more random poems and poetry

When before those eyes, my life and light,
my beauty and fortune in the world, I stand,
the style, speech, passion, genius I command,
the thoughts, conceits, feelings I incite,
in all I'm overwhelmed, utterly spent,
like a deaf mute, virutally dazed, all reverence, nothing but amazed
in that lovely light, I'm fixed and rent.
Enough, not a word can I intone
for that divine incubus never quits
sapping my strength, leaving my soul prone.
Oh Love, what strange and wonderful fits:
one sole thing, one beauty alone,
can give me life and deprive me of wits.

Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
Dusk

I feel my heart melting
in the mildness like candles:
my veins are slow oil
and not wine,
and I feel my life fleeing
hushed and gentle like the gazelle.

Death Sonnet I

From the icy niche where men placed you
I lower your body to the sunny, poor earth.
They didn't know I too must sleep in it
and dream on the same pillow.

I place you in the sunny ground, with a
mother's sweet care for her napping child,
and the earth will be a soft cradle
when it receives your hurt childlike body.

I scatter bits of earth and rose dust,
and in the moon's airy and blue powder
what is left of you is a prisoner.

I leave singing my lovely revenge.
No hand will reach into the obscure depth
to argue with me over your handful of bones.

Sister

Today I saw a woman plowing a furrow. Her hips are
broad, like mine, for love, and she goes about her work
bent over the earth.

I caressed her waist; I brought her home with me. She
will drink rich milk from my own glass and bask in the
shade of my arbors growing pregnant with the pregnancy
of love. And if my own breasts be not generous, my son
will put his lips to hers, that are rich.

Robert Frost
The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taught
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Leaves Compared with Flowers
A tree's leaves may be ever so good,
So may its bar, so may its wood;
But unless you put the right thing to its root
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bar, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.

They Were Welcome To Their Belief
Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
They were welcome to their belief,
The overimportant pair.

No, it took all the snows that clung
To the low roof over his bed,
Beginning when he was young,
To induce the one snow on his head.

But whenever the roof camme white
The head in the dark below
Was a shade less the color of night,
A shade more the color of snow.

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
But neither one was the thief
Of his raven color of hair.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Magda Isanos (Rumanian)
Apricot Tree

This morning I woke
to an impatient scratching on the window,
the finger branches
of the apricot that bloomed in the night

At first I didn't know him
amid the squandering of so much white and rose.
I thought an angel had swooped down
and broken her wing in the tree.

Could it not be the apricot? I thought.
Then annoyed that I was silent
it slashed my cheek with a blossoming branch.
Then I saw him,

the childhood friend I loved.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Rhodora
LINES ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh rhodora in the woods
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook:
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay, --
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame Power that brought me there brought you.

Grace
How much, preventing God! how much I owe
To the defenses thou hast round me set:
Example, custom, fear, occasional slow,
These scorned bondmen were my parapet.
I dare not peep over this parapet
To gauge with glance the roaring gulf beelow,
The depths of sin to which I had descended,
Had not these me against myself defended.

Days
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Arthur Davison Ficke
Fate with Devoted...
Fate, with devoted and incessant care,
Has showered grotesqueness round us day by day.
If we turn grave, a hurdy-gurdy's air
Is sure to rasp across the words we say.
If we stand tense on brink of perilous choices,
'Tis never where Miltonic headlands loom,
But mid the sound of comic-opera voices
Or the cheap blaze of some hair-dresser's room.
Heaven knows what moonlit turrets, hazed in bliss
Saw Launcelot and night and Guenivere! --
Or from the cliffs of what great sea-abyss
Tristan and Iseult watched their doom draw near. ...
I only know our first impassioned kiss
Was in your cellar, rummaging for beer. ...

Sara Teasdale
I Shall Not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Elinor Wylie
Spring Pastoral
Liza, go steep your long white hands
In the cool waters of that spring
Which bubbles up through shiny sands
The colour of a wild-dove's wing.

Dabble your hands, and steep them well
Until those nails are pearly white
Now rosier than a laurel bell;
Then come to me at candlelight.

Lay your cold hands across my brows,
And I shall sleep, and I shall dream
Of silver-pointed willow boughs
Dipping their fingers in a stream.

--

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There's something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There's something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering megre sheaves
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

Sanctuary
This is the bricklayer; hear the thud
Of his heavy load dumped down on stone.
His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,
His smoking mortar whiter than bone.
Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick
Straight by the plumb-line's shivering length;
Make my marvelous wall so thick
Dead nor living may shake its strength.
Full as a crystal cup with drink
Is my cell with dreams, and quiet, and cool. ...
Stop, old man! You must leave a chink;
How can I breathe? You can't, you fool!

Michael Drayton
A Parting
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part:
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so clearly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And, when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now, at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes;
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life though mightst him yet recover.

Truce
Truce, gentle love, a parley now I crave,
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun;
Nor thou nor I the better yet can have;
Bad is the match where neither party won.
I offer free conditions of fair peace,
My heart for hostage that it shall remain;
Discharge our forces, here let malice cease,
So for my pledge thou give me pledge again.
Or if no thing but death will serve thy turn,
Still thirsting for subversion of my state,
Do what thou canst, raze, massacre, and burn,
Let the world see the utmost of thy hate;
I send defiance, since if overthrown,
Thou vanquishing, the conquest is mine own.

Genevieve Taggard
The Quiet Woman
I will defy you down until my death
With cold body, indrawn breath;
Terrible and cruel I will move with you
Like a surly tiger. If you knew
Why I am shaken, if fond you could see
All the caged arrogance in me,
You would not lean so boyishly, so bold,
To kiss my body, quivering and cold.

Katherine Philips
Against Love
Hence Cupid! with your cheating toys,
Your real griefs, and painted joys,
Your pleasure which itself destroys.
Lovers like men in fevers burn and rave,
And only what will injure them do crave.
Men's weakness makes love so severe,
They give him power by their fear,
And make the shackles which they wear.
Who to another does his heart submit,
Makes his own idol, and then worships it.
Him whose heart is all his own,
Peace and liberty does crown,
He apprehends no killing frown.
He feels no raptures which are joys diseased,
And is not much transported, but still pleased.

Florencia del Pinar (Spanish)
Another Song of the Same Woman, to Some Partridges, Sent to Her Alive

These birds were born
singing for joy;
such softness imprisoned
gives me such sorrow--
yet no one weeps for me.
They cry that they flew
fearless of capture
and those whom they shunned
were those who seized them:
their names write my life
which goes on, losing joy;
such softness imprisoned
give me such sorrow--
yet no one weeps for me.

Victor Plarr
Epitaphium Citharistriae

Stand not uttering sedately
Trite oblivious praise above her!
Rather say you saw her lately
Lightly kissing her last lover.
Whisper not, "There is a reason
Why we bring her no white blossom":
Since the snowy bloom's in season,
Strow it on her sleeping bosom:
Oh, for it would be a pity
To o'erpraise her or to flout her:
She was wild, and sweet, and witty --
Let's not say dull things about her.

John Hall Wheelock
The Letter

The night is measureless, no voice, no cry,
Pierces the dark in which the planet swings --
It is the shadow of her bulk that flings
So deep a gloom on the enormous sky;
This timorous dust, this phantom that is I,
Cowers in shelter, while the evening brings
A sense of mystery and how all things
Waver like water and are gliding by.
Now, while the stars in heaven like blowing sand
Drift to their darkness, while oblivion
Hushes the fire of some fading sun,
I turn the page again -- and there they stand,
Traced by love's fleeting but victorious hand,
The words: "My darling, my beloved one."

This Quiet Dust

Here in my curving hands I cup
This quiet dust; I lift it up.
Here is the mother of all thought;
Of this the shining heavens are wrought,
The laughing lips, the feet that rove,
The face, the body, that you love:
Mere dust, no more, yet nothing less,
And this has suffered consciousness,
Passion, and terror, this again
Shall suffer passion, death, and pain.

For, as all flesh must die, so all,
Now dust, shall live. 'Tis natural;
Yet hardly do I understand --
Here in the hollow of my hand
A bit of God Himself I keep,
Between two vigils fallen asleep.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lines

The cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.
The wintry hedge was black
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest on the bared thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack,
Which the frost had made between.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream,
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved --
The wind made thy bosom chill --
The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

Francis Beaumont
Fie on Love

Now fie on foolish love, it not befits
Or man or woman know it.
Love was not meant for people in their wits,
And they that fondly show it
Betray the straw, and features in their brain,
And shall have Bedlam for their pain:
If simple love be such a curse,
To marry is to make it ten times worse.

John Donne
Thou hast made me, and shall Thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh;
Only Thou art above, and when towards Thee
By Thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year's roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,
My sky is black with small birds bearing south;
Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,
Put by my word as but an April truth --
Autumn is no less on me, that a rose
Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.

--

Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
Its friendly weathers down, far underneath
Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.
That April should be shattered by a gust,
That August should be levelled by a rain,
I can endure, and that the lifted dust
Of man shold settle to the earth again;
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
Between my ribs forever of hot pain.

Sara Bard Field
November 2am Conspiracy

Cold, strange, withdrawn our friendly court and still --
Still, though in motion under full moon flood.
Acknowledging the wind's official will
Compliant heads on every stem-end nod.
His occult whisper passes among all
Some secret countersign, some dark command,
Some final word of Sivaistic Fall
Plant, stone and air alike appear to understand.
Grape leaves on dry, curled edges scud
Along the pavement toward an angled wall
And gather there in milling rebel knot.
Even the distant moon that laves^* the land         washes
With so detached, impersonal a hand
Lies on the wind's wish, lsitens with full stare
And all her shadows with her. Now late-leaved,
Sky-flung cherry boughs (by day aloof
From groundling dreams frustrated or achieved)
Shudder with passionate consent. What plot
Have I, a wakeful sleeper, chanced upon?
What proof
Of machinations vast no mortal ear
Was meant by these conspirators to hear?
What sinister design is now conceived
By these unhuman allies to my fear?
The murmurous agreement tightly binds
Wind, moonlight, shadows, leaves and tree,
The patio stones and even part of me
Beyond my active wish or willing act
Into the fateful, unknown, ominous pact
Too formidable for this ear and eye
Behind the window. Pale, I draw the blinds
Lest I, discovered, perish as a spy.

Alfonsina Storni
I Am Going to Sleep (Suicide Poem)

Teeth of flowers, hairnet of dew,
hands of herbs, you, perfect wet nurse,
prepare the earthly sheets for me
and the down quilt of weeded moss.

I am going to sleep, my nurse, put me to bed.
Set a lamp at my headboard;
a constellation; whatever you like;
all are good: lower it a bit.

Leave me alone: you hear the buds breaking through ...
a celestial foot rocks you from above
and a bird traces a pattern for you

so you'll forget ... Thank you. Oh, one request:
if he telephones again
tell him not to keep trying, for I have left ...

They've Come

Today my mother and sisters
came to see me.

I had been alone a long time
with my poems, my pride ... almost nothing.

My sister -- the oldest -- is grown up,
is blondish. an elemental dream
goes through her eyes: I told the youngest
"Life is sweet. Everything bad comes to an end."

My mother smiled as those who understand souls
tend to do;
She placed two hands on my shoulders.
She's staring at me ...
and tears spring from my eyes.

We ate together in the warmest room
of the house.
Spring sky ... to see it
all the windows were opened.

And while we talked together quietly
of so much that is old and forgotten,
My sister -- the youngest -- interrupts:
"The swallows are flying by us."

Thomas Carew
Mediocrity in Love Rejected

Give me more love, or more disdain;
The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none:
Either extreme, of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.
Give me a storm; if it be love,
Like Danae in that golden shower,
I swim in pleasure; if it prove
Disdain, that torrent wil devour
My vulture hopes; and he's possessed
Of heaven that's but from hell released.
Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
Give me more love or more disdain.

Murasaki Shikibu (974-1031)
from The Tale of Genji

Lady Murasaki says:

The troubled waters
are frozen fast.
Under clear heaven
moonlight and shadow
ebb and flow.

Answered by Prince Genji:

The memories of long love
gather like drifting snow,
poignant as the mandarin ducks
who float side by side in sleep.

Wallace Stevens
The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

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