Dreaming of Li Po

Related poetry:

1. To Women As Far As I'm Concerned The feelings I don’t have I don’t have. The feeling I don’t have, I won’t say I have. The feelings you say you have, you don’t have. The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have. The feelings people ought to have, they never have. If people say they’ve got […]...
2. The Farewell They say the ice will hold So there I go, Forced to believe them by my act of trusting people, Stepping out on it, And naturally it gaps open And I, forced to carry on coolly By my act of being imperturbable, Slide erectly into the water wearing my captain’s helmet, Waving to the shore […]...
3. Dreaming The Breasts Mother, Strange goddess face Above my milk home, That delicate asylum, I ate you up. All my need took You down like a meal. What you gave I remember in a dream: The freckled arms binding me, The laugh somewhere over my woolly hat, The blood fingers tying my shoe, The breasts hanging like two […]...
4. We dream it is good we are dreaming We dream it is good we are dreaming It would hurt us were we awake But since it is playing kill us, And we are playing shriek What harm? Men die externally It is a truth of Blood But we are dying in Drama And Drama is never dead Cautious We jar each other And […]...
5. Ox Tamer, The IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen: There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them; He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him; He will go, fearless, […]...
6. At the sixty-ninth station (after hiroshige – stations of oi) Here at the sixty-ninth station Of the gregokaido road I have a sense of completion That is not completed yet The long journey to this moment Has many disparate paths Fragments of people within me Have stuttered their broken mantras What a bowl of uneasy pieces Litters the well […]...
7. Prairie Waters by Night CHATTER of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water-sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains. And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music; joined songs of day-end, feathery throats and stony waters, in a choir […]...
8. The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me Snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting You were beautiful; goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain Brown envelopes for the return of your very Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer Of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues Give the fullest treatment in literature yet To the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you […]...
9. The pedigree of Honey The pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee, Nor lineage of Ecstasy Delay the Butterfly On spangle journeys to the peak Of some perceiveless thing The right of way to Tripoli A more essential thing. The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy...
10. Taking Leave of a Friend Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them; Here we must make separation And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass. Mind like a floating wide cloud, Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each […]...
11. Wars IN the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet. In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires. In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not Yet dreamed out in the heads of men. In the old wars clutches of short swords and […]...
12. Towards Break Of Day Was it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: “There is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side That all my childhood counted dear; Were I to travel far and wide I could not find a […]...
13. The Big Heart “Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.” – From an essay by W. B. Yeats Big heart, Wide as a watermelon, But wise as birth, There is so much abundance In the people I have: Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, Joan, Marie, Dawn, Arlene, Father Dunne, And all in their short […]...
14. Epitaph For A Romantic Woman She has attained the permanence She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning. Untended stalks blow over her Even and swift, like young men running. Always in the heart she loved Others had lived, she heard their laughter. She lies where none has lain before, Where certainly none will follow after....
15. RHYMED DISTICHS RHYMED DISTICHS. [The Distichs, of which these are given as a Specimen, are about forty in number.] WHO trusts in God, Fears not His rod. THIS truth may be by all believed: Whom God deceives, is well deceived. HOW? when? and where? No answer comes from high; Thou wait’st for the Because, and yet thou […]...
16. Gentle Gaoler Being a gaoler I’m supposed To be a hard-boiled guy; Yet never prison walls enclosed A kinder soul than I: Passing my charges precious pills To end their ills. And if in gentle sleep they die, And pass to pleasant peace, No one suspects that it is I Who gave them their release: No matter […]...
17. In Harbour I. Goodnight and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us As mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by; To the waters of gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us Goodnight and goodbye. A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh; But were we not fools and blind, by […]...
18. Cherry bomb I said goodbye and went to bed to die; I never knew that they had lied – was quite Surprised they didn’t seem to care, I agonised, Refused to cry although in time the tears Were quietly shed. When I awoke and found My sight, listened to the sound of night’s Retreat, got to my […]...
19. Love's Coming She had looked for his coming as warriors come, With the clash of arms and the bugle’s call; But he came instead with a stealthy tread, Which she did not hear at all. She had thought how his armor would blaze in the sun, As he rode like a prince to claim his bride: In […]...
20. Farewell Farewell to thee! but not farewell To all my fondest thoughts of thee: Within my heart they still shall dwell; And they shall cheer and comfort me. O, beautiful, and full of grace! If thou hadst never met mine eye, I had not dreamed a living face Could fancied charms so far outvie. If I […]...
21. Closed Gentian Distances A nothing day full of Wild beauty and the Timer pings. Roll up The silver off the bay Take down the clouds Sort the spruce and Send to laundry marked, More starch. Goodbye Golden – and silver- Rod, asters, bayberry Crisp in elegance. Little fish stream By, a river in water....
22. The Netherlands (fragment) Water and windmills, greenness, Islets green; Willows whose Trunks beside the shadows stood Of their own higher half, and willowy swamp: Farmhouses that at anchor seem’d in the inland sky The fog-transfixing Spires Water, wide water, greenness and green banks, And water seen...
23. To Robert Batty, M. D., on His Giving Me a Lock of Milton's Hair It lies before me there, and my own breath Stirs its thin outer threads, as though beside The living head I stood in honoured pride, Talking of lovely things that conquer death. Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneath Ran his fine fingers when he leant, blank-eyed, And saw in fancy Adam and his bride […]...
24. Hymn 76 Christ dwells in heaven, but visits on earth. SS 6:1-3,12. When strangers stand and hear me tell What beauties in my Savior dwell, Where he is gone they fain would know, That they may seek and love him too. My best Beloved keeps his throne On hills of light, in worlds unknown; But he descends […]...
25. We are the time. We are the famous We are the time. We are the famous Metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure. We are the water, not the hard diamond, The one that is lost, not the one that stands still. We are the river and we are that greek That looks himself into the river. His reflection Changes into the waters of the […]...
26. They Know Not My Heart They know not my heart, who believe there can be One stain of this earth in its feelings for thee; Who think, while I see thee in beauty’s young hour, As pure as the morning’s first dew on the flower, I could harm what I love, as the sun’s wanton ray But smiles on the […]...
27. Coda There’s little in taking or giving, There’s little in water or wine; This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work […]...
28. Harlan Sewall You never understood, O unknown one, Why it was I repaid Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations First with diminished thanks, Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, So that I might not be compelled to thank you, And then with silence which followed upon Our final Separation. You had cured my diseased soul. […]...
29. Turns And Movies: The Cornet When she came out, that white little Russian dancer, With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young, He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players, And only heard an immortal music sung,- Of dryads flashing in the green woods of April, On cobwebs trembing over the deep, wet grass: Fleeing their […]...
30. The River In my first sleep I came to the river And looked down Through the clear water – Only in dream Water so pure, Laced and undulant Lines of flow On its rocky bed Water of life Streaming for ever. A house was there Beside the river And I, arrived, An expected guest About to explore […]...
31. Adam Cast Forth Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream? Amid the fleeting light, I have slowed myself and queried, Almost for consolation, if the bygone period Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme, Might not have been just a magical illusion Of that God I dreamed. Already it’s imprecise In my memory, […]...
32. Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new, In city and in forest they smiled like me and you, But now it’s come to distances and both of us must […]...
33. Lord, what a Beloved is mine! Lord, what a Beloved is mine! I have a sweet quarry; I possess In my breast a hundred meadows from his reed. When in anger the messenger comes and repairs towards me, He says, “Whither are you fleeing? I have business with you.” Last night I asked the new moon concerning my Moon. The Moon […]...
34. The Bather Where the path to the lake twists out of sight, A puff of dust, the kind bare feet make running, Is what I saw in the dying light, Night swooping down everywhere else. A low branch heavy with leaves Swaying momentarily where the shade Lay thickest, some late bather Disrobing right there for a quick […]...
35. At Dawn In the night I dreamed of you; All the place was filled With your presence; in my heart The strife was stilled. All night I have dreamed of you; Now the morn is grey. How shall I arise and face The empty day?...
36. On a Portrait of a Deaf Man The kind old face, the egg-shaped head, The tie, discreetly loud, The loosely fitting shooting clothes, A closely fitting shroud. He liked old city dining rooms, Potatoes in their skin, But now his mouth is wide to let The London clay come in. He took me on long silent walks In country lanes when young. […]...
37. False Notions, Fears, And Other Things Of Wood Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me Bears up like stone, Beneath some ritual I see: The blinding axe Swings up, holds, That moment of its weightlessness Inscrutable Till I confirm the arm is mine; I will it, grip, Feel moist the swelling handle, The shudder rude, The difference fallen. Toward that chopping block I carry […]...
38. Long Guns THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking […]...
39. Deeply Morbid Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters Always out of office hours running with her social betters But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her It was that look within her eye Why […]...
40. A Following the phone rang at 1:30 a. m. and it was a man from Denver: “Chinaski, you got a following in Denver…” “yeah?” “yeah, I got a magazine and I want some poems from you…” “FUCK YOU, CHINASKI!” I heard a voice in the background… “I see you have a friend,” I said. “yeah,” he answered, […]...