December Night

Related poetry:

1. December 30 At 1:30 in the morning a fart Smells like a marriage between An avocado and a fish head. I have to get out of bed To write this down without My glasses on....
2. Not yet 40, my beard is already white Not yet 40, my beard is already white. Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red, Like a child who has cried too much. What is more disagreeable Than last night’s wine? I’ll shave. I’ll stick my head in the cold spring and Look around at the pebbles. Maybe I can eat a can […]...
3. Moonlit Night Tonight at Fu-chou, this moon she watches Alone in our room. And my little, far-off Children, too young to understand what keeps me Away, or even remember Chang’an. By now, Her hair will be mist-scented, her jade-white Arms chilled in its clear light. When Will it find us together again, drapes drawn Open, light traced […]...
4. On The Night Train Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice calling – yet so warm, and yet so cold: “I’m the Mother-Bush […]...
5. Spring Night in Lo-yang Hearing a Flute In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting, Scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-yang? Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song, Who could help but long for the gardens of home?...
6. A Calendar of Sonnets: December The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes Of water ‘neath the summer sunshine gleamed: Far fairer than when placidly it streamed, The brook its frozen architecture makes, And under bridges white its swift way takes. Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed Might linger on the road; or one who deemed His […]...
7. Thinking Of A Friend At Night In this evil year, autumn comes early… I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters, The wind on my hat…And you? And you, my friend? You are standing maybe and seeing the sickle moon Move in a small arc over the forests And bivouac fire, red in the black valley. You are […]...
8. Night Poem There is nothing to be afraid of, It is only the wind Changing to the east, it is only Your father the thunder Your mother the rain In this country of water With its beige moon damp as a mushroom, Its drowned stumps and long birds That swim, where the moss grows On all sides […]...
9. Rainy Night Ghosts of all my lovely sins, Who attend too well my pillow, Gay the wanton rain begins; Hide the limp and tearful willow. Turn aside your eyes and ears, Trail away your robes of sorrow, You shall have my further years- You shall walk with me tomorrow. I am sister to the rain; Fey and […]...
10. Awake, My Heart Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake! The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break, It leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake The o’ertaken moon. Awake, O heart, awake! She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee: Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee, Already they watch the path thy […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
15. Any Night Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine, The yellowing ash, all the trees Are gone, and I was older than All of them. I am older than the moon, Than the stars that fill my plate, Than the unseen planets that huddle Together here at the end of a year No one wanted. A year more […]...
16. Vienna, December 1999 I watched The winter light die from the bridge, The sky a sinking empire’s battleship, Ice floes’ jagged edges Clink their cold toast To a stilled Danube. Johann Strauss Would have committed Himself to Wagnerian depression On a night just like this; Streetlights sputter Matchstick desperation Relinquishing desperate light, Shadow-glaciers crawl The alleys in deafness: […]...
17. The Woods At Night The binocular owl, Fastened to a limb Like a lantern All night long, Sees where all The other birds sleep: Towhee under leaves, Titmouse deep In a twighouse, Sapsucker gripped To a knothole lip, Redwing in the reeds, Swallow in the willow, Flicker in the oak – But cannot see poor Whippoorwill Under the hill […]...
18. MID-DECEMBER A full moon shines Over the morning frost; The lanes are full of late-fallen leaves; Walking across the mulch Is almost as tricky As treading over ice. In town the carol-singers are in Crowding the shopping-mall, While a group of muffled musicians Play by the outside market. This year but two robins On the early […]...
19. Night's sentinel Even tonight will pass into memory’s oblivion, Doomed, despite an ardent reunion Of once estranged yet precisely matched parts, To a guiltless verdict – a foregone conclusion. As you dissolve twice-blessed In a kaleidoscope of dreams, Claimed by the deep, curdling sands And sink, absorbed in sated self-suffusion, I sense hard-edged awareness balefully prick, Dredging […]...
20. Possums came at night You could see the signs which said that possums came at night And fed upon this tree, they left their mark in fruit discards And broken twigs and shredded leaves spread randomly In careless piles beneath its ravaged canopy. Our father ground his teeth, his frown a sentence to the pests, Such waste he said, […]...
21. River Moons THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face, The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head. I saw them last […]...
22. When Night Comes To the tune of “Telling My Most Intimate Feelings” When night comes, I am so flushed with wine, I undo my hair slowly: A plum calyx is Stuck on a damaged branch. I wake dazed when smoke Breaks my spring sleep. The dream distant, So very distant; And it is quiet, so very quiet. The […]...
23. The Cold Night It is cold. The white moon Is up among her scattered stars— Like the bare thighs of The Police Sergeant’s wife—among Her five children. . . No answer. Pale shadows lie upon The frosted grass. One answer: It is midnight, it is still And it is cold. . . ! White thighs of the sky! […]...
24. Hymn to the Night I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls! I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o’er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love. I heard […]...
25. Wanting The Moon Not the moon. A flower On the other side of the water. The water sweeps past in flood, Dragging a whole tree by the hair, A barn, a bridge. The flower Sings on the far bank. Not a flower, a bird calling Hidden among the darkest trees, music Over the water, making a silence Out […]...
26. When Cold December WHEN cold December Froze to grisamber The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees Then fading slow And furred is the snow As the almond’s sweet husk And smelling like musk. The snow amygdaline Under the eglantine Where the bristling stars shine Like a gilt porcupine The snow confesses The little Princesses On their small chioppines […]...
27. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
28. December 25 Christmas defeated Chanukah Once again last night By a margin of three billion dollars Or so, but every time I hear A Yiddish word like bupkes In a movie (L. A. Confidential) Or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie Calls a garment a shmatta, it’s “good For the Jews,” as our parents used […]...
29. Lines For Winter Tell yourself As it gets cold and gray falls from the air That you will go on Walking, hearing The same tune no matter where You find yourself Inside the dome of dark Or under the cracking white Of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold Tell yourself What […]...
30. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. The Night Dance Strike the gay harp! see the moon is on high, And, as true to her beam as the tides of the ocean, Young hearts, when they feel the soft light of her eye, Obey the mute call, and heave into motion. Then, sound notes the gayest, the lightest, That ever took wing, when heaven look’d […]...
33. Thoughts in a Tranquil Night Athwart the bed I watch the moonbeams cast a trail So bright, so cold, so frail, That for a space it gleams Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams. I raise my head, The splendid moon I see: Then droop my head, And sink to dreams of thee My Fatherland, of thee!...
34. 201. Birthday Ode for 31st December, 1787 AFAR 1 the illustrious Exile roams, Whom kingdoms on this day should hail; An inmate in the casual shed, On transient pity’s bounty fed, Haunted by busy memory’s bitter tale! Beasts of the forest have their savage homes, But He, who should imperial purple wear, Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal […]...
35. Words, Wide Night Somewhere on the other side of this wide night And the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say It is sad? In one of the tenses I singing An impossible song of desire that […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. The Science Of The Night I touch you in the night, whose gift was you, My careless sprawler, And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused, That have become the land of your self-strangeness. What long seduction of the bone has led you Down the imploring roads I cannot take Into the arms of ghosts I never knew, Leaving my manhood […]...
38. Night Words after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears Words rising from the streets, words he cannot Understand, and then the semis gear down For the traffic light on Houston. He sleeps Again and dreams of another city On a high hill above a wide river Bathed […]...
39. Far Rockaway Night till Morning WHAT can we say of the night? The fog night, the moon night, the fog moon night last night? There swept out of the sea a song. There swept out of the sea-torn white plungers. There came on the coast wind drive In the spit of a driven spray, On the boom of foam and […]...
40. Night Piece Climb, claim your shelf-room, far Packed from inquisitive moon And cold contagious stars. Lean out, but look no longer, No further, than to stir Night with extended finger. Now fill the box with light, Flood full the shining block, Masonry against night. Let window, curtain, blind Soft-sieve and sift and shred The impertinence of sound. […]...