The Very Rich Hours

T
Amant in bed,
dreaming.
There are no
borders to this
miniature.

B moves Bateau across the night.
It is all the loops can do
to let their gilding
bulge with what is there.
One light on the wide sea.
The bones of stars.

No other country is so
curiously watered.
From the estuaries to the very
sources of its inwardtending channels,
it rises in fogs which are themselves
arterial. For its earth
has more than once been seen
quite early in the morning
to lighten and give way.

At the gate to the garden,
Fair Welcome.
She raises her hand.
Salutare:
to greet and to save.

Leisures of tendrils are on all sides,
winding with the snails
through white acanthus and discarded
badges of pilgrims.
You may assign to the nineteen
portholes in these borders
whatever you like.

The sand is of such fineness
and the flow so singly clear
that nothing seems to pass through,
golden, and with all its lights.

water makes very much the best
portable horizon.
While its reflections are
fainter than those in the speculum,
their angles may be measured
accurately
and the differences from a true meridian
reckoned by the clock.
These sightings should be taken at least
three hours
before and after noon.

Two liveried falconers,
the jesses and bells, the gloves.
Amant with the dove’s neck-ring,
The lady in her chamber.
winter trees, rooks in the white
branches, hounds, the dying boar.
On the top of a mountain
a lion waving his tail.

The general course of the river
straightens, and is moderately timbered.
Scattered islands covered w/willow.
Across from a single, long bluff of open rock,
the plain to the S. is higher, extending
quite to the mountains which contain still
great quantities of snow.
A small creek falls in from this side.
Pursued its bottom for perhaps 4 m.
Cottonwood. Much evidence of beaver.

Now all of this is to be understood
in a spiritual manner.
Let us cover
the nakedness of our fathers
with the cloak of a
favorable interpretation.

Under a dry stalk of burdock, iron-brown
latches and fittings, a few nails.
The bulls are eating apples.
Thick grasses sweat through the whole pasture.

Dame Reason with her
chaplet of apothegms.
He should put his heart
in a single place only.
The truest things about bodies
are their shadows.

Pleas put me back
in the water I am
Paddle-to-the-Sea

She has done this before.
She wades into the current
to the one point where the current
lounges at her hips.
She stands there.
With all the time in the world,
steadily, she kneels steadily
deeper, to her shoulders, smiling, her hair
cupped in both hands behind her neck.

The Familiar gives Its first
lesson to the lover.
A new order
is one that is renewed
hourly.

A drove of geese in its tall, while file
plucks home through the wet fallow.
Hedges darken between the fields.
Along the wolds for miles in level tracts,
haze from the lime-kilns.
All quarters of the sky are wintry, huge.

We could no longer be sure
that we had passed the Préveranges.
Freshets from the little stream
poured onto the lane, filling
ruts and drainages. In the dusk,
and with our shoes soaked, we set
off through a meadow, and another,
and found soon an abandoned
cottage of some old forester.
We determined that I should
stay and secure it as an outpost.
Meaulnes went on alone.

At an earlier hour,
the ground at the wood’s edge
illumines to some thousand
footcandles, fades under the
canopies, the layers
of trees, of shrubs and herbs,
under the dark itself,
brighter by as many
eyes as are buried there.

Tied to a washboard,
submerged,
the panes of glass
chime like clean ice.

they are dangers harebells and
just where the fall goes over
they lean into the spray so
far and bob so on their stems
they thrill and a hammer rings
carillon down the cows spine
feel it there it goes again

death hath its seat
close to the entrance of delight.
—Gudique

Sifting over porches and limp hibiscus,
rust from the canvas awnings,
its red spores dull in a moon that shows
everything, houses and driveways,
fishponds, all of them
hiding from their insides, forgetting,
looking around.

there is no way to lie down
and not lie in the same way
that someone has had to lie
thinking of how far it is
to the places no one goes
or to any place this far
from the beds where the dying
cry into the night this far

Deacons and presbyters.
The Laying On of Hands.
In a vial,
juice from the wild cucumber,
powdered glass,
the divine Endura.
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Snow by Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
Read Poem
0
150
Rating:

from A Ballad Upon A Wedding by Sir John Suckling
Sir John Suckling
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been,
Where I the rarest things have seen;
Oh, things without compare!
Such sights again cannot be found
In any place on English ground,
Be it at wake, or fair.

At Charing-Cross, hard by the way,
Read Poem
0
156
Rating:

Flatted Fifths   by Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Little cullud boys with beards
re-bop be-bop mop and stop.

Little cullud boys with fears,
frantic, kick their CC years
into flatted fifths and flatter beers
that at a sudden change become
sparkling Oriental wines
rich and strange
Read Poem
0
296
Rating:

Voyages by Hart Crane
Hart Crane
I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning on the waves,
Read Poem
0
166
Rating:

Summer Images by John Clare
John Clare
Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
And laughing Joy, with wild flowers prank'd, and crown'd,
A wild and giddy thing,
And Health robust, from every care unbound,
Come on the zephyr's wing,
And cheer the toiling clown.
Read Poem
0
152
Rating:

from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
—Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou,
O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains
Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream
Read Poem
0
173
Rating:

Romance by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—a most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
Read Poem
0
158
Rating:

from Aurora Leigh, Second Book by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

'There it is!–
You play beside a death-bed like a child,
Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place
To teach the living. None of all these things,
Can women understand. You generalise,
Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts,
So sympathetic to the personal pang,
Read Poem
0
188
Rating:

I Dreamed That I Was Old by Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz
I dreamed that I was old: in stale declension
Fallen from my prime, when company
Was mine, cat-nimbleness, and green invention,
Before time took my leafy hours away.

My wisdom, ripe with body’s ruin, found
Itself tart recompense for what was lost
In false exchange: since wisdom in the ground
Has no apocalypse or pentecost.
Read Poem
0
145
Rating:

The Fountain by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
My dear, your eyes are weary;
Rest them a little while.
Assume the languid posture
Of pleasure mixed with guile.
Outside the talkative fountain
Continues night and day
Repeating my warm passion
In whatever it has to say.

The sheer luminous gown
The fountain wears
Where Phoebe’s very own
Color appears
Falls like a summer rain
Or shawl of tears.
Read Poem
2
461
Rating:

Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning
Robert Browning
But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems
As if—forgive now—should you let me sit
Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
Read Poem
0
243
Rating:

The Tower by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
I

What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
Read Poem
0
201
Rating:

In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 106 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Read Poem
0
162
Rating:

from The Seasons: Winter by James Thomson
James Thomson
See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train—
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot,
Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d
In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
Read Poem
0
191
Rating:

The Canticle of Jack Kerouac by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
1.

Far from the sea far from the sea
of Breton fishermen
the white clouds scudding
over Lowell
and the white birches the
bare white birches
along the blear night roads
Read Poem
0
182
Rating:

Speech: “Is this a dagger which I see before me” by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth) Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
Read Poem
0
210
Rating:

Ars Poetica? by Czeslaw Milosz
Czeslaw Milosz
I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
Read Poem
0
182
Rating:

Slavery by Hannah More
Hannah More
If Heaven has into being deigned to call
Thy light, O Liberty! to shine on all;
Bright intellectual Sun! why does thy ray
To earth distribute only partial day?
Since no resisting cause from spirit flows
Thy universal presence to oppose;
No obstacles by Nature’s hand impressed,
Thy subtle and ethereal beams arrest;
Read Poem
0
231
Rating:

Imitations of Horace by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
(Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
Read Poem
0
164
Rating:

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Read Poem
1
607
Rating: