Far Within Us #5

Related poetry:

1. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
2. The Visionary If fortune had not granted me To suck the Muse’s teats, I think I would have liked to be A sweeper of the streets; And city gutters glad to groom, Have heft a bonny broom. There as amid the crass and crush The limousines swished by, I would have leaned upon my brush With visionary […]...
3. It sounded as if the Streets were running It sounded as if the Streets were running And then the Streets stood still Eclipse was all we could see at the Window And Awe was all we could feel. By and by the boldest stole out of his Covert To see if Time was there Nature was in an Opal Apron, Mixing fresher Air....
4. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
5. 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, […]...
6. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
7. Carbonara eyes Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has the most expressive eyes. So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard My lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws On […]...
8. Prospect NSW (For Anita Cobby) The hushed dark hugs the streets. Somewhere a cat snaps the silence. Dogs begin to bark, like a pack moving in for the kill. Women shrink in their homes. Shadows slip through the night and stars dim their lights as cars flash past. When they disappear, silence, heavy as hate, descends. Hours stretch like elastic […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
11. Sardis (Revelations, iii. 1-6) “Write to Sardis,” saith the Lord, “And write what He declares, He whose Spirit, and whose word, Upholds the seven stars: All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay’d; Thou art call’d a living church, But thou art cold and dead. “Watch, remember, seek, and strive, Exert […]...
12. A Mile With Me O who will walk a mile with me Along life’s merry way? A comrade blithe and full of glee, Who dares to laugh out loud and free, And let his frolic fancy play, Like a happy child, through the flowers gay That fill the field and fringe the way Where he walks a mile with […]...
13. To Belloc For every tiny town or place God made the stars especially; Babies look up with owlish face And see them tangled in a tree; You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, A Sussex moon, untravelled still, I saw a moon that was the town’s, The largest lamp on Campden Hill. Yea; Heaven is everywhere at […]...
14. Summer Nights Lamoni, Iowa The factory siren tells workers time to go home Tells them the evening has begun. When living with the tall man Whom I didn’t love, I would wander The streets, dreaming of Italy. Trekking the handful of avenues With him, he would say look there Between pink cobblestones, There’s manure like mortar. The […]...
15. France, the 18th year of These States 1 A GREAT year and place; A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer than any yet. I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling […]...
16. If Hands Could Free You, Heart If hands could free you, heart, Where would you fly? Far, beyond every part Of earth this running sky Makes desolate? Would you cross City and hill and sea, If hands could set you free? I would not lift the latch; For I could run Through fields, pit-valleys, catch All beauty under the sun Still […]...
17. Hatteras Calling Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane Shivers and moans upon its dripping pin, Ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain Howls at the flues and windows to get in, The golden rooster claps his golden wings And from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more, The golden arrow in the southeast sings And hears on […]...
18. Does your semen smell like camembert? Does your semen smell like camembert? It’s just A thought I had today at lunch, I must have had The hunch before, perhaps reversed, and then Forgot. It’s not the sort of thought you’d have a lot Unless you make a sport of masturbation. Or Ejaculation in the air. So where did it occur? I […]...
19. The King's Breakfast The King’s Breakfast The King asked The Queen, and The Queen asked The Dairymaid: “Could we have some butter for The Royal slice of bread?” The Queen asked the Dairymaid, The Dairymaid Said, “Certainly, I’ll go and tell the cow Now Before she goes to bed.” The Dairymaid She curtsied, And went and told The […]...
20. Long highway blues highway dancing During a long day Of running My thumb, Carrying me nowhere Grew tired, A sunset and beauty Carved the sky Her eyes and hair A tattoo upon my soul Wouldn’t let go I had nowhere to run And so, Highway dancing And nowhere To call home. Walking the long black road Alone Believing […]...
21. THE DREAMER, THE SLEEP L’orage qui s’attarde, le lit dйfait Yves Bonnefoy Here am I, lying lacklustre in an unmade bed A Sunday in December while all Leeds lies in around me In the silent streets, frost on roof slates, gas fires And kettles whistle as I read Bonnefoy on the eternal. Too tired to fantasize, unsummoned images float […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. Evening water for dance Shadows last. Walk the paris streets, Slow. Sweet rain, All their eyes linger Within my soul, Evening. – jude...
24. 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 […]...
25. Roger Heston Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I Argue about the freedom of the will. My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow Roped out to grass, and free you know as far As the length of the rope. One day while arguing so, watching the cow Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle Which […]...
26. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
27. In Memory Of My Mother I do not think of you lying in the wet clay Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see You walking down a lane among the poplars On your way to the station, or happily Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday You meet me and you say: ‘Don’t forget to see about the cattle ‘ […]...
28. Paper Boats Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running Stream. In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of The village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and Know who I am. I load my little boats […]...
29. On Rabbi Kook's Street On Rabbi Kook’s Street I walk without this good man A streiml he wore for prayer A silk top hat he wore to govern, Fly in the wind of the dead Above me, float on the water Of my dreams. I come to the Street of Prophets there are none. And the Street of Ethiopians […]...
30. Dream Song 12: Sabbath There is an eye, there was a slit. Nights walk, and confer on him fear. The strangler tree, the dancing mouse Confound his vision; then they loosen it. Henry widens. How did Henry House Himself ever come here? Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent When loth at landfall soft I leave. The soldiers, Coleridge […]...
31. Flat Lands FLAT lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions, The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat lands-blood and fire of sunsets thousands of years have been pouring over you. And the stars follow the sunsets. One gold star. A shower of blue […]...
32. The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me It was the first gift he ever gave her, Buying it for five five francs in the Galeries In pre-war Paris. It was stifling. A starless drought made the nights stormy. They stayed in the city for the summer. The met in cafes. She was always early. He was late. That evening he was later. […]...
33. Letter Home New Orleans, November 1910 Four weeks have passed since I left, and still I must write to you of no work. I’ve worn down The soles and walked through the tightness Of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, Their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking My plain English and good writing would […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. Twice Shy Her scarf a la Bardot, In suede flats for the walk, She came with me one evening For air and friendly talk. We crossed the quiet river, Took the embankment walk. Traffic holding its breath, Sky a tense diaphragm: Dusk hung like a backcloth That shook where a swan swam, Tremulous as a hawk Hanging […]...
36. New York at Night A near horizon whose sharp jags Cut brutally into a sky Of leaden heaviness, and crags Of houses lift their masonry Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie And snort, outlined against the gray Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh The goaded city gives, not day Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours […]...
37. Wild Nights Wild Nights! Wild Nights Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Our luxury! Futile the Winds To a Heart in port Done with the Compass Done with the Chart! Rowing in Eden Ah, the Sea! Might I but moor Tonight In Thee!...
38. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
39. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
40. The Cinnamon Peeler If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed And leave the yellow bark dust On your pillow. Your breasts and shoulders would reek You could never walk through markets Without the profession of my fingers Floating over you. The blind would Stumble certain of whom they approached Though you might bathe Under […]...