Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Mother, the folk who live up in the clouds call out to me-
'We play from the time we wake till the day ends.
We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon.'
I ask, 'But how am I to get up to you? '
They answer, 'Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your
hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds.'
'My mother is waiting for me at home, 'I say, 'How can I leave
her and come? '
Then they smile and float away.
But I know a nicer game than that, mother.
I shall be the cloud and you the moon.
I shall cover you with both my hands, and our house-top will
be the blue sky.
The folk who live in the waves call out to me-
'We sing from morning till night; on and on we travel and know
not where we pass.'
I ask, 'But how am I to join you? '
They tell me, 'Come to the edge of the shore and stand with
your eyes tight shut, and you will be carried out upon the waves.'
I say, 'My mother always wants me at home in the everything-
how can I leave her and go? '
They smile, dance and pass by.
But I know a better game than that.
I will be the waves and you will be a strange shore.
I shall roll on and on and on, and break upon your lap with
laughter.
And no one in the world will know where we both are.
...

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

...

Don't walk out of my life
Friends
Because you are everything
I have
I don't want to be without
Friends
Living in isolation
Because I can't stand being
In isolation
Also, please friends

...

OUTSIDE the rain upon the street,
The sky all grim of hue,
Inside, the music-painful sweet,
And yet I heard but you
As is a thrilling violin,
So is your voice to me,
And still above the other strains,
It sang in ecstasy.
...

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music - hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.


...

One day Death asked me, 'How is life? '
I snapped, 'Alive enough to defy you.'
With a sinister smile, he told me to wait.

I forgot what I left behind
and what awaited me.
I clung to my so-called life,
struggling to breathe.
Life tried to tear me from itself,
inflicting more trauma.

...

Out on the high "bird islands," Ciboux and Hertford,
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand
with their backs to the mainland
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff's brown grass-frayed edge,
while the few sheep pastured there go "Baaa, baaa."
(Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede
and fall over into the sea or onto the rocks.)
The silken water is weaving and weaving,
disappearing under the mist equally in all directions,
lifted and penetrated now and then
by one shag's dripping serpent-neck,
and somewhere the mist incorporates the pulse,
rapid but unurgent, of a motor boat.

The same mist hangs in thin layers
among the valleys and gorges of the mainland
like rotting snow-ice sucked away
almost to spirit; the ghosts of glaciers drift
among those folds and folds of fir: spruce and hackmatack--
dull, dead, deep pea-cock colors,
each riser distinguished from the next
by an irregular nervous saw-tooth edge,
alike, but certain as a stereoscopic view.

The wild road clambers along the brink of the coast.
On it stand occasional small yellow bulldozers,
but without their drivers, because today is Sunday.
The little white churches have been dropped into the matted hills
like lost quartz arrowheads.
The road appears to have been abandoned.

...

i want her tin skin. i want
her militant barbie breast,
resistant, cupped, no, cocked
in the V of her elbow. i want
my curves mountainous

and locked. i want her
arabesque eyes, i want her
tar markings, her curlicues,
i want her tin skin. she

...

oh look at this beautiful fantasy
I stand upon this splendid field of gold
maybe there will be no calamity
Oh This world a wonderful story told

Oh this a wondrous land that lies within
oh The sky above me is orange and red
Oh yes The world around me wants to spin
Oh my for i feel that i lost my head


...