Metaphors Of A Magnifico

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1. The Bridge In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, Guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while Eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I Shall be crossing it shortly. […]...
2. Boots We’re foot slog slog slog sloggin’ over Africa Foot foot foot foot sloggin’ over Africa (Boots boots boots boots movin’ up an’ down again!) There’s no discharge in the war! Seven six eleven five nine-an’-twenty mile to-day Four eleven seventeen thirty-two the day before (Boots boots boots boots movin’ up an’ down again!) There’s no […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. On Prayer You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the color of ripe gold Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal Where […]...
5. The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky. The greatest wonder of the day, And a great beautification to the River Tay, Most beautiful to be seen, Near by Dundee […]...
6. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
7. The Village Green On the cheerful village green, Skirted round with houses small, All the boys and girls are seen, Playing there with hoop and ball. Now they frolic hand in hand, Making many a merry chain; Then they form a warlike band, Marching o’er the level plain. Now ascends the worsted ball, High it rises in the […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Muckers TWENTY men stand watching the muckers. Stabbing the sides of the ditch Where clay gleams yellow, Driving the blades of their shovels Deeper and deeper for the new gas mains Wiping sweat off their faces With red bandanas The muckers work on. . pausing. . to pull Their boots out of suckholes where they slosh. […]...
10. The Landlord's Tale; Paul Revere's Ride Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft […]...
11. Alone In The Woods Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures At man So […]...
12. Yet Do I Marvel I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a […]...
13. TEXTURES The grain of the exposed boards Speaks through the wall of the years We are back in our cottage On the wind-swathed hills Watching late winter dawns Gather like kindled flame. We are back with those winter dusks, – The hyaline air hung in darkness And a vale of stars, waking in blankets Laid on […]...
14. Girl (three) and the black horse i want to hold the horse’s string Cried the girl (three) stamping her foot Told by adults she was much too young The black horse stood staring at the wall It worries us you may get hurt The adults whispered – meaning to offer Comfort to the little madam (not convinced) The black horse stood […]...
15. THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE “THE mountain village was destroy’d; But see how soon is fill’d the void! Shingles and boards, as by magic arise, The babe in his cradle and swaddling-clothes lies; How blest to trust to God’s protection!” Behold a wooden new erection, So that, if sparks and wind but choose, God’s self at such a game must […]...
16. 339. Song-O for ane an' twenty, Tam Chorus.-An’ O for ane an’ twenty, Tam! And hey, sweet ane an’ twenty, Tam! I’ll learn my kin a rattlin’ sang, An’ I saw ane an’ twenty, Tam. THEY snool me sair, and haud me down, An’ gar me look like bluntie, Tam; But three short years will soon wheel roun’, An’ then comes ane […]...
17. THE DOUBTERS AND THE LOVERS THE DOUBTERS. YE love, and sonnets write! Fate’s strange behest! The heart, its hidden meaning to declare, Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair: Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best. Scarcely with freedom the o’erflowing breast As yet can speak, and well may it beware; Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that’s […]...
18. On The University Carrier Who Sickn'd In The Time Of His Vacancy, Being Forbid To Go To London, By Reason Of The Plague Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt, And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt, Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one, He’s here stuck in a slough, and overthrown. ‘Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down; For […]...
19. A Girl's Garden A NEIGHBOR of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, “Why not?” In casting about for a […]...
20. Walter Simmons My parents thought that I would be As great as Edison or greater: For as a boy I made balloons And wondrous kites and toys with clocks And little engines with tracks to run on And telephones of cans and thread. I played the cornet and painted pictures, Modeled in clay and took the part […]...
21. The Precinct. Rochester The tall yellow hollyhocks stand, Still and straight, With their round blossoms spread open, In the quiet sunshine. And still is the old Roman wall, Rough with jagged bits of flint, And jutting stones, Old and cragged, Quite still in its antiquity. The pear-trees press their branches against it, And feeling it warm and kindly, […]...
22. Song of Myself I was a Poet! But I did not know it, Neither did my Mother, Nor my Sister nor my Brother. The Rich were not aware of it; The Poor took no care of it. The Reverend Mr. Drewitt Never knew it. The High did not suspect it; The Low could not detect it. Aunt Sue […]...
23. Archimedes To Archimedes once a scholar came, “Teach me,” he said, “the art that won thy fame; The godlike art which gives such boons to toil, And showers such fruit upon thy native soil; The godlike art that girt the town when all Rome’s vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!” “Thou call’st art godlike it […]...
24. A Dream Of Death I dreamed that one had died in a strange place Near no accustomed hand, And they had nailed the boards above her face, The peasants of that land, Wondering to lay her in that solitude, And raised above her mound A cross they had made out of two bits of wood, And planted cypress round; […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol, Balliol in the rain. The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you, As you became that road through silent […]...
28. Panels THE WEST window is a panel of marching onions. Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards. The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace. (How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums?)...
29. 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 […]...
30. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
31. There Is a Solemn Wind Tonight There is a solemn wind to-night That sings of solemn rain; The trees that have been quiet so long Flutter and start again. The slender trees, the heavy trees, The fruit trees laden and proud, Lift up their branches to the wind That cries to them so loud. The little bushes and the plants Bow […]...
32. Redbud Trail – Winter It’s two muddy miles from Highway 20, Just past the north fork of Cache Creek, Across the broad meadow, through Blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge, And back down to the creek bank, The crossing point, me striding with Mud caking my old hiking boots. For a millennia the Miwok people walked These […]...
33. Remembered Women FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is […]...
34. Frank Drummer Out of a cell into this darkened space The end at twenty-five! My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, And the village thought me a fool. Yet at the start there was a clear vision, A high and urgent purpose in my soul Which drove me on trying to memorize The Encyclopedia Britannica!...
35. O Why Do You Walk (a Parody) O why do you walk through the fields in boots, Missing so much and so much? O fat white woman whom nobody shoots, Why do you walk through the fields in boots, When the grass is soft as the breast of coots And shivering-sweet to the touch?...
36. The Cow In Apple-Time Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree […]...
37. Black Oaks Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary, Or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance And comfort. Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays Carp and whistle all day in the branches, without The push of the wind. But to tell the truth after a […]...
38. The Tay Bridge Disaster Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time. ‘Twas about seven o’clock at night, And the wind it blew with all its might, And the rain […]...
39. When I Was One-and-Twenty When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.” But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, “The heart out of the […]...
40. Acknowledgement With the ladies’ permission, most humbly I’d mention How much we’re obliged by all their attention; We sink with the weight of the huge obligation Too long & too broad to admit compensation. For us (and I blush while I speak I declare) The charming enchanters be-torture their hair Till gently it rises and swells […]...