Category: Poetry

  ah, the hidden sweetness we find when the belly is empty! we are no more or less than string instruments: if the sound box is full of something, no music: obviously.   so: if the brain and the belly are burned clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire: […]

  The same leaves over and over again! They fall from giving shade above To make one texture of faded brown And fit the earth like a leather glove.   Before the leaves can mount again To fill the trees with another shade, They must go down past things coming up.                 T hey must […]

  if only Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me! A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time. If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift! If only, most lovely of all, […]

if there are any heavens if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but it will be a heaven of blackred roses   my father will be(deep like a rose tall like a rose)   standing near my   […]

He knew he was asleep and was dreaming Of a beautiful poem. It seemed to be singing Itself in the night, and he woke In a bed in a room in an old hotel And lay there, hearing the song go on Though he could see the shape Of his empty shirt on the straight […]

It is like the light coming through blue stained glass, Yet not quite like it, For the blueness is not transparent, Only translucent. Her soul’s light shines through, But her soul cannot be seen. It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, childlike, wise And noble.   Joyce Kilmer

  I speak this poem now with grave and level voice In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.   I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.   I praise the fall: it is the human season. Now No more the foreign sun does meddle […]

  patience   An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no […]

  A nothing day full of wild beauty and the timer pings. Roll up the silver off the bay take down the clouds sort the spruce and send to laundry marked, more starch. Goodbye golden- and silver- rod, asters, bayberry crisp in elegance. Little fish stream by, a river in water.   James Schuyler, Closed […]

  yellow, sadness, colour fading: flower, the sun and rain have had their way with you and yet you are rich, you are immaculate against all you kept your excellence intact.

I never knew the earth had so much gold— The fields run over with it, and this hill Hoary and old, Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.   Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God! This fringe of wood, Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod. […]

  Whatever you hoped, you will not find yourselves in the garden, among the growing plants. Your lives are not circular like theirs:   your lives are the bird’s flight which begins and ends in stillness– which begins and ends, in form echoing this arc from the white birch to the apple tree.   From […]

   @ @ @ A yellow flower (Light and spirit) Sings by itself For nobody.   A golden spirit (Light and emptiness) Sings without a word By itself.   Let no one touch this gentle sun In whose dark eye Someone is awake.   (No light, no gold, no name, no colour And no thought: […]

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.   The wrong of unshapely things […]

  The leaves are falling, falling, as from far away from distant gardens, somewhere in the sky they drift and wave, like someone saying ‘no’   and through the night the earth is falling, too falling like all the lonely night sky stars   and all of us. This hand is falling, look, and this […]

  The Opening and the Close Of Being, are alike Or differ, if they do, As Bloom upon a Stalk.   That from an equal Seed Unto an equal Bud Go parallel, perfected In that they have decayed. Emily Dickinson

There are nights that are so stillthat I can hear the small owlcallingfar off and a fox barkingmiles away. It is then that I liein the lean hours awake listeningto the swell born somewhere inthe Atlanticrising and falling, rising andfallingwave on wave on the long shoreby the village that is withoutlightand companionless. And thethought comesof […]

When in still air and still in summertime A leaf has had enough of this, it seems To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage Its drifting in detachment down the road.                 Howard Nemerov