Best Sideways Poems

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?
...

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
...

In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws. In school he never led his classes,
...

When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow,
the distinguishable flakes
blowing sideways,
looked like krill
...

This is not bad --
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music flowing through the soft calipers
...

IN SEVEN PARTS

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum
universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et
...

`You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
...

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther -- and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
...

We live from day to day to day
and we play and we play and we play
we always have and we think we always will
yes there is a brain cell that knows that end it will
...

ST Agnes' Eve---Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
...

I'm walking backwards for Christmas,
Across the Irish Sea,
I'm walking backwards for Christmas,
It's the only thing for me.
...

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
...

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
...

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
...

FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face
to face.
...

We’d gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
...

My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river
Stirs anguish in the heart of me.
...

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
...

Awake, of Muse, the echoes of a day
Long past, the ghosts of mem'ries manifold --
Youth's memories that once were green and gold
But now, alas, are grim and ashen grey.
...

Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company
...

My mother all of ninety has to be tied up
in her wheelchair, but still she leans far out of it sideways;
she juts there brokenly,
able to cut
...

A city clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child-
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old:
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
...

Neither will I look forward,
Nor sideways or backward,
I don’t prefer means hard,
No wish to have any reward,
...

The slender young woman who is there would be the premier creation by the
Creator in the sphere of women, with fine teeth, lips like a ripe bimba fruit, a
slim waist, eyes like a startled gazelle’s, a deep navel, a gait slow on account
of the weight of her hips, and who is somewhat bowed down by her breasts.
...

Nothing's moving I don't see anybody
And I know that it's not a trick
There really is nothing moving there
And there aren't any people. It is the very utmost top
...

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
...

A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old
It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,
...

I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted axe behind me.
...

The poppies gleamed like bloody pools through cotton-woolly mist;
The Captain kept a-lookin' at the watch upon his wrist;
And there we smoked and squatted, as we watched the shrapnel flame;
'Twas wonnerful, I'm tellin' you, how fast them bullets came.
...

.
I'm drifting
drifting with the clouds so gently
gently uplifting and oversteering so purposely
...

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
...

In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
...

STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements;
...

WHERE the city's ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day,
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching--I pause aside with
them.
...

From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
...

BOOK I

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
...

Lift me up to the sky by the notes
Oh, flute by your captivating melodious tunes

Sing to my body and sing to my soul...
...

Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company
...

I

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
...

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
...

O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
...

Far and wide among the nations
Spread the name and fame of Kwasind;
No man dared to strive with Kwasind,
No man could compete with Kwasind.
...

A bird that I don't know,
Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow,
Looks sideways out into the wheat
The wind waves under the waves of heat.
...

Twenty-eight shotgun pellets
crater my thighs, belly and groin.
I gently thumb each burnt bead,
fingering scabbed stubs with ointment.
...

My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard:
Though, if I saw not, yet they told me all
...

O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
...

Touch

His warm, sideways glance
Wrapped me like an angora shawl-
...

Monday
The world is a ball of water.
See, it is round-sided.
I move across its topside,
...

On the small marble-paved platform
On the turret on the head of the tower,
Watching the night deepen.
I feel the rock-edge of the continent
...

An angel was tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street;
His halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at his feet;
So the Master stooped in His pity, and gave him a pass to go,
For the space of a moon, to the earth-world, to mix with the men below.
...

A fine morning and the side-streets empty
then turning the corner,
in the middle of the road
a pigeon - grey-mauve, plump and feather-perfect,
...

Life is every where
It is in you now and forever it shall stay
Life is the wind blowing sideways
Life is the winter and the summer
...

I

Frost upon small rain--the ebony-lacquered avenue
Reflecting lamps as a pool shows goldfish.
...

But, learning now that they would have her speak,
She threw her wet hair backward from her brow,
Her hand close to her mouth touching her cheek,
...

Little trotty wagtail he went in the rain,
And tittering, tottering sideways he neer got straight again,
...

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost -
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.
...

THERE'S no menagerie, I vow,

Excels my Lily's at this minute;
...

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
...

I woke to the beaming rays
Of dawn's early golden light
Birds flew singing across the sky
Breeze whizzed past telling all is right
...

I'm very good at skiing.
I have a kind of knack
For I can do it frontways
And also on my back.
...

SWEET LIFE, if life were stronger,
Earth clear of years that wrong her,
Then two things might live longer,
Two sweeter things than they;
...

The dawn broke, tearing the dark shroud of gloom,
And lights turned on to greet another day,
Life taking its new course all around,
but in this room, life coming to an end!
...

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
...

Life is every where
It is in you now and forever it shall stay
Life is the wind blowing sideways
Life is the winter and the summer
...

You'd never have thought the Queen was Helen's sister- Troy's
burning-flower from Sparta, the beautiful sea-flower
Cut in clear stone, crowned with the fragrant golden mane, she
the ageless, the uncontaminable-
...

The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
...

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,
...

I feel like a train sometimes
that can't get no locomotin.'

My wheels lumber
...

Wander, I go hunting in the poem woods, horizon dusky, receding light, mindful, collecting reads from the 'hunter's' kit, a rejoicing me, fragrance piercing my nose,
alluring wildflowers that prefer
to bloom only when the day bids bye
...

These days the world is a place so cold
I wear a genuine smile as a lie's being told
That I assume is the truth, very deeply in my heart
but then there's a doubt that starts.
...

1.
WHAT though my words glance sideways from the thing
Which I would utter in thine ear, my sire!
Truth in the inward parts thou dost desire-
...

DOUBT spake no word in me as there I kneeled.
Loathing, I could not praise: I could not thank
God for the cup of evil that I drank:
...

Dear to my heart are the ancestral dwellings of America,
Dearer than if they were haunted by ghosts of royal splendour;
These are the homes that were built by the brave beginners of a nation,
They are simple enough to be great, and full of a friendly dignity.
...

LEAN BACK, and get some minutes’ peace;
Let your head lean
Back to the shoulder with its fleece
Of locks, Faustine.
...

MOTHER's gone a-visitin' to spend a month er two,
An', oh, the house is lonesome ez a nest whose birds has flew
...

1.
LORD, what I once had done with youthful might,
Had I been from the first true to the truth,
Grant me, now old, to do-with better sight,
...

closing my eyes I sleep
body floating in darkness
without substance
whether I lay up or down
...

I

How fresh the Dartle's little waves that day!
A steely silver, underlined with blue,
...

I WILL that if I say a heavy thing
Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring
Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,
...

I chanced upon an early walk to spy
A troop of children through an orchard gate:
The boughs hung low, the grass was high;
...

As with varnish red and glistening
Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid;
Raised, he settled stiffly sideways:
...

I

Demeter devastated our good land,
In blackness for her daughter snatched below.
...

So if it makes you feel great,
OK, go ahead -
as long as you're making yourself more attractive
for me, not your next husband...
...

and yes even the photo
on the back cover
as if he’d gone to the studio,
said, I’ve written this book
...

Oh, we started down from Roto when the sheds had all cut out.
We'd whips and whips of Rhino as we meant to push about,
So we humped our blues serenely and made for Sydney town,
With a three-spot cheque between us, as wanted knocking down.
...

IT HATH been seen and yet it shall be seen
That out of tender mouths God’s praise hath been
Made perfect, and with wood and simple string
...

He's nothing much but fur
And two round eyes of blue,
He has a giant purr
And a midget mew.
...

KING DAVID.
Knights mine, all that be in hall,
I have a counsel to you all,
Because of this thing God lets fall
...

SCARECROWS!

They told me that scarecrows do not scare
birds or crows any more!
...

I am sat on a bench, on the seafront, alone,
Just me, and the sea, and the old weathered stone.
Of course, there are tourists, who wander on by,
And silver winged gulls, as they dissect the sky.
...

Ron doesn’t actually live on the cut,
He just travels back and forth a lot,
Chatting to anyone who will listen
To his alcohol-soaked speech.
...

Ain't nobody nevah tol' you not a wo'd a-tall,
'Bout de time dat all de critters gin dey fancy ball?
...

Sunning ourselves in October on a day
Balmy as spring, though the year was in decay,
I lading my pipe, she stirring her tea,
...

The mirror and I have this relationship
complicated as can be;
sometimes my shadow it is
non-consequential.
...

'Of course,' I said, 'we cannot hope to find
What we are looking for in anyone;
They glitter, maybe, but are not the sun,
This pebble here, that bit of apple rind.
...

Ill fares it with the man whose lips are set
To bitter themes and words that spite the gods;
For, seeing how the son of Saturn sways
...

After your death.
It was windy every day.
Every day.
Opposed us like a wall.
...

This morning lengthened my life by ten years, it
is the most marvellous thing when joie de vivre
springs without external cause, without hope for
anything, simply the joy of being
...

'Of course,' I said, 'we cannot hope to find
What we are looking for in anyone;
They glitter, maybe, but are not the sun,
This pebble here, that bit of apple rind.
...

I.

Quiet I lay at last, and knew no more
Whether I breathed or not, so worn I lay
...