Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

How shall the burial rite be read?
The solemn song be sung?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
That ever died so young?

II.

Her friends are gazing on her,
And on her gaudy bier,
And weep! - oh! to dishonor
Dead beauty with a tear!

III.

They loved her for her wealth -
And they hated her for her pride -
But she grew in feeble health,
And they love her - that she died.

IV.

They tell me (while they speak
Of her 'costly broider'd pall')
That my voice is growing weak -
That I should not sing at all -

V.

Or that my tone should be
Tun'd to such solemn song

...

It mounts at sea, a concave wall
Down-ribbed with shine,
And pushes forward, building tall
Its steep incline.

Then from their hiding rise to sight
Black shapes on boards
Bearing before the fringe of white
It mottles towards.


...

The shady trees are gone.
The stems were murdered by the giants
And the wind split their bone.
The shady trees are gone.

The thick hair was trimmed by the hippos
And they leave the thorn.
The shady trees are gone.

The seeds were kidnapped by the lizards

...

Oh, it was a merry, gladsome day,
When the April Fool met the Queen of May;
She had roguish eyes and golden hair,
And they were a mischief-making pair.
They planned the funniest kind of a joke
On the poor, long-suffering mortal folk;
And a few mysterious words he said,
His fool's cap close to her flower-crowned head.
Then he laughed till he made his cap-bells ring,
At the thought of the topsy-turvy Spring.
''Tis a fair exchange,' he said, with a wink--
'It is!' she said, and what do you think?
The flowers that should bloom in the month of May
Every one of them came on an April day!
And they looked for April showers in vain,
But all through May it did nothing but rain!
...

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

...

Thy summer is passing.
The darling honeybee has charged
Womb of mine with pollen.
What do press thou, and shines shy sensuality?
The dark floating pillows of envy, still and all,
Under the spell of silver linings!
Stops gaming hide-and-seek. In lieu,
Swollen thine orange orb up, so to
Split the threadbare jaundiced overcast.
Not thou be a modest wolf! In lieu,

...

When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.

From the earth's loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold,
The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.

When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.

And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.


...

I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,
Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.

...

I have spent my life
tasting the world
and nothing lingers
quite the same as women.

We carry the same code,
the same chromosome.
Yet I am still enchanted by them;
and only them.


...