No More Music

Related poetry:

1. Music, In A Foreign Language In a cafe, once more I heard Your voice – those sparse and frugal notes. Do they not say that you spoke your native Greek With an English accent? Briefest of visions: eyes meet across the cafe; A man of about my age – eyelids heavy, Perhaps from recent pleasures. I begin the most innocent […]...
2. The Old Guitar Neglected now is the old guitar And moldering into decay; Fretted with many a rift and scar That the dull dust hides away, While the spider spins a silver star In its silent lips to-day. The keys hold only nerveless strings The sinews of brave old airs Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings […]...
3. The Song of the Borderguard The man with his lion under the shed of wars Sheds his belief as if he shed tears. The sound of words waits – A barbarian host at the borderline of sense. The enamord guards desert their posts Harkening to the lion-smell of a poem That rings in their ears. -Dreams, a certain guard said […]...
4. No Music I’ll tell you a sore truth, little understood It’s harder to leave, than to be left: To stay, to leave, both sting wrong. You will always have me to blame, Can dream we might have sailed on; From absence’s rib, a warm fiction. To tear up old love by the roots, To trample on past […]...
5. Courage In the shadow of the grave I will be brave; I’ll smile, I know I will E’er I be still; Because I will not smile So long a while. But I’ll be sad, I fear, And shed a tear, For those I love and leave My loss to grieve: ‘Tis just their grief I’ll grieve, […]...
6. The Portrait The portrait there above my bed They tell me is a work of art; My Wife, since twenty years she’s dead: Her going nearly broke my heart. Alas! No little ones we had To light our hearth with joy and glee; Yet as I linger lone and sad I know she’s waiting me. The picture? […]...
7. Sonnet 128: How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st, Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. My Husbands My first I wed when just sixteen And he was sixty-five. He treated me like any queen The years he was alive. Oh I betrayed him on the sly, Like any other bitch, And how I longed for him to die And leave me young and rich! My second is a gigolo I took when […]...
10. Sonnet 8: Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds […]...
11. Her News You paused for a moment and I heard you smoking On the other end of the line. I pictured your expression, One eye screwed shut against the smoke As you waited for my reaction. I was waiting for it myself, a list of my own news Gone suddenly cold in my hand. Supposing my wife […]...
12. War-Music Break off! Dance no more! Danger is at the door. Music is in arms. To signal war’s alarms. Hark, a sudden trumpet calling Over the hill! Why are you calling, trumpet, calling? What is your will? Men, men, men! Men who are ready to fight For their country’s life, and the right Of a liberty-loving […]...
13. TO MUSIC, TO BECALM HIS FEVER Charm me asleep, and melt me so With thy delicious numbers; That being ravish’d, hence I go Away in easy slumbers. Ease my sick head, And make my bed, Thou Power that canst sever From me this ill; And quickly still, Though thou not kill My fever. Thou sweetly canst convert the same From a […]...
14. The Gardener XL: An Unbelieving Smile An unbelieving smile flits on your Eyes when I come to you to take my Leave. I have done it so often that you Think I will soon return. To tell you the truth I have the Same doubt in my mind. For the spring days come again Time after time; the full moon takes […]...
15. The Passing of Gundagai “I’ll introduce a friend!” he said, “And if you’ve got a vacant pen You’d better take him in the shed And start him shearing straight ahead; He’s one of these here quiet men. “He never strikes that ain’t his game; No matter what the others try He goes on shearing just the same. I never […]...
16. Music In The Flat When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat; I had a taste for singing and playing and all that. And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped I would not stop All practice, like so many wives who let their Music drop. So I resolved to set apart an hour […]...
17. Music on Christmas Morning Music I love -­ but never strain Could kindle raptures so divine, So grief assuage, so conquer pain, And rouse this pensive heart of mine -­ As that we hear on Christmas morn, Upon the wintry breezes borne. Though Darkness still her empire keep, And hours must pass, ere morning break; From troubled dreams, or […]...
18. Serenade (For Music) The western wind is blowing fair Across the dark AEgean sea, And at the secret marble stair My Tyrian galley waits for thee. Come down! the purple sail is spread, The watchman sleeps within the town, O leave thy lily-flowered bed, O Lady mine come down, come down! She will not come, I know her […]...
19. Music In The Bush O’er the dark pines she sees the silver moon, And in the west, all tremulous, a star; And soothing sweet she hears the mellow tune Of cow-bells jangled in the fields afar. Quite listless, for her daily stent is done, She stands, sad exile, at her rose-wreathed door, And sends her love eternal with the […]...
20. An Old Man At the back of the noisy café Bent over a table sits an old man; A newspaper in front of him, without company. And in the scorn of his miserable old age He ponders how little he enjoyed the years When he had strength, and the power of the word, and good looks. He knows […]...
21. La Paloma in London About Soho we went before the light; We went, unresting six, craving new fun, New scenes, new raptures, for the fevered night Of rollicking laughter, drink and song, was done. The vault was void, but for the dawn’s great star That shed upon our path its silver flame, When La Paloma on a low guitar […]...
22. Nirvana not much chance, Completely cut loose from Purpose, He was a young man Riding a bus Through North Carolina On the wat to somewhere And it began to snow And the bus stopped At a little cafe In the hills And the passengers Entered. He sat at the counter With the others, He ordered and […]...
23. Dream Song 54: 'NO VISITORS' I thumb the roller to ‘NO VISITORS’ I thumb the roller to And leans against the door. Comfortable in my horseblanket I prop on the costly bed & dream of my wife, My first wife, And my second wife & my son. Insulting, they put guardrails up, As if it were a crib! I growl at the head nurse; we […]...
24. The Red Lacquer Music-Stand A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold, The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling, Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling Out […]...
25. Alone The abode of the nightingale is bare, Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air, The fox howls from his frozen lair: Alas, my loved one is gone, I am alone: It is winter. Once the pink cast a winy smell, The wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell, Light in effulgence of beauty fell: I […]...
26. A Happy Man When these graven lines you see, Traveller, do not pity me; Though I be among the dead, Let no mournful word be said. Children that I leave behind, And their children, all were kind; Near to them and to my wife, I was happy all my life. My three sons I married right, And their […]...
27. Music I PRELUDE Daughter of Psyche, pledge of that last night When, pierced with pain and bitter-sweet delight, She knew her Love and saw her Lord depart, Then breathed her wonder and her woe forlorn Into a single cry, and thou wast born? Thou flower of rapture and thou fruit of grief; Invisible enchantress of the […]...
28. Siren I became a criminal when I fell in love. Before that I was a waitress. I didn’t want to go to Chicago with you. I wanted to marry you, I wanted Your wife to suffer. I wanted her life to be like a play In which all the parts are sad parts. Does a good […]...
29. I look at the swaling sunset I look at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar. I wish that I could go Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of […]...
30. Proud Music of The Storm 1 PROUD music of the storm! Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert, Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! […]...
31. Tea On The Lawn It was foretold by sybils three That in an air crash he would die. “I’ll fool their prophesy,” said he; “You won’t get me to go on high. Howe’re the need for haste and speed, I’ll never, never, never fly.” It’s true he traveled everywhere, Afar and near, by land and sea, Yet he would […]...
32. To Music Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: Silence of paintings. You language where all language Ends. You time Standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts. Feelings for whom? O you the transformation Of feelings into what? : into audible landscape. You stranger: music. You heart-space Grown out of us. The deepest space in us, Which, rising […]...
33. MUSIC MUSIC doth uplift me like a sea Towards my planet pale, Then through dark fogs or heaven’s infinity I lift my wandering sail. With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee, And through the cordage wail, I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me Beneath her sombre veil. I feel the tremblings of all […]...
34. Music This shape without space, This pattern without stuff, This stream without dimension Surrounds us, flows through us, But leaves no mark. This message without meaning, These tears without eyes This laughter without lips Speaks to us but does not Disclose its clue. These waves without sea Surge over us, smooth us. These hands without fingers […]...
35. Music My friend went to the piano; spun the stool A little higher; left his pipe to cool; Picked up a fat green volume from the chest; And propped it open. Whitely without rest, His fingers swept the keys that flashed like swords, . . . And to the brute drums of barbarian hordes, Roaring and […]...
36. The Aftermath Although my blood I’ve shed In war’s red wrath, Oh how I darkly dread Its aftermath! Oh how I fear the day Of my release, When I must face the fray Of phoney peace! When I must fend again In labour strife; And toil with sweat and strain For kids and wife. The world is […]...
37. On Music When through life unblest we rove, Losing all that made life dear, Should some notes we used to love, In days of boyhood, meet our ear, Oh! how welcome breathes the strain! Wakening thoughts that long have slept, Kindling former smiles again In faded eyes that long have wept. Like the gale, that sighs along […]...
38. Loud Music My stepdaughter and I circle round and round. You see, I like the music loud, the speakers Throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so Each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut. But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four And likes the music […]...
39. Music: An Ode WAS it light that spake from the darkness, Or music that shone from the word, When the night was enkindled with sound Of the sun or the first-born bird? Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage Of seasons that fall and rise, Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, And blinded with light that dies, […]...
40. Ancient Music Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm. Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver, Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm, So ‘gainst the winter’s balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm. […]...