Far Within Us #2

Related poetry:

1. Talisman it is written The act of writing is Holy words are Sacred and your breath Brings out the God in them I write these words Quickly repeat them Softly to myself This talisman for you Fold this prayer Around your neck fortify Your back with these Whispers May you walk ever Loved and in love […]...
2. Sonnet XIII: Letters and Lines To the Shadow Letters and lines we see are soon defac’d, Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust, The diamond shall once consume to dust, And freshest colors with foul stains disgrac’d; Paper and ink can paint but naked words, To write with blood of force offends the sight; And if with tears I […]...
3. An excerpt from "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus&quot iiGloria Praise the wet snow Falling early. Praise the shadow My neighor’s chimney casts on the tile roof Even this gray October day that should, they say, Have been golden. Praise The invisible sun burning beyond The white cold sky, giving us Light and the chimney’s shadow. Praise God or the gods, the unknown, That […]...
4. HIS POETRY HIS PILLAR Only a little more I have to write: Then I’ll give o’er, And bid the world good-night. ‘Tis but a flying minute, That I must stay, Or linger in it: And then I must away. O Time, that cut’st down all, And scarce leav’st here Memorial Of any men that were; How many lie forgot […]...
5. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
6. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
7. Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market Among the market greens, A bullet From the ocean Depths, A swimming Projectile, I saw you, Dead. All around you Were lettuces, Sea foam Of the earth, Carrots, Grapes, But Of the ocean Truth, Of the unknown, Of the Unfathomable Shadow, the Depths Of the sea, The abyss, Only you had survived, A pitch-black, varnished […]...
8. Time to play It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen Where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way As words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent Sounds in my head translate into sentence structures, As lips articulate the rhythms and the sounds of the Jumbled lexis as swiftly as I can […]...
9. Again And Again, However We Know The Landscape Of Love Again and again, however we know the landscape of love And the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, And the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others Fall: again and again the two of us walk out together Under the ancient trees, lie down again and again Among the flowers, face to face with […]...
10. The Things that never can come back, are several The Things that never can come back, are several Childhood some forms of Hope the Dead Though Joys like Men may sometimes make a Journey And still abide We do not mourn for Traveler, or Sailor, Their Routes are fair But think enlarged of all that they will tell us Returning here “Here!” There are […]...
11. June 19 What is it about the Abyss That tempts the young poet to kiss The air and head for the nearest cliff? This Unreasonable attachment to the bliss Of falling what accounts for it? Unlike the hiss Announcing a reptilian presence, the word Abyss Creates the object of our dread: it exists, it is, Widening like […]...
12. Said The Poet To The Analyst My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget who one words is able […]...
13. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 22. The path by which we twain did go The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow: And we with singing cheer’d the way, And, crown’d with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart […]...
14. Epilogue Those blessиd structures, plot and rhyme Why are they no help to me now I want to make Something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter’s vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write With the threadbare art of my eye […]...
15. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. I can't tell you but you feel it I can’t tell you but you feel it Nor can you tell me Saints, with ravished slate and pencil Solve our April Day! Sweeter than a vanished frolic From a vanished green! Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen Round a Ledge of dream! Modest, let us walk among it With our faces veiled As they […]...
18. On Seeing The Elgin Marbles For The First Time My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening […]...
19. The butterfly and the rose i walk the dream Where the street Breathes in the shadow Of moon-light, The lovers night. Oh, sweet love Long time coming Longer time whispering Us free. I sing your eyes As willows Stretching into The ever passing winds I speak the words of my heart I sing the songs of my dreams I see […]...
20. Old Memory O thought, fly to her when the end of day Awakens an old memory, and say, ‘Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind, It might call up a new age, calling to mind The queens that were imagined long ago, Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough Through the long […]...
21. Inner Man It isn’t the body That’s a stranger. It’s someone else. We poke the same Ugly mug At the world. When I scratch He scratches too. There are women Who claim to have held him. A dog Follows me about. It might be his. If I’m quiet, he’s quieter. So I forget him. Yet, as I […]...
22. In the shadow of a broken house In the shadow of a broken house, Down a deserted street, Propt walls, cold hearths, and phantom stairs, And the silence of dead feet – Locked wildly in one another’s arms I saw two lovers meet. And over that hearthless house aghast Rose from the mind’s abyss Lost stars and ruined, peering moons, Worlds overshadowing […]...
23. Aftermath I learnt to write to you in happier days, And every letter was a piece I chipped From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays, Its throbbing reds, I gave to earn your praise. To make a pavement for your feet I stripped My soul for […]...
24. Autumn Day Four Translations Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials And let loose the wind in the fields. Bid the last fruits to be full; Give them another two more southerly days, Press them to ripeness, and chase The last sweetness into the heavy wine. Whoever has no house […]...
25. Silent Mark another day is here and my hands are still covered With a mantle of stoic ink Words scribbled on a hesitant paper Wishing to be read now not later. I want you to see this point-like light from an abyss Growing tongues tasting the wind Feel like the knife scraping soft butter And see that […]...
26. Ode To Pornography If you could write down the words Moving through a man’s mind as He masturbates you’d have a quick Bonus bonk read, I used to think. But words were never adequate Or the point in the bar where the girl Is a boy the boy is a girl the two girls Exchange underpants the one […]...
27. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
28. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
29. A Song of the Road O I will walk with you, my lad, whichever way you fare, You’ll have me, too, the side o’ you, with heart as light as air; No care for where the road you take’s a-leadin’ anywhere, It can but be a joyful ja’nt whilst you journey there. The road you take’s the path o’ love, […]...
30. Far Within Us #3 Unquiet you walk Along the rims of my eyes On the invisible grating Before your lips My naked words shiver We steal moments From the unheeding iron saws Your hands sadly Flow into mine The air is impassable...
31. Sonnet LXXXV My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts whilst other write good words, And like unletter’d clerk still cry ‘Amen’ To every hymn that able spirit affords In polish’d form […]...
32. Sonnet 85: My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill, And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words, And like unlettered clerk still cry “Amen” To every hymn that able spirit affords In polished form […]...
33. Give Me Back My Rags #4 Get out of my walled infinity Of the star circle round my heart Of my mouthful of sun Get out of the comic sea of my blood Of my flow of my ebb Get out of my stranded silence Get out I said get out Get out of my living abyss Of the bare father-tree […]...
34. Eldorado Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old This knight so bold And o’er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. And, as his strength Failed him at length, He […]...
35. I Know, You Walk I walk so often, late, along the streets, Lower my gaze, and hurry, full of dread, Suddenly, silently, you still might rise And I would have to gaze on all your grief With my own eyes, While you demand your happiness, that’s dead. I know, you walk beyond me, every night, With a coy footfall, […]...
36. Sheep Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep One by one going up the hill and over the fence one by One four-footed pattering up and over one by one wiggling Their stub tails as they take the short jump and go Over one by one silently unless for the multitudinous Drumming of their hoofs as they […]...
37. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
38. And do you think that love itself And do you think that love itself, Living in such an ugly house, Can prosper long? We meet and part; Our talk is all of heres and nows, Our conduct likewise; in no act Is any future, any past; Under our sly, unspoken pact, I KNOW with whom I saw you last, But I say […]...
39. Anna Who Was Mad Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say […]...
40. Sonnet XLII: Some Men There Be Some men there be which like my method well And much commend the strangeness of my vein; Some say I have a passing pleasing strain; Some say that im my humor I excel; Some, who not kindly relish my conceit, They say, as poets do, I use to feign, And in bare words paint out […]...