The Dead Man Walking

Related poetry:

1. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
2. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
3. Walking the Dog Two universes mosey down the street Connected by love and a leash and nothing else. Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves While he mooches along with tail up and snout down, Getting a secret knowledge through the nose Almost entirely hidden from my sight. We stand while he’s enraptured by a bush Till […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. The Anxious Dead O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear Above their heads the legions pressing on: (These fought their fight in time of bitter fear, And died not knowing how the day had gone.) O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar; Then let your mighty chorus […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. Dead thoughts of corpses The symbols that we use are T shirts of the dead Thoughts of corpses without heads, a rictus Without sound – open-mouthed, empty, unbound. And if you ever write those clichés which incite My approbation, fuck you, I am not amused. And if I ever do, then fuck me too. I battle with the icons […]...
9. Walking Around It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses Dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt Steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want […]...
10. The Truth the Dead Know For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 And my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, Refusing the stiff procession to the grave, Letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I […]...
11. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 06: Portrait Of One Dead This is the house. On one side there is darkness, On one side there is light. Into the darkness you may lift your lanterns- O, any number-it will still be night. And here are echoing stairs to lead you downward To long sonorous halls. And here is spring forever at these windows, With roses on […]...
12. 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...
13. To The Memory Of Mr Oldham Farewell, too little and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own; For sure our souls were near allied, and thine Cast in the same poetic mould with mine. One common note on either lyre did strike, And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike. To the same goal did both […]...
14. A Greeting Good morning, Life and all Things glad and beautiful. My pockets nothing hold, But he that owns the gold, The Sun, is my great friend His spending has no end. Hail to the morning sky, Which bright clouds measure high; Hail to you birds whose throats Would number leaves by notes; Hail to you shady […]...
15. A Dead Friend I. Gone, O gentle heart and true, Friend of hopes foregone, Hopes and hopeful days with you Gone? Days of old that shone Saw what none shall see anew, When we gazed thereon. Soul as clear as sunlit dew, Why so soon pass on, Forth from all we loved and knew Gone? II. Friend of […]...
16. Dead man's clothes Growing up, I propose, Is like wearing a dead man’s clothes. Death has a way of levelling the ground. I have found the closer your relationship The closer the fit; The unsettling bit is the fear Of not fitting the role, or where Your forbear made a name or leashed A reputation, which by imputation […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. The Dead King (EDWARD VII.) 1910 Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear? And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run? Let him approach. It is proven here Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself, has done. […]...
19. The Dead Village Here there is death. But even here, they say, Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon As desolate as ever the dead moon Did glimmer on dead Sardis, men were gay; And there were little children here to play, With small soft hands that once did keep in tune The strings that stretch from […]...
20. To His Dead Body When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried, Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died, Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled. Yet, though my dreams that throng the darkened stair Can bring me no report of how you fare, Safe quit of wars, I […]...
21. Love's Deity I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost, Who died before the God of Love was born: I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produced a destiny, And that vice-nature, Custom, lets it be, I must love her […]...
22. Elegy: Walking the Line Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line, The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum Superb above the cabin, along the wall- Stones gathered from the level field nearby When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.) And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous […]...
23. When You See Millions Of The Mouthless Dead When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you’ll remember. For you need not so. Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? Nor tears. Their blind […]...
24. A Wasted Illness Through vaults of pain, Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness, I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain To dire distress. And hammerings, And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent With webby waxing things and waning things As on I went. “Where lies the end To this foul way?” I asked with weakening […]...
25. The Dead-Beat He dropped, more sullenly than wearily, Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat, And none of us could kick him to his feet; Just blinked at my revolver, blearily; Didn’t appear to know a war was on, Or see the blasted trench at which he stared. “I’ll do ’em in,” he whined, “If this […]...
26. Looking, Walking, Being “The World is not something to Look at, it is something to be in.” Mark Rudman I look and look. Looking’s a way of being: one becomes, Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes Dig and burrow into the world. They touch Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the […]...
27. If anybody's friend be dead If anybody’s friend be dead It’s sharpest of the theme The thinking how they walked alive At such and such a time Their costume, of a Sunday, Some manner of the Hair A prank nobody knew but them Lost, in the Sepulchre How warm, they were, on such a day, You almost feel the date […]...
28. Just Walking Around What name do I have for you? Certainly there is not name for you In the sense that the stars have names That somehow fit them. Just walking around, An object of curiosity to some, But you are too preoccupied By the secret smudge in the back of your soul To say much and wander […]...
29. In A Museum I Here’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There’s a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges with me still in its sweet singing. II Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but […]...
30. My Dead Dream HAVE YOU found me, at last, O my Dream? Seven eons ago You died and I buried you deep under forests of snow. Why have you come hither? Who bade you awake from your sleep And track me beyond the cerulean foam of the deep? Would you tear from my lintels these sacred green garlands […]...
31. Walking in the sky Walking in the sky, A man in strange black garb Encountered a radiant form. Then his steps were eager; Bowed he devoutly. “My Lord,” said he. But the spirit knew him not....
32. Walking With God (Genesis, v.24) Oh! for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame; A light to shine upon the road That leads me to the Lamb! Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refershing view Of Jesus and his word? What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! […]...
33. Yes, the Dead Speak to Us YES, the Dead speak to us. This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness. Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the […]...
34. Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swooned, nor uttered cry: All her maidens, watching, said, ‘She must weep or she will die.’ Then they praised him, soft and low, Called him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly […]...
35. In the footsteps of the walking air In the footsteps of the walking air Sky’s prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying. Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss And a single drop of dark blood covers the earth. Now is the China of the spirit at walking In […]...
36. Walking Across The Atlantic I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach Before stepping onto the first wave. Soon I am walking across the Atlantic Thinking about Spain, Checking for whales, waterspouts. I feel the water holding up my shifting weight. Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface. But for now I try to imagine what […]...
37. The Walking Man of Rodin LEGS hold a torso away from the earth. And a regular high poem of legs is here. Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors. You make us […]...
38. Walking The Marshland It was no place for the faithless, So I felt a little odd Walking the marshland with my daughters, Canada geese all around and the blue Herons just standing there; Safe, and the abundance of swans. The girls liked saying the words, Gosling, Egret, whooping crane, and they liked When I agreed. The casinos were […]...
39. WALKING WITH ANGELS for Lindsay AIDS Knows the condom wrapped penetration Of strangers and lovers, deep inside Only a tear away from risk Knows bare minimum t-cell level counts, Replacing intoxicating cocktails With jagged little pills Knows how to avoid a cure thanks to war How to keep pharmaceutical corporations And doctors in business AIDS Knows the weight […]...
40. THE WALKING BELL A CHILD refused to go betimes To church like other people; He roam’d abroad, when rang the chimes On Sundays from the steeple. His mother said: “Loud rings the bell, Its voice ne’er think of scorning; Unless thou wilt behave thee well, ‘Twill fetch thee without warning.” The child then thought: “High over head The […]...