Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
...
The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters,
...
Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.
...
Fireflies die
Stars wink out of existence
Butterflies fall from the sky
Rivers take the path of least resistance
...
My fancies are fireflies, —
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
...
Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
...
When you are in the midst of darkness
Where loneliness engulfs your soul
Twinges of hopelessness felt
Chirping sound of crickets heard
...
Far, far away is my village!
Where fireflies of my childhood
Still glow in thick folliage
Of Pipal trees.
...
Night, the black summer, simplifies her smells
into a village; she assumes the impenetrable
musk of the negro, grows secret as sweat,
...
When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
...
We were entwined in red rings
Of blood and loneliness before
The first snows fell
Before muddy rivers seeded clouds
...
The serpents are asleep among the poppies,
The fireflies light the soundless panther's way
To tangled paths where shy gazelles are straying,
And parrot-plumes outshine the dying day.
...
A lake softly shimmering, in the evening's sunset glow,
Fireflies are dancing above it, moving swiftly to and fro,
Like a shower of confetti, they gyrate in a swirling mass,
Hovering over the surface, lightly humming as they pass.
...
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
...
Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn't be worse,
minutes of a barbaric condescension.
--Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees,
at their dark needles, accretions to no purpose
...
Loved to write as far back as memory goes
Without any thought for a verse to compose
Poetic expressions of innate creativity
...
On warm dark nights I think I see
beneath the weeping willow tree,
the fairies dancing in the grass
on tiny feet that fly so fast.
...
When sunset, a brass gong,
vibrate through Couva,
is then I see my soul, swiftly unsheathed,
like a white cattle bird growing more small
...
Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
...
It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth
A huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters
to the Malayan sea
I have been there too: the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka
...
[Brazil. A friend of the writer is speaking.]
Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)—
...
Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
...
Now comes the evening of the mind.
Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood;
Here is the shadow moving down the page
Where you sit reading by the garden wall.
...
Before those cruel twins whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
...
There's darkness, but not all is lost
The stars, the moon and the fireflies
Look how darkness helps them glow
Darkness, with its forbidding demeanor
...
A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
...
Beneath the canopy of stars,
The stillness of the night
Seeped into my being
And chilled me out.
...
The mood was bittersweet and lyrical.
The birds sang evening almost every day.
My dress was yellow as the paling sun.
Wind whispered of us to the Queen Anne's lace.
...
Who stole sleep from baby's eyes? I must know.
Clasping her pitcher to her waist mother went to fetch water
from the village near by.
It was noon. The children's playtime was over; the ducks in
...
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
...
I spent my day on the scorching
hot dust of the road.
Now, in the cool of the evening, I
knock at the door of the inn. It is
...
41
THE trees,
like the longings of the earth,
...
I own a solace shut within my heart,
A garden full of many a quaint delight
And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,
Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
...
One shows me how to lie down in a field of clover.
Another how to slip my hand under her Sunday skirt.
Another how to kiss with a mouth full of blackberries.
Another how to catch fireflies in jar after dark.
...
I. WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND
OUTSIDE the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
...
The sun drops luridly into the west;
darkness has raised her arms to draw him down
before the time, not waiting as of wont
till he has come to her behind the sea;
...
Better a jungle in the head
than rootless concrete.
Better to stand bewildered
by the fireflies' crooked street;
...
The sun is shining gray upon this hour.
The widening sky has drained the poem's power.
My tears are glued like fireflies to the pane.
I count the tiny glitters of mood rain.
...
When letters wait
to pounce on a blank page
when thoughts crowd the mind
like frothing scum in a pond
...
Sleep to sleep through thirty years of night,
a child herself with child,
for whom we searched
...
In the hush of a fading twilight eve
Heard the passionate crooning of a dove
Under the eaves, it sat close to her love
What delight, that sound instantly gave
...
Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
...
They say love is pure like 24 carat gold
It can easily be deformed and lose its grip
To accommodate beloved by mending self
...
One night
one night all full of murmurings, of perfumes and music of wings;
one night
in which fantastic fireflies burnt in the humid nuptial shadows,
...
One, two, three, four, five,
fireflies. Underneath the star
light. With the moon so big,
full and bright. Wishes in
...
THE night is dewy as a maiden's mouth,
The skies are bright as are a maiden's eyes,
Soft as a maiden's breath the wind that flies
...
It was heard: to the post-mortem cell
he had been taken;
last night—in the darkness of Falgoon-night
When the five-night-old moon went down—
...
if you go behind the clouds
and you’ll see the fireflies’ lamp
you will see the bottle of tears
lock inside the terrors hearts.
...
Moonlight, You calm the night
As a mother's lullaby
Fireflies, they come alive,
Only you know why
...
Those who’ve seen one, all give differing accounts;
that’s how it should be. No in-depth video. No coffee-table book.
But the collected book of sightings –
that’s hairs on the back of the neck stuff.
...
I want to go back to my past
When tame pigeons of joy nested on my eaves
And I could hear their crooning
With the sweetness of love outpouring
...
The old gate clicks, and down the walk,
Between clove-pink and hollyhock,
Still young of face though gray of lock,
Among her garden's flowers she goes
At evening's close,
Deep in her hair a yellow rose.
...
There were still shards of an ancient pastoral
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank
their pools of shadow from an older sky,
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as
...
I was a pleasant, conscientious librarian, whose world consisted of books,
As a world of fragrant beauty, can be found in the glossy, honeyed nooks.
Although it was pleasant work and appealing, I was not so very well read,
...
East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
...
COLOSSAL orb of space,
Sparkling with diamond
Of countless star on star,
All whirling with wild grace
...
It’s a sleepless lonely night
I can’t stop thinking of you
If only you knew
How much I love you
...
The music played softly
The dim light created an ambiance
In the cool, breezy night of December
Balls and balloons
...
The sun warms me
lighting the beauty all around
It's golden glory
Paints flowers of every shade and hue
...
Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River
Are your words in the dark, Beloved.
...
The moon reddish color looms through horizon's fog
In the dancing mist the hazy meadow sleeps
By the green lush a reptilian creature calls his mate the frog
There where a shadowy movement stealthily creeps
...
On the edge of your heart,
I saw my tiny love crawling.
Staring assiduously to get noticed,
Defying the security of firewalls.
...
The moonlight was falling throughout the night,
the earth was drenched in dewdrops,
two hearts away from the world
beneath the starry horizon
...
The whispering of night
Revealing it's hidden treasures.
Why silver moon is silent tonight?
What it is trying to hide?
...
Fish
schools knife
through
the stream -
...
O Child beside the Waterfall
what songs without a word
rise from those waters like the call
...
The night passes through the dark tunnel,
and the wishes were flying across,
like the fireflies waiting for the night to end.
...
Like every child
I used to follow the moon
Maundering in the sky
And wonder what he's doing
...
Besides the heady fragrance
Of the wet earth,
Freashly bathed green trees,
(Evoking images of a damsel
...
I walked out one evening, ,
as the sun was setting low.
Trees were whispering in the breeze,
as it yielded a gentle blow.
...
Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
...
When starlings were swimming in the azure lake
When bats and owls began their nocturnal ride
When all the Earth under a dark blanket lay
And man and beast into sweet repose retired
...
In August the grass discovered it could grow all by itself.
It could stretch its green almost to the sky.
The grass-cutter was being removed, it was free!
...
I.
as a golden star blazes a trail across the starry sky
a light breeze is blowing on a warm summer's night
so many stars are twinkling in a midnight blue sky
...
I feel like the fireflies in an astonishing nightfall
Luminescing the lives of the travellers
Who crosses the path in the journey of life.
...
closing my eyes I sleep
body floating in darkness
without substance
whether I lay up or down
...
ONCE, in the sultry heat of midsummer,
An Emperor caused the miniature mountains in his garden
...
Your face 'tis mirrored in the river-
Along its banks where moss and algae grow-
Shadows of the dark forests unfold slowly-
'Neath the lemon moon- your reflection- simply glows;
...
I.
Here we halt our march, and pitch our tent
On the rugged forest ground,
And light our fire with the branches rent
...
Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
...
This beautiful night ~
The moon above is softly glowing as the
clouds go flowing by.
...
I write your name
On this small envelope
But I don't know your address.
Anyway, I dropp this letter
...
I
How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over there, over there,
...
Down the hill, in the field of sweet alfalfa, they're
freezing each other, the children
playing tag and I'm up at the house, I'm
...
Becker was sitting on the steps
in the final moments of day-
catching fireflies with his fingers,
...
Seventieth birthday
In a revolving restaurant
On Space Needle in Seattle
...
Sparrows in my mind
Scratching for ort
Stirring a host
Crowding in my bowels
...
As I gaze to the boundless sky
Of lovers' starry dream,
From the lulling solitary bench
Under the tranquilizing tree of whim;
...
The moon shines white and silent
On the mist, which, like a tide
Of some enchanted ocean,
O'er the wide marsh doth glide
...
He stayed up half the night
collecting one hundred fireflies in a mason jar.
Just before midnight he unscrewed the lid
and released them inside the screen porch.
...
There happens to be a port for light-skinned gals on the shore of Malay Sea.
Seen many a sea all across the globe; been through Kuala Lumpur, Java,
Sumatra, Indochina, and Bali where the blue mist laden sun's ray had touched me.
...
trees whispering leaves
and shrinking sun serenade ~
homes in formation
...
THE slender moon and one pale star,
A rose leaf and a silver bee
From some god's garden blown afar,
Go down the gold deep tranquilly
...
Longing wings, gone and passed
Weak flapping, will go to pile the sense?
In an obstacles range, will not be lost
Although not one promise, keep eternal - definitely
...
It’s hard being in love
with fireflies. I have to do
all the pots and pans.
When asked to parties
...
Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.
So noble were the five I found to dwell
...
This is not June,--by Autumn's stratagem
Thou hast been ambushed in the chilly air;
Upon thy fragile crest virginal fair
...
If you walk in the dark, alone or with someone,
You will see the beauty of Nature
That remained unseen to you so far.
You will hear the unheard songs of Nature
...
Mommy, how many fish in the ocean?
How many peas in a pod?
How many steps up to Heaven
would there be if I went to see God?
...