The Innovator

Related poetry:

1. Some People some people never go crazy. Me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind the couch For 3 or 4 days. They’ll find me there. It’s Cherub, they’ll say, and They pour wine down my throat Rub my chest Sprinkle me with oils. Then, I’ll rise with a roar, Rant, rage – Curse them and the universe As […]...
2. The Riddle of the World Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of Mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A Being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; […]...
3. Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
4. The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me “the withness of the body” Whitehead The heavy bear who goes with me, A manifold honey to smear his face, Clumsy and lumbering here and there, The central ton of every place, The hungry beating brutish one In love with candy, anger, and sleep, Crazy factotum, dishevelling all, Climbs the building, kicks the football, Boxes […]...
5. The sun has burst the sky The sun has burst the sky Because I love you And the river its banks. The sea laps the great rocks Because I love you And takes no heed of the moon dragging it away And saying coldly ‘Constancy is not for you’. The blackbird fills the air Because I love you With spring and […]...
6. Her Vision In The Wood Dry timber under that rich foliage, At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood, Too old for a man’s love I stood in rage Imagining men. Imagining that I could A greater with a lesser pang assuage Or but to find if withered vein ran blood, I tore my body that its wine might cover Whatever […]...
7. The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is; Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this. What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under; If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the […]...
8. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
9. On Winter's Margin On winter’s margin, see the small birds now With half-forged memories come flocking home To gardens famous for their charity. The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins Hang at the entrance to the silent wood. With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs; By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing Like […]...
10. Barney Hainsfeather If the excursion train to Peoria Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life Certainly I should have escaped this place. But as it was burned as well, they mistook me For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery At Chicago, And John for me, so I lie here. It […]...
11. Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
12. The Circuit Judge Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred Were marking scores against me, But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches, Deciding cases on the points the lawyers […]...
13. Spring Night in the Imperial Chancellery Evening falls on palace walls shaded by flowering trees, with cry of birds Flying past on their way to roost. The stars quiver as they look down on the Myriad doors of the palace, and the moon’s light increases as she moves into The ninefold sky. Unable to sleep, I seem to hear the sound […]...
14. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the […]...
15. The Visitor it came today to visit And moved into the house It was smaller than an elephant But larger than a mouse First it slapped my sister Then it kicked my dad Then it pushed my mother Oh! that really made me mad It went and tickled rover And terrified the cat It sliced apart my […]...
16. Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw gnawing through a shinbone, a high howl Inside of which a bloody, slashed-by-growls note Is heard, unlike that Sound, and instead, its opposite: a barely sounded Sound (put your nuclear ears On for it, your giant hearing horn, its cornucopia mouth Wide) a slippery whoosh of rain Sliding down a mirror Leaned against a windfallen […]...
17. The Cranes of Ibicus Here was a man who watched the river flow Past the huge town, one gray November day. Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play The boys made merry as they saw him go, Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream, The immortal screed he held within his hand. For he was walking in an […]...
18. Sonnet XVII Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
19. Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come Who will believe my verse in time to come If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
20. Outside Fargo, North Dakota Along the sprawled body of the derailed Great Northern freight car, I strike a match slowly and lift it slowly. No wind. Beyond town, three heavy white horses Wade all the way to their shoulders In a silo shadow. Suddenly the freight car lurches. The door slams back, a man with a flashlight Calls me […]...
21. An Encounter ONCE on the kind of day called “weather breeder,” When the heat slowly hazes and the sun By its own power seems to be undone, I was half boring through, half climbing through A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated, And sorry I ever left […]...
22. To an Ungentle Critic The great sun sinks behind the town Through a red mist of Volnay wine…. But what’s the use of setting down That glorious blaze behind the town? You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look For newer pictures in this book; You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine. A fresh wind fills the evening air With […]...
23. Professor Newcomer Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard For buying an engine so powerful That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder He ran it with. But here is a joke of cosmic size: The urge of nature that made a man Evolve from his brain a spiritual life Oh miracle of the world! The very same brain […]...
24. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
25. Suzanne Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she’s half crazy But that’s why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just […]...
26. Mysterious Humanity I shall tell you stories about scores of troops Sent to the distant Croatian borders Medical soldiers of fortune with a sacred mission: To ease the pain and cure the wounds Of sons and daughters in genocized Bosnia Of which a moment later one would read, Heroic newspeaks roared by a government “We’re healing, we’re […]...
27. Kings Must Die Alphonso Rex who died in Rome Was quite a fistful as a kid; For when I visited his home, That gorgeous palace in Madrid, The grinning guide-chap showed me where He rode his bronco up the stair. That stairway grand of marbled might, The most majestic in the land, In statured splendour, flight on flight, […]...
28. Falltime GOLD of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon, Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue, Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts, Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence, Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long, Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers […]...
29. Death Wants More Death death wants more death, and its webs are full: I remember my father’s garage, how child-like I would brush the corpses of flies From the windows they thought were escape- Their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies Shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass Only to spin and flit In that second larger than hell or […]...
30. Sonnet 80: O, how I faint when I of you do write O, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame. But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark, […]...
31. Worldly Place Even in a palace, life may be led well! So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, Our freedom for a little bread we sell, And drudge under some foolish master’s ken Who rates us if we peer outside our pen Match’d […]...
32. Springfield Magical In this, the City of my Discontent, Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass, “Romance, Romance – is here. No Hindu town Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate; No picture-palace in a picture-book Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate!” In this, […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. A Ballad of John Nicholson It fell in the year of Mutiny, At darkest of the night, John Nicholson by Jalбndhar came, On his way to Delhi fight. And as he by Jalбndhar came, He thought what he must do, And he sent to the Rajah fair greeting, To try if he were true. “God grant your Highness length of […]...
35. Buckingham Palace They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace – Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Alice is marrying one of the guard. “A soldier’s life is terrible hard,” Says Alice. They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace – Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We saw a guard in a sentry-box. “One of the sergeants looks after their […]...
36. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
37. Wirers ‘Pass it along, the wiring party’s going out’- And yawning sentries mumble, ‘Wirers going out.’ Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud, They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood. The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there, Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts Stride hither and […]...
38. Sumach and Birds IF you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple Shining in the six o’clock September dusk: If the red sumach on the autumn roads Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes: If the red-haws never burst in a million Crimson fingertwists of your heartcrying: If all this beauty of yours never crushed me Then […]...
39. "We're All Australians Now&quot Australia takes her pen in hand To write a line to you, To let you fellows understand How proud we are of you. From shearing shed and cattle run, From Broome to Hobson’s Bay, Each native-born Australian son Stands straighter up today. The man who used to “hump his drum”, On far-out Queensland runs Is […]...
40. Ossawatomie I DON’T know how he came, Shambling, dark, and strong. He stood in the city and told men: My people are fools, my people are young and strong, my people must learn, my people are terrible workers and fighters. Always he kept on asking: Where did that blood come from? They said: You for the […]...