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Author: HALL, DONALD
Matches Found: 617


Hall, Donald    Poet's Biography
617 poems available by this author


1934       
First Line: In nineteen-forty-four we spent july
Last Line: Somebody did, who needed it before


1943       
First Line: They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium
Last Line: #name?


1951       
First Line: Every night I drank beer
Last Line: Reading, the grolier, talk, cronin's


440       
First Line: Because I was always
Last Line: Line kicking, bill best a yard ahead


A BEARD FOR A BLUE PANTRY    Poem Text    
First Line: Bluebeard displayed his wives
Subject(s): Marriage; Cancer (disease); Beards; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


A CAROL    Poem Text    
First Line: The warmth of cows
Last Line: And friend to grief
Subject(s): Christmas; Nativity, The


A SECOND STANZA    Poem Text    
First Line: I put my hat upon my head
Subject(s): Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)


A SISTER ON THE TRACKS    Poem Text    
First Line: Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches
Subject(s): Railroads; Railways; Trains


A SMALL FIG TREE    Poem Text    
First Line: I am dead, to be sure
Subject(s): Bible; Curses; Religion; Theology


ABROAD THOUGHTS FROM HOME       
First Line: My history extends
Last Line: Which I no longer take %and only partly took


ACORN       
First Line: Thank you for the acorn you brought me


ACORNS       
First Line: An oak twig drops
Last Line: A wicker basket up %the slippery path


ADULTERY AT FORTY    Poem Text    
First Line: At shower's head, high over the porcelain moonscape
Subject(s): Middle Age


ADULTERY AT FORTY       
First Line: At the shower's head, high over the porcelain moonscape
Last Line: And heistates, uncertain in which direction to hurl itself


ADVENT    Poem Text    
First Line: When I see the cradle rocking
Subject(s): Christianity


ADVENTURE WITH A LADY       
First Line: As I watched, the animals
Last Line: Of lions smiled %between ivory earrings
Subject(s): Love


AFFIRMATION    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: To grow old is to lose everything
Subject(s): Aging


AFFIRMATION       
First Line: To grow old is to lose everything. %aging, everybody knows it
Last Line: And affirm that it is fitting %and sweet to lose everything


AFTER HORACE (ODES III, 5)    Poem Text    
First Line: Ibyas, man of property
Subject(s): Old Age; Human Conduct


AFTER LIFE       
First Line: During the eleven days
Last Line: In her closet's corner


AFTERNOON    Poem Text    
First Line: My mouse, my girl in gray, I speak to her
Subject(s): Family Life; Relatives


AFTERNOON       
First Line: My mouse, my girl in gray, I speak to her
Subject(s): Family Life


AIR SHATTERS IN THE CAR'S SMALL ROOM       
First Line: Distracting myself %on the recliner between
Last Line: Their november postcard %keeping a place, halfway through


AIRPORT TOES       
First Line: When you could not meet me


AIRSTRIP IN ESSEX, 1960       
First Line: It is a lost road into the air
Last Line: In poland the wind rides on a jagged wall. %smoke rises from the stones; no, it is mist
Subject(s): War


ALCHEMIST       
First Line: Who imitates %turns gold to quartz
Last Line: Writes delmore schwartz


ALLIGATOR BRIDE       
First Line: The clock of my days wind down
Last Line: My left hand %leaks on the chinese carpet


ALLIGATOR GROOM       
First Line: Ridiculous. His top hat


AMOS    Poem Text    
First Line: No one would listen. He
Subject(s): Amos (bible)


AN ADVENTURE WITH A LADY    Poem Text    
First Line: As I watched, the animals
Last Line: Between ivory earrings
Subject(s): Love


AN AIRSTRIP IN ESSEX, 1960    Poem Text    
First Line: It is a lost road into the air
Subject(s): War


AN OLD LIFE    Poem Text    
First Line: Snow fell in the nght
Subject(s): Family Life; Poetry & Poets; Relatives


ANOTHER ELEGY; IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM TROUT    Poem Text    
First Line: It rained all night on the remaining elms. April soaked
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


ANOTHER ELEGY; IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM TROUT       
First Line: It rained all night on the remaining elms. April soaked
Last Line: Bill dying, shriveled and absolved, wrote on a yellow %pad, 'jesus who walked from the tomb has made
Subject(s): Poetry And Poets


ANTIQUITIES       
First Line: At sixty I began
Last Line: On a lucite tray in electric shade


APOLOGY FOR OLD CLOTHES    Poem Text    
First Line: Cerulean tweed jacket, twenty years old, that blueprints
Subject(s): Clothing & Dress


APPLES    Poem Text    
First Line: The have gone
Subject(s): Apples; Transience; Impermanence


APPLES       
First Line: They have gone %into the green hill
Last Line: Hill of the peacock, in the resounding hill


ARDOR       
First Line: Nursing her I felt alive
Last Line: To look the other way


AS I FOLLOW THE TRACK OF YOUR MIND       


ASSASSIN    Poem Text    
First Line: The spider glints
Subject(s): Spiders


AT DELPHI       
First Line: At delphi where the eagles climb
Last Line: Made dactyls on the ground


AT EAGLE POND    Poem Text    
First Line: In april the ice rots. Over the pocked glaze
Subject(s): Daughters; Illness; Time


BALLAD OF GOLDENHAIR       
First Line: They enter the castle together


BAMBOO    Poem Text    
First Line: In clumps like grass
Subject(s): Bamboo


BASEBALL PLAYERS       
First Line: Against the bright
Last Line: Waits %under the footbridge
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL, SEL.       
First Line: I would like to explain baseball to
Last Line: Henry moore wheelchaired at perry green


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 1    Poem Text    
First Line: Baseball, I warrant, is not the whole
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 1       
First Line: Baseball, I warrant, is not the whole
Last Line: Her cheekbones cool water; water flows %in her rapid hair. I drink water
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 2       
First Line: From her body as she walks past me
Last Line: Pleasure, thoroughly underrated, %is micturition, which is even


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 3       
First Line: Commoner than baseball. It begins
Last Line: Adultery elsewhere. We allow %this sweet release to commence itself


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 4       
First Line: Addressing a urinal perhaps
Last Line: Poignant and crimson bliss, it is as %voluptuous as rain all night long


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 5       
First Line: After baseball in august's parch. The
Last Line: Box seats do. The fourth of july we %exhaust stars from sparklers in the late


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 6       
First Line: Twilight. We swoop ovals of white-gold
Last Line: A dignified spreading cat and a %dog ash-gray on the muzzle


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 7    Poem Text    
First Line: Quickly exhaust this night of farewell
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 7       
First Line: Quickly exhaust this night of farewell
Last Line: To add two teams. Therefore minor league %playerrs will advance all too quickly
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 8    Poem Text    
First Line: With boys in the bigs who wouldn't have
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 8       
First Line: With boys in the bigs who wouldn't have
Last Line: Kurt, I get the notion that you were %another who never discarded
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 9    Poem Text    
First Line: Anything, a keeper from way back
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BASEBALL: THE SEVENTH INNING: 9       
First Line: Anything, a keeper from way back
Last Line: A collage. Ongoing life became %material for kurtschwitters ball
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


BEANS AND FRANKS    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: When newberry's closed
Subject(s): Novelty Stores; Store Closings; City & Town Life


BEARD FOR A BLUE PANTRY (1)       
First Line: Bluebeard displayed his wives
Last Line: It is blue in the breadless pantry


BEARD FOR A BLUE PANTRY (2)       
First Line: In alice mattison's dream
Last Line: The bald woman with %leukemia who stared back at me


BEAU OF THE DEAD       
First Line: John fleming walked in the house his cousin left him
Last Line: The beau of the dead, the gallant of dead ladies


BEAUTIFUL HORSES       
First Line: That time we went to suffolk downs to see


BEAUTY       
First Line: Your small curved thighs


BERMUDA, BERMUDA       
First Line: To celebrate her %eightieth birthday, we took my mother
Last Line: In a saturation of perfumed air


BETWEEN THE CLOCK AND THE BED'       
First Line: In the yellow light, an old man
Last Line: And sleeps %in the clock's light which is yellow


BLACK FACED SHEEP       
First Line: Ruminant pillows! Gregarious soft boulders!
Last Line: And death is our shepherd %and we die as the animals die
Subject(s): Farm Life; Mortality; Shepherds And Shepherdesses


BLUE WING       
First Line: She was all around me


BLUE WING       
First Line: She is all around me %like a rainy day
Last Line: And out of the sea


BLUES FOR POLLY       
First Line: Jane's bookcase and chest of drawers
Last Line: The months of sickness and taking care


BODY POLITIC (1)       
First Line: I shot my friend to save my country's life
Last Line: Too late I learn: a nation's just a notion


BODY POLITIC (2)       
First Line: I shot my friend to save my country's life
Last Line: Man lives by love, and not by metaphor


BORDERS       
First Line: Peonies as big as turkeys
Last Line: Gaze into bird and flower, %to inhabit the blossoming now


BRAIN CELLS       
First Line: Inside the brain they are holding a mass funeral for the


BREASTS       
First Line: There is something between us


BRIEF LIVES       
First Line: The world is everything that is the case
Last Line: This fitted him to teach creative writing


BY THE EXETER RIVER       
First Line: What is it you're mumbling, old father, my dad?
Last Line: We drowned your half-brother. I remember we did


CARIBBEAN    Poem Text    
First Line: Montego bay/in its quick curve
Subject(s): Caribbean Sea


CARLOTTA'S CONFESSION       
First Line: My grandfather's name was augusto
Last Line: Your sins are forgiven,' he said


CAROL       
First Line: The warmth of cows
Last Line: A man of sorrows %and friend to grief
Subject(s): Christmas


CARYATID       
First Line: Aphrodite of smooth long skin
Last Line: That vanished of its own excess


CHAIRS NEXT TO EACH OTHER       


CHILD       
First Line: He lives among a dog
Last Line: He stops suddenly %to hear the black water


CHILD'S GARDEN       
First Line: I'm sure I can't remember where, but some
Last Line: Was only grunts. I made no words at all


CHRIST CHURCH MEADOWS, OXFORD    Poem Text    
First Line: Often I saw, as on my balcony
Subject(s): Oxford University; Students, Foreign


CHRIST CHURCH MEADOWS, OXFORD       
First Line: Often I saw, as on my balcony
Last Line: Who cast her, as I told them, on the waters
Subject(s): Oxford University; Students, Foreign


CHRISTMAS EVE IN WHITNEYVILLE    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: December, and the closing of the year;
Subject(s): Christmas; Nativity, The


CHRISTMAS EVE IN WHITNEYVILLE       
First Line: December, and the closing of the year
Last Line: I will go back and leave you here to stay %where the dark houses harden into sleep


CHRISTMAS PARTY AT THE SOUTH DANBURY CHURCH    Poem Text    
First Line: December twenty-first
Subject(s): Christmas; Nativity, The


CHRISTMAS PARTY AT THE SOUTH DANBURY CHURCH       
First Line: December twenty-first
Last Line: Enters the world as a newborn again


CIDER 5 CENTS A GLASS       
First Line: When I heard monica's %voice on the telephone, I
Last Line: Detonation of cider sweet %and harsh in my mouth


CLERIHEWS       
First Line: The prince of wales
Last Line: That I developed a taste for escargots.'


CLIMBING OUT       
First Line: Above the timberline


CLOSING MY EYES       


CLOSINGS    Poem Text    
Subject(s): Suicide; Poetry & Poets


CLOWN       
First Line: Practically all you newspaper people
Last Line: The clown %cartwheeled across the dressing room, and bowed
Subject(s): Clowns


COAL FIRE       
First Line: A coal fire burned in a basket grate
Last Line: When it flaked into ash


COALITION       
First Line: If among earth's kings lord gilgamesh should remain unreasonable
Last Line: Of pharoah death, imperator death, shogun death, president death
Subject(s): Bly, Robert (b. 1926)


COFFEE CUP       
First Line: The newspaper, the coffee cup, the dog's
Last Line: New hampshire, putting on socks


COLD WATER       
First Line: He steps around a gate of bushes
Last Line: Of pines which are dead or born again


COLUMNS OF THE PARTHENON       
First Line: White bone in the yellow flats of sun
Last Line: To guard both granaries and temples


COMING TO OUR HOUSE       
First Line: We lived on our own
Last Line: Year-old sills, and became our house


CONDUCT AND WORK       
First Line: Mirror, mirror on the wall
Last Line: How can you tell seducer from seduced?


CONVERGENCES    Poem Text    
First Line: At sixteen he dismisses his mother with contempt.
Subject(s): Life


CONVERSATION       
First Line: At dinner their first night
Last Line: And late for the work she loved, she drove away. %green eyes, green eyes


CONVERSATION'S AFTERPLAY    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: At dinner our first night
Subject(s): Love - Erotic


COPS AND ROBBERS       
First Line: When I go west you wear a marshal's star
Last Line: An outsize penguin lumbers from the herd


CORNER       
First Line: It does not know %its name
Last Line: Into the corner, %it will not die


COUPLET    Poem Text    
First Line: When the tall puffy
Variant Title(s): Old Timers' Day
Subject(s): Aging; Baseball; Sports


COUPLET       
First Line: When the tall puffy
Last Line: Among shades the shadow %of achilles
Variant Title(s): Old Timers' Da
Subject(s): Aging; Baseball; Sports


CREW-CUTS       
First Line: Men with crew-cuts %are impossible


DANCERS       
First Line: Bowing he asks her the favor
Last Line: They are old, and their children like houses %stand in a row


DAVID HUME       
First Line: I dine, I play a game of backgammon'


DAY I WAS OLDER       
First Line: The clock on the parlor wall, stout as a mariner's clock
Last Line: From this cup every day, we will never drink it dry


DAYLILIES ON THE HILL       
First Line: Endurance is good,' he said, 'and best is the endurance
Last Line: Vertical birches, hilly road, sunlight slant and descending


DAYS       
First Line: Ten years ago this minute, he possibly sat
Last Line: In the sunlight, in connecticut, in an old chair


DEATH WORK        Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


DIGGING       
First Line: One midnight, after a day when lilies
Last Line: To bees, in the language of green and yellow, white and red


DISTRESSED HAIKU    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: In a week or ten days
Subject(s): Death; Time; Dead, The


DO NOT WAKE ME UP       


DON'T BE AFRAID....       
First Line: Don't be afraid; you look scared, like max the wimpy
Last Line: Timidity encourages %death and never prevents dying


DREAD AND DESIRE       
First Line: The body's adversaries %salt the pink filet
Last Line: To rub his wrinkles %against smooth skin


DUMP       
First Line: The trolley has stopped long since
Last Line: Old men live here, in narrow houses full of rugs, %in this last place


EATING THE PIG    Poem Text    
First Line: Twelve people, most of us strangers, stand in a room
Subject(s): Pigs; Food & Eating; Boars; Hogs


EATING THE PIG       
First Line: Twelve people, most of us strangers, stand in a room
Last Line: Opened your skin together %and tore your body apart, and took it %into our bodies


EDWARD'S ANECDOTE       
First Line: Late one night she told me
Last Line: Back to her father: where else %should she look for comfort?


EIGHTH INNING       
First Line: Kurt, terror is merely the thesis
Last Line: Fenway of january and snow, %we find ticket stubs in our wallets
Subject(s): Sports


ELEANOR'S LETTERS       
First Line: I who picked up the neat
Last Line: She signed her dying letter %'as ever, eleanor'


ELEGY FOR WESLEY WELLS       
First Line: Against the clapboards and the window panes
Last Line: In andover %while march bent down the cemetery trees


ENDING       
First Line: He wakes under a canopy of ice, and dreads
Last Line: Of gorged food, bile, eight knuckles bleeding


EXILE       
First Line: A boy who played and talked and read with me
Last Line: And all the streets were new


EXILE       
First Line: Each of us waking to the window's light
Last Line: Whatever hand might reach and touch our hand


EXTENDED CARE    Poem Text    
First Line: Katherine wears her hat
Subject(s): Disease; Illness; Disability


EXTENDED CARE       
First Line: Katherine wears her hat
Last Line: Or kathy who politely %inquires if I might be byron


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 1.       
First Line: In the nineteen-ninety, kurt, I picked the red sox
Last Line: Like everybody else in the universe. %the first time I died I was forty, whining


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 10.       
First Line: In the apothegm of baltimore earl weaver
Last Line: They pray, they eat peanut butter, they weep tears; %they practice love, sleep, work, cancer, and ba


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 11.       
First Line: When you drove me back home from the hospital
Last Line: Day's routine, inhabiting this clapboard, %quotidian, rare, sensible paradise


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 2.       
First Line: Commonplace miseries of whiskey and love
Last Line: The posthumous recognize each other at %store or post office: that one, with the pale shroud


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 3.       
First Line: Wound invisibly around her body, who
Last Line: Or froze them black. Now in the mild risen sun %we take deliberate pleasure breathing air


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 4.       
First Line: Every hours of our lives we inhale deeply
Last Line: At forty degrees in fenway, still harder %to hit. But the posthumous never complain


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 5.       
First Line: Kurt, I begin to understand what matters
Last Line: What strangers said to each other, fit topics %for conversation among men reclining


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 6.       
First Line: By the fire after a late meal.' the doctor
Last Line: From the morning paper through extra innings %from the west coast - fading with the pale grasses


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 7.       
First Line: Of october, returning with the yellow
Last Line: While spring training thawed under florida sun %and snow darkened by new london hospital


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 8.       
First Line: As his breaths grew quicker, abrupt and panicked
Last Line: Into his body. Frightened, watching my grave %open and suggest that I might enter it


EXTRA INNINGS: THE ELEVENTH INNING: 9.       
First Line: As if an owed death assumed me to itself
Last Line: When wrinkled flesh warmed itself again, I made %love with jennifer in her grieving body


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 1.       
First Line: My friend david tells me that jasper johns
Last Line: Despite its generic unpleasantgness %appears under almost all conditions


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 10.       
First Line: With no likelihood of metastasis
Last Line: Juice, the yankees beaaten three straight, cleveland %comingto town for four, a big series


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 2.       
First Line: More attractive than its alternative
Last Line: Unless we relish baseball, daydreaming %a game each night; then the morning paper


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 3.       
First Line: After the bald surgeon making his rounds
Last Line: Open. All night I reached in the darkness %to feel her familiar body again


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 4.       
First Line: And at dawn brought coffee to her bedside
Last Line: Reran the last days, as a crow returns %to the perfume of putrescent carcass


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 5.       
First Line: The drive to the hospital, admissions
Last Line: Where tomatoes sagged erupting black juice, %where squash lapsed softly drooling corrupt lymph


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 6.       
First Line: And seed, where kentucky wonders curled up
Last Line: On the likelihood of metastasis %or probability of recurrence


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 7.       
First Line: The entire history of human thought
Last Line: I looked covertly at the small bandage %over the smooth skin I kissed so often


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 8.       
First Line: While we made love and I nuzzled her neck
Last Line: Batter, two or three in a row - left, right, %left; meanwhile the other team's manager


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TENTH INNING: 9.       
First Line: Answers with pinch-hitters - right, left, right, left
Last Line: In virulence, encapsulated in %the membrand of the salivary gland


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 1.    Poem Text    
First Line: Before lights, kurt, baseball games were sometimes delayed
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 1.       
First Line: Before lights, kurt, baseball games were sometimes delayed
Last Line: The dogers beat the yankees in the world series %for the first time, as johnny podres won three game
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 10.       
First Line: His affection luminous. Baseball is better
Last Line: Mountain from an ox-path that became the grafton %turnpike in eighteen-three, later route 4. The cap


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 11.       
First Line: In its almost two hundred years of adjustment
Last Line: Chickadees, nuthatches, and slate-colored juncos; %soon grosbeaks with yellow chests will peck at th


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 12.       
First Line: In september the red sox lose games in the ninth
Last Line: Thinking again how carlton fisk ended game six %in the twelfth inning with a poke over the wall


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 2.       
First Line: I watched with my father on a seven-inch screen
Last Line: While baseball remains the alternative to days. %dock ellis performed poihntguard for his high schoo


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 3.       
First Line: But pitched for a profession. He threw a no-no
Last Line: And devastating. When we fake this way, fake that, %break past the body leaping midair to block us


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 4.       
First Line: And lay it up behind his back, we are deathless
Last Line: In september the red sox have an outside chance %if toronto keeps on clutching, if the tigers


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 5.       
First Line: Lose games they ought to lose. Today as the leaves fall
Last Line: And under the high sun of july prodigious %peonies of privacy, whiter than winter


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 6.       
First Line: Where buttercups flourished by a stony wellhead
Last Line: Buried on christmas eve. For twenty years his death %provoked the choices of my life. I use mornings


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 7.       
First Line: To work in, and afternoons for reading and love
Last Line: She weeps to recall jack who turned into ashes, %remembered by a granite bench with flowering shrubs


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 8.       
First Line: It is the season for blackberries that prosper
Last Line: Prizes for best answers: kurt carcinoma? Kid %chumpleheart? Kitsch champion? Kitchen cat? Kup cake?


EXTRA INNINGS: THE TWELFTH INNING: 9.       
First Line: Steve blass was a control-pitcher one year, the next
Last Line: Who still talks baseball for npr on fridays %from tallahassee. His voice was soft and nervous


FAIR       
First Line: In june the fair committee
Last Line: A hundred dollar bill. Massachusetts


FAMILY       
First Line: Under the glassy christmas tree
Last Line: He is hungry, very hungry; %he thinks he could eat an animal


FARM       
First Line: Standing on top of the hay
Last Line: Doze on the bottom


FATHERS AND SONS       
First Line: Over my bed %my father stood
Last Line: The form I dread %of father god


FETE       
First Line: Festival lights go on
Last Line: When you touch me, there


FIFTH INNING       
First Line: Kurt, last night dwight evans put it all
Last Line: Deep; we lost three or two, unable %to rally back. Then the long drive home
Subject(s): Sports


FIGHTING       
First Line: Your left foot moves


FIVE EPIGRAMS       
First Line: Begin again. There is no law which says


FLIES    Poem Text    
First Line: A fly sleeps on the field of a green curtain. I sit by my grandmother's side
Subject(s): Animals; Farm Life; Grandparents; Agriculture; Farmers; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers


FLIES       
First Line: A fly sleeps on the field of a green curtain. I sit by my grandmother's side
Last Line: I planned long ago I would live here, somebody's grandfather
Subject(s): Animals; Farm Life; Grandparents


FLYING       
First Line: In the cellar at the long
Last Line: Of hamden and spring glen


FOR AN EARLY RETIREMENT    Poem Text    
First Line: Chinless and slouched, gray-faced, and slack of jaw
Subject(s): Hate


FOR AN EARLY RETIREMENT       
First Line: Chinless and slouched, gray-faced, and slack of jaw
Last Line: This fitted him to teach creative writing
Subject(s): Hate


FOR AN EXCHANGE OF RINGS       
First Line: They rise into mind
Last Line: To other days as they %moisten and swell


FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY       
First Line: In the ford plant
Last Line: Them, and they walk on %their fathers
Subject(s): Industry; Labor And Laborers


FOUR       
First Line: At michigan games
Last Line: Rather you didn't but I don't mind


FOUR EPIGRAMS       
First Line: On a poet %he sought in his late work, which no one reads
Last Line: On a scholar: %ascribed to earth, by bookworms tilled and ploughed, %she wore her learning lightly,


FOURTH INNING       
First Line: As the moment's vowel rolls itself
Last Line: Backstop; I struck out; I dropped the ball: %airplanes crashed on my freckless sandlot


FRANK O'HARA       
First Line: If frank was a bird
Last Line: You're the type that would sue


FRIEND REVISITED       
First Line: Beside the door %she stood whom I had known before
Last Line: Deliberation and a shaping choice %to make a speaking voice


FRIENDS NOW       
First Line: Young robin of christ church
Last Line: Or until we died, whichever came first


GALLERY       
First Line: Back home from the grave
Last Line: At her home in wilmot


GENEROUS TINY HANDS       


GOGGLES AND HELMET    Poem Text    
First Line: In her living toom
Subject(s): Childhood Memories; Mothers; Hospitals


GOING OUT       
First Line: When my parents celebrated
Last Line: Christie in large type editions


GOLD    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Pale gold of the walls, gold
Subject(s): Love


GOLD       
First Line: Pale gold of the walls, gold
Last Line: Will find in a thousand years, %shining and whole
Subject(s): Love


GOODNIGHT       
First Line: The three-year-old with tight
Last Line: In the waiting room, I observe %a copy of goodnight moon


GOOGLES AND HELMET       
First Line: In her living room
Last Line: On a pacific atoll near wake %island, and she was safe


GOOSEFEATHERS    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: When I was twelve I sat by myself in the steamliner
Subject(s): Childhood Memories; Farm Life; Agriculture; Farmers


GORDON OF THE GROLIER BOOK SHOP       
First Line: He was an old man with a bump
Last Line: Atchison, topeka, and santa fe


GRACE       
First Line: God, I know nothing, my sense is all nonsense
Last Line: My grief festers, corrupted into dread, %and I know nothing.Give us our daily bread


GRANITE AND GRASS       
First Line: On ragged mountain birches twist from rifts in granite
Last Line: Granite is grass in the holy meadow of the soul's repose


GRASS       
First Line: Under grass %among stones and the downward


GRAVE, THE WELL       
First Line: Taking off from kennedy
Last Line: Grave, the well, the mine %of fur and scent


GREAT DAY IN THE COW'S HOUSE       
First Line: In the dark tie-up seven huge holsteins
Last Line: Through floorboards onto the manure pile in the great day


GREEN SHELF       
First Line: Driving back from the market
Last Line: Basil, and tarragon


GREEN, RED & WHITE       
First Line: Blueberry bagels and the globe
Last Line: Reprieve into he blood's white water


GROWN-UPS       
First Line: Lady, what are you laughing at? Is it the joke
Last Line: Of the laughter, the lies, the responsive pitches


HAPPY TIMES       
First Line: There is straw in the goose bindery


HEART       
First Line: When her young sister married
Last Line: I don't believe this heart business.'


HENYARD ROUND       
First Line: From the dark yard by the sheep barn the cock crowed
Last Line: Who died one summer at eighty-seven, childish, %deaf, unable to feed herself, demented
Subject(s): Poetry And Poets


HER FACE       
First Line: Her death divests the valley
Last Line: Over decades and academies %of the haymaking rain


HER GARDEN    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: I let her garden go.
Subject(s): Gardens & Gardening


HER LONG ILLNESS    Poem Text    
First Line: Daybreak until nightfall,
Subject(s): Cancer (disease); Kenyon, Jane (1947-1995); Marital Love


HER LONG ILLNESS       
First Line: Daybreak until nightfall %he sat by his wife at the hospital
Last Line: So that she could smell the snowy air


HERE IS THE UNDERSIDE       


HIDING    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: I know she's gone for good.
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


HIGGLEDY HIGGINSON?       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %emily dickinson
Last Line: Murder and incest are %sweetness and light


HIGH PASTURE       
First Line: I am the hounds
Last Line: In the high pasture


HIS FACE       
First Line: My whole life of writing
Last Line: To keep my grandfather from dying?


HISTORY       
First Line: When the knife slipped and cut deeply into the fingerpad


HOLE       
First Line: He could remember that in the past, seven months ago
Last Line: And lay and twisted and slept, until nobody called him


HUNKERING       
First Line: In october the red leaves going brown heap and scatter
Last Line: More tighten themselves for darkness and hunker down


HURRICANE       
First Line: Just after my tenth birthday
Last Line: Scribbled upward, writhing in stillness


HUT OF THE MAN ALONE       
First Line: Jerome had lived alone for thirty years
Last Line: The shattered pieces of a wall of mirror


I AM NO FAUST: UNSALARIED MY SIN       
Last Line: It is from love I ask the devil in


I AWOKE MY BODY DRIFTING       


I COME TO THE GARDEN ALONE       
First Line: Among the dead of this village church


I DREAMED LAST NIGHT       


I FEEL AS IF       


I LOST MY OVERCOAT IN OMOHA       
First Line: A scarf resides


I PASS THE ATTENTIVE       


I SLUMP IN MY RED CHAIR       


IDEA OF FLYING       
First Line: The wings lacking a trunk %flap like a sail
Last Line: Look, how the body of %space is a steep dying


ILLUSTRATION       
First Line: In a bookshelf at the dark living room's end
Last Line: Empty, inhabited only 'the skeleton in armor'


IMPOSSIBLE LOVERS       
First Line: When the clothes fell away% from your caryatid body
Last Line: Although we were impossible lovers, %because we were impossible lovers


IMPOSSIBLE MARRIAGE       
First Line: The bride disappears. After twenty minutes of searching
Last Line: Anchoret of amherst! O reticent kosmos of brooklyn!
Subject(s): Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)


IN THE MIDDLE OF THINGS THAT CONTAIN YOU       


IN THE OLD HOUSE       
First Line: In the kitchen of the old house, late
Last Line: He opened the door and met the young %woman who waited for him


INDEPENDENCE DAY LETTER       
First Line: Five a.M., the fourth of july %I walked by eagle pond with the dog
Last Line: After the wednesday we buried you


INFANT       


INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FORMS    Poem Text    
First Line: What the birds say
Subject(s): Autumn; Nature; Fall


INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FORMS' (FROM HENRY MOORE'S SCULPTURE)       
First Line: What the birds say
Last Line: Curve inward, and %the seed talks


ISLAND       
First Line: We called it the island, as if
Last Line: Never budged from noon %in the permanent connecticut sky


IT WAS SIGMUND..., FR. THE MUSEUM OF CLEAR IDEAS       
First Line: It was sigmund freud, I believe, who inquired
Last Line: Ambition's spaceship a million miles an hour a thousand years %to the furthest galaxy at a temperatu


JACK AND THE OTHER JACK       
First Line: Jack told himself the word was pure as soap


JAMAICA    Poem Text    
First Line: Nothing is taller than a royal palm
Subject(s): Jamaica, West Indies


JANE AT PIGALL'S       
First Line: It is impossible to comprehend this aubergine that strays


JE SUIS UNE TABLE       
First Line: It has happened suddenly
Last Line: To relieve on principle %now this intense thickening


JEALOUS LOVERS       
First Line: When he lies in the night away from her
Last Line: Her eyes have not shut all night
Subject(s): Jealousy


KICKING THE LEAVES    Poem Text    
First Line: Each fall in new hampshire, on the farm
Last Line: Three of us sitting together, silent, in gray november
Subject(s): Grandparents; Farm Life; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers; Agriculture; Farmers


KICKING THE LEAVES       
First Line: Kicking the leaves, october, as we walk home together
Last Line: In the story of leaves


KILL       
First Line: Sheep move on the grass
Last Line: Like a wind or a flood %into the rubble of distance


KING AND QUEEN' (FROM HENRY MOORE'S SCULPTURE)       
First Line: As they grew older
Last Line: As a river builds a delta, %they have become still


KISS'       
First Line: The backs twist with the kiss
Last Line: Of a green lizard to walls %whole days, and is gone


LAOCOON       
First Line: I lived to tell the truth, and truth was wrong


LAST DAYS     Poem Text    
First Line: It was reasonable / to expect. So he wrote. The next day
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


LAST DAYS (1)       
First Line: It was reasonable %to expect. So he wrote. The next day
Last Line: With his thumb he closed her round brown eyes
Subject(s): Death


LAST DAYS (2)       
First Line: Home from the hospital
Last Line: With his thumb he closed her round brown eyes
Subject(s): Death


LET ENGINE COWLING....       
First Line: Let engine cowling rivets
Last Line: Mother's and father's souls %otherwise orphaned, giddy with vacuum


LETTER AFTER A YEAR       
First Line: Here's a story I never told you
Last Line: It faded as we watched %not seeing it fade


LETTER AT CHRISTMAS    Poem Text    
First Line: The big wooden clock you gave me
Last Line: In the kearsage mini-mart
Subject(s): Christmas; Letters; Nativity, The


LETTER AT CHRISTMAS       
First Line: The big wooden clock you gave me
Last Line: I press my penis %into zinc and butcherblock
Subject(s): Christmas; Letters


LETTER FROM WASHINGTON       
First Line: Sitting in a swivel chair
Last Line: The one who will close them


LETTER IN AUTUMN    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: This first october of your death
Subject(s): Death; Marital Love; Mourning; Dead, The; Bereavement


LETTER IN AUTUMN       
First Line: This first october of your death
Last Line: Rising from the clump behind you %and I the gray oak alongside


LETTER IN THE NEW YEAR       
First Line: New year's eve I baby-sat
Last Line: Love, is a conflagration %of the whole being


LETTER TO AN ENGLISH POET       
First Line: Your letter describes %what you see from your window. You chose
Last Line: Without parents we adopt the world


LETTER WITH NO ADDRESS    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: Your daffodils rose up
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


LETTER WITH NO ADDRESS       
First Line: Your daffodils rose up %and collapsed in their yellow
Last Line: As if proposing an encounter %dog-fashion, with the honda


LIGHT PASSAGE       
First Line: Light %grunts out of black tubes


LITERATURE       
First Line: Playboy put on a show
Last Line: Of stairs to remainder his collarbone


LITTLE TOWN       
First Line: I walk for a long time. These mountains are soft, and


LONE RANGER       
First Line: Vast unmapped badlands sprad without a road
Last Line: Why did he wear a mask? He was abstract


LONG RIVER       
First Line: The musk ox smells
Last Line: The wood is dark %with old pleasures


LONG RIVER       
First Line: The musk-ox smells %in his long head
Last Line: The wood is dark %with old pleasures


LOOKING AT THESE POEMS       


LOST       
First Line: At three, living in the rented
Last Line: Of the other - rocking, %hopeless, wet-faced - provided us house


LOST BROTHER       
First Line: I knew that tree was my lost brother
Last Line: Sooner or later, some bag of wind will cut me down


LOVE IS LIKE SOUNDS       
First Line: Late snow fell this early morning of spring
Last Line: Where snow hangs still in the middle of the air


LOVE POEM    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: When you fall in love
Subject(s): Love


LOVING YOU       


LUNCH       
First Line: It is necessary
Subject(s): Lunch


LYCANTHROPY REVISITED    Poem Text    
First Line: When it is truly the moon that he sees
Subject(s): Werewolves; Dreams; Nightmares


MAKE UP       
First Line: The daughter with breasts


MAN IN THE DEAD MACHINE       
First Line: High on a slope in new guinea
Last Line: Upright, held %by the firm webbing
Subject(s): World War Ii


MAPLE SYRUP    Poem Text    
First Line: August, goldenrod blowing. We walk
Subject(s): Farm Life; Graves; Agriculture; Farmers; Tombs; Tombstones


MAPLE SYRUP       
First Line: August, goldenrod blowing. We walk
Last Line: The sweetness preserved, of a dead man %in his own kitchen, %giving us %from his lost grave the gift
Subject(s): Farm Life; Graves


MARAT'S DEATH'       
First Line: Charlotte, 'the angel of asssasination,' is relaxed
Last Line: Her body is an alpabet


MARRIAGE       
First Line: When in the bedded dark of night


MATCH       
First Line: Yellow fingers %lit a match
Last Line: Neatly pushed to %the same quarter


MATERIAL       
First Line: At fourteen, parked
Last Line: Like bread, like grass %after warm rain


MATTER OF FACT    Poem Text    
First Line: No deposit. No return


MAUNDY THURSDAY'S CANDLES       
First Line: We speak the verses out of mark
Last Line: And in bright day, up the hillside, %'they took him to be crucified.'


MERLE BASCOM'S .22    Poem Text    
First Line: I was twelve when my father gave me this .22
Subject(s): Sports


MERLE BASCOM'S .22       
First Line: I was twelve when my father gave me this .22
Last Line: I cannot throw it away; it was my father's gift
Subject(s): Sports


MIDSUMMER LETTER       
First Line: The polished black granite
Subject(s): August; Summer


MIDSUMMER LETTER       
First Line: The polished black granite
Last Line: To see it huge in the west %as if this were any august
Subject(s): August; Summer


MIDWINTER LETTER       
First Line: I wanted this assaulting winter
Last Line: The label basil in a familiar hand %a stain on flowery sheets


MIGHTY POETS       
First Line: When I asked wallace
Last Line: To guilty sorrow: 'but we were so poor.'


MILKERS BROKEN UP       
First Line: I was sleeping in madison, anthony bradbury's spare room
Last Line: Over rocky pastures, ripped meat bloody and still alive


MILKMAID       
First Line: As the clutch of her loving
Last Line: Like a milkmaid in a meadow, %petticoats flung upward


MIRROR       
Subject(s): Fairy Tales


MOISHE'S HORSE       
First Line: When the ragpicker's weary


MOON       
First Line: A woman who lived %in a tree caught
Last Line: Of a tree, beside %a cold kettle


MOON CLOCK       
First Line: Like an oarless boat through midnight's watery
Last Line: Upreared and stony as the moon's mycenaean lions


MORBID JOY       
First Line: We worked all morning. In the fall
Last Line: Gathered themselves one april afternoon


MORNING IN BED       


MORNING PORCHES       
First Line: Even the morning is formal. A coughing dog


MORTAL ENGINES: LATE PLEASURES       
First Line: At ninety, bed-bound
Last Line: Breathe, her face gorgeous with ecstasy


MORTAL ENGINES: RINGS       
First Line: She lay in the coffin, her hands
Last Line: Sapphire. To please me? It pleases me


MORTAL ENGINES: SIGHS       
First Line: A decade ago, when philippa
Last Line: It's good that I married my mother


MORTAL ENGINES: TELEPHONE       
First Line: In the night the phone rang
Last Line: Rings although no one is calling


MORTAL ENGINES: THE COMFORT       
First Line: Insofar as coffins
Last Line: Was wrong. It was a comfort, I suppose


MORTAL ENGINES: WATCH       
First Line: The old woman's tiny watch
Last Line: Second. Interred on christmas eve


MOUNT KEARSARGE    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Great blue mountain! Ghost
Subject(s): Kearsarge (mountain), New Hampshire


MOUNT KEARSARGE       
First Line: Great blue mountain! Ghost
Last Line: My eyes, and you rise inside me, %blue ghost
Subject(s): Kearsarge (mountain), New Hampshire


MOUNT KEARSARGE SHINES...    Poem Text    
First Line: Mount kearsarge shines with ice; from hemlock branches
Last Line: For the government of two
Subject(s): Togetherness; Weather


MOUNT KEARSARGE SHINES...       
First Line: Mount kearsarge shines with ice; from hemlock branches
Last Line: For peepers as spring comes on, never to miss %the day's offering of pleasure %for the government of
Subject(s): Kearsarge (mountain), New Hampshire; Nature


MOUTH       
First Line: Your mouth


MR. AND MRS. BILLINGS       
First Line: Your wife,' the doctor said %'will be dead'
Last Line: To think of a suitable, and funny, joke


MR. WAKEFIELD ON INTERSTATE 90    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Now I will abandon the route of my life
Subject(s): Conduct Of Life


MR. WAKEVILLE ON INTERSTATE 90       
First Line: Now I will abandon the route of my life
Last Line: I will exult in the ecstasy of my concealment


MY FRIEND FELIX       
First Line: Beginning at five o'clock, just before dawn rises
Last Line: Continuing straight west I dream %of my lucky friend felix the singlewing halfback


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF ADVENTURE       
First Line: The gringo baker's howling wonder bread
Last Line: Dogmatics barking up arcadia's baobab: %blossoming nymphs, extruding fruitloops


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF HELL       
First Line: After the fifth week without sight
Last Line: Later still, we crowd the ports of hell %awaiting voyage to an alternate damnation


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND       
First Line: The black carnival pitched its tent
Last Line: Sable instruction, in order to grow: %awful, laborious, dazzled by dollars


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF PEACE       
First Line: Like literary theorists, peace never existed,'
Last Line: And love without prejudice, while the imagined %theorist empties his magazine into this text


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF PLEASURE       
First Line: Happiness, pleasure, and bliss hunted
Last Line: In its chosen tub of hurts and flares %decorated with our languid purple poesis


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE       
First Line: The green pond boils. In the aftermath
Last Line: (what happened afterwards belongs %to the history of affection and nails.)


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF THE PAST       
First Line: Theorganic or at least mildly decadent
Last Line: Robert the philosopher's dog %whimpers sniffing at a healthy hole


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A HISTORY OF VIRTUE       
First Line: Vice's orininal project, ongoing major export
Last Line: We establish a herd of plywood hosteins %who confess: peccavi; peccavi; peccavi


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A THEORY OF PHILOSOPHY       
First Line: It is essential to be transparent
Last Line: Up resembles the way dwon, the way %parmenides resembles three squares a day


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A THEORY OF POETRY       
First Line: Turn on the (o muse) autism! We sing
Last Line: Without fear that a lion leap roaring %from the unexamined wordfinder of life


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A THEORY OF SIN       
First Line: The depleted rose sighs for its jesus
Last Line: Beneath the arrangements these adjectives %fess up to, bragging: unforgiven songs


MY LIFE AND TIMES: A THEORY OF WORDS       
First Line: They begin in utero. After a white parlor
Last Line: Imagination (who reek of an imbecile perfume) %to howl, loathing the mouse-music of howling


MY OLD BOOKS       


MY SON THE EXECUTIONER       
Last Line: Observe enduring life in you %and start to die together


MY SON, MY EXECUTIONER    Poem Text    


MY SON, MY EXECUTIONER       
Last Line: Observe enduring life in you %and start to die together
Subject(s): Sons


MYCENAE       
First Line: In the shaft graves, butterflies
Last Line: To be struck like a zebra %drinking at a water-hole


NAMES OF HORSES    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
Subject(s): Farm Life; Love; Agriculture; Farmers


NAMES OF HORSES       
First Line: All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
Last Line: O roger, mackerel, riley, ned, nellie, chester, lady ghost
Subject(s): Farm Life; Love


NEW ANIMALS       
First Line: Waking one morning
Last Line: And peacocks that keen %aiee aiee


NEW HAMPSHIRE       
First Line: A bear sleeps in a cellar hole; pine needles
Last Line: Where a quarrel %of vines crawls into the spilled body of a plane


NEW ROOM       
First Line: Suddenly I look up


NIGHT OF THE DAY       
First Line: Cool october, monday night. I waited for kickoff
Last Line: Not wanting to sleep, happy, amazed by happiness


NO COLOR MAN       
First Line: I lived no-color. In a gray room I talked
Last Line: And buried each other continually in gray sand


NO DEPOSIT       
First Line: No deposit - no return %said the bottle dead of beer
Last Line: No deposit - no return


NO DEPOST NO RETURN       


NORTH SOUTH    Poem Text    
First Line: Morning is a dog with failing hindquarters
Subject(s): Life


NOSE       
First Line: It is an accurate nose
Last Line: Do not sit on this nose


NOTES FOR NOBODY       
First Line: The first time I met him henry moore was sixty. Before tea
Last Line: Never consider a surface except as the extremity of a volume


NOTES FROM CHINA       
First Line: At shanghai, poplars
Last Line: Walk, halting to gaze at our train


NOTES FROM INDIA       
First Line: As I said before (do I
Last Line: And endurance under the sun


NOTHING, MY AGING FLACCUS....       
First Line: Nothing, my aging flaccus, looks so happy next to your ranch
Last Line: For a few alert moments before we are granted to die


NOTICES       
First Line: It was an equity
Last Line: One actress told me. 'you could just go home.'


O CHEESE    Poem Text    
First Line: In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, cheddars and harsh
Subject(s): Cheese


O CHEESE       
First Line: In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, cheddars and harsh
Last Line: O cheeses that keep to your own nature, like a lucky couple,%this solitude, this energy, these bodie
Subject(s): Cheese


O FLODDEN FIELD' (IN MEMORY OF EDWIN MUIR)    Poem Text    
First Line: The learned king fought
Last Line: Picks up from the heather / a whole sword
Subject(s): Flodden Field, England; Muir, Edwin (1887-1959); War


O FLODDEN FIELD' (IN MEMORY OF EDWIN MUIR)       
First Line: The learned king fought
Last Line: Picks up from the heather %a whole sword
Subject(s): Flodden Field, England; Muir, Edwin (1887-1959); War


OLD HOME DAY       
First Line: Under the eyeless, staring lid


OLD HOME WEEK       
First Line: Old man remembers to old man
Last Line: The batter's box washed out in rain


OLD HOUSES       
First Line: Old houses were scaffolding once
Last Line: As the old whistling that bend %out with the nails


OLD LIFE       
First Line: Snow fell in the night
Last Line: Engagement with the one task and desire


OLD LIFE       
First Line: Sitting in the back seat
Last Line: Of the tongue: my life hasn leukemia


OLD PILOT'S DEATH; IN MEMORY OF PHILIP THOMPSON       
First Line: He discovers himself on an old airfield
Last Line: He banks and flies to join them
Variant Title(s): The Old Pilo


OLD ROSES    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: White roses, tiny and old, hover among thorns
Subject(s): Roses


OLD ROSES       
First Line: White roses, tiny and old, hover among thorns
Last Line: As we call them now, %strolling beside the barn %on a day that perishes


OLD SONG       
First Line: I sort through left-behind
Last Line: Of rage, fucking, and tears


OLD TIMER'S DAY    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: When the tall puffy
Subject(s): Baseball; Old Age


OLIVES    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Dead people don't like olives
Subject(s): Aging; Olives; Death; Dead, The


ON A HORSE CARVED IN WOOD    Poem Text    
First Line: The horses of the sea; remember
Subject(s): Sculpture & Sculptors


ON A HORSE CARVED IN WOOD       
First Line: The horses of the sea; remember
Last Line: Sacred to poseidon are both the %nimble dolphin and the stiff pine tree
Subject(s): Sculpture And Sculptors


ON REACHING THE AGE OF TWO HUNDRED       
First Line: When I awoke on the morning
Last Line: And in each of the two hundred beds %me sleeping


ONE DAY       
First Line: As I sit by myself, middle-aged in my yellow chair


ONE DAY WE MADE ONION SOUP       


ORDER       
First Line: That time I needed to order
Last Line: He grinned with hungarian competence: %'what kind of a head?'


ORDINARY PARENTS       
First Line: Jane's father played
Last Line: He was a professional gambler


ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS       
First Line: Money is shit,' said freud
Last Line: A less disgusting word


OUR WALK IN YORKSHIRE       
First Line: Sheep mutter as we pass
Last Line: By pastures where sheep mutter


OUT OF BED       
First Line: They remove themselves, one after one, leaving
Last Line: An angry tongue that specifies the drowned


OX CART MAN       
First Line: In october of the year
Last Line: For next year's ox in the barn, %and carves the yoke, and saws planks %building the cart again


OX-CART MAN    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: In october of the year,
Subject(s): Farm Life; Agriculture; Farmers


OYSTERS AND HERMITS       
First Line: We live by love, but not by love alone
Last Line: And never leave your hands nothing to do


PAINTING YOU DID FOR ME AT CHRISTMAS       


PAPER TO WRITE ON       
First Line: Covered with lions


PARTING       
First Line: We romped together night and day
Last Line: And an old lover, and withdrew. %love, broken-hearted


PASSAGE TO WORSHIP       
First Line: Those several times she cleaved my dark
Last Line: But honoring the steadfast dead


PEACEABLE KINGDOM       
First Line: Rarely did her toenails %scrape the ceiling. Twice
Last Line: Scratches on the horizon


PERFECT LIFE       
First Line: Unicorns envy their cousin
Last Line: Envies an other who fondles %a pistol in a motel room


PERSISTENCE OF 1937       
First Line: After fifty years amelia earhart's lockheed fretted with rust
Last Line: Slices of wonder bread, listening to the philco for bulletins %from the navy: after 50 years her loc


PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHINA       
First Line: After the many courses, hot bowls of rice
Last Line: And li chi: %'when I close my eyes, because my eyes hurt me,%then it is west lake that I see.'


PICTURES OF PHILIPPA       
First Line: Here she comes %the queen of moons!
Last Line: Take care of not getting your hair wet


PLUVIA    Poem Text    
First Line: In the nation of rainy days
Last Line: Over the nation of rainy days
Subject(s): Nature; Rain


PLUVIA       
First Line: In the nation of rainy days
Last Line: Like a lost airplane still circling %over the nation of rainy days
Subject(s): Nature


POEM       
First Line: It discovers by night
Last Line: Who knows %what it is thinking?


POEM BEGINING WITH A LINE OF WITTGENSTEIN    Poem Text    
First Line: The world is everything that is the case


POEM WITH ONE FACT    Poem Text    
First Line: At pet stores in detroit, you can buy
Subject(s): Pets; Detroit, Michigan


POEM WITH ONE FACT       
First Line: At pet stores in detroit, you can buy frozen rats
Last Line: To amino acids, which enter %the cold bloodstream


POET AT TWENTY       
First Line: Images leap with him from branch to branch. His eyes


PORCELAIN COUPLE       
First Line: When jane felt well enough for me to leave her
Last Line: Bluebeard was, their cat who died long ago
Subject(s): China (porcelain); Home


POSTCARD: JANUARY 22ND       
First Line: I grew heavy through summer and autumn
Last Line: She is the darling of her mother's old age
Variant Title(s): After Nine Month


PRACTICES       
First Line: Jane spent a morning
Last Line: Checks, according to another practice


PRAISE FOR DEATH       
First Line: Let us praise death that turns pink cheeks to ashes
Last Line: To utnapishtim %who alone of all men after the flood lives without dying


PRESIDENT AND POET       
First Line: Granted that what we summon is absurd
Last Line: Chose to belaurel robinson instead %of famous men like richard watson gilder


PRESIDENTIAD       
First Line: Abraham lincoln was giggling uncontrollably
Last Line: Which he used in a system of rotation


PROFESSION       
First Line: An imcompetent boy scout
Last Line: It is my profession,' he said


PROFESSOR GRATT       
First Line: And why does gratt teach english? Why, because
Last Line: Face stuffed and sneering, 'gratt has what it takes'


PROPHECY       
First Line: I will strike down wooden houses; I will burn aluminum
Last Line: While babylon's managers burn in the rage of the lamb


PROSPERO'S TUNE       
First Line: We hayed three loads
Last Line: Wind that touched me, loading the hayrack


PROVERBS: 1. PHILOSOPHICAL PROVERBS       
First Line: Theory is the continuation of war by other means
Last Line: Most poets are bad poets; most critics are bad philosophers


PROVERBS: 2. PROSTESTANT PROVERBS       
First Line: Unnameable god speaks the word jesus
Last Line: The word speaks out of silence toward repose: 'before adam was, I %am.'


PROVERBS: 3. PRACTICAL PROVERBS       
First Line: Universal knowledge extends so far: umbrellas discourage rainfall
Last Line: Never assume anything except the contrary; but doubt the contrary


PROVERBS: 4. PROFESSIONAL PROVERBS       
First Line: Whatever we think we write, with luck we write something else
Last Line: When it arrives in the mail, never open the treasury of failure and %despair


PROVERBS: 5. PAIRED PROVERBS       
First Line: You hunker by the salt marsh watching the ocean; under the hill, I
Last Line: You were thin but fatten with age; I am pre-socratic


QUESTIONS [1]       
First Line: Why do you love her?


QUESTIONS [2]       
First Line: How is it now


QUESTIONS [3]       
First Line: Why did it happen


QUESTIONS [4]       
First Line: Who is asking these questions


RADIO KEEPS TALKING       


RAISIN       
First Line: I drank cool water from the fountain
Last Line: This morning I looked into the pale %raisin of harry's face


REASONABLE NAP       
First Line: In nineteen ninety-three
Last Line: With sarcasm, 'go write a poem about it.'


RECLINING FIGURE' (FROM HENRY MOORE'S SCULPTURE)       
First Line: Then the knee of the wave
Last Line: And saw planks %building the cart again


RECURRENT DREAM       
First Line: I am sitting alone waiting for a woman


RED BRANCH       
First Line: Even the dignity of christ
Last Line: So far one branch is red on this green tree


RED, ORANGE, YELLOW       
First Line: For five years of my life, or ten


REGRET       
First Line: Just before I entered
Last Line: Gosh. I never did get %to know don, the way I wanted to.'


RELIGIOUS ARTICLES       
First Line: By the road to church, shaker village
Last Line: You must not belileve in anything; %you who feel cheated are crooning


REPEATED SHAPES       
First Line: I have visited men's rooms
Last Line: And doze in the morning


RESIGNATIONS       
First Line: At sixty-five I feel well
Last Line: To engage the bliss of ardor


REVOLUTION       
First Line: In the great hall where lady ann by firelight after dining alone
Last Line: Drank up the cellar, emigrated without notice, copulated, conceived, and begot us


REWARD       
First Line: Curled on the sofa
Last Line: How admirable I found myself


RIC'S PROGRESS       
First Line: They met in a bar - would you believe it? - at the edge
Last Line: The decaying body's music which is their measure


ROCKER       
First Line: He played jacks with me
Last Line: When a mouse skitters over the linoleum


SAFE SEX    Poem Text    
First Line: If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
Subject(s): Desire


SAVIN ROCK       
First Line: Bored in the backseat, eleven
Last Line: And it's something that costs money.'


SCENIC VIEW       
First Line: Every year the mountains
Last Line: Rears with unseeable peaks %fatal to airplanes


SCREAM       
First Line: Observe. Ridged, raised, tactile, the horror
Last Line: The repose of art that has distance
Variant Title(s): Munch's Screa
Subject(s): Art And Artists; Munch, Edvard (1863-1944); Paintings And Painters


SEA       
First Line: I remember watching %from the porch of a cottage
Last Line: No one will understand them


SECOND STANZA       
First Line: I put my hat upon my head
Last Line: His head was in his hat
Subject(s): Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)


SELF-PORTRAIT AS A BEAR    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Here is a fat animal, a bear
Subject(s): Bears


SELF-PORTRAIT, AS A BEAR       
First Line: Here is a fat animal, a bear
Last Line: Lifts through a haze every morning %of the summer in the stomach


SEPTEMBER ODE       
First Line: And now september burns the careful tree
Last Line: And when we die are full of memory


SESTINA       
First Line: Hang it all, ezra pound, there is only the one sestina
Last Line: About which, conversation is not dull


SET OF SEASONS       
First Line: He suspects that the seasons
Last Line: Scored in the head as grass, %seasonal, unsuspected


SEW       
First Line: She kneels on the floor, snip snip
Last Line: On the bolt in the dark warehouse, %dreaming my shapes


SHAME       
First Line: If I lived in peckwater
Last Line: Where he stayed, trembling, rattling saucers


SHIP OF STATE, HIGH TIDE...       
First Line: Ship of state, high tide rising
Last Line: In the always- %ruinous sea?


SHIP POUNDING       
First Line: Each morning I made my way
Last Line: On the cross still twisted under the sun
Subject(s): Ships And Shipping; Sickness


SHRUBS BURNED AWAY       
First Line: Once a little boy and his sister - my mother lay


SHUDDER    Poem Text    
First Line: The foot of death has printed on my chest
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


SHUDDER       
First Line: The foot of death has printed on my chest
Last Line: If we walk, we walk on graves
Subject(s): Death


SISTER BY THE POND       
First Line: An old life photograph
Last Line: Or into weeds that waver in water


SISTER ON THE TRACKS       
First Line: Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches
Last Line: A double scent of heaven and cut hay
Subject(s): Railroads


SIX NAPS IN ONE DAY       
First Line: In the nap there are numerous doors, boudoirs, a talking hall
Last Line: Skulks hiding in salt grass - while the halt gibbon howls


SIX POETS IN SEATCH OF A LAWYER    Poem Text    
First Line: Finesse be first, whose elegance deplores
Subject(s): Law & Lawyers; Poetry & Poets; Attorneys


SIX POETS IN SEATCH OF A LAWYER       
First Line: Finesse be first, whose elegance deplores
Last Line: Scoundrel be last, be deaf, be dumb, be blind, %who writes satiric verses on his kind
Subject(s): Law And Lawyers; Poetry And Poets


SLEEPING       
First Line: The avenue rises towards a city of white marble
Last Line: Awake, it is still sleeping


SLEEPING GIANT; A HILL IN CONNECTICUT       
First Line: The whole day long, under the walking sun
Last Line: And winter pulled a sheet over his head
Subject(s): Children; Connecticut; Giants; Mountains; Poetry And Poets


SLEEPING TOGETHER       


SMALL FIG TREE       
First Line: I am dead, to be sure
Last Line: I will the devil kiss
Subject(s): Bible; Curses; Religion


SNAIL       
First Line: Soft liquid feet


SNOW       
First Line: Snow is in the oak
Last Line: And the snow keeps falling, %and something will always be falling


SNOWBANKS NORTH OF THE HOUSE    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six feet from the house...
Subject(s): Death - Children; Family Life; Death - Babies; Relatives


SOME AMERICANS IN PARIS    Poem Text    
First Line: Here, in the right cafe, convened by fate
Subject(s): Paris, France


SOME ODDITIES       
First Line: The hugy spider stooping through the door
Last Line: I'm through with oddities of nature


SONG FOR LUCY       
First Line: She died quickly at ninety
Last Line: They kissed and jane %whispered, timor mortis conturbat me


SOUTHWEST OF BUFFALO       
First Line: The long lakes, flanked
Last Line: Of flowers, on %the hills of new york


SPACE SPIDERS       
First Line: All autumn and winter they attacked the mother


SPEECHES       
First Line: Two old men %meet at the lunch
Last Line: Froggie, nuke us %some beans


SPIDER HEAD       
First Line: The spider glints
Last Line: Humming in a cement hole %electric glass
Variant Title(s): The Assassi
Subject(s): Assassination; Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963)


SPRING GLEN GRAMMAR SCHOOL    Poem Text    
First Line: I remember the moment because I planned, at six in the first grade
Subject(s): Education; Schools; Students


SPRING GLEN GRAMMAR SCHOOL       
First Line: I remember the moment because I planned, at six in the first grade
Last Line: The box is humid; it continues to continue: nothing escapes
Subject(s): Education; Schools


STANDING OUT FROM THE BODY       
First Line: The first snow every
Last Line: On the clothesline using wooden clothespins


STONE WALLS       
First Line: Stone walls emerge from leafy ground
Last Line: Past noons of birch and sugarbush, past cellarholes, %many miles to the village of nightfall


STONES       
First Line: Now it is gone, all of it
Last Line: Lived in a stone house here %whole lives


STOREFRONT       
First Line: When newberry's closed
Last Line: But drew with a well-groomed hand %a line through 'franklin, new hampshire.'


STORIES       
First Line: I look at the rock and the house
Last Line: Fire at night %in the squares of winter


STORY       
First Line: My old connecticut friend
Last Line: Me a story, how it used to be


STUMP    Poem Text    
First Line: Today they cut down the oak.
Subject(s): Oak Trees


STUMP       
First Line: Today they cut down the oak
Last Line: And white blossoms that last into october


SUDDEN THINGS       
First Line: A storm was coming, and that was why it was dark. The


SUGGESTION       
First Line: It didn't matter that
Last Line: In bloomsbury: 'have fun while you can'


SUMMER KITCHEN    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: In june's high light she stood at the sink
Subject(s): Family Life; Relatives


SUMS    Poem Text    
First Line: From that daye thee hart strokys


SUMS (FROM THE DAYE-BOKE OF ADAM RAISON, 1515-1560)       
First Line: From that daye thee hart strokys
Last Line: Axemann gruntyd, glintt of bryght %blade. Blodde-russhe


SUN       
First Line: Both of them felt it: that day was an island
Last Line: Their privacy completed the cafes of strangers


SUN       
First Line: He waited in the sadness of the sun's intention
Last Line: His own darkness. In the sun he knew he was followed


SUNDAYS       
First Line: However we started our sunday
Last Line: Sample the butterscotch this sunday


SURFACE       
First Line: The surveyor climbs a stonewall into woods
Last Line: Sun and study slogans of dirt: 'never consider %a surface except as the extension of a volume.'
Subject(s): Environment; Nature


SWAN       
First Line: December, nightfall at three thirty
Last Line: And sleek as a swan


SWANS    Poem Text    
First Line: December, nightfall at three-thirty
Subject(s): Mills & Millers


T.R.    Poem Text    
First Line: Granted that what we summon is absurd
Subject(s): Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)


TABLE       
First Line: Walking back to the farm form the depot
Last Line: And grasshoppers %haying the fields of the air


TASTE COLD       


TENNIS BALL    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: I parked by the grave in september, under oaks and birvhes
Subject(s): Graves; Love - Erotic; Tombs; Tombstones


THE BASEBALL PLAYERS    Poem Text    
First Line: Against the bright
Subject(s): Baseball; Sports


THE BEAU OF THE DEAD    Poem Text    
First Line: John fleming walked in the house his cousin left him
Subject(s): Past


THE BLACK FACED SHEEP    Poem Text    
First Line: Ruminant pillows! Gregarious soft boulders!
Subject(s): Farm Life; Mortality; Shepherds & Shepherdesses; Agriculture; Farmers


THE BLUE WING    Poem Text    
First Line: She was all around me
Subject(s): Aircraft Wrecks


THE CLOWN    Poem Text    
First Line: Practically all you newspaper people
Subject(s): Clowns


THE COALITION    Poem Text    
First Line: If among earth's kings lord gilgamesh should remain unreasonable
Last Line: Of pharoah death, imperator death, shogun death, president death
Subject(s): Gulf War (1991)


THE COFFEE CUP    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: The newspaper, the coffee cup, the dog's
Subject(s): Death; City & Town Life; Dead, The


THE DAY I WAS OLDER        Recitation


THE DAYS    Poem Text    
First Line: Ten years ago this minute, he possibly sat
Subject(s): Past


THE EIGHTH INNING    Poem Text    
First Line: Kurt, terror is merely the thesis
Subject(s): Sports


THE FARM    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: Standing on top of the hay
Subject(s): Farm Life; Agriculture; Farmers


THE FIFTH INNING    Poem Text    
First Line: Kurt, last night dwight evans put it all
Subject(s): Sports


THE FOOTSTEPS    Poem Text    
First Line: In the kitchen of the old house, late
Subject(s): Fathers; Past; Family Life; Relatives


THE FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY    Poem Text    
First Line: In the ford plant
Subject(s): Industry; Labor & Laborers; Work; Workers


THE GRAVE, THE MINE    Poem Text    
First Line: Taking off from the city
Subject(s): City & Town Life


THE HENYARD ROUND    Poem Text    
First Line: From the dark yard by the sheep barn the cock crowed
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


THE HUNKERING    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: In october the red leaves going brown heap and
Subject(s): Autumn; Fall


THE IMPOSSIBLE MARRIAGE    Poem Text    
First Line: The bride disappears. After twenty minutes of searching
Subject(s): Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)


THE JEALOUS LOVERS    Poem Text    
First Line: When he lies in the night away from her
Subject(s): Jealousy


THE KISS    Poem Text    
First Line: The back twists with the kiss
Subject(s): Kisses


THE LONE RANGER    Poem Text    
First Line: Anarchic badlands spread without a road
Subject(s): Fictional Characters


THE MAN IN THE DEAD MACHINE    Poem Text    
First Line: High on a slope in new guinea
Subject(s): World War Ii; Second World War


THE MORNING PORCHES    Poem Text    
First Line: Even the morning is formal. A coughing dog
Subject(s): Porches


THE OLD PILOT    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: He discovers himself on an old airfield.
Subject(s): Aviation & Aviators; Airplanes; Air Pilots


THE ONE DAY    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: There are ways to get rich: find an old corporation,
Subject(s): Wealth; Riches; Fortunes


THE PAINTED BED    Poem Text    
First Line: Even when I danced erect


THE PORCELAIN COUPLE       
First Line: When jane felt well enough for me to leave her
Subject(s): China (porcelain); Home


THE RAISIN    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: I drank cool water from the fountain
Subject(s): Old Age


THE ROUTINE        Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Marital Love; Mortality


THE SCREAM    Poem Text    
First Line: Observe. Ridged, raised, tactile, the horror
Variant Title(s): Munch's Scream
Subject(s): Art & Artists; Munch, Edvard (1863-1944); Paintings & Painters


THE SHIP POUNDING    Poem Text    
First Line: Each morning I made my way
Subject(s): Ships & Shipping; Sickness; Illness


THE SLEEPING GIANT; A HILL IN CONNECTICUT    Poem Text    
First Line: The whole day long, under the walking sun
Subject(s): Children; Connecticut; Giants; Mountains; Poetry & Poets; Childhood; Hills; Downs (great Britain)


THE SNOW        Recitation
First Line: Snow is in the oak
Subject(s): Snow


THE SUN    Poem Text    
First Line: He waited in the sadness of the sun's intention
Subject(s): Sun


THE TABLE    Poem Text    
First Line: Walking back to the farm from the depot
Subject(s): Farm Life; Grandparents; Childhood Memories; Agriculture; Farmers; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers


THE THINGS    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: When I walk in my house I see pictures,
Subject(s): Inanimate Objects


THE TOY BONE    Poem Text    
First Line: Looking through boxes
Subject(s): Nostalgia


THE WEDDING COUPLE    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Fifteen years ago his heart
Subject(s): Marital Love; Old Age


THE WISH        Recitation by Author
Subject(s): Mourning; Bereavement


THE WORDS    Poem Text    
First Line: My mother said, of course
Subject(s): Cancer, Lung; Death - Fathers


THE WRECKAGE    Poem Text    
First Line: At the edge of the city the pickerel
Subject(s): Life


THE YOUNG WATCH US    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: The young girls look up
Variant Title(s): Lovers In Middle Age
Subject(s): Youth; Marital Love


THERE USED TO BE DAYS       


THESE FACES       


THIRTEENTH INNING       
First Line: John singer sargent's the daughters of edward d. Boit
Last Line: You roll like a dog in the stinking carcass of your death


THIS POEM       
First Line: This poem is why
Last Line: Suppose all poems %contain this poem, %dreaming one knowledge %shaped by the measure %of the body's


THIS ROOM    Poem Text    
First Line: When I woke that morning
Subject(s): Life


THIS ROOM       
First Line: When I woke this morning


THIS SADNESS       


THREE MONTHS       


THREE MOVEMENTS       
First Line: It is not in the books
Last Line: It is %like himself, only visible


TO A WATERFOWL    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks
Subject(s): Waterfowl


TO A WATERFOWL       
First Line: Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks
Last Line: Not you, not you, not you, not you, not you, not you
Subject(s): Waterfowl


TO BUILD A HOUSE       
First Line: Gazing at may's blossoms, imagining bounty of mcintosh


TO THE LOUD WIND       
First Line: Mime the loud wind in pain
Last Line: Shouts the loud wind to fill %the worded intellect


TOMORROW    Poem Text    
First Line: Although the car radio warned that / 'war threatened' as 'europe mobilized'
Subject(s): Americans; Kent State University - Riot, 1970; United States; America


TOMORROW       
First Line: Although the car radio warned that %'war threatened' as 'europe mobilized'
Last Line: At the red lights of intersections
Subject(s): Americans; Kent State University - Riot, 1970; United States


TOWN OF HILL       
First Line: Back of the dam, under
Last Line: Door shuts %under dream water


TOY BONE       
First Line: Looking through boxes
Last Line: I was happy %in the room dark with the shades drawn
Subject(s): Nostalgia


TRAFFIC    Poem Text    
First Line: Trucks and stationwagons, vws, old chevies, pintos
Subject(s): City Traffic


TRAFFIC       
First Line: Trucks and stationwagons, vws, old chevies, pintos
Last Line: I wait %for the traffic to pause, shift, and enter the traffic
Subject(s): City Traffic


TRAIN       
First Line: Out of memory, a long shape


TRANSCONTINENT    Poem Text    
First Line: Where the cities end, the
Last Line: They’re nearly there
Subject(s): Americans; United States; America


TRANSCONTINENT       
First Line: Where the cities end, the
Last Line: See cars and shacks, they know %they're nearly there
Subject(s): Americans; United States


TREE AND THE CLOUD       
First Line: In the middle distance %a tree stands
Last Line: To touch the cloud %hardens the touching


TUBES    Poem Text    
First Line: Up, down, good, bad, said
Subject(s): Illness


TUBES       
First Line: Up, down, good, bad,' said %the man with the tubes
Last Line: And house of desire %is tubes up the nose


TWELVE SEASONS       
First Line: Snow starts at twilight. All night the house
Last Line: As we drowse waiting. Someone is at the door


UMBRELLA       
First Line: It keeps out everything! It goes
Last Line: You will not get me to come out


VALENTINE    Poem Text    
First Line: Chipmunks jump, and
Subject(s): Love


VALENTINE       
First Line: Chipmunks jump, and
Last Line: Nothing else but %us can matter
Subject(s): Love


VALLEY OF MORNING       
First Line: Jack baker %rises when
Last Line: For the reigns %of fifty %kings and queens


VENETIAN NIGHTS       
First Line: There were joys, even
Last Line: O green, red, and gold! %o watery chrysanthemums of fire!


VILLAGE IN EAST ANGLIA       
First Line: He walks out of the village. The road
Last Line: It hurtles together from all sides %at once


WAITING ON THE CORNERS       
First Line: Glass, air, ice, light
Last Line: Of glass, air, ice, light, %and winter cold


WAKING THE NEXT MORNING       
First Line: His bladder signalled first


WATERS       
First Line: A rock drops in a bucket
Last Line: The life worth living


WE BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE FISH    Poem Text     Recitation
First Line: It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other.
Subject(s): Fish Farming


WE WALKED IN SMALL STREETS       


WEDDING PARTY       
First Line: The pock-marked player of the accordion
Last Line: That only empties, fills, empties, fills


WEEDS AND PEONIES    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: Your peonies burst out, white as snow squalls
Subject(s): Love


WEEDS AND PEONIES       
First Line: Your peonies burst out, white as snow squalls
Last Line: As if they might topple. Some topple
Subject(s): Love


WELL, I SAID, OF COURSE       


WELLS    Poem Text    
First Line: I lived in a dry well
Subject(s): Wells


WELLS       
First Line: I lived in a dry well
Last Line: I drink from the well of cattle


WHEN I THINK OF YOU       


WHEN I WAS YOUNG       
First Line: When I was young and sexual
Last Line: Zero notes), he must acknowledge %that the god is blind and a baby


WHEN THE YOUNG HUSBAND    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: When the young husband picked up his friend's pretty wife
Subject(s): Unfaithfulness; Infidelity; Adultery; Inconstancy


WHEN YOU WOKE YOU TURNED       


WHIP-POOR-WILL       
First Line: As the last light %of june withdraws
Last Line: To drowse all morning %in his grassy hut


WHIP-POOR-WILL       
First Line: Every night about nine


WHITE APPLES    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: When my father had been dead a week
Subject(s): Death - Fathers


WHITE APPLES       
First Line: When my father had been dead a week
Last Line: If he called again %I would put on my coat and galoshes


WIDOWS       
First Line: Up and down the small streets, in which
Last Line: Many left like you, though no two %widows are exactly alike


WINE TREE       
First Line: By the side of the huron


WINTER'S ASPERITY MOLLIFIES...    Poem Text    
First Line: Winter's asperity mollifies under the assault of april
Last Line: And death, love and death: how do you tell them apart?
Subject(s): Death; Love


WINTER'S ASPERITY MOLLIFIES...       
First Line: Winter's asperity mollifies under the assault of april
Last Line: Desire for each other's bodies. In response to death's deplorable %likelihood, we bed each other dow
Subject(s): Nature


WISH       
First Line: I keep her weary ghost inside me. %'oh, let me go,' I hear her crying
Last Line: I hear her cry, as I reach to hold her, %'oh, let me go!'


WITHOUT    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: We live in a small island stone nation
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


WITHOUT       
First Line: We lived in a small island stone nation
Last Line: Without monkey or lily without garlic


WITNESSES' HOUSE    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: From the scratchy sleep of old age,
Subject(s): Old Age


WIVES       
First Line: If I said, 'little wives.'
Last Line: For a long time %on the sidewalks


WOLF KNIFE (FROM THE JOURNALS OF C.F. HOYT, USN, 1826-89)       
First Line: In mid-august, in the second year'
Last Line: From the thigh of the larger wolf, %which we ate %gratefully, blessing the creator, for we were hung


WOOD SMOKE       
First Line: Sun on the sand


WOOL SQUARES    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: I sort through left-behind


WOOLWORTH'S       
First Line: My whole life has led me here
Last Line: I followed this vision to boston


WORDS       
First Line: My mother said, of course
Last Line: If anything should happen to me...'


WORDS FROM THE SARCOPHAGUS       
First Line: Even when I danced erect
Last Line: Everyone dies of something


WORDS OVER AMOS       
First Line: A young red male, long haired


WRECKAGE       
First Line: At the edge of the city the pickerel
Last Line: And across the field into the new pine


YOU HATE ANIMALS       


YOU SEND ME A SMILE       


YOU TOLD ME ABOUT LAUTREAMONT TODAY       


YOUNG EDGAR       
First Line: When I was twelve I took
Last Line: Smarter than poe--to script %the home movie of the chosen life


YOUNG WATCH US       
First Line: The young girls look up
Last Line: I look at you. You are smiling at the sidewalk, %dear wrinkled face
Variant Title(s): Lovers In Middle Ag


YOUR BODY CLENCHED ON MINE       


YOUR NOSE       
First Line: It is a snail


YOUR TINY LEFT HAND       


YOUR VOICE ON THE TELEPHONE