Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
-I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me.
...

The mysteries remain,
I keep the same
cycle of seed-time
and of sun and rain;
Demeter in the grass,
I multiply,
renew and bless
Bacchus in the vine;
I hold the law,
I keep the mysteries true,

...

All I hear are the footsteps down the hall.
I can tell everything from those footsteps.
I can tell what kind of day it's going to be.
Happy, sad, angry, lonely, tired, loud, quite.
I wish I didn't know.
I wish I didn't have to.
But I always hear those footsteps, I always know.
I know based on the car ride to school.
Of my fathers goodbye in the morning.
Because of my mothers hug.

...

Mount Kearsarge shines with ice; from hemlock branches
snow slides onto snow; no stream, creek, or river
               budges but remains still. Tonight
we carry armloads of logs

from woodshed to Glenwood and build up the fire
that keeps the coldest night outside our windows.
Sit by the woodstove, Camilla,
               while I bring glasses of white,

and we'll talk, passing the time, about weather
without pretending that we can alter it:
Storms stop when they stop, no sooner,
leaving the birches glossy

with ice and bent glittering to rimy ground.
We'll avoid the programmed weatherman grinning
               from the box, cheerful with tempest,
and take the day as it comes,

one day at a time, the way everyone says,
These hours are the best because we hold them close
in our uxorious nation.
Soon we'll walk -- when days turn fair

and frost stays off -- over old roads, listening
for peepers as spring comes on, never to miss
               the day's offering of pleasure
for the government of two.
...

Hair-braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes-fagots,
Lips-old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath-the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame.
...

Nowadays I felt something had lost
So I began to quest to find what I lost
I asked my long relatives what I lost
they replied 'you lost beauty'
I asked my neighbours what I lost
they answered 'you lost your charmness'
I asked my friends what I lost
they responded 'you lost your smile'
I asked my sibling what I lost
they retorted 'you lost your happiness'

...

Yes, I still remember
The whole thing in a way;
Edge and exactitude
Depend on the day.

Of all that prodigious scene
There seems scanty loss,
Though mists mainly float and screen
Canal, spire and fosse;

Though commonly I fail to name
That once obvious Hill,
And where we went and whence we came
To be killed, or kill.
Those mists are spiritual
And luminous-obscure,
Evolved of countless circumstance
Of which I am sure;

Of which, at the instance
Of sound, smell, change and stir,
New-old shapes for ever
Intensely recur.

And some are sparkling, laughing, singing,
Young, heroic, mild;
And some incurable, twisted,
Shrieking, dumb, defiled.
...

To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go
Sailing far across the sea
All alone, just little me.
And the sea is big and strong
And the journey very long.
To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go.

Sea and sky, sea and sky,

...

The start will always come, mediocrely;
Voices in your back will whisper dismay,
Trying to make you feel black, to bring you down.
Every voice will rise, a word to say,
Tallying fails, a ledger of the past,
To make your ambitions dark, to make you doubt at last,
And let you believe in nothing, nought.

But when the éclat comes, the moment of pride,
Friends will gather 'round, a congratulatory tide,

...