom age […]...
14. To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
15. Every Man Should have a Rifle So I sit and write and ponder, while the house is deaf and dumb, Seeing visions “over yonder” of the war I know must come. In the corner – not a vision – but a sign for coming days Stand a box of ammunition and a rifle in green baize. And in this, the living […]...
16. Psalm 139 part 1 The all-seeing God. Lord, thou hast searched and seen me through, Thine eye commands with piercing view My rising and my resting hours, My heart and flesh with all their powers. My thoughts, before they are my own, Are to my God distinctly known; He knows the words I mean to speak Ere from my […]...
17. Psalm 63 part 1 v.1-5 C. M. The morning of a Lord’s day. Early, my God, without delay, I haste to seek thy face; My thirsty spirit faints away Without thy cheering grace. So pilgrims on the scorching sand, Beneath a burning sky, Long for a cooling stream at hand, And they must drink or die. I’ve seen thy […]...
18. Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
19. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
20. A Curse For A Nation I heard an angel speak last night, And he said ‘Write! Write a Nation’s curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.’ I faltered, taking up the word: ‘Not so, my lord! If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother. ‘For I am bound by gratitude, By love […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. 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; […]...
23. On Building With Stone To be an ape in little of the mountain-making mother Like swarthy Cheops, but my own hands For only slaves, is a far sweeter toil than to cut Passions in verse for a sick people. I’d liefer bed one boulder in the house-wall than be the time’s Archilochus: we name not Homer: who now Can […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. Holy Sonnet V: I Am A Little World Made Cunningly I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angelic sprite; But black sin hath betrayed to endless night My worlds both parts, and (oh!) both parts must die. You which beyond that heaven which was most high Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write, Pour new seas in mine […]...
26. The Fury Of Sunsets Something Cold is in the air, An aura of ice And phlegm. All day I’ve built A lifetime and now The sun sinks to Undo it. The horizon bleeds And sucks its thumb. The little red thumb Goes out of sight. And I wonder about This lifetime with myself, This dream I’m living. I could […]...
27. When We Were Here Together when we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one Another. A bit of grass held between the teeth for a moment, bright hair on the Wind. What we were we did not know, nor even the grass or the flame of Hair turning to ash on the wind. But they […]...
28. The Admirations and Contempts of time The Admirations and Contempts of time Show justest through an Open Tomb The Dying as it were a Height Reorganizes Estimate And what We saw not We distinguish clear And mostly see not What We saw before ‘Tis Compound Vision Light enabling Light The Finite furnished With the Infinite Convex and Concave Witness Back toward […]...
29. The Scribe's Prayer When from my fumbling hand the tired pen falls, And in the twilight weary droops my head; While to my quiet heart a still voice calls, Calls me to join my kindred of the Dead: Grant that I may, O Lord, ere rest be mine, Write to Thy praise one radiant, ringing line. For all […]...
30. Rhyme-Smith Oh, I was born a lyric babe (That last word is a bore – It’s only rhyme is astrolabe,” Whose meaning I ignore.) From cradlehood I lisped in numbers, Made jingles even in my slumbers. Said Ma: “He’ll be a bard, I know it.” Said Pa: “let’s hoe he will outgrow it.” Alas! I never […]...
31. 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...
32. 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 […]...
33. Sympathy My Muse is simple, yet it’s nice To think you don’t need to think twice On words I write. I reckon I’ve a common touch And if you say I cuss too much I answer: ‘Quite!’ I envy not the poet’s lot; He has something I haven’t got, Alas, I know. But I have something […]...
34. Abou Ben Adhem Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold:- Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room […]...
35. 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...
36. 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 […]...
37. The Wonderer I wish that I could understand The moving marvel of my Hand; I watch my fingers turn and twist, The supple bending of my wrist, The dainty touch of finger-tip, The steel intensity of grip; A tool of exquisite design, With pride I think: “It’s mine! It’s mine!” Then there’s the wonder of my Eyes, […]...
38. In the desert In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter – bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”...
39. Grand-Père And so when he reached my bed The General made a stand: “My brave young fellow,” he said, “I would shake your hand.” So I lifted my arm, the right, With never a hand at all; Only a stump, a sight Fit to appal. “Well, well. Now that’s too bad! That’s sorrowful luck,” he said; […]...
40. You love the Lord you cannot see You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the Day. An Ample Letter How you miss And would delight to see But then His House is but a Step And Mine’s in Heaven You see....