The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke. For view there are the houses opposite Cutting the sky with one long line of wall Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch Monotony of surface & of form Without a break to hang a guess upon. No bird can make a shadow as it flies, For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung By thickest canvass, where the golden rays Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye Or rest a little on the lap of life. All hurry on & look upon the ground, Or glance unmarking at the passers by The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages
It is patent to the eye that cannot face the sun The smug philosophers lie who say the world is one; World is other and other, world is here and there, Parmenides would smother life for lack of air Precluding birth and death; his crystal never breaks— No movement and no breath, no progress nor mistakes, Nothing begins or ends, no one loves or fights, All your foes are friends and all your days are nights
When I come to view about steadfastness Espousal is as ever Evil never unravels Memory was and will be yet mercy flows Mercies to me and mine Night rainy my family in private and family
1 Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose, And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
2 The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day, The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme, The similitudes of the past and those of the future, The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river, The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away, The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know, we know that we can smile! But there's a something in this breast, To which thy light words bring no rest, And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
One died, and the soul was wrenched out Of the other in life, who, walking the streets Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on The same corners, volumetrics, shadows Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever Called, through increasingly suburban airs And ways, with autumn falling over everything: The plush leaves the chattels in barrels
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear my head about this poem about why I can’t go out without changing my clothes my shoes my body posture my gender identity my age my status as a woman alone in the evening/ alone on the streets/alone not being the point/ the point being that I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong
I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says that animals have no need of speech and Nature abhors the superfluous.My cat is fluent.He converses when he wants with me.To speak
is natural.And whales and wolves I’ve heard in choral soundings of the sea and air know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs my mind and heart—they touch the soul.Here
For the person who obtained my debit card number and spent $11,000 in five days My pale stepdaughter, just off the school bus, Scowled, "Well, that's the last time I say my name's Snodgrass!" Just so, may that anonymous Mexican male who prodigally claims
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Now he has silver in him. When sometime Death shall boil down unnecessary fat To reach the nub of our identity, When in the run of crime The skull is rifled for the gold in teeth, And chemistry has eaten from the spine Superfluous life and vigor, why then he Will show a richness to be wondered at, And shall be thought a mine Whose claim and stake are stone and floral wreath.
The body burns away, and burning gives Light to the eye and moisture to the lip And warmth to our desires, but it burns Whatever body lives
All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
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