My Coffin

Related poetry:

1. A Coffin is a small Domain A Coffin is a small Domain, Yet able to contain A Citizen of Paradise In it diminished Plane. A Grave is a restricted Breadth Yet ampler than the Sun And all the Seas He populates And Lands He looks upon To Him who on its small Repose Bestows a single Friend Circumference without Relief Or […]...
2. The Place of the Damned All folks who pretend to religion and grace, Allow there’s a HELL, but dispute of the place: But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined The place of the damned – I’ll tell you my mind. Wherever the damned do chiefly abound, Most certainly there is HELL to be found: Damned poets, damned critics, […]...
3. Indifference When I am dead I will not care Forever more, If sky be radiantly fair Or tempest roar. If my life-hoard in sin be spent, My wife re-wed, I’ll be so damned indifferent When I am dead. When I meet up with dusty doom What if I rest In common ditch or marble tomb, If […]...
4. One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; So many things seem filled with the intent To be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster Of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: Places, […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. On Reading A Recent Greek Poet After the wailing had already begun Along the walls, their ruin certain, The Trojans fidgeted with bits of wood In the three-ply doors, itsy-bitsy Pieces of wood, fussing with them. And began to get their nerve back and feel hopeful....
7. 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 […]...
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. Fulfillment For this my mother wrapped me warm, And called me home against the storm, And coaxed my infant nights to quiet, And gave me roughage in my diet, And tucked me in my bed at eight, And clipped my hair, and marked my weight, And watched me as I sat and stood: That I might […]...
10. Adonis 1. Each of us like you Has died once, Has passed through drift of wood-leaves, Cracked and bent And tortured and unbent In the winter-frost, The burnt into gold points, Lighted afresh, Crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, Gold turned and re-welded In the sun; Each of us like you Has died once, Each of us […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. When I'm Killed When I’m killed, don’t think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there’s one thing that I know well, I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell! So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, […]...
13. Alias Bill We bore him to his boneyard lot One afternoon at three; The clergyman was on the spot To earn his modest fee. We sprinkled on his coffin ld The customary loam, And so old Bill was snugly slid To his last home. A lonesome celebate we thought, For close as clam was he; We never […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. The Funeral of the Late Prince Henry of Battenberg Alas! Prince Henry of Battenberg is dead! And, I hope, has gone to heaven, its streets to tread, And to sing with God’s saints above, Where all is joy and peace and love. ‘Twas in the year of 1896, and on the 5th of February, Prince Henry was buried at Whippingham – a solemn sight […]...
16. Night Ray Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: To her I send the coffin of lightest wood. Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; It wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: It talks as I do when I grant admittance to […]...
17. Brother Jim My brother Jim’s a millionaire, While I have scarce a penny; His face is creased with lines of care, While my mug hasn’t any. With inwardness his eyes are dim, While mine laugh out in glee, And though I ought to envy him, I think he envies me. He has a chateau, I a shack, […]...
18. Couplets on Wit I But our Great Turks in wit must reign alone And ill can bear a Brother on the Throne. II Wit is like faith by such warm Fools profest Who to be saved by one, must damn the rest. III Some who grow dull religious strait commence And gain in morals what they lose in […]...
19. Domestic Scene The meal was o’er, the lamp was lit, The family sat in its glow; The Mother never ceased to knit, The Daughter never slacked to sew; The Father read his evening news, The Son was playing solitaire: If peace a happy home could choose I’m sure you’d swear that it was there. BUT The Mother: […]...
20. In Tara's Halls A man I praise that once in Tara’s Hals Said to the woman on his knees, ‘Lie still. My hundredth year is at an end. I think That something is about to happen, I think That the adventure of old age begins. To many women I have said, ”Lie still,” And given everything a woman […]...
21. The Ambition Bird So it has come to this Insomnia at 3:15 A. M., The clock tolling its engine Like a frog following A sundial yet having an electric Seizure at the quarter hour. The business of words keeps me awake. I am drinking cocoa, That warm brown mama. I would like a simple life Yet all night […]...
22. New age (i) How new the world is Trying to find Nerve in an old rind (ii) The bread is crumbled For birds to swallow Rolled into droppings Flowers from the hair Of noseless statues Tyrants of parks Where men have cowered Too long and mistaken Unmanned by he dark (iii) When we awaken (how have we […]...
23. The Wheel Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter’s best of all; And after that there s nothing good Because the spring-time has not come – Nor know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb....
24. The Death King I hired a carpenter To build my coffin And last night I lay in it, Braced by a pillow, Sniffing the wood, Letting the old king Breathe on me, Thinking of my poor murdered body, Murdered by time, Waiting to turn stiff as a field marshal, Letting the silence dishonor me, Remembering that I’ll never […]...
25. Does It Matter? Does it matter?-losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?-losing you sight? There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace […]...
26. Reconciliation WORD over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world: … For my enemy is dead-a man divine as myself is dead; I look […]...
27. A Dream Of Death I dreamed that one had died in a strange place Near no accustomed hand, And they had nailed the boards above her face, The peasants of that land, Wondering to lay her in that solitude, And raised above her mound A cross they had made out of two bits of wood, And planted cypress round; […]...
28. The Sea Took Pity The sea took pity: it interposed with doom: ‘I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand: Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb, And she shall child them on the New-world strand.’ . . . . . . . ....
29. 459. Sonnet on the Death of Robert Riddell NO more, ye warblers of the wood! no more; Nor pour your descant grating on my soul; Thou young-eyed Spring! gay in thy verdant stole, More welcome were to me grim Winter’s wildest roar. How can ye charm, ye flowers, with all your dyes? Ye blow upon the sod that wraps my friend! How can […]...
30. The Poets Of The Tomb The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, ‘Tis time the people passed a law to knock ’em on the head, For ‘twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave Those bards of ‘tears’ and ‘vanished hopes’, those poets of the grave. They say that life’s […]...
31. We'll pass without the parting We’ll pass without the parting So to spare Certificate of Absence Deeming where I left Her I could find Her If I tried This way, I keep from missing Those that died....
32. Hate I had a bitter enemy, His heart to hate he gave, And when I died he swore that he Would dance upon my grave; That he would leap and laugh because A livid corpse was I, And that’s the reason why I was In no great haste to die. And then – such is the […]...
33. To A Blossoming Pear Tree Beautiful natural blossoms, Pure delicate body, You stand without trembling. Little mist of fallen starlight, Perfect, beyond my reach, How I envy you. For if you could only listen, I would tell you something, Something human. An old man Appeared to me once In the unendurable snow. He had a singe of white Beard on […]...
34. The Conjugation of the Paramecium This has nothing To do with Propagating The species Is continued As so many are (among the smaller creatures) By fission (and this species Is very small Next in order to The amoeba, the beginning one) The paramecium Achieves, then, Immortality By dividing But when The paramecium Desires renewal Strength another joy This is what […]...
35. As At Thy Portals Also Death AS at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, I sit by the form in the coffin, I kiss […]...
36. Dream Song 82: Op. posth. no. 5 Maskt as honours, insult like behaving Missiles homes. I bow, & grunt ‘Thank you. I’m glad you could come So late.’ All loves are gratified. I’m having To screw a little thing I have to screw. Good nature is over. Herewith ill-wishes. From a cozy grave Rainbow I scornful laughings. Do not do, Father, me […]...
37. Revulsion THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss. For winning love we win the risk of losing, And losing love is as one’s life were riven; It cuts […]...
38. Enigma Some men are born to gather women’s tears, To give a harbour to their timorous fears, To take them as the dry earth takes the rain, As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain; Yet their own tears remain unshed, Their own tumultuous fears unsaid, And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the […]...
39. Autumn overlooked my Knitting Autumn overlooked my Knitting Dyes said He have I Could disparage a Flamingo Show Me them said I Cochineal I chose for deeming It resemble Thee And the little Border Dusker For resembling Me...
40. A Pit but Heaven over it A Pit but Heaven over it And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad, And yet a Pit With Heaven over it. To stir would be to slip To look would be to drop To dream to sap the Prop That holds my chances up. Ah! Pit! With Heaven over it! The depth is all my thought […]...