Far Within Us #6

Related poetry:

1. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
2. Tangibles (Washington, August, 1918)I HAVE seen this city in the day and the sun. I have seen this city in the night and the moon. And in the night and the moon I have seen a thing this city gave me nothing of in the day and the sun. The float of the dome in the […]...
3. Souls And Rain-Drops Light rain-drops fall and wrinkle the sea, Then vanish, and die utterly. One would not know that rain-drops fell If the round sea-wrinkles did not tell. So souls come down and wrinkle life And vanish in the flesh-sea strife. One might not know that souls had place Were’t not for the wrinkles in life’s face....
4. Sunrise on the Coast Grey dawn on the sand-hills the night wind has drifted All night from the rollers a scent of the sea; With the dawn the grey fog his battalions has lifted, At the call of the morning they scatter and flee. Like mariners calling the roll of their number The sea-fowl put out to the infinite […]...
5. Fill the Bumper Fair Fill the bumper fair! Every drop we sprinkle O’er the brow of Care Smooths away a wrinkle. Wit’s electric flame Ne’er so swiftly passes, As when through the frame It shoots from brimming glasses. Fill the bumper fair! Every drop we sprinkle O’er the brow of Care Smooths away a wrinkle. Sages can, they say, […]...
6. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
7. After Auschwitz Anger, As black as a hook, Overtakes me. Each day, Each Nazi Took, at 8:00 A. M., a baby And sauteed him for breakfast In his frying pan. And death looks on with a casual eye And picks at the dirt under his fingernail. Man is evil, I say aloud. Man is a flower That […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. The Garden Wall Bricks of the wall, So much older than the house – Taken I think from a farm pulled down When the street was built – Narrow bricks of another century. Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, A wall behind the flowers – Roses and hollyhocks, the silver Pods of lupine, sweet-tasting Phlox, gray Lavender […]...
10. Winter Remembered Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing. Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks, And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter, I glowed like them, the […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Looking-Glass River Smooth it glides upon its travel, Here a wimple, there a gleam O the clean gravel! O the smooth stream! Sailing blossoms, silver fishes, Pave pools as clear as air How a child wishes To live down there! We can see our colored faces Floating on the shaken pool Down in cool places, Dim and […]...
13. This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn This is a poem I wrote before I died and was reborn: – After the years of the apples ripening and the eagles soaring, After the festival here the small flowers gleamed like the first stars, And the horses cantered and romped away like the experience of skill; mastered and serene Power, grasped and governed […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. Variations on ‘The short night Below are eleven Buson haiku Beginning with the phrase ‘The short night ‘ The short night On the hairy caterpillar Beads of dew. The short night Patrolmen Washing in the river. The short night Bubbles of crab froth Among the river reeds. The short night A broom thrown away On the beach. The short night […]...
16. A Shropshire Lad The gas was on in the Institute, The flare was up in the gym, A man was running a mineral line, A lass was singing a hymn, When Captain Webb the Dawley man, Captain Webb from Dawley, Came swimming along the old canal That carried the bricks to Lawley. Swimming along – Swimming along – […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
19. Too cold is this Too cold is this To warm with Sun Too stiff to bended be, To joint this Agate were a work Outstaring Masonry How went the Agile Kernel out Contusion of the Husk Nor Rip, nor wrinkle indicate But just an Asterisk....
20. My Book Before I drink myself to death, God, let me finish up my Book! At night, I fear, I fight for breath, And wake up whiter than a spook; And crawl off to a bistro near, And drink until my brain is clear. Rare Absinthe! Oh, it gives me strength To write and write; and so […]...
21. Sorrow Why does the thin grey strand Floating up from the forgotten Cigarette between my fingers, Why does it trouble me? Ah, you will understand; When I carried my mother downstairs, A few times only, at the beginning Of her soft-foot malady, I should find, for a reprimand To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs […]...
22. Aladdin and the Jinn “Bring me soft song,” said Aladdin. “This tailor-shop sings not at all. Chant me a word of the twilight, Of roses that mourn in the fall. Bring me a song like hashish That will comfort the stale and the sad, For I would be mending my spirit, Forgetting these days that are bad, Forgetting companions […]...
23. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
24. Statue of a Couple Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold. The purest light of the celestial dome Has burned me through. And now we are As two still plams lying in darlmess, As two black banks of a frozen stream In the chasm of the world. Our hair combed back is carved in wood, The moon walks […]...
25. Smoke Rose Gold THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river. Out of haze over the sunset, Out of a smoke rose gold: One star shines over the sunset. Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold, The haze changes from sunset to star. The pour of a thin silver […]...
26. Fanciful creators What fanciful creators we are: Bestowing shock absorbers on cars Sprinkling tenderizer on meats And stitching wrinkle-resistant shirts Such wishful thinking, this Gifting what we desire....
27. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
28. Like Time's insidious wrinkle Like Time’s insidious wrinkle On a beloved Face We clutch the Grace the tighter Though we resent the crease The Frost himself so comely Dishevels every prime Asserting from his Prism That none can punish him...
29. Summer has two Beginnings Summer has two Beginnings Beginning once in June Beginning in October Affectingly again Without, perhaps, the Riot But graphicker for Grace As finer is a going Than a remaining Face Departing then forever Forever until May Forever is deciduous Except to those who die...
30. 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 […]...
31. 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...
32. Houses (For Aline) When you shall die and to the sky Serenely, delicately go, Saint Peter, when he sees you there, Will clash his keys and say: “Now talk to her, Sir Christopher! And hurry, Michelangelo! She wants to play at building, And you’ve got to help her play!” Every architect will help erect A palace […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
36. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
37. Byzantium The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than […]...
38. Silver Filigree The icicles wreathing On trees in festoon Swing, swayed to our breathing: They’re made of the moon. She’s a pale, waxen taper; And these seem to drip Transparent as paper From the flame of her tip. Molten, smoking a little, Into crystal they pass; Falling, freezing, to brittle And delicate glass. Each a sharp-pointed flower, […]...
39. 420. Lines of John M'Murdo, Esq BLEST be M’Murdo to his latest day! No envious cloud o’ercast his evening ray; No wrinkle, furrow’d by the hand of care, Nor ever sorrow add one silver hair! O may no son the father’s honour stain, Nor ever daughter give the mother pain!...
40. The Death King I hired a carpenter To build my coffin And last night I lay in it, Braced by a pillow, Sniffing the wood, Letting the old king Breathe on me, Thinking of my poor murdered body, Murdered by time, Waiting to turn stiff as a field marshal, Letting the silence dishonor me, Remembering that I’ll never […]...