A New Broom

Related poetry:

1. The Visionary If fortune had not granted me To suck the Muse’s teats, I think I would have liked to be A sweeper of the streets; And city gutters glad to groom, Have heft a bonny broom. There as amid the crass and crush The limousines swished by, I would have leaned upon my brush With visionary […]...
2. From the Roof This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers animal vines twisting over the line and Slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment In the gesticulations of shirtsleeves, I recall out of my joy a night of misery Walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth, Halfmade foundations and unfinished drainage trenches […]...
3. The Doves The house where I was born, Where I was young and gay, Grows old amid its corn, Amid its scented hay. Moan of the cushat dove, In silence rich and deep; The old head I love Nods to its quiet sleep. Where once were nine and ten Now two keep house together; The doves moan […]...
4. Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town ‘Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town The golden broom should blow; The hawthorn sprinkled up and down Should charge the land with snow. Spring will not wait the loiterer’s time Who keeps so long away; So others wear the broom and climb The hedgerows heaped with may. Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold […]...
5. When i was a boy Up in the attic where I slept When I was a boy, a little boy, In through the lattice the moonlight crept, Bringing a tide of dreams that swept Over the low, red trundle-bed, Bathing the tangled curly head, While moonbeams played at hide-and-seek With the dimples on the sun-browned cheek – When I was […]...
6. Words I had this thought a while ago, ‘My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land.’ And I grew weary of the sun Until my thoughts cleared up again, Remembering that the best I have done Was done to make it plain; That every year I have […]...
7. Unfulfilled to Observation Unfulfilled to Observation Incomplete to Eye But to Faith a Revolution In Locality Unto Us the Suns extinguish To our Opposite New Horizons they embellish Fronting Us with Night....
8. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
9. Juggler A ball will bounce; but less and less. It’s not A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience. Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls So in our hearts from brilliance, Settles and is forgot. It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls To shake our gravity up. Whee, in the air The […]...
10. Knife Something Just now Moved through my heart Like the thinnest of blades As that red-tail pumped Once with its great wings And flew above the gray, cracked Rock wall. It wasn’t About the bird, it was Something about the way Stone stays Mute and put, whatever Goes flashing by. Sometimes, When I sit like this, […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
13. I could not prove the Years had feet I could not prove the Years had feet Yet confident they run Am I, from symptoms that are past And Series that are done I find my feet have further Goals I smile upon the Aims That felt so ample Yesterday Today’s have vaster claims I do not doubt the self I was Was competent […]...
14. Sonnet Since you would claim the sources of my thought Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed, The reedy traps which other hands have times To close upon it. Conjure up the hot Blaze that it cleared so cleanly, or the snow Devised to strike it down. It will be free. Whatever nets draw in to […]...
15. The Buyers Father drank himself to death, Quite enjoyed it. Urged to draw a sober breath He’d avoid it. ‘Save your sympathy,’ said Dad; ‘Never sought it. Hob-nail liver, gay and glad, Sure, I bought it.’ Uncle made a heap of dough, Ponies playing. ‘Easy come and easy go,’ Was his saying. Though he died in poverty […]...
16. Long Odds How many million galaxies there are Who knows? and each has countless stars in it, And each rolls through eternities afar Beneath the threshold of the Infinite. How is it that will all that space to roam I should have found this mote that spins and leaps In what unutterable sunlight, foam Of what unfathomable […]...
17. Autumn Perspective Now, moving in, cartons on the floor, The radio playing to bare walls, Picture hooks left stranded In the unsoiled squares where paintings were, And something reminding us This is like all other moving days; Finding the dirty ends of someone else’s life, Hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit, And burned-out matches in […]...
18. Chorus From Oedipus At Colonos What is unwisdom but the lusting after Longevity: to be old and full of days! For the vast and unremitting tide of years Casts up to view more sorrowful things than joyful; And as for pleasures, once beyond our prime, They all drift out of reach, they are washed away. And the same gaunt bailiff […]...
19. Melpomene The forest bitter, spiky, No shore breeze, no foothills, The grass grows matted, death will come With horses’ hooves, endlessly Over the steppes’ mounds, we went back, Searching the sky for the fort That could not be razed. The villages hostile, The cottages cleared out in haste, Smoked skin on the attic beams, Snare netting, […]...
20. The Wildy Ones The sheep are in the silver wood, The cows are in the broom; The goats are in the wild mountain And won’t be home by noon. My mother sang that olden tune Most every night, And to her newest she would croon By candle light; While cuddling in the velvet gloom I’d dream of cows […]...
21. In the desert In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter – bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”...
22. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
23. A Singing Lesson Far-fetched and dear-bought, as the proverb rehearses, Is good, or was held so, for ladies: but nought In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is Far-fetched and dear-bought. As the turn of a wave should it sound, and the thought Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses […]...
24. In the Rangitaki Valley Valley of waving broom, O lovely, lovely light, O hear of the world, red-gold! Breast high in the blossom I stand; It beats about me like waves Of a magical, golden sea The barren heart of the world Alive at the kiss of the sun, The yellow mantle of Summer Flung over a laughing land, […]...
25. Millennium The great millennium is at hand. Redder apples grow on the tree. A saxophone is in ev’ry band. Brandy no longer taints our tea. Dimples smile in the red-rouged knee. The dowagers are no longer fat. Radio now makes safe the sea- And the Turk has bought him a derby hat. Even our sauerkraut now […]...
26. 532. Song-Their groves o' sweet myrtle THEIR groves o’ sweet myrtle let Foreign Lands reckon, Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume; Far dearer to me yon lone glen o’ green breckan, Wi’ the burn stealing under the lang, yellow broom. Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowèrs Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk, lowly, unseen; For there, lightly tripping, […]...
27. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage How this woman came by the courage, how she got The courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot Night of the eight of July, Where it came from, did once the Lord frown down Upon her ancient cradle thinking ‘This one Will do before she die For two and seventy years of chipped indignities […]...
30. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
31. Self-Portrait, 1969 He’s still young ; thirty, but looks younger Or does he?… In the eyes and cheeks, tonight, Turning in the mirror, he saw his mother, Puffy; angry; bewildered… Many nights, Now, when he stares there, he gets angry: Something unfulfilled there, something dead To what he once thought he surely could be Now, just the […]...
32. The Spider as an Artist The Spider as an Artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing Merit Is freely certified By every Broom and Bridget Throughout a Christian Land Neglected Son of Genius I take thee by the Hand...
33. Houses Of Dreams You took my empty dreams And filled them every one With tenderness and nobleness, April and the sun. The old empty dreams Where my thoughts would throng Are far too full of happiness To even hold a song. Oh, the empty dreams were dim And the empty dreams were wide, They were sweet and shadowy […]...
34. Three Quatrains I As long as Fame’s imperious music rings Will poets mock it with crowned words august; And haggard men will clamber to be kings As long as Glory weighs itself in dust. II Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled, Nor shudder for the revels that are done: The wines that flushed Lucullus are all […]...
35. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
36. Ripening The longer we are together The larger death grows around us. How many we know by now Who are dead! We, who were young, Now count the cost of having been. And yet as we know the dead We grow familiar with the world. We, who were young and loved each other Ignorantly, now come […]...
37. Fairy Bread Come up here, O dusty feet! Here is fairy ready to eat. Here in my retiring room, Children, you may dine On the golden smell of broom And the shade of pine; And when you have eaten well, Fairy stories hear and tell....
38. As the Ruin Falls All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you. I never had a selfless thought since I was born. I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through: I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn. Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek, I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin: I […]...
39. Mary Ellen It’s mighty quiet in the house Since Mary Ellen quit me cold; I’ve swept the hearth and fed the mouse That’s getting fat and overbold. I’ve bought a pig’s foot for the pot And soon I’ll set the fire alight; Then I may eat or I may not, Depends upon my appetite. Since Mary Ellen […]...
40. Echoes in an empty room The strident sounds of silence echo In a darkened room, a beggar’s tomb Of emptied space and barrenness, a Shameful waste, a bitter sadness. It violates all sense of being strips aside All causal meaning bound inside the shrinking Wrap that clings to surfaces debased, Insulates the tiny tap of time, a skulking Soulless mirthless […]...