There was, before me

Related poetry:

1. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
2. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
3. Yellow One pearly day of early May I strolled upon the sand, And saw, say half-a-mile away A man with gun in hand; A dog was cowering to his will, As slow he sought to creep Upon a dozen ducks so still They seemed to be asleep, When like a streak the dog dashed out, The […]...
4. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
5. The Palm And The Pine From the German of Heine. In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone, Upon a wintry height; It sleeps: around it snows have thrown A covering of white. It dreams forever of a Palm That, far i’ the Morning-land, Stands silent in a most sad calm Midst of the burning sand....
6. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
7. Dream Song 73: Karensui, Ryoan-ji The taxi makes the vegetables fly. ‘Dozo kudasai,’ I have him wait. Past the bright lake up into the temple, Shoes off, and My right leg swings me left. I do survive beside the garden I Came seven thousand mile the other way Supplied of energies all to see, to see. Differ them photographs, plans […]...
8. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
9. Bond and Free Love has earth to which she clings With hills and circling arms about Wall within wall to shut fear out. But Though has need of no such things, For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings. On snow and sand and turn, I see Where Love has left a printed trace With straining in the […]...
10. From The Flats What heartache ne’er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o’er again and o’er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name: Always the same, […]...
11. Lost in the Prairie In one of fhe States of America, some years ago, There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow, Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen, Who had finished their day’s work – nine or ten of them. The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp, And with the thick falling […]...
12. Hope in Failure THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat, Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet, For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years, And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears. The eyes that […]...
13. Two Seasons I The stars were wild that summer evening As on the low lake shore stood you and I And every time I caught your flashing eye Or heard your voice discourse on anything It seemed a star went burning down the sky. I looked into your heart that dying summer And found your silent woman’s […]...
14. The Sea Hold THE SEA is large. The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men. Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land… five white dice rolled from a tube. Not so long […]...
15. The Fairest Apparition If thou never hast gazed upon beauty in moments of sorrow, Thou canst with truth never boast that thou true beauty hast seen. If thou never hast gazed upon gladness in beauteous features, Thou canst with truth never boast that thou true gladness hast seen....
16. A Mile With Me O who will walk a mile with me Along life’s merry way? A comrade blithe and full of glee, Who dares to laugh out loud and free, And let his frolic fancy play, Like a happy child, through the flowers gay That fill the field and fringe the way Where he walks a mile with […]...
17. Sonnet 2: When forty winters shall besiege thy brow When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now, Will be a tattered weed of small worth held. Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say within thine own deep sunken […]...
18. Sonnet II: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held: Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, […]...
19. Sonnet II When forty winters shall beseige thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held: Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, […]...
20. Tranquillity This morning on my pensive walk I saw a fisher on a rock, Who watched his ruby float careen In waters bluely crystalline, While silver fishes nosed his bait, Yet hesitated ere they ate. Nearby I saw a mother mid Who knitted by her naked child, And watched him as he romped with glee, In […]...
21. The Little Match Girl It was biting cold, and the falling snow, Which filled a poor little match girl’s heart with woe, Who was bareheaded and barefooted, as she went along the street, Crying, “Who’ll buy my matches? for I want pennies to buy some meat!” When she left home she had slippers on; But, alas! poor child, now […]...
22. Winter Clouded with snow The cold winds blow, And shrill on leafless bough The robin with its burning breast Alone sings now. The rayless sun, Day’s journey done, Sheds its last ebbing light On fields in leagues of beauty spread Unearthly white. Thick draws the dark, And spark by spark, The frost-fires kindle, and soon Over […]...
23. Dance Me To The End Of Love Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone […]...
24. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
25. Where I have lost, I softer tread Where I have lost, I softer tread I sow sweet flower from garden bed I pause above that vanished head And mourn. Whom I have lost, I pious guard From accent harsh, or ruthless word Feeling as if their pillow heard, Though stone! When I have lost, you’ll know by this A Bonnet black A […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. Answer THE WARMTH of life is quenched with bitter frost; Upon the lonely road a child limps by Skirting the frozen pools: our way is lost: Our hearts sink utterly. But from the snow-patched moorland chill and drear, Lifting our eyes beyond the spirëd height, With white-fire lips apart the dawn breathes clear Its soundless hymn […]...
28. To E I have remembered beauty in the night, Against black silences I waked to see A shower of sunlight over Italy And green Ravello dreaming on her height; I have remembered music in the dark, The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach’s, And running water singing on the rocks When once in English woods […]...
29. Death in the Family They call it stroke. Two we loved were stunned By that same blow of cudgel Or axe to the brow. Lost on the earth They left our circle Broken. One spent five months Falling from our grasp Mute, her grace, wit, Beauty erased. Her green eyes gazed at us As if asking, as if aware, […]...
30. I cannot be ashamed I cannot be ashamed Because I cannot see The love you offer Magnitude Reverses Modesty And I cannot be proud Because a Height so high Involves Alpine Requirements And Services of Snow....
31. On a Lady Throwing Snow-Balls at Her Lover [From the Latin of Petronious Ascanius.] When, wanton fair, the snowy orb you throw, I feel a fire before unknown in snow. E’en coldest snow I find has pow’r to warm My breast, when flung by Julia’s lovely arm. T’elude love’s pow’rful arts I strive in vain, If ice and snow can latent fires contain. […]...
32. Pentecost Better a jungle in the head Than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered By the fireflies’ crooked street; Winter lamps do not show Where the sidewalk is lost, Nor can these tongues of snow Speak for the Holy Ghost; The self-increasing silence Of words dropped from a roof Points along iron railings, Direction, in not […]...
33. Each And All Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down; And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round […]...
34. The Lost Dancer Spatial depths of being survive The birth to death recurrences Of feet dancing on earth of sand; Vibrations of the dance survive The sand; the sand, elect, survives The dancer. He can find no source Of magic adequate to bind The sand upon his feet, his feet Upon his dance, his dance upon The diamond […]...
35. Ballade of a Special Edition He comes; I hear him up the street Bird of ill omen, flapping wide The pinion of a printed sheet, His hoarse note scares the eventide. Of slaughter, theft, and suicide He is the herald and the friend; Now he vociferates with pride A double murder in Mile End! A hanging to his soul is […]...
36. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
37. Snow ‘Who affirms that crystals are alive?’ I affirm it, let who will deny: Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive, Wane and wither; I have seen them die. Trust me, masters, crystals have their day, Eager to attain the perfect norm, Lit with purpose, potent to display Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form. Water-crystals need for flower […]...
38. 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...
39. Florentine Pilgrim “I’ll do the old dump in a day,” He told me in his brittle way. “Two more, I guess, I’ll give to Rome Before I hit the trail for home; But while I’m there I kindo’ hope To have an audience with the Pope.” We stood upon the terraced height With sunny Florence in our […]...
40. 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...