First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
...
Then said Almitra, 'Speak to us of Love.'
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them.
And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
...
I weep for Adonais -he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
...
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
...
Part One
The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry.
...
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
...
I will give you a poem when you wake tomorrow.
It will be a peaceful poem.
It won’t make you sad.
It won’t make you miserable.
...
Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the trappings of poetic myth,
Far from me but here all the same without your knowing,
Far from me and even more silent because I imagine you endlessly.
Far from me, my lovely mirage and eternal dream, you cannot know.
...
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
...
Rintrah roars and shakes his
fires in the burdenM air,
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
...
Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
...
Fruit of My Being
Beautiful flower in my garden,
Infinite is the tree,
...
There is a place to which I often go,
Not by planning to, but by a flow
Away from all existence, to a cold
Lucidity, whose will is uncontrolled.
...
Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
...
For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
...
Pellam the King, who held and lost with Lot
In that first war, and had his realm restored
But rendered tributary, failed of late
To send his tribute; wherefore Arthur called
...
Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
...
Life and Thought have gone away
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide.
Careless tenants they!
...
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
...
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though they never fight.
...
Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
...
I had just won $115 from the headshakers and
was naked upon my bed
listening to an opera by one of the Italians
...
Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
...
Trust yourself and have faith in you
Bullies can't hurt you, they are few!
Why fear! Be smart and take my note
Nobody ever sees you when you vote!
...
Then said Almitra, 'Speak to us of Love.'
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them.
...
There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fireglow.
...
SCENE: 'En ce bourdel ou tenons nostre estat.'
It being remembered that there were six of us with Master
...
First
one
foot
...
I.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
...
My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
...
49
Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
...
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit,
...
Smoke, it is all smoke
in the throat of eternity. . . .
For centuries, the air was full of witches
Whistling up chimneys
...
I
Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
...
To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
...
BOOK I
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
...
A Document of Promise.
(Transcreation of the poem(ପ୍ରତିଶୃତିର ଦସ୍ତାବିଜ)by Kumudini Jee
(From the Anthology-A Handful of Memories)
...
Señora, it is true the Greeks are dead.
It is true also that we here are Americans:
That we use the machines: that a sight of the god is unus ...
...
That was the year when he stayed
Without work, for a living played
Cards, or backgammon; or borrowed and never paid.
...
A New Version: 1980
What is that little black thing I see there
in the white?
...
The sky-line melts from russet into blue,
Unbroken the horizon, saving where
A wreath of smoke curls up the far, thin air,
And points the distant lodges of the Sioux.
...
The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
...
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?
...
They said that is nakedness
I said that is my born physical form
They said that pollutes the environment
...
I.
That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court,
nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables;
...
Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.--BYRON.
I.
A glorious people vibrated again
...
Lo, my son,
This is India's map.
These drained lines flowing out
Like frantic cries of impotence
...
Yes, I want to see for myself
The stern madness involved in
Trying the treacherous, which
You had done with your barefeet
...
Ah! What avails the classic bent
And what the cultured word,
Against the undoctored incident
...
Your nakedness
encounters my nakedness
the moonlight
...
Murder mystery.
At last the killer’s name is...
revealed: but hides now
behind the blood on the page
...
Astonished I'm! No! World is distinct book
of deaths! Book of lives, of a child,
of a woman, of a man, of human.
...
O why your good deeds with such pride do you scan,
And why that self-satisfied smile
At the shilling you gave to the poor working man,
...
Oh, my beloved companion!
Oh thou of my existence,
The very heart and soul!
...
I consider how blossom trees, do
a stark impressive autumn strip, to
shamelessly stand naked through
winters frost and snow; stir to
...
(ALCAICS)
Confused, he found her lavishing feminine
...
Glory falls around us
as we sob
a dirge of
desolation on the Cross
...
Twice I awoke this night, and went
to the window. The streetlamps were
a fragment of a sentence spoken in sleep,
...
The mannequins
have got bored
hanging around
...
Ye flaming Powers, and wingèd Warriors bright,
That erst with music, and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful Shepherds’ ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along,
...
my love
my straight
nakedness
wants to be sucked
...
Truth is naked.
The moon is naked.
The Elephant is naked,
so is the ant
...
In the sad November time,
When the leaf has left the lime,
And the Cam, with sludge and slime,
Plasters his ugly channel,
...
Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
So Man, declining always, disappears
In the weak circles of increasing years;
...
"little soul, little flirting,
little perverse one
where are you off to now?
little wan one, firm one
...
J'aime le souvenir de ces époques nues,
Dont Phoebus se plaisait à dorer les statues.
Alors l'homme et la femme en leur agilité
...
Unknown faces in the street
And winter coming on. I
Stand in the last moments of
The city, no more a child,
...
You have beheld a smiling rose
When virgins' hands have drawn
O'er it a cobweb-lawn:
And here, you see, this lily shows,
...
Love, has robbed you
of your clothes
except for high high heels
...
Here, down between the dusty trees,
At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
...
She takes off
all her clothes
just for
...
And when I held together my bones
By the pull of a leather belt with buckle
A symbolic leaf of Adam still I felt
The nakedness in nature on my shoes
...
NOT that in colour it was like thy hair,
For armlets of that thou mayst let me wear;
Nor that thy hand it oft embraced and kiss'd,
...
Now our boys have such toys
as my brother and I never dreamed;
Did the same spirit stir our make-believe?
Yet outdoor was where we took its measure.
...
A new born baby finds,
Even with closed eyes,
Mother's nipple, sucks,
Without prior knowledge,
...
'A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have sav'd her; now she's gone for
ever.'
[ King Lear,5.3.269-271]
...
Am I failing ? For no longer can I cast
A glory round about this head of gold.
Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
Not like the consecration of the Past!
...
I
HAIL sun-beams in the east are spread ;
Leave, leave, fair bride, your solitary bed ;
...
I Les Ténèbres
Dans les caveaux d'insondable tristesse
Où le Destin m'a déjà relégué;
...
The time that I first saw the light
Sun turned into darkness
Of the billows of smoke
From the warship
...
On the morning of May,
Ere the children had entered my gate
With their wreaths and mechanical lay,
A metal ding-dong of the date!
...
Alas, I thought this forest must be true,
And would not change because of my changed eyes;
...
Once on a time
There was a little boy: a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
...
Despair has no wings,
Nor has love,
No countenance:
They do not speak.
...
I thought he was dumb,
I said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
...
Be gentle, sky, and let me rest -
These bones are worn - they lack the zest
Of flesh in life - they're marrowless! -
Their arid surface, nakedness! -
...
Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper;
Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring
Gives to each mead a neat enamelling;
...
I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
...
On Spending an Exceedingly Long Time in Debenham’s Lingerie Department Buying Bigger Underwear After the Usual Christmas Indulgence Despite Dónall’s Kind Assurances That It is AS HE LIKES IT!
I’m busy in the changing room
choosing bras, to fit my bigger,
...
LIBERAL Nature did dispence
To all things Arms for their defence;
And some she arms with sin'ewy force,
And some with swiftness in the course;
...
'Twas after dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede--
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
...
Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank,
Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!
Quenched youth, and is that thy purse?
...
Wandering by the river's edge,
I love to rustle through the sedge
And through the woods of reed to tear
Almost as high as bushes are.
...
I woke, awkwardly
in the dim light of morning
to find the world hushed in newborn snow.
...
Hours before the dawn,
The soft moonlight seeps
Through an open upstairs window,
A blanket is tossed from the bed,
...
..........Shells cracked.........
.......Confines crashed.......
......As life thrust.........
........With feeble might.......
...