Ghosts of a Lunatic Asylum

Related poetry:

1. Love In The Asylum A stranger has come To share my room in the house not right in the head, A girl mad as birds Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume. Strait in the mazed bed She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room, At large […]...
2. ASYLUM SEEKERS When Blunkett starts to talk like Enoch Powell I think of Harold Wilson’s statue in Huddersfield Station Caught striding forward, gripping his pipe in his pocket, Hair blowing in the wind. Could we but turn that bronze To flesh I would have asked him to meet the two Asylum-seekers I met in Huddersfield’s main street […]...
3. Sonnet 103: Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. O, blame me not if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a face That overgoes my blunt […]...
4. Tom The Lunatic Sang old Tom the lunatic That sleeps under the canopy: ‘What change has put my thoughts astray And eyes that had s-o keen a sight? What has turned to smoking wick Nature’s pure unchanging light? ‘Huddon and Duddon and Daniel O’Leary. Holy Joe, the beggar-man, Wenching, drinking, still remain Or sing a penance on the […]...
5. The Ghosts of the Buffaloes Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry, The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high, The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar, White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar. I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone. My home was a hut without orchard or lawn. It was […]...
6. The Ghosts Smith, great writer of stories, drank; found it immortalized his pen; Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then; Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling Flat in your face a soul-thought Bing! Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. “Bah!” said Smith, “let my body […]...
7. Sonnet: The Ghosts Of James And Peirce In Harvard Yard In memory of D. W. Prall The ghosts of James and Peirce in Harvard Yard At star-pierced midnight, after the chapel bell (Episcopalian! palian! the ringing soared!) Stare at me now as if they wish me well. In the waking dream amid the trees which fall, Bar and bough of shadow, by my shadow crossed, […]...
8. A Visit To The Asylum Once from a big, big building, When I was small, small, The queer folk in the windows Would smile at me and call. And in the hard wee gardens Such pleasant men would hoe: “Sir, may we touch the little girl’s hair!”- It was so red, you know. They cut me coloured asters With shears […]...
9. Noon Walk On The Asylum Lawn The summer sun ray Shifts through a suspicious tree. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow It sucks the air And looks around for me. The grass speaks. I hear green chanting all day. I will fear no evil, fear no evil The blades extend And reach my way. The sky breaks. It […]...
10. Sorrow of Departure Red lotus incense fades on The jeweled curtain. Autumn Comes again. Gently I open My silk dress and float alone On the orchid boat. Who can Take a letter beyond the clouds? Only the wild geese come back And write their ideograms On the sky under the full Moon that floods the West Chamber. Flowers, […]...
11. Ghosts I to a crumpled cabin came Upon a hillside high, And with me was a withered dame As weariful as I. “It used to be our home,” she said; “How well I remember well! Oh that our happy hearth should be Today an empty shell!” The door was flailing in the storm That deafed us […]...
12. Ghosts Some ghosts are women, Neither abstract nor pale, Their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts Who come, moving their useless arms Like forsaken servants. Not all ghosts are women, I have seen others; Fat, white-bellied men, Wearing their genitals like old rags. Not devils, but ghosts. This one thumps barefoot, lurching […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. The Ghosts Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial look-out, Sees the downward plunge, and follows; And a third pursues the second, Coming from the invisible ether, First a speck, and then a vulture, Till the air is dark […]...
15. Three Ghosts THREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People. The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat Cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each Other thimbles. Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other As misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor, They sat […]...
16. Ghosts in Love “Tell me, where do ghosts in love Find their bridal veils?” “If you and I were ghosts in love We’d climb the cliffs of Mystery, Above the sea of Wails. I’d trim your gray and streaming hair With veils of Fantasy From the tree of Memory. ‘Tis there the ghosts that fall in love Find […]...
17. Indian Weavers WEAVERS, weaving at break of day, Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . . Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild, We weave the robes of a new-born child. Weavers, weaving at fall of night, Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . . Like the plumes of a […]...
18. A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur- There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk And August the most peaceful month. To be, in the grass, in the […]...
19. To the Thawing Wind COME with rain. O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester; Give the buried flower a dream; Make the settled snowbank steam; Find the brown beneath the white; But whate’er you do tonight, Bath my window, make it flow, Melt it as the ice will go; Melt the glass and leave the sticks Like […]...
20. Mowgli's Song The Song of Mowgli I, Mowgli, am singing. Let the jungle listen to the things I have done. Shere Khan said he would kill would kill! At the gates in the twilight he would kill Mowgli, the Frog! He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou drink again? Sleep and […]...
21. Later life Something this foggy day, a something which Is neither of this fog nor of today, Has set me dreaming of the winds that play Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach, And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray: Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away, So out of reach while quite within my […]...
22. At The Door All actors look for them-the defining moments When what a character does is what he is. The script may say, He goes to the door And exits or She goes out the door stage left. But you see your fingers touching the doorknob, Closing around it, turning it As if by themselves. The latch slides […]...
23. Blind His headstrong thoughts that once in eager strife Leapt sure from eye to brain and back to eye, Weaving unconscious tapestries of life, Are now thrust inward, dungeoned from the sky. And he who has watched his world and loved it all, Starless and old and blind, a sight for pity, With feeble steps and […]...
24. 342. Song-Sweet Afton FLOW gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes, Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, […]...
25. There Be None of Beauty's Daughters There be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like Thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmйd ocean’s pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull’d winds seem dreaming: And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain […]...
26. For Music THERE be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean’s pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull’d winds seem dreaming: And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain […]...
27. Stanzas For Music There be none of Beauty’s daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean’s pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lulled winds seem dreaming; And the midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain […]...
28. Glass Words of a poem should be glass But glass so simple-subtle its shape Is nothing but the shape of what it holds. A glass spun for itself is empty, Brittle, at best Venetian trinket. Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence. Words should be looked through, should be windows. The best word were invisible. […]...
29. Manhole Covers The beauty of manhole covers what of that? Like medals struck by a great savage khan, Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable, Not like the old electrum, chased and scored, Mottoed and sculptured to a turn, But notched and whelked and pocked and smashed With the great company names (Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States). This […]...
30. The Loom of Dreams I broider the world upon a loom, I broider with dreams my tapestry; Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me. I broider my life into the frame, I broider my love, thread upon thread; The world goes by with its glory and shame, […]...
31. To The Not Impossible Him How shall I know, unless I go To Cairo and Cathay, Whether or not this blessed spot Is blest in every way? Now it may be, the flower for me Is this beneath my nose: How shall I tell, unless I smell The Carthaginian rose? The fabric of my faithful love No power shall dim […]...
32. The Return From Town As I sat down by Saddle Stream To bathe my dusty feet there, A boy was standing on the bridge Any girl would meet there. As I went over Woody Knob And dipped into the hollow, A youth was coming up the hill Any maid would follow. Then in I turned at my own gate,- […]...
33. Covering Two Years This nothingness that feeds upon itself: Pencils that turn to water in the hand, Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air, Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass, Blank sheets of paper that reflect the world Whitened the world that I was silenced by. There were two years of that. Slowly, Whatever splits, dissevers, […]...
34. A Sense of Humor NO man should stand before the moon To make sweet song thereon, With dandified importance, His sense of humor gone. Nay, let us don the motley cap, The jester’s chastened mien, If we would woo that looking-glass And see what should be seen. O mirror on fair Heaven’s wall, We find there what we bring. […]...
35. Finale Here is this vale of sweet abiding, My ultimate and dulcet home, That gently dreams above the chiding Of restless and impatient foam; Beyond the hazards of hell weather, The harceling of wind and sea, With timbers morticed tight together My old hulk havens happily. The dawn exultantly discloses My lawn lit with mimosa gold; […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. The Bohemian Dreams Because my overcoat’s in pawn, I choose to take my glass Within a little bistro on The rue du Montparnasse; The dusty bins with bottles shine, The counter’s lined with zinc, And there I sit and drink my wine, And think and think and think. I think of hoary old Stamboul, Of Moslem and of […]...
38. No Lilies For Lisette Said the Door: “She came in With no shadow of sin; Turned the key in the lock, Slipped out of her frock, The robe she liked best When for supper she dressed. Then a letter she tore. . . What a wan look she wore!” Said the Door. Said the Chair: “She sat down With […]...
39. 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 […]...
40. Hearthside Half across the world from me Lie the lands I’ll never see- I, whose longing lives and dies Where a ship has sailed away; I, that never close my eyes But to look upon Cathay. Things I may not know nor tell Wait, where older waters swell; Ways that flowered at Sappho’s tread, Winds that […]...