Poetry Explorer

Search Classic and Contemporary Poetry

Search Results

Back to search

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Searching...
Author: MARIANI, PAUL
Matches Found: 136


Mariani, Paul    Poet's Biography
136 poems available by this author


& P NIGHTSHIFT: JANUARY 1959       
First Line: The johns hopkins university


A TOAST FOR LITTLE IRON MIKE    Poem Text    
First Line: Having come in out of the unrelenting
Subject(s): Amniotic Fluid Embolism; Babies; Family Life; Infants; Relatives


AFTER FORTY YEARS THE SON TAKES A GIANT STEP FORWARD       
First Line: Whose is this face and
Last Line: Gagging like the cholic %infant whom you nursed


AND THIS THY HARBOR       
First Line: He said, this water flows east down...To the sea; and
Last Line: By these waters rising from the waters with him


ANTIPHON       
First Line: But no. Death cannot be the only end of it
Last Line: The morning sun come up to greet them


ASSASSINS       
First Line: We have come now to expect it at anytime


BAD JOKE       
First Line: Because they had to cut deep


BAUDELAIRE AT GAMMA LEVEL       
First Line: At that depth the face disengages
Last Line: And yours, my brother, we will call the season %out of time.Enough. And ceased. And faded back, was


BETTY       
First Line: And the fumbling. Oh blessed lord the fumbling
Subject(s): Love - Erotic; Music, Rock; Rock & Roll


BETTY       
First Line: And the fumbling. Oh blessed lord the fumbling
Last Line: & kissed her lips & dear god tasted woman once again
Subject(s): Erotic Love; Music, Rock


BOMBINGS       
First Line: It's not the kids, he chokes into the phone
Last Line: Phosphor white & unforgiving, burns away the dark


BOX       
First Line: I sift through the battered shoebox


BREAK IN THE WEATHER       
First Line: Done in and travelling west yesterday


BROTHERHOOD       
First Line: Week one we went from sixteen
Last Line: Our hearts out to the empty hunter moon


BROWN STUDY: 1.       
First Line: One of those early morning dreams
Last Line: I am saying to myself, knowing %I will never get her back


BROWN STUDY: 2.       
First Line: Her one-room apartment, filled
Last Line: Splashing gaily all about you, when you wore it %cut straight across your forehead


CASUALTY REPORT    Poem Text    
First Line: The car coming on, then crossing the divide
Subject(s): Automobile Accidents; Guilt; Memory


CATALPA       
First Line: In the patchbright shadow of the flowering catalpa


CISTERN       
First Line: In the limestone cistern
Last Line: The one companion left me


CLEANING OUT THE CELLAR       
First Line: Time once more to clean the cellar out


CODA: REVISING HISTORY       
First Line: You know it's all bullshit
Last Line: For chrissake give %yr. Head a rest. Dig it? Here. %here! Take a toke of this


CONNING TOWERS OF MY FATHER'S WAR       
First Line: These the exposed, low-lying inlets
Last Line: Requiescat in pace, the sick pitch %of a metal coffin lowered. Nothing changes


CROSSING COCYTUS       
First Line: Arc of fire across the black of heaven: a father's fist
Last Line: To call him good %at last and watch him, slowly breaking, embrace the chastened son


DUET       
First Line: Noon: the jones beach causeway
Last Line: Then after that to nothing


DUET       
First Line: Noon: the causeway shimmering
Last Line: In the muffled dust about us


EARLY AUTUMN SONG       
First Line: Brilliance of the first fallen leaf
Last Line: Our drinks turn to gold before us as we mused %how the four of us could have gone on like this forev


EASTERN POINT MEDITATIONS       
First Line: It was during this time that a serious disturbance broke


EASTERN POINT MEDITATIONS, SELS.       
First Line: It was during this time that a serious disturbance broke
Last Line: The world I'd lifted high to smash against the rocks


ENCIRCLEMENT OF HORSES       
First Line: And now the hot press of horses' flanks
Last Line: To catch %the unblinking stare before the final, the obliterating charge


ENTRANCE SONG       
First Line: Begin there: with the watery light
Last Line: Behind it all, the lashed lines converging, pain visible %behind her eyes, still saying yes, yes, an


FALLING ASLEEP       
First Line: Somewhere far from this room
Last Line: Right and that now they can sleep


FERRY CROSSING    Poem Text    
First Line: Beyond the granite breakers, a world of roiling
Subject(s): Fathers; Old Age


FIRE IN THE CHOIR LOFT       
First Line: I stand to one side in the old choir loft among
Last Line: Children float so easy in: for air and more air, melody%and air, a clear consuming blaze...And not t


FOLLOWING THE LIGHT       
First Line: In the midst of so much rich uncertain
Last Line: As we listen to the sounds of words which are %not quite words drifting downward through our element


GHOST    Poem Text    
First Line: After so much time you think
Subject(s): Dreams; Nightmares


GHOST       
First Line: After so much time you think
Last Line: Growing dimmer with each oarstroke
Subject(s): Dreams


GHOST       
First Line: Upland, behind the house itself, behind


GIRL WHO LEARNED TO SING IN CROW       
First Line: Narcotic plash of water from the kitchen sink
Last Line: We know it happens all the time. We know %just as they do it's the song birds make good eating


GODS WHO COME AMONG US IN THE GUISE OF STRANGERS       
First Line: Late nights, with summer moths clinging
Last Line: Of water and a little of your time


GOODNIGHT IRENE    Poem Text    
First Line: I am ten and a half and my father
Subject(s): Memory


GOODNIGHT IRENE       
First Line: I am ten and a half and my father
Subject(s): Memory


GREAT ASSEMBLY       
First Line: In immense golden spokes the broken light
Last Line: Of the morning anthem breaking all around him


GREAT WHEEL       
First Line: In the tuileries we came upon the great wheel
Last Line: As now the evening air took mastery, it & the great wheel
Subject(s): Religion; Tuileries Gardens, Paris


HANG GLIDING ON THE UPPER SLOPES       
First Line: So it had come at last to this: the homemade makeshift
Last Line: He felt as if he were floating free, even as he began %falling fast then faster towards the unforgiv


HARRY       
First Line: The paisley kerchief blooming
Last Line: Intent on getting where he had to go


HORSES       
First Line: Late afternoon & late summer light, a scene
Last Line: The sad brown eyes of the horses straining after


HOUSE       
First Line: The table, son, is laid
Last Line: To sleep with body and soul


HUNT       
First Line: Pulling the shotgun from the
Last Line: At ease there in the summer wood, %still waiting for her hunter to approach


IN THE BOILER       
First Line: When my kid brother
Last Line: The big bastard just %for being there for me


IN THE SACRED WOOD       
First Line: Always son had followed son, it seemed
Last Line: The swish of scythe she must be waisthigh swinging. %he knew then it was not his throat she meant to


KEEPING UP       
First Line: What is it I wanted to say
Last Line: Driving me irresistibly forward, %falter, begin to fall finally behind?
Subject(s): Life


LANDSCAPE WITH DOG    Poem Text    
First Line: Often up the back steps he came
Subject(s): Animals; Dogs; Nature


LANDSCAPE WITH DOG       
First Line: Often up the back steps he came
Last Line: Somewhere in the woods to die
Subject(s): Animals; Dogs; Nature


LESSON       
First Line: Silent, my jaws working, I knew
Subject(s): Discipline


LIEUTENANT OWEN       
First Line: This then was where it waited: in mist
Last Line: He found waiting for him on that distant shore


LIGHT STREAMING INTO THE HEAD       
First Line: When the light trickles through the cracked


LINES I TOLD MYSELF I WOULDN'T WRITE    Poem Text    
First Line: Nebuchadnezzar, von hoffman the great, then
Subject(s): Animals; Dogs


LINES I TOLD MYSELF I WOULDN'T WRITE       
First Line: Nebuchadnezzar, von hoffman the great, then
Subject(s): Animals; Dogs


LOSS OF LIFE       
First Line: A masterpiece of pathos,' one eyewitness put it


LURE       
First Line: What is this strange translucent light


MANHATTAN       
First Line: Thirty years, and the six-inch scar still there
Subject(s): New York City; Religion; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple; Theology


MANHATTAN       
First Line: Thirty years, and the six-inch scar still there
Last Line: I come up with for questions 2 & 3 & 4
Subject(s): New York City; Religion


MATADERO, RILEY & COMPANY       
First Line: A perfectly useless concentration


MILLENARIANS       
First Line: The voiceover on the grainy film
Last Line: & rooted to their crusts of precious earth


MINNEAPOLIS: AT THE SUMMER SOLSTICE       
First Line: About this north midwest polis abrupt


MOONRISE AS ABSTRACTION       
First Line: Last night, driving west along the parkway
Subject(s): Nature


MOONRISE AS ABSTRACTION       
First Line: Last night, driving west along the parkway
Last Line: Now at last my friend might ease me on my way
Subject(s): Nature


MOUNTAIN VIEW WITH FIGURES    Poem Text    
First Line: As if cezanne had rendered it: a palimpsest
Subject(s): Nature


MOUNTAIN VIEW WITH FIGURES       
First Line: As if cezanne had rendered it: a palimpsest
Last Line: Climbed it now, he would find himself transfigured
Subject(s): Nature


MUSIC OF DESIRE       
First Line: Having done his best and lost her anyway
Last Line: In danny rossi's family grocery store


NEW ENGLAND WINTER       
First Line: To hell with john greenleaf whittier
Last Line: Blinking out this frozen glass. At this


NEW YORK: SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 1944       
First Line: I would walk after him into the deckle-edged


NEWS THAT STAYS NEWS       
First Line: I don't know but it might have been


NORTH / SOUTH       
First Line: In the long run for both of us


NOTE       
First Line: To tell the truth, it happened


OLD MEN ARE DYING       
First Line: After the three days' watch, after the flowers
Last Line: Between them, they begin to drift out through the once %familiar channels for the last trip north


ON THE AURIGA: LAKE WINNEPESAUKEE       
First Line: Pisarro's brownblack loons off starboard
Last Line: Like a thousand islands unexplored and beckoning, as he proclaims %brash youth being what it is: I a


ON THE EDGE OF THE ATLANTIC       
First Line: An old man walking on the beach alone


ON THE SUBLIME       
First Line: When burke stared into the heart of the sublime


ONE DARK NIGHT       
First Line: One dark night
Last Line: Until among the lilies even they were soon forgotten


PALIMPSEST       
First Line: When poe had crossed and then recrossed


PASTORAL       
First Line: It was when he stopped
Last Line: Of winter and ready now %to prove themselves again


PENTECOST SUNDAY: HOWARD BEACH       
First Line: From four on in the pre-dawn summer light


PILGRIM       
First Line: I think of jimmy pellegrino as always
Last Line: He was being sent ahead to find


PRELUDE       
First Line: In the graygreen firs of the high sierra madres
Last Line: Of the promise she saw lighting evrywhere around her: %butterflies, butterflies, a million butterfli


PRIME MOVER       
First Line: In this small painting of virgin and child


PROMISES       
First Line: To keep from killing him, my friend had said


Q / A       
First Line: Q. And what was it he felt, first


QUID PRO QUO    Poem Text    
First Line: Just after my wife's miscarriage (her second
Subject(s): Miscarriage; God; Birth; Faith; Child Birth; Midwifery; Belief; Creed


QUID PRO QUO       
First Line: Just after my wife's miscarriage (her second
Last Line: The ante each time he answers one sign with another?


REPLAYING THE OLD MORALITY PLAY       
First Line: Before the dull and torpid fire of his text
Last Line: A woman's voice down under so that his noble thoughts %couldmarch once more in onanistic splendor do


REPUBLIC       
First Line: Midnight. For the past three hours
Last Line: Why socrates would want to drink it


RESPITE       
First Line: So for once he sat there at his ease
Last Line: Of tobacco smoked in peace, the rich %peculiar pitch of silence and of katydid


RIGHT AND LEFT       
First Line: In winslow homer's final masterpiece


RING       
First Line: Only after, wading waist deep


SALVAGE OPERATIONS       
First Line: When my oldest boy calls home (collect
Subject(s): Dreams; Nightmares


SALVAGE OPERATIONS       
First Line: When my oldest boy calls home (collect
Last Line: And cleaned, he figures he could still %get something for the plymouth
Subject(s): Dreams


SARCOPAGUS       


SARCOPHAGUS       
First Line: Anger so hot, so thick & clotted


SAYING GOODBYE       
First Line: At a signal from the undertaker's
Last Line: Now. Everything is going to be just fine


SCAVENGERS       
First Line: Changing and unchanging they keep coming in
Last Line: Me, me, they cry, shoving shells and bulbs %before me, before my drifting gaze, my half-vacant eyes


SECRETS       
First Line: Bondswomen of the royal retinue
Last Line: That I have brought them from a loving wife %to her dear lord, an offering from my mother?


SEPARATE PEACE       
First Line: He stared out from the tangled
Last Line: Except for the shattered faces


SHADOW PORTRAIT       
First Line: In the lost portrait by siqueiros
Subject(s): Nature


SHADOW PORTRAIT       
First Line: In the lost portrait by siqueiros
Last Line: Sheets of paper. He knows now that, wherever %he is going, there is no way he can make it
Subject(s): Nature


SIGN       
First Line: May the fates conspire to lift my clamant voice


SILT    Poem Text    
First Line: How it steals up on you, this mortality
Subject(s): Mortality; Ransience


SMOKE RINGS       
First Line: O most sacred muse: conspire, breathe
Last Line: As if (again) by singing we could somehow %slow the thin incessant drift of things


SMOOTH WHITE PEBBLE       
First Line: Pistolcracl! Thunder over my head, over
Last Line: As here, now, worlds %condensed for once into one cool white translucent pebble


SOME SORT OF ANSWER       
First Line: Three a.M. Again: the only light


SONG       
First Line: Sing me a song, she said, once
Last Line: A song to soothe a tired woman. Something %with love in it...And memories


STARRY NIGHT       
First Line: Was it just that all our ordered order
Last Line: The strictest kind of order, freely offered %whenever sky lets go


STATUE       
First Line: A july evening, venti anni fa, the four of us
Last Line: Shifting bronzeblack surface glinted back


STEPS       
First Line: A cold wind rising on the creaking steps
Last Line: And sigh of each lovely ghost son's footfall


STUDY IN BLACK & WHITE    Poem Text    
First Line: Seven days a week, six till ten,
Subject(s): Automobiles - Service Stations; Fathers & Sons; Childhood Memories; Friendship; Gasoline Stations; Filling Stations; Automobile Repair Shops


STUDY IN BLACK & WHITE       
First Line: Seven days a week, six till ten
Last Line: The poor forked mortal trembling thing itself


TEN THOUSAND PLASTIC TURTLE BOWLS       
First Line: And so it went: hour after
Last Line: The dull-spangled stars that kept %putting out each night and all for nothing


TERN'S EYE       
First Line: By slow degrees


THE GODS WHO COME AMONG US IN THE GUISE OF STRANGERS    Poem Text    
First Line: Late nights, with summer moths clinging
Subject(s): Friendship; Death; Dead, The


THE GREAT WHEEL    Poem Text    
First Line: In the tuileries we came upon the great wheel
Subject(s): Religion; Tuileries Gardens, Paris; Theology


THE LESSON       
First Line: Silent, my jaws working, I knew
Subject(s): Discipline


THE REPUBLIC    Poem Text    
First Line: Midnight. For the past three hours
Subject(s): Police; Truth


THEN    Poem Text    
First Line: Glow of mahogany, glow of those pulsing
Subject(s): Man-woman Relationships; Transience; Male-female Relations; Impermanence


THEN       
First Line: Glow of mahogany, glow of those pulsing
Last Line: The odds the very air around is turned to whiteness


THEN SINGS MY SOUL       
First Line: Who can tell a man's real pain
Last Line: Then to still sing to thee, how great thou art


ULYSSES WEEPS       
First Line: It was the song the singer sang


VARIATIONS ON A THEME       
First Line: Miami sunlight, as in a painting
Subject(s): Nature


VARIATIONS ON A THEME       
First Line: Miami sunlight, as in a painting
Last Line: Three dots drifting slowly out to sea
Subject(s): Nature


VOYAGER    Poem Text    
First Line: Beyond the moon, beyond planet blue
Subject(s): Mothers; Death; Dead, The


VOYAGER       
First Line: Beyond the moon, beyond planet blue
Last Line: She did, to ward against the cold


WALK IN EARLY MARCH       
First Line: Of the manner in which he moves
Last Line: Bracing stream to be pored over, %delighted in, left mirac lously intact


WHAT CAN WE EXPECT OF LANGUAGE!?       
First Line: In the valley of the shadows he lifted
Last Line: Only the interrobangs hunkered in the sagging branches: %electric questions tense with so much longi


WHAT THE WIND SAID       
First Line: Wind against cheekbone, against
Last Line: Your dazed eyes fixed first on it, then me, %you stuttered, what, what do I do now, dad?


WINTER MEDITATION       
First Line: And now it's snow again, snow


WORDS       
First Line: Midwinter. A coalmining town
Last Line: The broken words, now begins to do


WORLD OF OUR FATHERS       
First Line: Your serpentine smile, lowell dubbed it back
Last Line: Comic who comes at last to play the part he loves