To The Stone-Cutters

Related poetry:

1. A Stone Is Nobody's A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner. Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the Rest of his life. His mother asked why. He said, because it’s held captive, because it is Captured. Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know Whether it’s […]...
2. Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor […]...
3. The Hearth-Stone The leaves are sick and jaundiced, they Drift down the air; December’s sky is sodden grey, Dark with despair; A bleary dawn will light anon A world of care. My name is cut into a stone, No care have I; The letters drool, as I alone Forgotten lie: With weed my grave is overgrown, None […]...
4. Loitering with a Vacant Eye Loitering with a vacant eye Along the Grecian gallery, And brooding on my heavy ill, I met a statue standing still. Still in marble stone stood he, And stedfastly he looked at me. “Well met,” I thought the look would say, “We both were fashioned far away; We neither knew, when we were young, These […]...
5. The Old Stone Cross A statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote; A journalist makes up his lies And takes you by the throat; So stay at home’ and drink your beer And let the neighbours’ vote, Said the man in the golden breastplate Under the old stone Cross. Because this age and the next […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. A Rolling Stone There’s sunshine in the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I’m fellow to the trees. My golden youth I’m squandering, Sun-libertine am I; A-wandering, a-wandering, Until the day I die. I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man, And I roomed in the cool of […]...
8. The Has-Been A STONE face higher than six horses stood five thousand Years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret. A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the End of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a Mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the Old […]...
9. Black Stone on Top of a White Stone I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm, On a day I already remember. I shall die in Paris it does not bother me Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn. It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders To the evil. Never […]...
10. Stone Breaking March wind rough Clashed the trees, Flung the snow; Breaking stones, In the cold, Germans slow Toiled and toiled; Arrowy sun Glanced and sprang, One right blithe German sang: Songs of home, Fatherland: Syenite hard, Weary lot, Callous hand, All forgot: Hammers pound, Ringing round; Rise the heaps, To his voice, Bounds and leaps Toise […]...
11. How happy is the little Stone How happy is the little Stone That rambles in the Road alone, And doesn’t care about Careers And Exigencies never fears Whose Coat of elemental Brown A passing Universe put on, And independent as the Sun Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute Decree In casual simplicity...
12. It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone Enclosed ’twas not of Rail A Consciousness its Acre, and It held a Human Soul. Entombed by whom, for what offence If Home or Foreign born Had I the curiosity ‘Twere not appeased of men Till Resurrection, I must guess Denied the small desire A Rose upon […]...
13. Stone Villages The stone-built villages of England. A cathedral bottled in a pub window. Cows dispersed across fields. Monuments to kings. A man in a moth-eaten suit Sees a train off, heading, like everything here, for the sea, Smiles at his daughter, leaving for the East. A whistle blows. And the endless sky over the tiles Grows […]...
14. At the grave of Anastasia Baluk – Cross Stone Anastasia And the sad snow falling A toiling sky And a long white line of hills A distant birthplace Short span and early dying Pain from what heaven Sorrowed your slope of life? Through valley’s throat Run double veins of water Feverish river Somnolent canal – the vein of the metal rail And the trundling […]...
15. Troll Sat Alone on His Seat of Stone Troll sat alone on his seat of stone, And munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near, For meat was hard to come by. Done by! Gum by! In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone, And meat was hard to come by. Up came Tom […]...
16. TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol, Balliol in the rain. The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you, As you became that road through silent […]...
17. Twenty-Pound Stone It nests in the hollow of my pelvis, I carry it with both hands, as if offering my stomach, as if it were pulling me forward. At night the sun leaks from it, it turns cold, I sleep with it beside my head, I breath for it. Sometimes I dream of hammers. I am hammering […]...
18. Temporary Poem Of My Time Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west, Latin writing, from west to east. Languages are like cats: You must not stroke their hair the wrong way. The clouds come from the sea, the hot wind from the desert, The trees bend in the wind, And stones fly from all four winds, Into […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. Suicide's Stone Peace is the heir of dead desire, Whether abundance killed the cormorant In a happy hour, or sleep or death Drowned him deep in dreamy waters, Peace is the ashes of that fire, The heir of that king, the inn of that journey. This last and best and goal: we dead Hold it so tight […]...
21. The Spring (After Rilke) Spring has returned! Everything has returned! The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes Poems, so many poems. … Look, she has learned So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes! Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white Of the old man’s beard, bright like the snow’s: Now we may ask […]...
22. Valentine Too high, too high to pluck My heart shall swing. A fruit no bee shall suck, No wasp shall sting. If on some night of cold It falls to ground In apple-leaves of gold I’ll wrap it round. And I shall seal it up With spice and salt, In a carven silver cup, In a […]...
23. For Lew Welch In A Snowfall Snowfall in March: I sit in the white glow reading a thesis About you. Your poems, your life. The author’s my student, He even quotes me. Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland Twenty since you disappeared. All those years and their moments- Crackling bacon, slamming car doors, Poems tried out on […]...
24. About My Poetry I have no silver-saddled horse to ride, No inheritance to live on, Neither riches no real-estate A pot of honey is all I own. A pot of honey red as fire! My honey is my everything. I guard My riches and my real-estate my honey pot, I mean From pests of every species, Brother, just […]...
25. Stanzas To Augusta When all around grew drear and dark, And reason half withheld her ray – And hope but shed a dying spark Which more misled my lonely way; In that deep midnight of the mind, And that internal strife of heart, When dreading to be deemed too kind, The weak despair-the cold depart; When fortune changed-and […]...
26. A Negro Love Song Seen my lady home las’ night, Jump back, honey, jump back. Hel’ huh han’ an’ sque’z it tight, Jump back, honey, jump back. Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh, Seen a light gleam f’om huh eye, An’ a smile go flittin’ by Jump back, honey, jump back. Hyeahd de win’ blow thoo de pine, Jump […]...
27. Sleeping Together Sleeping together… how tired you were… How warm our room… how the firelight spread On walls and ceiling and great white bed! We spoke in whispers as children do, And now it was I and then it was you Slept a moment, to wake “My dear, I’m not at all sleepy,” one of us said…. […]...
28. Where We Differ To think my thoughts are hers, Not one of hers is mine; She laughs while I must sigh; She sighs while I must whine. She eats while I must fast; She reads while I am blind; She sleeps while I must wake; Free I no freedom find. To think the world for me Contains but […]...
29. If Still Your Orchards Bear Brother, that breathe the August air Ten thousand years from now, And smell-if still your orchards bear Tart apples on the bough- The early windfall under the tree, And see the red fruit shine, I cannot think your thoughts will be Much different from mine. Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon […]...
30. Black Stone On Top Of Nothing Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon Around the apartment building covering the front door. He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and begins To untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him Wondering what’s going on. A middle-aged woman carrying A loaf of fresh bread asks him […]...
31. Inheritance AS flow the rivers to the sea Adown from rocky hill or plain, A thousand ages toiled for thee And gave thee harvest of their gain; And weary myriads of yore Dug out for thee earth’s buried ore. The shadowy toilers for thee fought In chaos of primeval day Blind battles with they knew not […]...
32. OBSTACLES A thousand visits to the supermarket A thousand acts of sexual intimacy Spread over forty years. Your essence was quite other A smile of absolute connection Repeated a thousand times. Your daily visits to the outside lavatory While I stood talking outside, An intimacy I have sought With no other. My greatest fear is that […]...
33. THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY I sat on a low stone wall Watching the blue blood of the azaleas Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles. A seamless transparency of rain Lowering over the turning trees My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s ‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker To the swathes of heather. I stood on the moor top Where the tracks cross […]...
34. The poem The poem That I chose for you Is simple, As are all my singing poems. It has the trace of a veil, A little balsam, And a taste of the honey Of lies. There is also The coming end of summer When heat scorches the meadow And the quick waters Of the river Cease to […]...
35. Oh You Are Coming Oh you are coming, coming, coming, How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? But why does it anger my heart to long so For one man out of the world of men? Oh I would live in myself only And build my life lightly and still as a dream Are not my […]...
36. X. On Dover Cliffs ON these white cliffs, that calm above the flood Rear their o’er-shadowing heads, and at their feet Scarce hear the surge that has for ages beat, Sure many a lonely wanderer has stood; And, whilst the lifted murmur met his ear, And o’er the distant billows the still Eve Sail’d slow, has thought of all […]...
37. Psalm 90 part 1 v.1-5 C. M. Man frail, and God eternal. Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home. Under the shadow of thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is thine arm alone, And our defence is sure. Before the hills […]...
38. The Old Gray Wall Time out of mind I have stood Fronting the frost and the sun, That the dream of the world might endure, And the goodly will be done. Did the hand of the builder guess, As he laid me stone by stone, A heart in the granite lurked, Patient and fond as his own? Lovers have […]...
39. The Truth the Dead Know For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 And my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, Refusing the stiff procession to the grave, Letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I […]...
40. Sonnet: At Dover Cliffs, July 20th 1787 On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood Uplift their shadowing heads, and, at their feet, Scarce hear the surge that has for ages beat, Sure many a lonely wanderer has stood; And whilst the lifted murmur met his ear, And o’er the distant billows the still eve Sailed slow, has thought of all […]...