The Spirit Medium

Related poetry:

1. Tic Douloureux The trigger is sensation. The violin’s a dirty animal. I want you to take away the suddenness. Pain up the side of my head. I’ll have my teeth extracted one by one. See if it makes any difference. Rehearse for the real. Be either present or absent. I’ll let my fingers drum ebony. Thinking makes […]...
2. Sonnet 129: Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and, till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated as a swallowed bait On purpose laid to […]...
3. Sonnets CXXIX: Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had, Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait, On purpose laid to […]...
4. Two Lyrics From Kilroy's Carnival: A Masque I Aria ” Kiss me there where pride is glittering Kiss me where I am ripened and round fruit Kiss me wherever, however, I am supple, bare and flare (Let the bell be rung as long as I am young: let ring and fly like a great bronze wing!) ” I’ll kiss you wherever you […]...
5. The Spirit lasts but in what mode The Spirit lasts but in what mode Below, the Body speaks, But as the Spirit furnishes Apart, it never talks The Music in the Violin Does not emerge alone But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet Touch Alone is not a Tune The Spirit lurks within the Flesh Like Tides within the Sea That make […]...
6. Poem (The spirit likes to dress up…) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, Shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning In the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather Plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, […]...
7. Spirit Dity Of No Fax Line Dial Tone The telephone company calls and asks what the fuss is. Betty from the telephone company, who’s not concerned With the particulars of my life. For instance If I believe in the transubstantiation of Christ Or am gladdened at 7:02 in the morning to repeat An eighth time why a man wearing a hula skirt of […]...
8. The Spirit of Poetry There is a quiet spirit in these woods, That dwells where’er the gentle south-wind blows; Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. With what a tender and impassioned voice It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, When […]...
9. Poetry And Religion Religions are poems. They concert Our daylight and dreaming mind, our Emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture Into the only whole thinking: poetry. Nothing’s said till it’s dreamed out in words And nothing’s true that figures in words only. A poem, compared with an arrayed religion, May be like a soldier’s one short marriage night […]...
10. The Elixir Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything To do it as for Thee. Not rudely, as a beast, To run into an action; But still to make Thee prepossest, And give it his perfection. A man that looks on glass, On it may stay […]...
11. Spirit Be still, thou unregenerate part, Disturb no more my settled heart, For I have vow’d (and so will do) Thee as a foe still to pursue, And combat with thee will and must Until I see thee laid in th’ dust. Sister we are, yea twins we be, Yet deadly feud ‘twixt thee and me, […]...
12. Ghosts Some ghosts are women, Neither abstract nor pale, Their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts Who come, moving their useless arms Like forsaken servants. Not all ghosts are women, I have seen others; Fat, white-bellied men, Wearing their genitals like old rags. Not devils, but ghosts. This one thumps barefoot, lurching […]...
13. The Flesh and the Spirit In secret place where once I stood Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood, I heard two sisters reason on Things that are past and things to come. One Flesh was call’d, who had her eye On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere. “Sister,” quoth […]...
14. A Spirit Passed Before Me From Job A spirit passed before me: I beheld The face of immortality unveiled – Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine – And there it stood,-all formless-but divine: Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake; And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake: “Is man more just than God? Is […]...
15. The Song Of Shadows “Sweep thy faint strings, Musician, With thy long lean hand; Downward the starry tapers burn, Sinks soft the waning sand; The old hound whimpers couched in sleep, The embers smoulder low; Across the walls the shadows Come, and go. Sweep softly thy strings, Musician, The minutes mount to hours; Frost on the windless casement weaves […]...
16. The Vagaries of Fishes After they passed beneath us I could tell More would be coming, beneath the sand, Under the bejeweled sky, under the first Layer of earth where water exists In flutes and eddies. I lay there with you, Not wanting to leave your side even For them, the miraculous creatures of sex And sediment, the ones […]...
17. Thekla – A Spirit Voice Whither was it that my spirit wended When from thee my fleeting shadow moved? Is not now each earthly conflict ended? Say, have I not lived, have I not loved? Art thou for the nightingales inquiring Who entranced thee in the early year With their melody so joy-inspiring? Only whilst they loved they lingered here. […]...
18. People Who Live People who live by the sea Understand eternity. They copy the curves of the waves, Their hearts beat with the tides, & the saltiness of their blood Corresponds with the sea. They know that the house of flesh Is only a sandcastle Built on the shore, That skin breaks Under the waves Like sand under […]...
19. A spirit sped A spirit sped Through spaces of night; And as he sped, he called, “God! God!” He went through valleys Of black death-slime, Ever calling, “God! God!” Their echoes From crevice and cavern Mocked him: “God! God! God!” Fleetly into the plains of space He went, ever calling, “God! God!” Eventually, then, he screamed, Mad in […]...
20. Southern Mansion Poplars are standing there still as death And ghosts of dead men Meet their ladies walking Two by two beneath the shade And standing on the marble steps. There is a sound of music echoing Through the open door And in the field there is Another sound tinkling in the cotton: Chains of bondmen dragging […]...
21. The Lost Dancer Spatial depths of being survive The birth to death recurrences Of feet dancing on earth of sand; Vibrations of the dance survive The sand; the sand, elect, survives The dancer. He can find no source Of magic adequate to bind The sand upon his feet, his feet Upon his dance, his dance upon The diamond […]...
22. Coral This coral’s hape ecohes the hand It hollowed. Its Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice, As your breast in my cupped palm. Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand, Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat. Bodies in absence displace their weight, And your smooth body, like none other, Creates an exact absence like this […]...
23. Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness; If Autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood, […]...
24. The Telegraph Operator I will not wash my face; I will not brush my hair; I “pig” around the place There’s nobody to care. Nothing but rock and tree; Nothing but wood and stone, Oh, God, it’s hell to be Alone, alone, alone! Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws Corral me in a ring. I feel as if I was […]...
25. Winter in the Country Sweet life! how lovely to be here And feel the soft sea-laden breeze Strike my flushed face, the spruce’s fair Free limbs to see, the lesser trees’ Bare hands to touch, the sparrow’s cheep To heed, and watch his nimble flight Above the short brown grass asleep. Love glorious in his friendly might, Music that […]...
26. The Crazed Moon Crazed through much child-bearing The moon is staggering in the sky; Moon-struck by the despairing Glances of her wandering eye We grope, and grope in vain, For children born of her pain. Children dazed or dead! When she in all her virginal pride First trod on the mountain’s head What stir ran through the countryside […]...
27. Man And The Echo Man. In a cleft that’s christened Alt Under broken stone I halt At the bottom of a pit That broad noon has never lit, And shout a secret to the stone. All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after […]...
28. Pretty Halcyon Days How pleasant to sit on the beach, On the beach, on the sand, in the sun, With ocean galore within reach, And nothing at all to be done! No letters to answer, No bills to be burned, No work to be shirked, No cash to be earned, It is pleasant to sit on the beach […]...
29. The Past is the Present If external action is effete And rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class The teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said – and I think I repeat his exact words – “Hebrew poetry is prose With a sort of heightened consciousness.” Ecstasy affords The occasion and […]...
30. Come hither, child Come hither, child who gifted thee With power to touch that string so well? How darest thou rouse up thoughts in me, Thoughts that I would but cannot quell? Nay, chide not, lady; long ago I heard those notes in Ula’s hall, And had I known they’d waken woe I’d weep their music to recall. […]...
31. Selecting A Reader First, I would have her be beautiful, And walking carefully up on my poetry At the loneliest moment of an afternoon, Her hair still damp at the neck From washing it. She should be wearing A raincoat, an old one, dirty From not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, […]...
32. I did not reach Thee I did not reach Thee But my feet slip nearer every day Three Rivers and a Hill to cross One Desert and a Sea I shall not count the journey one When I am telling thee. Two deserts, but the Year is cold So that will help the sand One desert crossed The second one […]...
33. An Invitation Holding with shaking hands a letter from some Official – high up he says in the Ministry, I note that I am invited to Birmingham, There pedagogues to address for a decent fee. ‘We like to meet,’ he goes on, ‘men eminent In the field of letters each year,’ and that’s well put, Though I […]...
34. Heritage Now the dead past seems vividly alive, And in this shining moment I can trace, Down through the vista of the vanished years, Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face. And suddenly some secret spring’s released, And unawares a riddle is revealed, And I can read like large, black-lettered print, What seemed before a thing […]...
35. To a Very Wise Man I Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, Or guard relentless fanes with flickering […]...
36. A Crazed Girl That crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing Heroically lost, heroically found. No matter what disaster occurred She […]...
37. Dunes WHAT do we see here in the sand dunes of the white Moon alone with our thoughts, Bill, Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying Scarves around their heads dancing, Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the Other of all the dead, The dead more than all these […]...
38. Dream Song 73: Karensui, Ryoan-ji The taxi makes the vegetables fly. ‘Dozo kudasai,’ I have him wait. Past the bright lake up into the temple, Shoes off, and My right leg swings me left. I do survive beside the garden I Came seven thousand mile the other way Supplied of energies all to see, to see. Differ them photographs, plans […]...
39. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 03: Haunted Chambers The lamplit page is turned, the dream forgotten; The music changes tone, you wake, remember Deep worlds you lived before,-deep worlds hereafter Of leaf on falling leaf, music on music, Rain and sorrow and wind and dust and laughter. Helen was late and Miriam came too soon. Joseph was dead, his wife and children starving. […]...
40. The Soldier If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England’s, […]...