Prisoners

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1. Egypt, Tobago There is a shattered palm On this fierce shore, Its plumes the rusting helm- Et of a dead warrior. Numb Antony, in the torpor Stretching her inert Sex near him like a sleeping cat, Knows his heart is the real desert. Over the dunes Of her heaving, To his heart’s drumming Fades the mirage of […]...
2. Hymn To Eros O Eros, silently smiling one, hear me. Let the shadow of thy wings Brush me. Let thy presence Enfold me, as if darkness Were swandown. Let me see that darkness Lamp in hand, This country become The other country Sacred to desire. Drowsy god, Slow the wheels of my thought So that I listen only […]...
3. Leda Where the slow river Meets the tide, A red swan lifts red wings And darker beak, And underneath the purple down Of his soft breast Uncurls his coral feet. Through the deep purple Of the dying heat Of sun and mist, The level ray of sun-beam Has caressed The lily with dark breast, And flecked […]...
4. The Prisoners Of The Little Box Open little box We kiss your bottom and cover Keyhole and key The whole world lies crumpted in you It resembles everything Except itself Not even your clear-sky mother Would recognize it anymore The rust will eat your key Our world and us there inside And finally you too We kiss your four sides And […]...
5. The Prisoners Steel doors – guillotine gates – Of the doorless house closed massively. We were locked in with loss. Guards frisked us, marked our wrists, Then let us into the drab Rec Hall – Splotched green walls, high windows barred – Where the dispossessed awaited us. Hands intimate with knife and pistol, Hands that had cruelly […]...
6. The Unconquered Dead “. . . defeated, with great loss.” Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame Of them that flee, of them that basely yield; Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame Of them that vanquish in a stricken field. That day of battle in the dusty heat We lay and heard the bullets […]...
7. Remembering Mountain Men I put my foot in cold water And hold it there: early mornings They had to wade through broken ice To find the traps in the deep channel With their hands, drag up the chains and The drowned beaver. The slow current Of the life below tugs at me all day. When I dream at […]...
8. A London Thoroughfare. 2 A. M They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another. Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is […]...
9. Not Dead Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, I know that David’s with me here again. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Caressingly I stroke Rough bark of the friendly oak. A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. Turf burns with pleasant smoke; I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. […]...
10. The Paroo It was a week from Christmas-time, As near as I remember, And half a year since, in the rear, We’d left the Darling timber. The track was hot and more than drear; The day dragged out for ever; But now we knew that we were near Our camp – the Paroo River. With blighted eyes […]...
11. Did I Not Say To You Did I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this Mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life?” Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years From me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal. Did I not say to […]...
12. Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? Then crouch within the door Red is the Fire’s common tint But when the vivid Ore Has vanquished Flame’s conditions, It quivers from the Forge Without a color, but the light Of unanointed Blaze. Least Village has its Blacksmith Whose Anvil’s even ring Stands symbol for […]...
13. Full Moon and Little Frieda A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket – And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with […]...
14. Song For The Last Act Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook. Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease The lead and marble figures watch the show Of yet another summer loath to […]...
15. The Return See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering! See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back; These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,” Inviolable. Gods of the […]...
16. The Children Dancing Away, sad thoughts, and teasing Perplexities, away! Let other blood go freezing, We will be wise and gay. For here is all heart-easing, An ecstasy at play. The children dancing, dancing, Light upon happy feet, Both eye and heart entrancing Mingle, escape, and meet; Come joyous-eyed and advancing Or floatingly retreat. Now slow, now swifter […]...
17. Of all the Souls that stand create Of all the Souls that stand create I have elected One When Sense from Spirit files away And Subterfuge is done When that which is and that which was Apart intrinsic stand And this brief Drama in the flesh Is shifted like a Sand When Figures show their royal Front And Mists are carved away, […]...
18. Gacela of the Dead Child Each afternoon in Granada, Each afternoon, a child dies. Each afternoon the water sits down And chats with its companions. The dead wear mossy wings. The cloudy wind and the clear wind Are two pheasants in flight through the towers, And the day is a wounded boy. Not a flicker of lark was left in […]...
19. Transit A woman I have never seen before Steps from the darkness of her town-house door At just that crux of time when she is made So beautiful that she or time must fade. What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves A phantom heraldry of all the loves Blares from the lintel? That […]...
20. If You Only Knew Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the trappings of poetic myth, Far from me but here all the same without your knowing, Far from me and even more silent because I imagine you endlessly. Far from me, my lovely mirage and eternal dream, you cannot know. If you only knew. […]...
21. Crossroads The second half of my life will be black To the white rind of the old and fading moon. The second half of my life will be water Over the cracked floor of these desert years. I will land on my feet this time, Knowing at least two languages and who My friends are. I […]...
22. The Hayloft Through all the pleasant meadow-side The grass grew shoulder-high, Till the shining scythes went far and wide And cut it down to dry. Those green and sweetly smelling crops They led the waggons home; And they piled them here in mountain tops For mountaineers to roam. Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail, Mount Eagle and […]...
23. Ask Me Some time when the river is ice ask me Mistakes I have made. Ask me whether What I have done is my life. Others Have come in their slow way into My thought, and some have tried to help Or to hurt: ask me what difference Their strongest love or hate has made. I will […]...
24. Village in Late Summer LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers....
25. Snake As cats bring their smiling Mouse-kills and hypnotised birds, Slinking home under the light Of a summer’s morning To offer the gift of a corpse, You carry home the snake you thought Was sunning itself on a rock At the river’s edge: Sun-fretted, gracile, It shimmies and sways in your hands Like a muscle of […]...
26. Heat O wind, rend open the heat, Cut apart the heat, Rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop Through this thick air Fruit cannot fall into heat That presses up and blunts The points of pears And rounds the grapes. Cut the heat Plough through it, Turning it on either side Of your path....
27. Fleming Helphenstine At first I thought there was a superfine Persuasion in his face; but the free flow That filled it when he stopped and cried, “Hollo!” Shone joyously, and so I let it shine. He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine, But be that as it may;-I only know He talked of this and that and […]...
28. The West Wind Beneath the forest’s skirts I rest, Whose branching pines rise dark and high, And hear the breezes of the West Among the threaded foliage sigh. Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of wo? Is not thy home among the flowers? Do not the bright June roses blow, To meet thy kiss at morning hours? And lo! […]...
29. The Mortal One Three months after he lies dead, that Long yellow narrow body, Not like Christ but like one of his saints, The naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are Done in gilt, all knees and raw ribs, The ones who died of nettles, bile, the One who died roasted over a slow fire- Three months […]...
30. Sail on sail on, When the sun is gone When the wind rises Off a river slow When you hear no more Just silence Waves upon wood Slow motion A picture in my hand Carved into The sand in my eyes. Cry the tears of rain, A young boy Dreams again Sail on… – jude...
31. Love in Twilight There is darkness behind the light and the pale light drips Cold on vague shapes and figures, that, half-seen loom Like the carven prows of proud, far-triumphing ships And the firelight wavers and changes about the room, As the three logs crackle and burn with a small still sound; Half-blotting with dark the deeper dark […]...
32. Jerusalem On a roof in the Old City Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight: The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy, The towel of a man who is my enemy, To wipe off the sweat of his brow. In the sky of the Old City A kite. At the other end of […]...
33. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
34. I watcher her face to see which way I watcher her face to see which way She took the awful news Whether she died before she heard Or in protracted bruise Remained a few slow years with us Each heavier than the last A further afternoon to fail, As Flower at fall of Frost....
35. The Tortoise In Keystone Heights When I knew, it was raining. Winter in decline. I was tired. You in your soaked shirt diffused Into the western sky bulging with clouds, Speeding cars a few feet away- Why would they not slow down? Though afternoon, a slip of moon Busied itself with rising, And it had to mean something. If only […]...
36. A FINE MADNESS Any poets about or bored muses fancying a day out? Rainy, windy, cold Leeds City Station Half-way through its slow chaotic transformation Contractors’ morning break, overalls, hard hats and harness Flood McDonalds where I sip my tea and try to translate Valйry. London has everything except my bardic inspiration I’ve only to step off the […]...
37. A Rusty Nail I ran a nail into my hand, The wound was hard to heal; So bitter was the pain to stand I thought how it would feel, To have spikes thrust through hands and feet, Impaled by hammer beat. Then hoisted on a cross of oak Against the sullen sky, With all about the jeering follk […]...
38. Yellow One pearly day of early May I strolled upon the sand, And saw, say half-a-mile away A man with gun in hand; A dog was cowering to his will, As slow he sought to creep Upon a dozen ducks so still They seemed to be asleep, When like a streak the dog dashed out, The […]...
39. Waterfall at Lu-shan Sunlight streams on the river stones. From high above, the river steadily plunges Three thousand feet of sparkling water The Milky Way pouring down from heaven....
40. Going to Him! Happy letter! Going to Him! Happy letter! Tell Him Tell Him the page I didn’t write Tell Him I only said the Syntax And left the Verb and the pronoun out Tell Him just how the fingers hurried Then how they waded slow slow And then you wished you had eyes in your pages So you could […]...