Before The Flood

Related poetry:

1. Flood Goldbrown upon the sated flood The rockvine clusters lift and sway; Vast wings above the lambent waters brood Of sullen day. A waste of waters ruthlessly Sways and uplifts its weedy mane Where brooding day stares down upon the sea In dull disdain. Uplift and sway, O golden vine, Your clustered fruits to love’s full […]...
2. Block City What are you able to build with your blocks? Castles and palaces, temples and docks. Rain may keep raining, and others go roam, But I can be happy and building at home. Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, There I’ll establish a city for me: A kirk and a mill and a […]...
3. The Mother Poem (two) I always wanted to give birth Do that incredible natural thing That women do-I nearly broke down When I heard we couldn’t And then my man said to me Well there’s always adoption (we didn’t have test tubes and the rest Then) and well even in the early sixties there was something Scandalous about adopting […]...
4. The Kitchen Chimney Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear […]...
5. Answers I keep my answers small and keep them near; Big questions bruised my mind but still I let Small answers be a bulwark to my fear. The huge abstractions I keep from the light; Small things I handled and caressed and loved. I let the stars assume the whole of night. But the big answers […]...
6. Immrama I, too, have trailed my father’s spirit From the mud-walled cabin behind the mountain Where he was born and bred, TB and scarletina, The farm where he was first hired out, To Wigan, to Crewe junction, A building-site from which he disappeared And took passage, almost, for Argentina. The mountain is coming down with hazel, […]...
7. Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow) Old man in the crystal morning after snow, Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent Figure building the snow man which is meant For the grandchild’s target, do you know This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal Nears you each time your breath smokes the air, Lewdly grinning out of a private […]...
8. SWISS SONG Up in th’ mountain I was a-sitting, With the bird there As my guest, Blithely singing, Blithely springing, And building His nest. In the garden I was a-standing, And the bee there Saw as well, Buzzing, humming, Going, coming, And building His cell. O’er the meadow I was a-going, And there saw the Butterflies, Sipping, […]...
9. The Flood On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood I’ve seen the winter floods their gambols play Through each old arch that trembled while I stood Bent o’er its wall to watch the dashing spray As their old stations would be washed away Crash came the ice against the jambs and then A shudder jarred the […]...
10. Oh You Are Coming Oh you are coming, coming, coming, How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? But why does it anger my heart to long so For one man out of the world of men? Oh I would live in myself only And build my life lightly and still as a dream Are not my […]...
11. The Flood I thought my true love slept; Behind her chair I crept And pulled out a long pin; The golden flood came out, She shook it all about, With both our faces in. Ah! little wren, I know Your mossy, small nest now A windy, cold place is; No eye can see my face, Howe’er it […]...
12. The Flood Blood has been harder to dam back than water. Just when we think we have it impounded safe Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!), It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter. We choose to say it is let loose by the devil; But power of blood itself releases blood. It goes […]...
13. The Defective Record Cut the bank for the fill. Dump sand Pumped out of the river Into the old swale Killing whatever was There before-including Even the muskrats. Who did it? There’s the guy. Him in the blue shirt and Turquoise skullcap. Level it down For him to build a house On to build a House on to […]...
14. Mr Flood's Party Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night Over the hill between the town below And the forsaken upland hermitage That held as much as he should ever know On earth again of home, paused warily. The road was his with not a native near; And Eben, having leisure, said aloud, For no man else in […]...
15. Noah's Flood (excerpts) Eternal and all-working God, which wast Before the world, whose frame by Thee was cast, And beautified with beamful lamps above, By thy great wisdom set how they should move To guide the seasons, equally to all, Which come and go as they do rise and fall. My mighty Maker, O do thou infuse Such […]...
16. Flood-Tide of Flowers IN HOLLAND The laggard winter ebbed so slow With freezing rain and melting snow, It seemed as if the earth would stay Forever where the tide was low, In sodden green and watery gray. But now from depths beyond our sight, The tide is turning in the night, And floods of color long concealed Come […]...
17. The Truth of Woman Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust – Write the characters in the dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon’s pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean. I have strain’d the spider’s thread ‘Gainst the promise of […]...
18. Sonnet LXVI: The Night-Flood Rakes The night-flood rakes upon the stony shore; Along the rugged cliffs and chalky caves Mourns the hoarse Ocean, seeming to deplore All that are buried in his restless waves- Mined by corrosive tides, the hollow rock Falls prone, and rushing from its turfy height, Shakes the broad beach with long-resounding shock, Loud thundering on the […]...
19. Sonnet XXXII: Our Flood's-Queen Thames Our flood’s-queen Thames for ships and swans is crown’d, And stately Severn for her shore is prais’d, The crystal Trent for fords and fish renown’d, And Avon’s fame to Albion’s cliffs is rais’d; Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee, York many wonders of her Ouse can tell, The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile […]...
20. Canute the Great I’ll tell of Canute, King of England, A native of Denmark was he, His hobbies was roving and raiding And paddling his feet in the sea. By trade he were what’s called a Viking, Every summer he’d visit our shore, Help himself to whatever he wanted, And come back in the autumn for more. These […]...
21. The New Mistress “Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be? You may be good for something, but you are not good for me. Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here. And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear. “I will go where I […]...
22. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
23. Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks Sit together, building blocks; Shuffle-Shoon is old and grey, Amber-Locks a little child, But together at their play Age and Youth are reconciled, And with sympathetic glee Build their castles fair to see. “When I grow to be a man” (So the wee one’s prattle ran), “I shall build a castle so […]...
24. Promises Like Pie-Crust Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know? You, so warm, may once have been Warmer towards […]...
25. I prayed, at first, a little Girl I prayed, at first, a little Girl, Because they told me to But stopped, when qualified to guess How prayer would feel to me If I believed God looked around, Each time my Childish eye Fixed full, and steady, on his own In Childish honesty And told him what I’d like, today, And parts of […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. The School Of Metaphysics Executioner happy to explain How his wristwatch works As he shadows me on the street. I call him that because he is grim and officious And wears black. The clock on the church tower Had stopped at five to eleven. The morning newspapers had no date. The gray building on the corner Could’ve been a […]...
29. First We Take Manhattan They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. I’m guided by a signal in the heavens I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin I’m guided by the beauty of our […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. The Rains The river rises And the rains keep coming. My Papa says It can’t flood for The water can run Away as fast as It comes down. I believe Him because he’s Papa And because I’m afraid Ofwater I know I can’t stop. All day in school I See the windows darken, And hearing the steady […]...
32. Rain and the Robin A ROBIN in the morning, In the morning early, Sang a song of warning, “There’ll be rain, there’ll be rain.” Very, very clearly From the orchard Came the gentle horning, “There’ll be rain.” But the hasty farmer Cut his hay down, Did not heed the charmer From the orchard, And the mower’s clatter Ceased at […]...
33. I Saw From the Beach I saw from the beach, when the morning was shining, A bark o’er the waters move gloriously on; I came when the sun o’er that beach was declining, The bark was still there, but the waters were gone. And such is the fate of our life’s early promise, So passing the spring-tide of joy we […]...
34. A Valentine For Hands names, silence-quietest minutes (building like rain or returning like seas) Since they have touched me, your warm hands have sown Gentlest sounds, touches and hours (or, building like rain, turning, like seas) (building like rain, or returning like seas) Ripples and springs-the shiniest rivers- Since they have known me your warm hands have gathered Smallest, […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes Fasten your hair with a golden pin, And bind up every wandering tress; I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: It worked at them, day out, day in, Building a sorrowful loveliness Out of the battles of old times. You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, And bind up your long hair and sigh; […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
39. The Well At sixteen I believed the moonlight Could change me if it would. I moved my head On the pillow, even moved my bed As the moon slowly Crossed the open lattice. I wanted beauty, a dangerous Gleam of steel, my body thinner, My pale face paler. I moonbathed Diligently, as others sunbathe. But the moon’s […]...
40. A Gardener-Sage Here in the garden-bed, Hoeing the celery, Wonders the Lord has made Pass ever before me. I see the young birds build, And swallows come and go, And summer grow and gild, And winter die in snow. Many a thing I note, And store it in my mind, For all my ragged coat That scarce […]...