Sparkles from The Wheel

Related poetry:

1. 378. Song-Bessy and her Spinnin Wheel O LEEZE me on my spinnin’ wheel, And leeze me on my rock and reel; Frae tap to tae that cleeds me bien, And haps me biel and warm at e’en; I’ll set me down and sing and spin, While laigh descends the simmer sun, Blest wi’ content, and milk and meal, O leeze me […]...
2. God's Wheel GOD says to me with a kind Of smile, “Hey how would you like To be God awhile And steer the world?” “Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try. Where do I set? How much do I get? What time is lunch? When can I quit?” “Gimme back that wheel,” says GOD. “I don’t […]...
3. Mother, I cannot mind my Wheel MOTHER, I cannot mind my wheel; My fingers ache, my lips are dry: O, if you felt the pain I feel! But O, who ever felt as I? No longer could I doubt him true All other men may use deceit; He always said my eyes were blue, And often swore my lips were sweet....
4. My wheel is in the dark! My wheel is in the dark! I cannot see a spoke Yet know its dripping feet Go round and round. My foot is on the Tide! An unfrequented road Yet have all roads A clearing at the end Some have resigned the Loom Some in the busy tomb Find quaint employ Some with new stately […]...
5. Stars Wheel in Purple Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare As Hesperus, nor yet so great a star As bright Aldeboran or Sirius, Nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War; Stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight; Yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are Nor as Orion’s sapphires, luminous; Yet disenchanted, cold, […]...
6. The Balance Wheel Where I waved at the sky And waited your love through a February sleep, I saw birds swinging in, watched them multiply Into a tree, weaving on a branch, cradling a keep In the arms of April sprung from the south to occupy This slow lap of land, like cogs of some balance wheel. I […]...
7. Hamlet Off-Stage: She Wheel Ophelia puked hourly dawn till dusk, Retching mucous slobber, then spewing air. Scum that I am, I never stopped thinking What a beauty: small Icelandic hooters, Femme d’Bumpers, on whom all fun depends. Woman’s the car, man the hood ornament. She lay there so sick she wasn’t human, More an engine blowing jello gaskets. Yet, […]...
8. The Moon A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others. In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him To have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas. Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part Excitedly unpacks […]...
9. Ape And Coffee Some coffee had gotten on a man’s ape. The man said, Animal did you get on my coffee? No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me. You’re sure you didn’t spill on my coffee? said the man. Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape. Well you sure don’t look human, said […]...
10. Daylight and Moonlight In broad daylight, and at noon, Yesterday I saw the moon Sailing high, but faint and white, As a schoolboy’s paper kite. In broad daylight, yesterday, I read a poet’s mystic lay; And it seemed to me at most As a phantom, or a ghost. But at length the feverish day Like a passion died […]...
11. Banishment I am banished from the patient men who fight They smote my heart to pity, built my pride. Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side, They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light. Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight They went arrayed in honour. But they died,- Not one by one: […]...
12. The Wheel Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter’s best of all; And after that there s nothing good Because the spring-time has not come – Nor know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb....
13. Litany You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine… – Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass And the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, And the marsh […]...
14. I threw my arms about those shoulders I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing At what emerged behind that back, And saw a chair pushed slightly forward, Merging now with the lighted wall. The lamp glared too bright to show The shabby furniture to some advantage, And that is why sofa of brown leather Shone a sort of yellow in a […]...
15. Ippolit Konovaloff I was a gun-smith in Odessa. One night the police broke in the room Where a group of us were reading Spencer. And seized our books and arrested us. But I escaped and came to New York And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, Where I could study my Kant in peace And […]...
16. Dead man's clothes Growing up, I propose, Is like wearing a dead man’s clothes. Death has a way of levelling the ground. I have found the closer your relationship The closer the fit; The unsettling bit is the fear Of not fitting the role, or where Your forbear made a name or leashed A reputation, which by imputation […]...
17. The Old Gray Wall Time out of mind I have stood Fronting the frost and the sun, That the dream of the world might endure, And the goodly will be done. Did the hand of the builder guess, As he laid me stone by stone, A heart in the granite lurked, Patient and fond as his own? Lovers have […]...
18. Moon In Virgo You are not beaten. The simple music rises up, Children’s voices in the air, sound floating out Across the land and on to the river beyond, Over the valley’s floor. No, you cannot go back For those things you lost, the parts of yourself That were taken, often by force. Like an animal In the […]...
19. Idylls Of The King: Song From The Marriage Of Geraint Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel thro’ sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. […]...
20. 1861 AARM’D year! year of the struggle! No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder, With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands-with […]...
21. Jack JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, And his hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight children And the woman died and the children grew up and Went away and wrote the old man every two years. […]...
22. The Song of the Shirt With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the “Song of the Shirt.” “Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work […]...
23. Monet Refuses The Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes Around the streetlights in Paris And what I see is an aberration Caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life To arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, To soften and blur and finally banish The edges you […]...
24. The Minotaur The mahogany table-top you smashed Had been the broad plank top Of my mother’s heirloom sideboard- Mapped with the scars of my whole life. That came under the hammer. That high stool you swung that day Demented by my being Twenty minutes late for baby-minding. ‘Marvellous!’ I shouted, ‘Go on, Smash it into kindling. That’s […]...
25. In a Breath To the Williamson Brothers HIGH noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue Asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors. Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching Play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes. Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea. From the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks, […]...
26. Keepsake Mill Over the borders, a sin without pardon, Breaking the branches and crawling below, Out through the breach in the wall of the garden, Down by the banks of the river we go. Here is a mill with the humming of thunder, Here is the weir with the wonder of foam, Here is the sluice with […]...
27. Evolution I swim near summer shadows Glide over dappled shoals Keeping to the fluid shallows Reminiscent of the womb Where I learned to swallow Gulps Of tantalising air In the amniotic sac Where I shed scales Preferring skin and Hanks of auburn hair Upon my head Where I dispensed With fins and gills Grew hands and […]...
28. Any Woman I am the pillars of the house; The keystone of the arch am I. Take me away, and roof and wall Would fall to ruin me utterly. I am the fire upon the hearth, I am the light of the good sun, I am the heat that warms the earth, Which else were colder than […]...
29. The Mother Your children grow from you apart, Afar and still afar; And yet it should rejoice your heart To see how glad they are; In school and sport, in work and play, And last, in wedded bliss How others claim with joy to-day The lips you used to kiss. Your children distant will become, And wide […]...
30. The Lifeguard In a stable of boats I lie still, From all sleeping children hidden. The leap of a fish from its shadow Makes the whole lake instantly tremble. With my foot on the water, I feel The moon outside Take on the utmost of its power. I rise and go our through the boats. I set […]...
31. An Opera House Within the gold square of the proscenium arch, A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds, Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind. Gold carving edges the balconies, Rims the boxes, Runs up and down fluted pillars. Little knife-stabs of gold Shine out whenever a box door is opened. Gold clusters […]...
32. Making Love To Concrete An upright abutment in the mouth Of the Willis Avenue bridge A beige Honda leaps the divider Like a steel gazelle inescapable Sleek leather boots on the pavement Rat-a-tat-tat best intentions Going down for the third time Stuck in the particular You cannot make love to concrete If you care about being Non-essential wrong or […]...
33. The Hill Maples Here on a hill of the occident stand we shoulder to shoulder, Comrades tried and true through a mighty swath of the years! Spring harps glad laughter through us, and ministrant rains of the autumn Sing us again the songs of ancient dolor and tears. The glory of sunrise smites on our fair, free brows […]...
34. A Year's Spinning 1 He listened at the porch that day, To hear the wheel go on, and on; And then it stopped, ran back away, While through the door he brought the sun: But now my spinning is all done. 2 He sat beside me, with an oath That love ne’er ended, once begun; I smiled believing […]...
35. Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,- Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath […]...
36. The Dead Heart After I wrote this, a friend scrawled on this page, “Yes.” And I said, merely to myself, “I wish it could be for a Different seizure as with Molly Bloom and her ‘and Yes I said yes I will Yes.” It is not a turtle Hiding in its little green shell. It is not a […]...
37. My Treasures These nuts, that I keep in the back of the nest, Where all my tin soldiers are lying at rest, Were gathered in Autumn by nursie and me In a wood with a well by the side of the sea. This whistle we made (and how clearly it sounds!) By the side of a field […]...
38. The Mayor of Gary I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week. And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States. “Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing-machinery does everything,” said the Mayor […]...
39. A Song of Peach-Blossom River A fisherman is drifting, enjoying the spring mountains, And the peach-trees on both banks lead him to an ancient source. Watching the fresh-coloured trees, he never thinks of distance Till he comes to the end of the blue stream and suddenly – strange men! It’s a cave-with a mouth so narrow that he has to […]...
40. The Ballad Of The Harp-Weaver “Son,” said my mother, When I was knee-high, “you’ve need of clothes to cover you, And not a rag have I. “There’s nothing in the house To make a boy breeches, Nor shears to cut a cloth with, Nor thread to take stitches. “There’s nothing in the house But a loaf-end of rye, And a […]...