Bogland

Related poetry:

1. Never Suddenly, desperately I thought, “No, never In millions of minutes Can I for one second Calm-leaving my own self Like clothes on a chair-back And quietly opening The door of one house (No, not one of all millions) Of blood, flesh and brain, Climb the nerve-stair and look From the tower, from the windows Of […]...
2. Dream Song 29: There sat down, once, a thing There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart Só heavy, if he had a hundred years & more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time Henry could not make good. Starts again always in Henry’s ears The little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime. And there is another thing he has in mind Like […]...
3. In the Shadow of the Palace LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office. Let us sit among the telegrams-clickety-click-the kaiser’s crown goes into the gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of […]...
4. The King's Breakfast The King’s Breakfast The King asked The Queen, and The Queen asked The Dairymaid: “Could we have some butter for The Royal slice of bread?” The Queen asked the Dairymaid, The Dairymaid Said, “Certainly, I’ll go and tell the cow Now Before she goes to bed.” The Dairymaid She curtsied, And went and told The […]...
5. The Missing All prevented Me The Missing All prevented Me From missing minor Things. If nothing larger than a World’s Departure from a Hinge Or Sun’s extinction, be observed ‘Twas not so large that I Could lift my Forehead from my work For Curiosity....
6. By my Window have I for Scenery By my Window have I for Scenery Just a Sea with a Stem If the Bird and the Farmer deem it a “Pine” The Opinion will serve for them It has no Port, nor a “Line” but the Jays That split their route to the Sky Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula May be easier […]...
7. Hypochondriac Maybe it’s Emphysema, a shiny black jewel of phlegm Humming like a clump of bees in my chest. Perhaps a tumor crawling in the crook of my armpit, A blood clot opening like a tiny red flower in my brain. Maybe it’s too early to show up on an X-ray, A kind of cancerous seed […]...
8. Lament When I was a windy boy and a bit And the black spit of the chapel fold, (Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women), I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood, The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit, I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled Nine-pin down on donkey’s common, […]...
9. The Witch's Life When I was a child There was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story Window From behind the wrinkled curtains And sometimes she would open the window And yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp And a voice like […]...
10. Butter Butter, like love, Seems common enough Yet has so many imitators. I held a brick of it, heavy and cool, And glimpsed what seemed like skin Beneath a corner of its wrap; The decolletage revealed A most attractive fat! And most refined. Not milk, not cream, Not even creme de la creme. It was a […]...
11. At the Melting of the Snow There’s a sunny Southern land, And it’s there that I would be Where the big hills stand, In the South Countrie! When the wattles bloom again, Then it’s time for us to go To the old Monaro country At the melting of the snow. To the East or to the West, Or wherever you may […]...
12. EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE Desks are straining on all fours, flanks Heaving to hurl the hunched riders Down crack and cranny, buck Finger-snapping lids, consume Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth. The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me, Making my neck prick as it scatters dust Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clichй, Anoints its carved channels […]...
13. The Dead Heart After I wrote this, a friend scrawled on this page, “Yes.” And I said, merely to myself, “I wish it could be for a Different seizure as with Molly Bloom and her ‘and Yes I said yes I will Yes.” It is not a turtle Hiding in its little green shell. It is not a […]...
14. Poem With Refrains The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog Uncurling over the tainted city river, A young girl rowing and her anxious father Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer Sulking in his tent. As though all stories began With someone dying. When her mother died, My mother refused to attend […]...
15. Miss Lloyd has now went to Miss Green Miss Lloyd has now sent to Miss Green, As, on opening the box, may be seen, Some years of a Black Ploughman’s Gauze, To be made up directly, because Miss Lloyd must in mourning appear For the death of a Relative dear Miss Lloyd must expect to receive This license to mourn and to grieve, […]...
16. I, or Someone Like Me In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing Through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes, And the prospect of a string bass inside the wood, I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision. As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos Topped first one tree, then another and another, Till […]...
17. The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews An ingenuity too astonishing To be quite fortuitous is This bog full of sundews, sphagnum- Lined and shaped like a teacup. A step Down and you’re into it; a Wilderness swallows you up: Ankle-, then knee-, then midriff- To-shoulder-deep in wetfooted Understory, an overhead Spruce-tamarack horizon hinting You’ll never get out of here. But the […]...
18. The Mowed Hollow When yellow leaves the sky They pipe it to the houses To go on making red And warm and floral and brown But gradually people tire of it, Return it inside metal, and go To be dark and breathe water colours. Some yellow hangs on outside Forlornly tethered to posts. Cars chase their own supply. […]...
19. Ladies And Gentlemen In Outer Space Here is my philosophy: Everything changes (the word “everything” Has just changed as the Word “change” has: it now Means “no change”) so Quickly that it literally surpasses my belief, Charges right past it Like some of the giant Ideas in this area. I had no beginning and I shall have No end: the beam […]...
20. The Philosopher And what are you that, wanting you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver […]...
21. October 12 My bag was missing at the airport “Just one bag?” “Yes, but it meant a lot to me” I had seen the bartender before, but where? “You didn’t tell me you had been to Oxford” “Yes, I was at Magdalen College for two years” “What did you do there?” “Drugs.” “Did you know that in […]...
22. A Few Rules for Beginners Babies must not eat the coal And they must not make grimaces, Nor in party dresses roll And must never black their faces. They must learn that pointing’s rude, They must sit quite still at table, And must always eat the food Put before them if they’re able. If they fall, they must not cry, […]...
23. There was an Old Man of Calcutta There was an old man of Calcutta, Who perpetually ate bread & butter; Till a great bit of muffin on which he was stuffing, Choked that horrid old man of Calcutta....
24. Fall Song Another year gone, leaving everywhere Its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, The uneaten fruits crumbling damply In the shadows, unmattering back From the particular island Of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere Except underfoot, moldering In that black subterranean castle Of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds And the wanderings of water. […]...
25. Different Destinies Millions busily toil, that the human race may continue; But by only a few is propagated our kind. Thousands of seeds by the autumn are scattered, yet fruit is engendered Only by few, for the most back to the element go. But if one only can blossom, that one is able to scatter Even a […]...
26. Anne Rutledge Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music; ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all.’ Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, And the beneficient face of a nation Shining with justice and truth. I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, […]...
27. From "THE TALK OF FLOWERS&quot I do not know, whether the sun Accomplished it, The rain or wind – But I was missing so The whiteness and the snow. I listened to the rustling Of spring rain, Washing the reddish buds Of chestnut-trees, – And a tiny spring ran down Into the valley from the hill – And I was […]...
28. The missing the way loss seeps Into neck hollows And curls at temples Sits between front teeth Cavity Empty and waiting For mourning to open The way mourning stays Forever shadowing vision Shaping lives with memory A drawer won’t close Sleep elusive Smile illusive The only real is grief Forever counting the days Minutes missing without knowing […]...
29. What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner Or Later Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with. And with whom they breakfast with and sup with. They interfere with the discipline of nurseries, And forget anniversaries, And when they have been particularly remiss They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss, And when you tell them […]...
30. PRAY AND PROSPER First offer incense; then, thy field and meads Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads. The spangling dew dredged o’er the grass shall be Turn’d all to mell and manna there for thee. Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil, Shall run as rivers all throughout thy soil. Would’st thou to sincere […]...
31. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
32. The Simple Truth I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes, Took them home, boiled them in their jackets And ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. Then I walked through the dried fields On the edge of town. In middle June the light Hung on in the dark furrows at […]...
33. A Woman Unconscious Russia and America circle each other; Threats nudge an act that were without doubt A melting of the mould in the mother, Stones melting about the root. The quick of the earth burned out: The toil of all our ages a loss With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought (Not to be thought ridiculous) Shies […]...
34. Be Angry At San Pedro I say to my woman, “Jeffers was A great poet. think of a title Like Be Angry At The Sun. don’t you Realize how great that is? “you like that negative stuff.” she Says “positively,” I agree, finishing my Drink and pouring another. “in one of Jeffers’ poems, not the sun poem, This woman fucks […]...
35. Child Margaret THE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers. All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child’s room. Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps. The 6 and 9 […]...
36. A Curse for Kings A curse upon each king who leads his state, No matter what his plea, to this foul game, And may it end his wicked dynasty, And may he die in exile and black shame. If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens, What punishment could Heaven devise for these Who fill the rivers of […]...
37. LETTER FROM HAWORTH Poems do not always satisfy the soul, The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more Than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the unending vistas Of the moor, an infinity of purity that excels even Mallarmй. I sit on the cracked steps to the church, sipping tea With my eye on the Black Bull where […]...
38. In Memory of Maggie A pussy-cat who was the household pet for seventeen years. Naught but a little cat, you say; Yet we remember her, A creature loving, loyal, kind, With merry, mellow purr; The faithful friend of many years, Shall we not give her meed of tears? Sleek-suited in her velvet coat, White-breasted and bright-eyed, Feeling when she […]...
39. Wind This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the […]...
40. Aplolgia Pro Vita Sua The poet in his lone yet genial hour Gives to his eyes a magnifying power : Or rather he emancipates his eyes From the black shapeless accidents of size In unctuous cones of kindling coal, Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe’s trim bole, His gifted ken can see Phantoms of sublimity....