Digging

Related poetry:

1. Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? “Ah, are you digging on my grave, My loved one? planting rue?” “No: yesterday he went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred. ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said, ‘That I should not be true.'” “Then who is digging on my grave, My nearest dearest kin?” “Ah, no: they sit and think, […]...
2. Habitation Marriage is not A house or even a tent It is before that, and colder: The edge of the forest, the edge Of the desert the unpainted stairs At the back where we squat Outside, eating popcorn Where painfully and with wonder At having survived even This far We are learning to make fire...
3. The bottle tree A bottle tree bloometh in Winkyway land – Heigh-ho for a bottle, I say! A snug little berth in that ship I demand That rocketh the Bottle-Tree babies away Where the Bottle Tree bloometh by night and by day And reacheth its fruit to each wee, dimpled hand; You take of that fruit as much […]...
4. Vocation When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our Lane. Every day I meet the hawker crying, “Bangles, crystal Bangles!” There is nothing to hurry him on, there is no road he must Take, no place he must go to, no time when he must come home. I wish […]...
5. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
6. An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire, The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire. It’s Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small, And then ’tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all. And so my blood grows cold. I say, “The bottle held but ink, […]...
7. To A Valentine Faire Valentine, since once your welcome hand Did cull mee out wrapt in a paper band, Vouchsafe the same hand still, to shew thereby That Fortune did your will no injury: What though a knife I give, your beauty’s charme Will keepe the edge from doing any harme: Wool deads the sternest blade; and will […]...
8. Personality Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb. You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only One thumb. You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and Win all the world’s honors, but when you come back […]...
9. Between Games Nobody rests This one constantly shifts his eyes Hangs them on his head And whether he wants it or not starts walking backwards He puts them on the soles of his feet And whether he wants it or not returns walking on his head This one turns into an ear He hears all that won’t […]...
10. Winter Milk THE MILK drops on your chin, Helga, Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes. Let your mammy keep hands off the chin. This is a high holy spatter of white on the reds and blues. Before the bottle was taken away, Before you so […]...
11. Nationality In Drinks I. My heart sank with our Claret-flask, Just now, beneath the heavy sedges That serve this Pond’s black face for mask And still at yonder broken edges O’ the hole, where up the bubbles glisten, After my heart I look and listen. II. Our laughing little flask, compelled Thro’ depth to depth more bleak and […]...
12. Girl in a Cage HERE in a cage the dollars come down. To the click of a tube the dollars tumble. And out of a mouth the dollars run. I finger the dollars, Paper and silver, Thousands a day. Some days it’s fun to finger the dollars. Some days… the dollars keep on in a sob or a whisper: […]...
13. Sister Cat Cat stands at the fridge, Cries loudly for milk. But I’ve filled her bowl. Wild cat, I say, Sister, Look, you have milk. I clink my fingernail Against the rim. Milk. With down and liver, A word I know she hears. Her sad miaow. She runs To me. She dips In her whiskers but Doesn’t […]...
14. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
15. A Scrap of Paper “Will you go to war just for a scrap of paper?” Question Of the German Chancellor to the British Ambassador, August 5, 1914. A mocking question! Britain’s answer came Swift as the light and searching as the flame. “Yes, for a scrap of paper we will fight Till our last breath, and God defend the […]...
16. Oatmeal I eat oatmeal for breakfast. I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it. I eat it alone. I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone. Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if somebody eats it with you. That is why I often […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. Bottle 'O&#039 I ain’t the kind of bloke as takes to any steady job; I drives me bottle cart around the town; A bloke what keeps ‘is eyes about can always make a bob I couldn’t bear to graft for every brown. There’s lots of handy things about in everybody’s yard, There’s cocks and hens a-runnin’ to […]...
19. 24. Song-No Churchman am I NO churchman am I for to rail and to write, No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight, No sly man of business contriving a snare, For a big-belly’d bottle’s the whole of my care. The peer I don’t envy, I give him his bow; I scorn not the peasant, though ever so low; […]...
20. The Spirit Medium Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet Because of those new dead That come into my soul and escape Confusion of the bed, Or those begotten or unbegotten Perning in a band, I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand. Or those begotten or unbegotten, For I would not recall […]...
21. Palladiums IN the newspaper office-who are the spooks? Who wears the mythic coat invisible? Who pussyfoots from desk to desk with a speaking forefinger? Who gumshoes amid the copy paper with a whispering thumb? Speak softly-the sacred cows may hear. Speak easy-the sacred cows must be fed....
22. The Fury Of Cooks Herbs, garlic, Cheese, please let me in! Souffles, salad, Parker House rolls, Please let me in! Cook Helen, Why are you so cross, Why is your kitchen verboten? Couldn’t you just teach me To bake a potato, To bake a potato, That charm, That young prince? No! No! This is my county! You shout silently. […]...
23. Blackberry-Picking Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and […]...
24. Confessions What is he buzzing in my ears? “Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?” Ah, reverend sir, not I! What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table’s edge,-is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside […]...
25. With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
26. The Other Under my bowels, yellow with smoke, It waits. Under my eyes, those milk bunnies, It waits. It is waiting. It is waiting. Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse. Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover. When truth comes spilling out like peas It hangs up the phone. When the child is soothed and resting on the […]...
27. Gray Room Although you sit in a room that is gray, Except for the silver Of the straw-paper, And pick At your pale white gown; Or lift one of the green beads Of your necklace, To let it fall; Or gaze at your green fan Printed with the red branches of a red willow; Or, with one […]...
28. The Batchelors Song Like a Dog with a bottle, fast ti’d to his tail, Like Vermin in a trap, or a Thief in a Jail, Or like a Tory in a Bog, Or an Ape with a Clog: Such is the man, who when he might go free, Does his liberty loose, For a Matrimony noose, And sels […]...
29. Patroling Barnegat WILD, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, Where through the […]...
30. Days of the slow roll It was the days of the slow roll, Times when we dextrously dressed Our hand-rolled cigarettes With a dearth of fine-cut tobacco, Teased in frugal strands from A handsomely battered, Always near empty, 2oz tobacco tin. The thin rolls were patiently Mastered in a slow statement Of intense deliberation In a fold of rice paper […]...
31. Empty Room The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax. The clock’s voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats. The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating, Loudly, with finger raised, when the class has gone. But time flows through the room, light flows through the room Like someone picking flowers, like someone whistling Without a tune, like talk in front of […]...
32. 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...
33. The Town Between the Hills The further the little girl leaped and ran, The further she longed to be; The white, white fields of jonquil flowers Danced up as high as her knee And flashed and sparkled before her eyes Until she could hardly see. So into the wood went she. It was quiet in the wood, It was solemn […]...
34. Fawn's Foster-Mother The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels With her meagre pale demoralized daughter. Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun And saying that when she was first married She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon. (It is empty now, the roof has fallen […]...
35. The Plowboy AFTER the last red sunset glimmer, Black on the line of a low hill rise, Formed into moving shadows, I saw A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray, Plowing in the dusk the last furrow. The turf had a gleam of brown, And smell of soil was in the air, And, cool and […]...
36. The Wedding Ring Dance I dance in circles holding The moth of the marriage, Thin, sticky, fluttering Its skirts, its webs. The moth oozing a tear, Or is it a drop of urine? The moth, grinning like a pear, Or is it teeth Clamping the iron maiden shut? The moth, Who is my mother, Who is my father, Who […]...
37. Commandeering Our hero was a Tommy with a conscience free from care, And such an open countenance that when he breathed the air He mopped up all the atmosphere so little went to spare You could hardly say he breathed, he “commandeered” it. For nowadays you’ll notice when a man is “on the make”, And other […]...
38. 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...
39. The Fury Of Overshoes They sit in a row Outside the kindergarten, Black, red, brown, all With those brass buckles. Remember when you couldn’t Buckle your own Overshoe Or tie your own Overshoe Or tie your own shoe Or cut your own meat And the tears Running down like mud Because you fell off your Tricycle? Remember, big fish, […]...
40. New Mexico I was fairly drunk when it Began and I took out my bottle and used it Along the way. I was reading a week or two after Kandel and I did not look quite as Pretty but I brought it off and we Ended up at the Webbs, 6, 8, 10 of Us, and I […]...