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Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Searching... Author: RICH ADRIENNE Matches Found: 595 Rich, Adrienne Cecile Poet's Biography 595 poems available by this author 1941 First Line: In the heart of pain where mind is broken %and consumed by body, I sit like you Last Line: In whose name? %do you 21-JUN First Line: It's june and summer's height 21-SEP First Line: Wear the weight of equinoctial evening Last Line: Then the houses draw you. Then they have you 21-SEP First Line: Wear the weight of equinoctial eveing 5:30 A.M. First Line: Birds and periodic blood Last Line: Will have our skins at last A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING Poem Text Recitation First Line: My swirling wants. Your frozen lips Subject(s): Donne, John (1572-1631); Pain; Poetry & Poets; Suffering; Misery A WALK BY THE CHARLES First Line: Finality broods upon the things that pass Subject(s): Charles River, Massachusetts A WOMAN MOURNED BY DAUGHTERS Poem Text First Line: Now, not a tear begun Subject(s): Mothers & Daughters ABNEGATION First Line: The red fox, the vixen Last Line: Who chopped their way across these hills %-- a chosen people ABSENT-MINDED ARE ALWAYS TO BLAME First Line: What do you look for down there Last Line: Minutes after you slowly turn away ADAM WRITING HOME First Line: The dark blue band above the gray green stripe AFTER A SENTENCE IN MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE First Line: The month's eye blurs Last Line: Once more stare in the eye of our first failure AFTER DARK First Line: You are falling asleep and I sit looking at you Subject(s): Fathers & Daughters AFTER DARK First Line: You are falling asleep and I sit looking at you Last Line: At the last, your hand feels steady Subject(s): Fathers And Daughters AFTER TWENTY YEARS First Line: Two women sit at a table by a window. Light breaks Last Line: As in a city where nothing is forbidden %and nothing permanent AFTERWAKE First Line: Nursing your nerves Last Line: Slowly, till scissors of cockcrow snip the air AFTERWARD First Line: Now that your hopes are shamed, you stand Last Line: To one who grows to fit her doom AIR WITHOUT INCENSE First Line: We eat this body and remain ourselves Last Line: A site unscourged by wasting tongues of fire ALLEGED MURDERESS WALKING IN HER CELL First Line: Nine months we conspired ALTERNATING CURRENT First Line: Sometimes I'm back in that city Last Line: (and-as you once said-what's wrong with that?) ALWAYS THE SAME First Line: Slowly, prometheus Last Line: Like a battle-song after a battle AMENDS First Line: Nights like this: on the cold apple-bough Last Line: As it dwells upon the eyelids of the sleepers %as if to make amends AMNESIA First Line: I almost trust myself to know Last Line: Over the something that gets left behind? AN ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 13 (DEDICATIONS) Poem Text First Line: I know you are reading this poem Subject(s): Poetry & Poets ANNOTATION FOR AN EPITAPH First Line: These are the sins for which they cast out angels Last Line: And all their luxury glitters grand and void ANTINOUS: THE DIARIES First Line: Autumn torture. The old signs Last Line: Isn't it also dead gobbets of myself, %abortive, murdered, or never willed? ANY HUSBAND TO ANY WIFE First Line: I know: you are glycerine Last Line: The black, blurred face to something we can love APOLOGY First Line: I've said: I wouldn't ever Last Line: And the nightmares of a dog APOLOGY First Line: You, invincibly yourself Last Line: Silence like thunder bears it sown %excuse for dread ARCHITECT First Line: Nothing he had done before %or would try for later' Last Line: While devising the little fountain to run all night %outside the master bedroom ART OF TRANSLATION: 1 First Line: To have seen you exactly, once Last Line: That streaked the pouch, the shirt I wore %and the bench on which I leaned Subject(s): Art And Artists; Translating And Interpreting ART OF TRANSLATION: 2 First Line: It's only a branch like any other %green with the flare of life in it Last Line: Broken by force, broken by lying %green, with the flare of life in it ART OF TRANSLATION: 3 First Line: But say we're crouching on the ground like children Last Line: Existed, were spoken, or could be spoken %like a thief I'd bury them and remember where ART OF TRANSLATION: 4 First Line: The trade names follow trade %the translator stopped at passport control Last Line: That not a word of them %is contraband -- how could I prove it? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE First Line: Over the chessboard now Last Line: Our luxury of nausea, you %forget nothing, have no dreams AT A BACH CONCERT Poem Text Recitation First Line: Coming by evening through the wintry city Subject(s): Love; Symphonies; Concerts AT A BACH CONCERT First Line: Coming by evening through the wintry city Last Line: Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart Subject(s): Love; Symphonies AT A DEATHBED IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND First Line: I bid you cast out pity Last Line: Bring on the men of mirth AT HERTFORD HOUSE First Line: Perfection now is tended and observed Last Line: To think that use too mean for art or draft AT MAJORITY First Line: When you are old and beautiful Last Line: The stillness of antiquity Subject(s): Youth AT THE JEWISH NEW YEAR First Line: For more than five thousand years Last Line: May the taste of honey linger %under the bitterest tongue Subject(s): Jews AT THE JEWISH NEW YEAR First Line: For more than five thousand years Last Line: Under the bitterest tongue ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 1 First Line: A dark woman head bent, listening for something Last Line: You knew me by. But the woman driving, walking, watching %for life and death, is the same ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 10 First Line: Soledad, = f. Solitude, loneliness, homesickness; lonely retreat Last Line: No one responds to kindness, no one is more sensitive to it %than the desperate man ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 11 First Line: One night on monterey bay the death-freeze of the century Last Line: What are the bindings? %what behooves us? ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 12 First Line: What homage will be paid to a beauty built to last Last Line: I speak of them now ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 13 (DEDICATIONS) First Line: I know you are reading this poem Last Line: Because there is nothing left to read %there where you have landed, stripped as you are Subject(s): Poetry And Poets ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 2 First Line: Here is a map of our country Last Line: Then yes let it be these are small distinctions %where do we see it from is the question ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 3 First Line: Two five-pointed star-shaped glass candleholders, bought at the ben Last Line: Talk of withering, of wintering-over ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 4 First Line: Late summers, early autumns, you can se something that binds Last Line: Never-to-be-finished, still unbegun work of repair - it cannot %be done without them %and where are ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 5 First Line: Catch if you can your country's moment, begin Last Line: A cell dividing without maps, sliver of ice beneath a wheel %could do the job. Faithfulness isn't th Subject(s): San Francisco ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 6 First Line: A potato explodes in the oven. Poetry and famine Last Line: America. Meat three times a day, they said. Slaves - you would %not be that Subject(s): Ireland - Famine; Sullivan, Annie (1866-1936) ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 7 (THE DREAM-SITE) First Line: Some roof-top, water-tank looming, street-racket strangely quelled Last Line: Known and unknown %living its life Subject(s): New York City ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 8 First Line: He thought there would be a limit and that iw would stop him. He Last Line: Ants, sandcrabs, dun-rats, because no one understood %all picnics are eaten on the grave? ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD: 9 First Line: On this earth, in this life, as I read your story, you're lonely Last Line: Her mother travelled on alone to cook in the mining camps ATTENTION First Line: The ice age is here Last Line: Half-parted, steady as the mouths %of antique statues AUGUST First Line: Two horses in yellow light Last Line: Which looks like a village lit with blood %where all the fathers are crying: my son is mine! AUNT JENNIFER'S TIGERS Recitation First Line: Aunt jennifer's tigers prance across a screen Subject(s): Animals; Aunts; Imagination; Love - Marital; Tapestries; Tigers; Women's Rights; Fancy; Wedded Love; Marriage - Love; Feminism AUNT JENNIFER'S TIGERS First Line: Aunt jennifer's tigers prance across a screen Last Line: Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid Subject(s): Animals; Aunts; Imagination; Love - Marital; Tapestries; Tigers; Women's Rights AUTUMN EQUINOX First Line: The leaves that shifted overhead all summer Last Line: Enough for one september afternoon AUTUMN SEQUENCE First Line: An old shoe, an old pot, an old skin Last Line: With a film of stale gossip coating his tongue BEARS First Line: Wonderful bears that walked my room all night Subject(s): Animals; Bears; Night; Bedtime BEARS First Line: Wonderful bears that walked my room all night Last Line: My bears, who keeps you now, in pride and fear? Subject(s): Animals; Bears; Night BIRTH First Line: Like a clenched roar. Low, hard. Is there a word BLOOD-SISTER First Line: Shoring up the ocean. A railroad track Last Line: Where survival %takes naked and fiery forms Subject(s): Women BLUE GHAZALS (1) First Line: Violently asleep in the old house Last Line: Wading aganst the tide, and with the tide Variant Title(s): The Blue Ghazals 9/21/6 BLUE GHAZALS (2) First Line: One day of equinoctial light after another Last Line: To let the water slide downward: I am that woman %and that water Variant Title(s): The Blue Ghazals 9/23/6 BLUE GHAZALS (3) First Line: A man, a woman, a city %the city as object of love Last Line: Air of dust and rising sparks, %the city burning her letters Variant Title(s): The Blue Ghazals 9/26/68: BLUE GHAZALS (4) First Line: They say, if you can tell, clasped under the blanket Last Line: When will we lie clearheaded in our flesh again %with the cold edge of the night driving us close to BLUE GHAZALS (5) First Line: There are days when I seem to have nothing Last Line: A black run through the tunnelled winter, he and she, %together, touching, yet not side by side Variant Title(s): The Blue Ghazals 12/20/68: BLUE GHAZALS (6) First Line: Frost, burning. The city's ill BLUE GHAZALS (7) First Line: Pain made her conservative Last Line: Sometimes I dream we are floating on water %hand-in-hand; and sinking without terror Variant Title(s): The Blue Ghazals 5/4/6 BLUE GHAZALS 12/20/68: II First Line: Frost burning. The city's ill. Last Line: Touch down at the forbidden island BLUE GHAZALS 9/28/68: II First Line: Ideas of order - sinner of the florida keys Last Line: Nothing, not even the honeycomb, manifests such control BLUE GHAZALS 9/29/68 First Line: Late at night I went walking through your difficult wood Last Line: With the cold edge of the night driving us close together BOOK First Line: You, hiding there in your words Last Line: When they write at night in their diaries they are writing to you Subject(s): Howard, Richard (b. 1929); Writing And Writers BOUNDARY First Line: What has happened here will do Last Line: A hair would span the difference BREAK First Line: All month eating the heart out Last Line: Full on the dusty panes BREAKFAST IN A BOWLING ALLEY IN UTICA, NEW YORK First Line: Smudged eyeballs Last Line: Alone with his girl %for the first time BURNING OF PAPER INSTEAD OF CHILDREN First Line: My neighbor, a scientist and art-collector, telephones me Last Line: Touch you and this is the opressor's language BURNING ONESELF IN First Line: In a bookstore on the east side Last Line: However we may scream we are %suffering quietly BURNING ONESELF OUT First Line: We can look into the stove tonight Last Line: Till there is nothing in life %that had not fed that fire BY NO MEANS NATIVE First Line: Yonder,' they told him, 'things are not the same' Last Line: By one ancestral patch of local ground CAMINO REAL First Line: Hot stink of skunk Last Line: Drawn by love's unprovable pull %I write this Subject(s): Nature; Writing And Writers CAPITAL First Line: Under that summer asphalt, under vistas Last Line: In that metropolis anything but greek CARTOGRAPHIES OF SILENCE First Line: A conversation begins %with a lie Last Line: Are these words, these whispers, conversations %from which time after time the truth breaks moist an CELEBRATION IN THE PLAZA First Line: The sentimentalist sends his mauve balloon Last Line: All we have left, their pedagogues reply CHANGE OF WORLD First Line: Fashions are changing in the sphere Last Line: The changes coming are due at last CHAR First Line: There is bracken there is the dark mulberry Last Line: About you like that and like this I keep vigil for you CHARLESTON IN THE 1860S First Line: He seized me round the waist and kissed my throat Subject(s): Charleston, South Carolina; Chestnut, Mary Boykin CHARLESTON IN THE 1860S First Line: He seized me round the waist and kissed my throat Last Line: No imagination [is] to forestall woe Subject(s): Charleston, South Carolina; Chestnut, Mary Boykin CHILDREN PLAYING CHECKERS AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST First Line: Two green-webbed chairs CLASSMATE First Line: One year, you gave us Last Line: Lost classmate, look %your glory was here CLOCK IN THE SQUARE First Line: This handless clock stares blindly from its tower Last Line: Whether around a clockface or a world COAST TO COAST First Line: There are days when housework seems the only COLOPHON First Line: In this long room, upon each western pane Last Line: The world's last thought will be our flaring thought CONCORD RIVER First Line: The turtles on the ledges of july Last Line: Are absolutes, no longer scenery Subject(s): Rivers CONTINUUM First Line: Waking thickheaded by crows' light Last Line: As I go on hoping to feel %tears of mercy in the of course impersonal rain CONTRADICTIONS: TRACKING POEMS, SELS. First Line: Look: this is january the worst onslaught Last Line: My love hot on your scent on the cusp of winter CORPSE-PLANT First Line: A milk-glass bowl hanging by three chains Last Line: Where I placed its sign by choice CULTURE AND ANARCHY First Line: Leafshade stirring on linchened bark Last Line: And we should be together DAYS: SPRING First Line: He writes: let us bear %our illusions together Last Line: A woman's body nailed with stars DELTA First Line: If you have taken this rubble for my past Last Line: With its five fingers spread DEMON LOVER First Line: Fatigue, regrets. The lights Last Line: Seasick, I drop into the sea Subject(s): Love DESERT AS GARDEN OF PARADISE First Line: Guard the knowledge DESIGN IN LIVING COLORS First Line: Embroidered in a tapestry of green Last Line: Out of a pattern unperceived till now DIALOGUE First Line: She sits with one hand poised against her head, the Last Line: Or whether I knew, even then %that there was doubt about these things DIAMOND CUTTERS First Line: However legendary %the stone is still a stone Last Line: And know that africa %will yield you no more Subject(s): Diamonds; South Africa DIEN BIEN PHU First Line: A nurse on the battlefield Last Line: Blank chart of %amnesia Subject(s): Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 DISSOLVE IN SLOW MOTION First Line: When you watch a marriage %dissolve, in slow motion Last Line: It all gets thrown away Subject(s): Marriage DIVING INTO THE WRECK Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: First having read the book of myths Subject(s): Cousteau, Jacques (1910-1997); Disasters; Diving & Divers; Sea; Shipwrecks; Ocean DIVING INTO THE WRECK First Line: First having read the book of myths Last Line: Our names do not appear Subject(s): Cousteau, Jacques (1910-1997); Disasters; Diving And Divers; Sea; Shipwrecks DIVISIONS OF LABOR First Line: The revolutions wheel, compormise, utter their statements DOUBLE MONOLOGUE First Line: To live illusionless, in the abandonned mineshaft of doubt Last Line: Our need mocks our gear DREAMWOOD First Line: In the old, scratched, cheap wood of the typing stand EASTERN WAR TIME First Line: Memory says: want to do right? Don't count on me Last Line: Lifting my smoky mirror Subject(s): Memory; World War Ii EASTERN WAR TIME, SELS. Subject(s): Memory; World War Ii EASTPORT TO BLOCK ISLAAND First Line: Along the coastal waters, signals run Last Line: As usual in these parts for foul, not fair EDUCATION OF A NOVELIST First Line: Looking back - trying to decipher Last Line: Map of kept and broken promises %I was always the one Subject(s): Glasgow, Ellen (1873-1945) END OF AN ERA First Line: This morning, flakes of sun Last Line: Are still in the earth ENDS OF THE EARTH First Line: All that can be unknown is stored in the black screen of a Last Line: Other whose bed I have shared but never at once together? EPILOGUE FOR A MASQUE OF PURCELL First Line: Beast and bird must bow aside Last Line: May we still forgive ourselves, %and dance again when trumpets blow Subject(s): Purcell, Henry (1659-1695) ESSENTIAL RESOURCES First Line: I don't know %how late it is. I'm writing Last Line: Sweated with desire and %premature clarity EURYCLEA'S TALE First Line: I have to weep when I see it, the grown boy fretting Last Line: Than her flanks, her hair, that true but aging bride EXCERPT, FROM AN OLD HOUSE IN AMERICA First Line: I am an american woman: %I turn that over Last Line: Most of the time, in my sex, I was alone Subject(s): Americans; United States EXPLORERS First Line: Beside the mare crisium, that sea Last Line: Across that outer desert, from my home EYE First Line: A balcony, violet shade on stucco fruit in a plastic bowl on the iron Last Line: Like shade on a balcony FACE First Line: I could look at you a long time Last Line: That is your true element FACE TO FACE First Line: Never to be lonely like that Subject(s): Pioneers; Reunions FACE TO FACE First Line: Never to be lonely like that Last Line: Burning under the bleached scalp; behind dry lips %a loaded gun Subject(s): Pioneers; Reunions FACT OF A DOORFRAME First Line: Means there is something to hold FAMILY ROMANCE First Line: Our mother went away and our father was king FINAL NOTATIONS First Line: It will not be simple, it will not be long Last Line: It will be short, it will take all your breath %it will not be simple, it will become your will FIRST THINGS First Line: I can't name love now Last Line: Only in the sun's eye %do I take fire FIVE O'CLOCK, BEACON HILL First Line: Curtis and I sit drinking auburn sherry Last Line: Avant-garde in tradition's lineaments FIVE O'CLOCK, JANUARY 2003 First Line: Tonight as cargoes of my young Last Line: Of an ocean wouldn't tell you FLESH AND BLOOD First Line: A cracked walk in the garden Last Line: And, lord, it's true FOCUS First Line: Obscurity has its tale to tell Last Line: The mind's passion is all for singling out. %obscurity has another tale to tell FOOD PACKAGES: 1947 First Line: Powdered milk, chocolate bars, canned fruit, tea Last Line: Was once my home FOR A FRIEND IN TRAVAIL First Line: Waking from violence: the surgeon's probe left in the Last Line: What are you going through, there on the other edge? FOR A RUSSIAN POET: 1. THE WINTER DREAM First Line: Everywhere, snow is falling. Your bandaged foot Last Line: Footprints, bells and voices with all deliberate speed FOR A RUSSIAN POET: 2. SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY First Line: Now, again, every year for years: the life-and-death talk Last Line: At the verge of tears in a lightning-flash of loneliness FOR A RUSSIAN POET: 3. THE DEMONSTRATION First Line: Natalya gorbanevskaya Last Line: We'll meet each other later Subject(s): Pushkin, Alexander (1799-1837) FOR A SISTER First Line: I trust none of them. Only my existence Last Line: To light the stove, get out the typewriter and begin again. Your story Subject(s): Russia; Social Protest FOR AN ALBUM First Line: Our story isn't a file of photographs Last Line: How still we stood, %how fast FOR AN ANNIVERSARY First Line: The wing of the osprey lifted %over the nest on tomales bay Last Line: And the tides beseeching, besieging %they bay in its ruined langour FOR ETHEL ROSENBERG Poem Text First Line: Europe 1953: / throughout my random sleepwalk Last Line: With secrets she has never sold Subject(s): Antinuclear Movement; Capital Punishment; Communism; Mccarthyism; Rosenberg Case; Nuclear Freeze; Hanging; Executions; Death Penalty; Rosenberg, Ethel; Rosenberg, Julius FOR JULIA IN NEBRASKA First Line: In the midwest of willa cather Last Line: A grandmother's strong hands plaited %straight down a grand-daughter's back Subject(s): Cather, Willa (1873-1947); Frontier And Pioneer Life; Women FOR L.G.: UNSEEN FOR TWENTY YEARS First Line: A blue-grained line circles a fragment of the mind Last Line: As we left each other, seeking the love of men FOR MEMORY First Line: Old words: trust - fidelity Last Line: The starry worlds. From all the lost collections FOR THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO PLANETS First Line: We smile at astrological hopes Last Line: We see the things we long to see %in fiery iconography? FOR THE DEAD First Line: I dreamed I called you on the telephone Last Line: Than you wish they were %sitting there long after midnight FOR THE FELLING OF AN ELM IN THE HARVARD YARD First Line: They say the ground precisely swept Last Line: With which the aged elm came down FOR THE RECORD First Line: The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war Last Line: The ones you fear most of all: ask where you were FOR THIS First Line: If I've reached for your lines (I have) Last Line: And still a lighthouse be FOURTH MONTH OF THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT First Line: It is asleep in my body FOX First Line: I needed fox badly I needed Last Line: Pushed out of a female the yet-to-be woman FRAME First Line: Winter twilight. She comes out of the lab Last Line: In silence. What I am telling you %is told by a white woman who they will say %was never there. I sa FROM A CHAPTER ON LITERATURE First Line: After the sunlight and the fiery vision Last Line: And the wet twilight scares the bird away FROM A SURVIVOR First Line: The pact that we made was the ordinary pact Last Line: Each one making possible the next FROM AN OLD HOUSE IN AMERICA First Line: Deliberately, long ago Last Line: Any woman's death diminishes me FROM MORNING-GLORY TO PETERSBURG (THE WORLD BOOK, 1928) First Line: Organized knowledge in story and picture' Last Line: The morning-glory on the gate %from petersburg in history - but it's too late FROM THE PRISON HOUSE First Line: Underneath my lids another eye has opened Last Line: It must forget %nothing GABRIEL First Line: There are no angels - yet Last Line: Straight at me %awhile longer GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (1) First Line: The clouds are electric in this university Last Line: When you read these lines, think of me %and what I have not written here Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib): 7/12/6 GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (10) First Line: The friend I can trust is the one who will let me have my death Last Line: Streaming above me like the graph of a cry Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/24/68: I Subject(s): Friendship GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (11) First Line: A dead mosquito, flattened against a door Last Line: They carry illustrated catalogues of all that there is to lose Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/26/68: I GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (12) First Line: So many minds in search of bodies Last Line: Long weeks without women do this to a man Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/26/68: Ii GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (13) First Line: The order of the small town on the riverbank Last Line: Where are you buried, what is the condition of your bones? Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 8/1/6 GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (14) First Line: If these are letters, they will have to be misread Last Line: When they read this poem of mine, they are translators. %every existence speaks a language of its ow Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 8/4/6 GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (15) First Line: From here on, all of us will be living Last Line: Though I can see from here where I'll be standing at the end Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 8/8/68: GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (16) First Line: A piece of thread ripped-out from a fierce design Last Line: While the strong heart goes on pounding in its sleep Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 8/8/68: I GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (17) First Line: Last night you wrote on the wall: revolution is poetry Last Line: Neither alone, nor in anyone's arms, we will end up sleeping Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/26/68: GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (2) First Line: The ones who camped on the slopes, below the bare summit Last Line: The photograph shows just a white rocking-chair, still rocking Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib): 7/13/6 GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (3) First Line: In central park we talked of our own cowardice Last Line: You were american, whitman, and those words are yours Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Thalib) 7/14/68: GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (4) First Line: Did you think I was talking about my life? Last Line: For us the work undoes itself over and over: %the grass grows back, the dust collects, the scar brea Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/14/68: I GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (5) First Line: Blacked-out on a wagon, part of my life cut out forever Last Line: Till the walls of the tunnel cave in %and the black river walks on our faces Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/16/68: GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (6) First Line: When they mow the fields, I see the world reformed Last Line: The impartial scholar writes me from under house arrest. %I hope you are rotting in hell, montaigne Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/16/68: I GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (7) First Line: Armitage of scrap-iron for the radiations of a moon Last Line: At the aquarium that day, between the white whale's loneliness and the grouper's mass promiscuities, Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/17/6 GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (8) First Line: When your sperm enters me, it is altered Last Line: What are y ou doing here at the edge of the death-camps, vivaldi Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/23/6 GHAZALS: HOMAGE TO GHALIB (9) First Line: The sapling springs, the milkweed blooms: obsolete nature Last Line: More hotly than they later touched me with their lips Variant Title(s): Ghazals (homage To Ghalib) 7/24/68: GHOST OF A CHANCE First Line: You see a man %trying to think Last Line: Pulls it back blind into the triumphant %sea GRANDMOTHERS: 1. MARY GRAVELY JONES First Line: We had no petnames, no diminutives for you Subject(s): Grandparents; Mothers & Daughters; Women; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers GRANDMOTHERS: 1. MARY GRAVELY JONES First Line: We had no petnames, no diminutives for you Last Line: Reciting your unwritten novels to the children Subject(s): Grandparents; Mothers And Daughters; Women GRANDMOTHERS: 2. HATTIE RICE RICH First Line: Your sweetness of soul was a mystery to me Subject(s): Grandparents; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers GRANDMOTHERS: 2. HATTIE RICE RICH First Line: Your sweetness of soul was a mystery to me Last Line: Dispersed among the children and grandchildren Subject(s): Grandparents GRANDMOTHERS: 3. GRANDDAUGHTER First Line: Easier to encapsulate your lives Last Line: The daughter of one of you - amnesia was the answer GRATING First Line: Not having worn %the pearly choker Last Line: The great rock shoulders overlook %in their immensity all decisions HALFWAY First Line: In the field the air writhes, a heat-pocket Last Line: My days lie open, listening, grandmother HALFWAY First Line: In the fields the air writhes, a heat-pocket Last Line: My days lie open, listening, grandmother HANDS First Line: On the way, my hands HARPERS FERRY First Line: Where do I get this landscape? Two river-roads HE REMEMBERETH THAT WE ARE DUST First Line: And when was dust a thing so rash Last Line: To build such anger, mould such woes HEROINES First Line: Exceptional %even deviant you draw your long skirts Last Line: That is not enough? HOLDING OUT First Line: The hunters' shack will do Last Line: And our love in our boots at first - %no matter HOLIDAY First Line: Summer was another country, where the birds Last Line: The long walk back to winter, leagues away HOUSE AT THE CASCADES First Line: All changed now through neglect. The steps dismantled Last Line: His yard despoiled, and out of innocent noon %the insect-cloud like thunder on the land HUNGER First Line: A fogged hill-scene on an enormous continent Last Line: Until we find each other, we are alone I AM IN DANGER - SIR -' First Line: Half-cracked' to higginson, living Last Line: Chose to have it out at last %on your own premises Variant Title(s): 'i Am In Danger - Sir - '; "i Am In Danger-sir- Subject(s): Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886) I DREAM I'M THE DEATH OF ORPHEUS First Line: I am walkng rapidly through striations of light and dark thrown under an arcade Last Line: Her dead poet learning to walk backward against the wind %onthe wrong side of the mirror I HEARD A HERMIT SPEAK First Line: Upon the mountain of the young Last Line: All walking out to die IDEAL LANDSCAPE First Line: We had to take the world as it was given Last Line: Those gilded trees, those statues green and white IF YOUR NAME IS ON THE LIST First Line: If your name is on the list of judges Last Line: Don't let me die do you forget %what we were to each other IMAGES First Line: Close to your body, in the %pain of the city IMAGES FOR GODARD: 1. First Line: Language as city: wittgenstein Last Line: My face must have a meaning IMAGES FOR GODARD: 2 First Line: To know the extremes of light Last Line: On a vinyl raincoat IMAGES FOR GODARD: 3 First Line: To love, to move perpetually Last Line: To be stopped, to shoot the same scene %over & pver IMAGES FOR GODARD: 4 First Line: At the end of alphaville Last Line: We leave the theatre %suffering from that IMAGES FOR GODARD: 5 First Line: Interior monologue of the poet Last Line: The moment of change is the only poem IMPLOSIONS First Line: The world's %not wanton Last Line: I'll have nothing %even for you? IN A CLASSROOM First Line: Talking of poetry, hauling the books IN MEMORIAM: D.K. First Line: A man walking on the street Last Line: No, not again %but still Subject(s): Aids (disease); Sickness IN THE EVENING First Line: Three hours chain-smoking words Last Line: The moon, cracked every which-way %pushes steadily on IN THE NORTH First Line: Mulish, unregenerate Last Line: You are their king IN THE WAKE OF HOME First Line: You sleep in a room with bluegreen curtains Last Line: Who will number the grains of loss %and what would comfort be? IN THE WOODS First Line: Difficult ordinary happiness Last Line: Will melt me as I lie IN THE WOODS First Line: Difficult ordinary happiness,' %no one nowadays believes in you Last Line: Naked between the trees %will melt me as I lie IN THOSE YEARS First Line: In those years, people will say, we lost track Last Line: Where we stood, saying I IN TIME OF CARNIVAL First Line: Those lights, that plaza -- I should know them all Last Line: The songs that send those lovers wild to bed INCIPIENCE First Line: To live, to lie awake Last Line: Over the scarred volcanic rock INNOCENTS First Line: They said to us, or tried to say, and failed: Last Line: They knew what we would never have believed INSCRIPTIONS (FIVE: VOICES) First Line: That year I began to understand the words burden of proof Last Line: Swearing to the satellites it had been a natural death INSCRIPTIONS (ONE: COMRADE) First Line: Little as I knew you I know you: Last Line: How thickskinned peace is, and those who claim to promote it INSCRIPTIONS (SIX: EDGELIT) First Line: Living under fire in the raincolored opal of your love Last Line: Still roaring %into thinnest air INSOMNIACS First Line: The mystic finishes in time Last Line: Yet find a ritual to embrace %raw towns of man, the pockmark ed sun Subject(s): Insomnia INSUSCEPTIBLES First Line: Then the long sunlight lying on the sea Last Line: To leave a light for them when they should come INTEGRITY First Line: A wild patience has taken me this far Last Line: Imperceptibly scalding %the skin these hands will also salve IT DOES IT First Line: Dear d., the man has been rolling the grass ITINERARY First Line: The guidebooks play deception Last Line: And tails of mermaids glittering JERUSALEM First Line: In my dream, children Last Line: And hear the sirens screaming %and the carob-tree is bare Subject(s): Jerusalem JERUSALEM First Line: In my dream, children Last Line: And the carob-tree is bare JUVENILIA First Line: Your ibsen volumes, violet-spined Last Line: Behind the two of us, thirsty spines %quiver in semi-shadow,huge leaves uncurl and thicken Subject(s): Dramatists; Ibsen, Henrik (1828-1906); Plays And Playwrights KEY First Line: Through a drain grating, something Last Line: By the whole night KNIGHT First Line: A knight rides into the noon Last Line: His rags and wounds still hidden %under the great breastplate? KNOT First Line: In the heart of the queen anne's lace, a knot of blood Last Line: Little wonder the eye, healing, sees %for a long time through a mist of blood KURSAAL AT INTERLAKEN First Line: Here among tables lit with bottled tapers Last Line: Consumes the mind with mingled snow and fire LAG First Line: With you it is still the middle of the night Last Line: Blurts knowledge you can't use LANDSCAPE OF THE STAR First Line: The silence of the year. This hour the streets Last Line: Where angels spring like starlight in the trees LAST SONG First Line: All in the day that I was born Last Line: Far from the caul in which I lie LATELY IN MY DREAMS I HEAR LONG SENTENCES First Line: Lately in my dreams I hear long sentences Last Line: You don't know how lonely I am. LEAFLETS First Line: The big star, and that other Subject(s): Modern Life; Poetry & Poets LEAFLETS First Line: The big star, and that other Last Line: To invent what we need Subject(s): Life, Modern; Poetry And Poets LETTER FROM THE LAND OF SINNERS First Line: I write you this out of another province Last Line: Sweeter this year; our gates are falling down, %and need not be replaced LETTERS IN THE FAMILY First Line: Dear parents: %I'm the daughter Last Line: And we'll eat and tell our stories %together. That is my reason. %ma Subject(s): Senesh, Hannah (1921-1944) LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 1 First Line: Your photograph won't do you justice Last Line: Distract your thirst for closure %and quick escape LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 2 First Line: Let me turn you around in your frozen nightgown and say Last Line: To say, you and I are caught in %a laboratory without a science LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 3 First Line: Would it gladden you to think %poetry could purely Last Line: Would it relieve you to decide poetry %doesn't make this happen? LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 4 First Line: From the edges of your own distraction turn Last Line: Look: with all my fear I'm here with you, trying what it %means, to stand fast; what it means to mov LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 5 First Line: Beneaped. Rowboat, pirogue, caught between the lowest Last Line: You can be like this forever -- be as without movement LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 6 First Line: But this is how %I come, anyway, pushing up from below Last Line: In films by sappho and artaud? %everyone. For a moment LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET: 7 First Line: It's not the deja vu that kills %it's the forseeing Last Line: I wanted not to be %there so alone LETTERS: MARCH 1969: 1 First Line: Foreknown. The victor Last Line: Outside along the railroad cut %they were singing for our death LETTERS: MARCH 1969: 2 First Line: Hopes sparkle like water in the clean carafe Last Line: Of the other world LETTERS: MARCH 1969: 3 First Line: I am up at sunrise Last Line: Laid open as on the desk %of an importer or a fence LETTERS: MARCH 1969: 4 First Line: Six months back Last Line: On the cracked palm LIFE AND LETTERS First Line: An old man's wasting brain; a ruined city Last Line: The fallen architecture of the mind LIKE A SIGN First Line: I almost let bastille day get away LIKE THIS TOGETHER First Line: Wind rocks the car Last Line: The whole length of a stem LIKENESS First Line: A good man %is an odd thing Last Line: And unprotected %by the protectors LIONESS First Line: The scent of her beauty draws me to her place Subject(s): Animals LIVING IN SIN Poem Text First Line: She had thought the studio would keep itself Subject(s): Jews - Women; Love; Sin LIVING IN SIN First Line: She had thought the studio would keep itself Last Line: She woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming %like a relentless milkman up the stairs Subject(s): Jews - Women; Love; Sin LIVING MEMORY First Line: Open the book of tales you knew by heart Subject(s): Nostalgia LONG CONVERSATION First Line: -- warm bloom of blood in the child's arterial tree Last Line: Charred, crumpled, ever-changing human language %is that still you? LOOK: THIS IS JANUARY THE WORST ONSLAUGHT First Line: Look: this is january the worst onslaught Last Line: This battering, blunt-edged life LOSER First Line: I kissed you, bride and lost, and went Last Line: You stagger against the wind Subject(s): Love; Love - Loss Of; Memory LOVE IN THE MUSEUM First Line: Now will you stand for me, in this cool light Last Line: Lest one imperfect gesture make demands %as troubling as the touch of human hands Subject(s): Love; Museums LOVE POEM First Line: Tell me, bristler, where LOVERS ARE LIKE CHILDREN First Line: Chagall's sweet lovers mounting into blue Last Line: Now add this pebble to that early one LUCIFER IN THE TRAIN Poem Text First Line: Riding the black express from heaven to hell Subject(s): Railroads; Railways; Trains LUCIFER IN THE TRAIN First Line: Riding the black express from heaven to hell Last Line: After our weary transit, find us rest Subject(s): Railroads MARGHANITA First Line: At the oak table under the ceiling fan Last Line: Hating and loving come down %to a few columns of figures, %an aching stomach, a care taken, somethin MARRIAGE IN THE 'SIXTIES First Line: As solid-seeming as antiquity Last Line: Suspend its dance to hang %beside you like your twin MARRIAGE PORTION First Line: From commissars of daylight Last Line: When all the rest have gone MATHILDE IN NORMANDY First Line: From the archaic ships the green and red Last Line: And the sick strained farewells, too sharp for speech MEDITATIONS FOR A SAVAGE CHILD First Line: In their own way, by their own lights Last Line: Weep for the scientists %why Subject(s): Children; Science MERCED First Line: Fantasies of old age Last Line: To hate, therefore to love MERELY TO KNOW: 1 First Line: Wedged in by earthworks Last Line: In the dried brook-bed MERELY TO KNOW: 2 First Line: Let me take you by the hair Last Line: Merely to know and let you go MERELY TO KNOW: 3 First Line: Spirit like water Last Line: Asking to be read %in the dried brook-bed MIDDLE-AGED First Line: Their faces, safe as an interior Last Line: Upon what terms, with how much left unsaid Subject(s): Middle Age MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 1 First Line: Up skyward through a glazed rectangle I Last Line: Friend an old figure an old trigonometry %still true to our story in orbits flaming or cold MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 2 First Line: Under the conditions of my hiring %I could profess or declare anything at all Last Line: Anything at all %in their hire MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 3 First Line: Had never expected hope would form itself Last Line: Making for warmer waters %where the new would be delivered : : though I would not see it MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 4 First Line: But neither was expecting in my time %to witness this : : wasn't deep Last Line: In nerve gas saying to them go for it %and to the girl get with it MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 5 First Line: When I ate and drank liberation once I walked Last Line: -- did you think I wore this city without pain? %did you think I had no family? MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 6 First Line: Past the curve where the old craftsman was run down Last Line: Killed nobody left no trace %practiced in life as I am MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 7 First Line: This horrible patience which is part of the work Last Line: Submit to whatever poetry is %I accept no limits horrible patience MIDNIGHT SALVAGE: 8 First Line: You cannot eat an egg you don't know where it's been Last Line: Scan its fissures for young stars %in the belt of orion MIRACLE ICE CREAM First Line: Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue Last Line: Late, you sit weighing the evening news, %fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions, %the rest of your Variant Title(s): Miracle, Ice Crea MIRROR IN WHICH TWO ARE SEEN AS ONE First Line: She is the one you call sister Last Line: Your nerves the nerves of a midwife %learning her trade MISSING THE POINT First Line: There it was, all along Last Line: Who's in the wrong? Who's in the wrong? MODOTTI First Line: Your footprints of light on sensitive paper Last Line: These %footsteps I'm following you with MOTH HOUR First Line: Space mildews at our touch Last Line: You are already reaching toward an empty space MOTHER-IN-LAW First Line: Tell me something Last Line: Ask me something Subject(s): Mothers-in-law MOTHER-RIGHT First Line: Woman and child - running Last Line: Heart stopping - making for the open MOURNING PICTURE (PAINTED BY EDWIN ROMANZO ELMER) First Line: They have carried the mahogany chair and the cane rocker Variant Title(s): Mourning Picture Subject(s): Elmer, Edwin Romanzo (1850-1923); Fathers & Daughters; Paintings & Painters MOURNING PICTURE (PAINTED BY EDWIN ROMANZO ELMER) First Line: They have carried the mahogany chair and the cane rocker Last Line: And leave this out? I am effie, you were my dream Variant Title(s): Mourning Pictur Subject(s): Elmer, Edwin Romanzo (1850-1923); Fathers And Daughters; Paintings And Painters MOVING IN WINTER First Line: Their life, collapsed like unplayed cards Last Line: Which, shaken out, take wing and breed %new altercations, the old silences NATURAL RESOURCES First Line: The core of the strong hill: not understood Last Line: With no extraordinary power, %reconstitute the world NECESSITIES OF LIFE First Line: Piece by piece I seem %to re-enter the world Last Line: Like old women knitting, breathless %to tell their tales NEGOTIATIONS First Line: Someday if someday comes we will agree NEW YEAR MORNING First Line: The bells have quit their clanging; there beneath Last Line: Under the dying ornamental tree NEW YEAR'S EVE IN TROY First Line: Out in the dark beyond my gates Subject(s): Troy NIGHT First Line: The motes that still disturbed her lidden calm Last Line: Held in the vise of sense about to die NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 1 First Line: The taxi meter clicking up %loose change who can afford to pay Last Line: The east side with its trinkets %the west side with its memories NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 2 First Line: Wherever you had to connect %question of passport, glances, bag Last Line: Gathered you into your earth-craving %belly-self, that desire NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 3 First Line: Gaze through the sliced-glass window %nothing is foreign here Last Line: Who can't afford to care if he lives or dies %you rode with him long ago NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 4 First Line: Between two silvered glass urns an expensive %textile is shouldered Last Line: -- nothing you haven't seen on your palm %nothing your thumbnail doesn't know NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 5 First Line: After one stroke she looks at the river %remembers her name -- muriel Last Line: In europe or the east %her mind on that water widening NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 6 First Line: Among five men walks a woman Last Line: Julia de burgos, of herself, fallen %in puerto rican harlem NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 7 First Line: Sometime tonight you'll fall down %on a bed far from your heart's desire Last Line: Back off! Don't ask! You will never meet those eyes %(none of them meeting NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES': 8 First Line: The wrapped candies from cleveland %the acclaim of east st. Louis Last Line: As we don't say, of the night %as we don't say of the night Subject(s): Eyes; Night NIGHT IN THE KITCHEN First Line: The refrigerator falls silent Last Line: Inside its pacific cave NIGHT WATCH First Line: And now, outside, the walls Last Line: How pure, how poster-like the colors of this dream NIGHT-PIECES: FOR A CHILD First Line: You sleeping I bend to cover Last Line: If milk flowed from my breast again - NIGHTBREAK First Line: Something broken - something %I need Last Line: Dumbly back %toward each other NIGHTS AND DAYS First Line: The stars will come out over and over NINTH SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN UNDERSTOOD .. SEXUAL MESSAGE First Line: A man in terror of impotence Last Line: Beating of a bloody fist upon %a splintered table Subject(s): Beethoven, Ludwig Van (1770-1827); Composers; Happiness; Music And Musicians NO WATER First Line: Dear d., you know the picture in my room NOON First Line: Light pulses through underground chambers Last Line: Leap from the black grotto NORA'S GAZE First Line: Clayton, we can't %have it both ways: %nora's art Last Line: I a woman tell it %none of it lessens her NORTH AMERICAN TIME First Line: When my dreams showed signs Last Line: And I start to speak again NOT SOMEWHERE ELSE, BUT HERE First Line: Courage - her face in the leaves - the polygons NOV-68 First Line: Stripped %you're beginning to float free Last Line: Starting to give yourself away %to the wind NOVEL First Line: All winter you went to bed early, drugging yourself on war and peace NOVELLA First Line: Two people in a room, speaking harshly Last Line: Outside, separate as minds, %the stars too come alight OBSERVER First Line: Completely protected on all sides Last Line: The camera-flash of her quiet %eye ON EDGES First Line: When the ice starts to shiver Last Line: With blunt scissors on dotted lines %like the teacher told ONE LIFE First Line: A woman walking in a walker on the cliffs OPEN-AIR MUSEUM First Line: Ailanthus, goldenrod, scrapiron, what makes you flower? Last Line: At your heart burns on %a languid fire ORIENT WHEAT First Line: Our fathers in their books and speech Last Line: Can never grow again ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS First Line: Night-life. Letters, journals, bourbon Last Line: Like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner ORION Poem Text First Line: Far back when I went zig-zagging Subject(s): Orion (constellation) ORION First Line: Far back when I went zig-zagging Last Line: Out here in the cold with you %you with your back to the wall Subject(s): Orion (constellation) OUR WHOLE LIFE First Line: Our whole life a translation Last Line: And there are no words for this %except himself PAINTER'S HOUSE First Line: Nineteen-thirties midwestern Last Line: No sex no face PARTING First Line: The ocean twanging away there Last Line: Every knot is a knife %where two strands tangle to rust PARTING: 2 First Line: White morning flows into the mirror Last Line: Hidden in all that tangle %there is a way Subject(s): Love PASSING ON First Line: The landlord's hammer in the yard Last Line: Minces, catwise, waiting for an in PAULA BECKER TO CLARA WESTHOFF First Line: The autumn feels slowed down Last Line: Will hear all I say and cannot say Subject(s): Art And Artists; Becker, Paula (1876-1907); Modersohn, Otto; Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875-1926); Westhoff, Clara (1878-1954); Women PEACE First Line: Lashes of white light Last Line: Of the cattle in their kingdom PEELING ONIONS Poem Text First Line: Only to have a grief Subject(s): Onions; Tears PEELING ONIONS First Line: Only to have a grief Last Line: These old tears in the chopping bowl Subject(s): Onions; Tears PERENNIAL ANSWER First Line: The way the world came swinging around my ears Last Line: My debt is paid: the rest is on your head PHANTASIA FOR ELVIRA SHATAYEV First Line: The cold felt cold until our blood Last Line: To settle for less. We have dreamed of this %all of our lives Subject(s): Mountain Climbing; Women PHENOMENOLOGY OF ANGER First Line: The freedom of the wholly mad Last Line: Is an unnatural act Subject(s): Anger; Women's Rights PHOTOGRAPH OF AN UNMADE BED First Line: Cruelty is rarely conscious Last Line: This feather held to lips %that still breathe and are warm PICNIC First Line: Sunday in inwood park Last Line: What kind of sunlight is it %that leaves the rocks so cold? Subject(s): Picnics PICTURES BY VUILLARD First Line: Now we remember all: the wild pear-tree Last Line: Air that we should have known, and cannot know PIECES: 1. BREAKPOINT First Line: The music of words Last Line: And still to love but simply %as one of those faces on the street PIECES: 2. RELEVANCE First Line: That erudition %how to confront it Last Line: All night like the moon PIECES: 3. MEMORY First Line: Plugged-in to her body Last Line: And each other PIECES: 4. TIME AND PLACE First Line: Liquid mist burning off Last Line: Hard, cream-colored, unbreakable %even in our travels PIECES: 5. REVELATION First Line: This morning: read simone weil Last Line: Who are the faithful of this world PIERCED DARKNESS, SELS. First Line: Taking the least griefcrusted avenue the last worst bridge away Last Line: Again, we will surely %hear of it %again PIERROT LE FOU First Line: Suppose you stood facing %a wall of photographs Last Line: This is my way of coming back PLANETARIUM Poem Text First Line: A woman in the shape of a monster Subject(s): Astronomy & Astronomers; Constellations; Herschel, Caroline (1750-1848); Herschel, William (1738-1822); Women PLANETARIUM First Line: A woman in the shape of a monster Last Line: And the reconstruction of the mind Subject(s): Astronomy And Astronomers; Constellations; Herschel, Caroline (1750-1848); Herschel, William (1738-1822); Women PLATFORM First Line: The railway stations of our daily plight Last Line: We know the heart beyond the transient face PLAZA STREET AND FLATBUSH: 1 First Line: On a notepad on a table %tagged for the goodwill Last Line: Of light unseen %till now, in brooklyn PLAZA STREET AND FLATBUSH: 2 First Line: If you had been required %to make inventory Last Line: And tend their work %art is register of light PLAZA STREET AND FLATBUSH: 3 First Line: The painter taking her moment %-- a rift in the clouds Last Line: Giving it back to its creatures %headed under the earth POSTCARD First Line: Rodin's orpheus, floodlit, hacked Last Line: The paralysis of his floodlit lips POWER First Line: Loving in the earth-deposits of our history Subject(s): Curie, Marie (1867-1934); Women POWER First Line: Loving in the earth-deposits of our history Last Line: Her wounds came from the same source as her power Subject(s): Curie, Marie (1867-1934); Women PRIMARY GROUND First Line: And this is how you live: a woman, children PRISONERS First Line: Enclosed in this disturbing mutual wood Last Line: The unpurged ghosts of passion bound by pride %who wake in isolation, side by side PROBLEM, UNSTATED TILL NOW, IS HOW First Line: The problem, unstated till now, is how Last Line: Walking her boundaries never counting the cost PROSPECT First Line: You promise me when certain things are done Last Line: Those unapportioned clusters overhead PROSPECT First Line: You promise me certain things are done PROSPECTIVE IMMIGRANTS PLEASE NOTE Poem Text First Line: Either you will Subject(s): Americans; Immigrants; United States; Emigrant; Emigration; Immigration; America PROSPECTIVE IMMIGRANTS PLEASE NOTE First Line: Either you will Last Line: Makes no promises %it is only a door Subject(s): Americans; Immigrants; United States PURELY LOCAL First Line: Beside this door a january tree Last Line: Why are we scarred with winter's thrust today RACHEL First Line: There's a girl born in abrupt august light Last Line: She was born one of them? RAFTS First Line: Down the river, on rafts you came Last Line: Homemade inventions %danced %along RAIN OF BLOOD First Line: In that dark year an angry rain came down Last Line: The guilty roofs on which the rain came down RAPE Poem Text First Line: There is a cop who is both prowler and father Subject(s): Police; Rape RAPE First Line: There is a cop who is both prowler and father Last Line: Will you swallow, you will deny them, will you lie your way home? Subject(s): Police; Rape RAVEN First Line: If, antique hateful bird Last Line: Even as you prime your feathers and set sail RE-FORMING THE CRYSTAL First Line: I am trying to imagine Last Line: Scribes upon the ribs of the volcano the name of the one she has chosen Subject(s): Desire READINGS OF HISTORY RECORDERS IN ITALY First Line: It was amusing on that antique grass Last Line: There were four recorders sweet upon the wind Subject(s): Musical Instruments RELIQUARY First Line: The bones of saints are praised above their flesh Last Line: Find symbols traced, and freeze them into stone RETURN OF THE EVENING GROSBEAKS First Line: The birds about the house pretend to be Last Line: Remembering what has changed since last they came REVIVALIST IN BOSTON First Line: Going home by lamplight across boston common Last Line: Treading to glory's throne up tremont street RIFT First Line: I have in my head some images of you RIGHT THERE IN THE PARKING LOT First Line: The choppy voices in the coffee shop ROADWAY First Line: When the footbridge washes away Last Line: The wild grass still grows wild ROOFWALKER First Line: Over the half-finished houses Last Line: Fleeing across the roofs ROOTS First Line: Evenings seem endless, now Subject(s): Flowers; Gardens & Gardening ROOTS First Line: Evenings seem endless, now Last Line: And all the gardens %to dig again? Subject(s): Flowers; Gardens And Gardening RURAL REFLECTIONS Poem Text First Line: This is the grass your feet are planted on Subject(s): Nature RURAL REFLECTIONS First Line: This is the grass your feet are planted on Last Line: It is the cloud that swallows up the sky Subject(s): Nature RUSTED LEGACY First Line: Imagine a city where nothing's %forgiven your deed adheres Last Line: Yet leaching down from her eyesockets tears %-- for one self only? Each encysts a city RUSTICATION First Line: In a gigantic pot de chambre, scrolled Last Line: Should you seem infamous to me SALVAGERS First Line: We children of our fathers signed in anger Last Line: The damnable is mixed with all we bless SCHOOL AMONG THE RUINS First Line: Teaching the first lesson and the last Last Line: Some had forgotten how' Subject(s): Politics; War SEVEN SKINS: 1 First Line: Walk along back of the library %in 1952 Last Line: A woman has to answer %you don't even think SEVEN SKINS: 2 First Line: What a girl I was then what a body Last Line: Eager to sink to be found %to disembody what a mass of swimmy legs SEVEN SKINS: 3 First Line: Vic into what shoulder could I have pushed your face Last Line: Linen-service %sheets? SHATTERED HEAD First Line: A life hauls itself uphill %through hoar-mist steaming Last Line: I believed I was loved, I believed I loved %who did this to us? SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 1 First Line: We were bound on the wheel of an endless conversation Last Line: A shell penetrated by meaning SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 2. ADAPTED FROM MIRZA GHALIB First Line: Even when I thought I prayed, I was talking to myself; when I Subject(s): Ghalib, Mirza (1797-1869) SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 2. ADAPTED FROM MIRZA GHALIB First Line: Even when I thought I prayed, I was talking to myself; when I Last Line: Games with me, or you never cared to learn the structure of my language Subject(s): Ghalib, Mirza (1797-1869) SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 3 First Line: The old blanket. The crumbs of rubbed wool turning up Last Line: Over and over the point is missed and still the blind will %turns for its target SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 4 First Line: In my imagination I was the pivot of a fresh beginning Last Line: Humans lived here once; it became sacred only when they wentaway SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 5 First Line: Of simple choice they are the villagers Last Line: The wet clay, the rhythms of choice, the lost methods away SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 6 First Line: You are beside me like a wall; I touch you with my fingers and Last Line: Keep trying to move through the bad light SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART I 11/69-2/70: 7 First Line: Picking the wax to crumbs in the iron lip of the candelabrum Last Line: And handed them over SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 10 First Line: They come to you with their descriptions of your soul Last Line: You are a letter written, folded, burnt to ash, and mailed in an envelope to another continent SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 11 First Line: The mare's skeleton in the clearing: another sign of life Last Line: Speech of noble savages, of the fathers of our country, bursting %into the full sun of the uncut fie SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 12 First Line: I was looking for a way out of a lifetime's consolations Last Line: These descriptions at the cost of missing every other point SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 13 First Line: We are driven to odd attempts; once it would not have occured to Last Line: It seemed to me, was a light I might have lit, in the old days SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 14 First Line: Whatever it was: the grains of the glacier caked in boot-cleats Last Line: Your old neighborhood SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 8 First Line: A woman waking behind grimed blinds slatted across a courtyard Last Line: Of the lumps of snow gritted and melting in the unloved corners of the courtyard SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 9. NEWSREEL First Line: This would not be the war we fought in. See, the foliage is Subject(s): World War Ii; Second World War SHOOTING SCRIPT. PART II 3-7/70: 9. NEWSREEL First Line: This would not be the war we fought in. See, the foliage is Last Line: This would not be the war I fought in Subject(s): World War Ii SIBLING MYSTERIES First Line: Remind me how we walked SIDE BY SIDE First Line: Ho! In the dawn Last Line: To ascertain how we are coming on SIGNATURES First Line: That was no country for old women... Someone from d-day Last Line: To the steep with the small soft claws gripping her back? SISTERS First Line: Can I easily say Last Line: Her I should recognize %years later, anywhere Subject(s): Women SIX NARRATIVES First Line: You drew up the story of your life - I was in that story Last Line: Had not been calculated from the first into the mighty scaffold SLEEPWALKING NEXT TO DEATH First Line: Sleep horns of a snail Last Line: Like two snails %our four horns erect SLIDES First Line: Three dozen squares of light-inflicted glass SNAPSHOTS OF A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: You, once a belle in shreveport Subject(s): Daughters-in-law; Sexism; Women; Women's Rights; Feminism SNAPSHOTS OF A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW First Line: You, once a belle in shreveport Last Line: But her cargo %no promise then: %delivered %palpable %ours Subject(s): Daughters-in-law; Sexism; Women; Women's Rights SNOW First Line: When it comes down turning Last Line: With these diagrams of loss SNOW QUEEN First Line: Child with a chip of mirror in his eye Last Line: Only this frozen spear that drives through me SOLFEGGIETTO First Line: Your windfall at fifteen your steinway grand SONG First Line: You're wondering it I'm lonely Last Line: Ice nor mud nor winter light %but wood, with a gift for burning SOURCES: I First Line: Sixteen years. The narrow, rough-gullied backroads Last Line: Bladder-campion veined with purple. %multifoliate heal-all SOURCES: II First Line: I refuse to become a seeker for cures Last Line: Even when it turns on me %like a violent master SOURCES: III First Line: From where? The voice asks coldly Last Line: The realms of touch-me-not fiery with tiny tongues %cover the wild ground of the woods SOURCES: IV First Line: With whom do you believe your lot is cast? Last Line: In the beginning we grasp whatever we can %to survive SOURCES: IX First Line: Why has my imagination stayed Last Line: There being no distance, no space around %to experiment withlife? SOURCES: V First Line: All during world war ii Last Line: Whose lives must have been strategies no less %than the vixen's on route 5 SOURCES: VI First Line: If they had played the flute, or chess Last Line: We were the chosen people %in the beginning we grasp whatever we can SOURCES: VII First Line: For years I struggled with you: your categories Last Line: That I can decipher your suffering and %deny no part of my own SOURCES: VIII First Line: Back there in maryland the stars Last Line: I thought I was following a track of freedom %and for awhile it was SOURCES: X First Line: These upland farms are the farms Last Line: Is this a law of history %or simply, what must change? SOURCES: XI First Line: If I try to conjure their lives Last Line: So quick, fierce, unconditional %short growing season is no explanation SOURCES: XIII First Line: Coming back after sixteen years Last Line: I will never %let you know SOURCES: XIV First Line: And if my look becomes the bomb that rips Last Line: -but I can't stop seeing like this %more and more I see like this everywhere SOURCES: XIX First Line: They say such things are stored Last Line: Shall want an end to suffering %zion by itself is not enough SOURCES: XV First Line: It's an oldfashioned, an outrageous thing Last Line: Of ordering hunger, weather, death, desire, %and the nearness of chaos SOURCES: XVI First Line: The jews I've felt rooted among Last Line: Wearing the star of david %on a thin chain at my breastbone SOURCES: XVII First Line: Bvut there was also the other jew. The one you most Last Line: Humor, a turn of phrase, a gesture of the hands: %there is something more SOURCES: XVIII First Line: There is something more than self-hatred. That still outlives Last Line: Terrible, threadbare %strained familiar on-going SOURCES: XX First Line: The faithful drudging child Last Line: A desert absolute: dragged by the roots of her own will %into another scene of choices SOURCES: XXI First Line: Yerushalayim: a vault of golden heat Last Line: And broken promises %this promised land SOURCES: XXII First Line: I have resisted this for years, writing to you as if you Last Line: Who want to change the laws of history, if %we are not to give ourselves away SOURCES: XXII First Line: And has any of this to do with how Last Line: Of the people who kept their promises %as a way of life? SOURCES: XXIII First Line: Sixteen years ago I sat in this northeast kingdom Last Line: Write the words in their fullness: %powerful; womanly SPIRIT OF PLACE First Line: Over the hills in shutesbury, leverett Last Line: They are pieces of us that lies out there %knowing - knowing- knowing SPLITTINGS First Line: My body opens over san francisco like the day Last Line: I choose to love this time for once %with all my intelligence SPRING THUNDER First Line: Thunder is all it is, and yet Last Line: And the old, affective clouds SPRINGBOARD First Line: Like divers, we ourselves must make the jump Last Line: Swifter, more sure than any will of ours Subject(s): Sports STAND UP First Line: Stand up in my nightgown at the window Last Line: And blank sheets of paper, bare STELAE First Line: Last night I met you in my sister's house Last Line: I never knew you had them %I wonder if you are giving them away STEPPING BACKWARD First Line: Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow Last Line: The flaws that make you both yourself and human STEPPING BACKWARD First Line: Good-bye to you whom I shall see tomorrow Last Line: The flaws that make you both yourself and human STORM WARNINGS First Line: The glass has been falling all the afternoon Last Line: Who live in troubled regions STORY First Line: Absence is homesick. Absence wants a home STRANGER First Line: Fond credos, plaster ecstasies Last Line: Blaze of his wide pure eye STRANGER First Line: Looking as I've looked before Last Line: The letters of my name are written under the lids %of the newborn child Subject(s): Identity STRAYED VILLAGE First Line: He had come nearly half a thousand miles Last Line: And all that walking was to do again STUDY OF HISTORY First Line: Out there. - the mind of the river Last Line: In your upturned %defenseless %face STUDY OF HISTORY First Line: Out there. The mind of the river Last Line: What rockface leaned to stare %in your upturned %defenseless%face Subject(s): Nature SUNDAY EVENING First Line: We are two acquaintances on a train Last Line: Where weekend half-acquaintances say good-by SURVIVORS First Line: Quite rightly, we remained among the living Last Line: Yet we can pay our tax and see the sun. %what else could we,what else could you, have done? Subject(s): Survival TEAR GAS First Line: This is how it feels to do something you are afraid of Last Line: It's not the worst way to live Subject(s): Social Protest THE DEMON LOVER Poem Text First Line: Fatigue, regrets. The lights Subject(s): Love THE LOSER Poem Text First Line: I kissed you, bride and lost, and went Subject(s): Love; Love - Loss Of; Memory THE MIDDLE-AGED Poem Text First Line: Their faces, safe as an interior Subject(s): Middle Age THE NINTH SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN UNDERSTOOD .. SEXUAL MESSAGE Poem Text First Line: A man in terror of impotence Subject(s): Beethoven, Ludwig Van (1770-1827); Composers; Happiness; Music & Musicians; Joy; Delight THE PARTING: 2 First Line: White morning flows into the mirror Subject(s): Love THE TOURIST AND THE TOWN (SAN MINIATO AL MONTE) Poem Text First Line: Those clarities detached us, gave us form Subject(s): Tourists THE TREES First Line: The trees inside are moving out into the forest Subject(s): Trees THEN OR NOW: AND NOW First Line: And now as you read these poems Last Line: Was declared obsolete THEN OR NOW: DEPORTATIONS First Line: It's happened already while we were still Last Line: As if I were practising for something %yet to come THEN OR NOW: FOOD PACKAGES: 1947 First Line: Powdered milk, chocate bars, canned fruit, tea Last Line: I am no longer german. I am a jew and the german language %was once my home THEN OR NOW: INNOCENCE: 1945 First Line: The beauty of it was the guilt Last Line: Guilt after all was a feeling THEN OR NOW: SUNSET, DECEMBER, 1993 First Line: Dangerous of course to draw Last Line: While the chimneys shuddered with the first dischargements THIS First Line: Face flashing free -- child-arms Last Line: I wanted this from you Subject(s): Animals; Dogs THIS BEAST, THIS ANGEL First Line: No: this, my love, is neither you nor I Last Line: This beast, this angel is both you and I THROUGH CORRALITOS UNDER ROLLS OF CLOUD : 1 Last Line: The pruners freeing up the boughs %in the unsearched faith these strange stiff shapes will bear THROUGH CORRALITOS UNDER ROLLS OF CLOUD: 2 First Line: Showering after 'flu; stripping the bed Last Line: Covered you as you lay freezing, she survived %uncertain who she is or will be without you THROUGH CORRALITOS UNDER ROLLS OF CLOUD: 3 First Line: If you know who died in that bed, do you know Last Line: Until you take the mirrors and turn them outward %and read your own face in their outraged light? THROUGH CORRALITOS UNDER ROLLS OF CLOUD: 4 First Line: That light of outrage is the light of history Last Line: Is that? To what kind of god? What kind of wish? THROUGH CORRALITOS UNDER ROLLS OF CLOUD: 5 First Line: She who died on that bed sees it her way Last Line: Further and further, calling her all the while: %she who went under summons her other still TO A POET First Line: Ice splits under the metal TO FRANTZ FANON First Line: I don't see your head Last Line: On the mass grave %of revolt TO JUDITH, TAKING LEAVE First Line: Dull-headed, with dull fingers Last Line: Receiving at one moment %the rainbow of the world TO THE AIRPORT First Line: Death's taxi crackles through the mist. Last Line: To see all we were promised, never knew TO THE DAYS Poem Text Recitation First Line: From you I want more than I've ever asked Subject(s): Luxemburg, Rosa (1871-1919) TO THE DAYS First Line: From you I want more than I've ever asked Last Line: Shortening days, strawberry fields in ferment %with tossed-aside, bruised fruit Subject(s): Luxemburg, Rosa (1871-1919) TOURIST AND THE TOWN (SAN MINIATO AL MONTE) First Line: Those clarities detached us, gave us form Last Line: And you are theirs and of their mystery Subject(s): Tourists TOWARD THE SOLSTICE First Line: The thirtieth of november %snow is starting to fall Last Line: As if above a letter %I long and dread to close TRACKING POEMS, SELS. TRANSCENDENTAL ETUDE First Line: This august evening I've been driving Last Line: Forming underneath everything that grows TRANSIT First Line: When I meet the skier she is always Last Line: And the cripple must decide %to recognize each other? Subject(s): Skiing TRANSLATIONS First Line: You show me the poems of some woman Last Line: Is shared, unnecessary %and political TREE First Line: Long ago I found a seed Last Line: Hanged by the hair upon that tree TREES First Line: The trees inside are moving out into the forest Last Line: Its pieces flash now in the crown %of the tallest oak Subject(s): Trees TRYING TO TALK WITH A MAN Poem Text First Line: Out in this desert we are testing bombs Last Line: As if we were testing anything else. Subject(s): Antinuclear Movement; Atomic Bomb - Testing; Men; Nuclear Freeze TRYST IN BROBDINGNAC First Line: My glumdalclitch, come here and sit with me Last Line: Held ministers in my palm and, laughing, blew %confusion on the fleets of blefuscu! TURNING First Line: Deadstillness over droughtlands TURNING THE WHEEL: 1. LOCATION First Line: No room for nostalgia here. What would it look like? Last Line: And seeming to give the finger to it all TURNING THE WHEEL: 2. BURDEN BASKETS First Line: False history gets made all day, any day Last Line: Goes on to explain a different method of weaving TURNING THE WHEEL: 3. HOHOKAM First Line: Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around Last Line: The shamaness could well have withdrawn her ghost TURNING THE WHEEL: 4. SELF-HATRED First Line: In colcha embroidery, I learn Last Line: The past as your steadying and corrective lens TURNING THE WHEEL: 5. PARTICULARITY First Line: In search of the desert witch, the shamaness Last Line: She stifles in unspeakable loneliness TURNING THE WHEEL: 6. APPARITION First Line: If she appears, hands ringed with rings Last Line: Or those eye-sockets; or that still-bristling hair TURNING THE WHEEL: 7. MARY JANE COLTER, 1904 First Line: My dear mother and sister: %I have been asked Last Line: Daughter and sister, %mary TURNING THE WHEEL: 8. TURNING THE WHEEL First Line: The road to the great canyon always feels Last Line: As I talk to you all day - whatever day TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 1 Poem Text First Line: Wherever in this city, screens flicker Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 1 First Line: Wherever in this city, screens flicker Last Line: Our animal passion rooted in the city Subject(s): Homosexuality TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 10 First Line: Your dog, tranquil and innocent, dozes through Last Line: One creature-traveler clear to the end; %that without tenderness, we are in hell TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 11 Poem Text First Line: Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes Subject(s): Love TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 11 First Line: Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes Last Line: Was here before us, knew we would come, and sees beyond us Subject(s): Love TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 12 Poem Text First Line: Sleeping, turning in turn like planets Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 12 First Line: Sleeping, turning in turn like planets Last Line: We were two women of one generation Subject(s): Homosexuality TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 13 First Line: The rules break like a thermometer Last Line: Plucked and fingered by women outside the law TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 14 First Line: It was your vision of the pilot Last Line: Vomiting their private pain %as if all suffering were physical TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 15 First Line: If I lay on that beach with you Last Line: Not responsible. Only she who says %she did not choose, is the loser in the end TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 16 Poem Text First Line: Across a city from you, I'm with you Subject(s): Gays & Lesbians; Homoeroticism; Lesbians; Gay Women; Gay Men TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 16 First Line: Across a city from you, I'm with you Last Line: Where grief and laughter sleep together Subject(s): Homosexuality TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 17 First Line: No one's fated or doomed to love anyone Last Line: Within us and against us, against us and within us TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 18 First Line: Rain on the west side highway Last Line: Where I am adrienne alone. And growing colder TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 19 First Line: Can it be growing colder when I begin Last Line: Look at the faces of those who have chosen it TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 2 First Line: I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming Last Line: Which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 20 First Line: That conversation we were always on the edge Last Line: Where it cannot hear me, %and soon I shall know I was talking to my own soul TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 21 Poem Text First Line: The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones Subject(s): Love TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 21 First Line: The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones Last Line: Greeting the moon, yet more than stone: %a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle Subject(s): Love TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 3 First Line: Since we're not young, weeks have to do time Last Line: And somewhere, each of us must help the other die TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 4 First Line: I come home from you through the early light of spring Last Line: And they still control the world, and you are not in my arms TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 5 First Line: This apartment full of books could crack open Last Line: To our life - this still unexcavated hole %called civilization, this act of translation, this half-w TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 6 First Line: Your small hands, precisely equal to my own Last Line: Of the range and limits of violence %that violence ever would be obsolete TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 7 First Line: What kind of beast would turn its life into words? Last Line: So that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem %mere emblems of that desecration of oursel TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 8 First Line: I can see myself years back at sunion Last Line: But I want to go on from here with you %fighting the temptation to make a career of pain TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: 9 First Line: Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live Last Line: For you, who have often made the unnameable %nameable for others, even for me TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: THE FLOATING POEM, UNNUMBERED Poem Text First Line: Whatever happens with us, your body Subject(s): Love TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS: THE FLOATING POEM, UNNUMBERED First Line: Whatever happens with us, your body Last Line: Reaching where I had been waiting years for you %in my rose-wet cave - whatever happens, this is Subject(s): Love TWO ARTS: 1 First Line: I've redone you by daylight Last Line: I brush you off my apron, %the charged filings crunch like cinders on the floor TWO ARTS: 2 First Line: Raise it up there and it will Last Line: But you have to raide it up there, you %have a brutal thing to do TWO POEMS (ADAPTED FROM ANNA AKHMATOVA) First Line: There's a secret boundary hidden in the waving grasses Last Line: With the man you love TWO SONGS Poem Text First Line: Sex, as they harshly call it Subject(s): Desire; Love - Erotic; Metaphor; Similes TWO SONGS First Line: Sex, as they harshly call it Last Line: We murmur the first moonwords: %spasibo. Thanks. O.K Subject(s): Desire; Erotic Love; Metaphor TWO SONGS: 2 First Line: That 'old last act'! Last Line: We murmur the first moonwords: %spasibo. Thanks. O.K UNCLE SPEAKS IN THE DRAWING ROOM First Line: I have seen the mob of late Last Line: And murmurings of missile-throwers UNSAID WORD First Line: She who has power to call her man Last Line: Knows this the hardest thing to learn UNSOUNDED First Line: Mariner unpracticed %in this chartless zone Last Line: These are latitudes revealed %separate to each UPCOUNTRY First Line: The silver shadow - where the line falls grey Last Line: Her love means danger UPPER BROADWAY Poem Text First Line: The leafbud straggles forth Subject(s): Women UPPER BROADWAY First Line: The leafbud straggles forth Last Line: I look at my face in the glass - and see %a halfborn woman Subject(s): Women USONIAN JOURNALS 2000 First Line: A country I was born and lived in undergoes rapid and flagrant Last Line: Against human speech VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING First Line: My swirling wants. Your frozen lips Last Line: To do something very common, in my own way Subject(s): Donne, John (1572-1631); Pain; Poetry And Poets VERSAILLES First Line: Merely the landscape of a vanished whim Last Line: Where each has back his old restricted face VERTIGO First Line: As for me, I distrust the commonplace Last Line: Or at the burning bush in harvard square VICTORY First Line: Something spreading underground won't speak to us Last Line: Victory %indented in disaster striding %at the head of stairs VIEW OF MERTON COLLEGE First Line: An interval: the view across the fields Last Line: Not to be littered or presumed upon VIEW OF THE TERRACE First Line: Under the green umbrellas Last Line: Impervious to surprise VILLA ADRIANA First Line: When the coloussus of the will's dominion Last Line: Whose hadrian has given the slip, and gone VIOLENCE First Line: No one knows yet Last Line: Fuses in a blown-up field VISION (THINKING OF SIMONE WEIL) First Line: You. There, with your gazing eyes WAITING FOR YOU AT THE MYSTERY SPOT First Line: I sat down facing the steep place where Last Line: In late day warmth and odor and odd wonder WAKING IN THE DARK First Line: The thing that arrests me is Last Line: Looking at the earth, the wildwood %where the split began WALDEN 1950 First Line: Thoreau, lank ghost, comes back to visit concord Last Line: Merely to set them wondering again WALK BY THE CHARLES First Line: Finality broods upon the things that pass Last Line: Past innocence, beyond these aging bricks, %to where the charles flows in to join the styx Subject(s): Charles River, Massachusetts WALKING DOWN THE ROAD First Line: On a clear night in live oak you can see Last Line: Flashing their angry tears, here in live oak Subject(s): California; Mexico WAVE First Line: To give you back this wave Last Line: And how, miraculously, we failed WELL First Line: Down this old well Last Line: Sail up into my hands WHAT GHOSTS CAN SAY First Line: When harry wylie saw his father's ghost Last Line: What if the terror stays without the meaning WHAT IS POSSIBLE First Line: A clear night if the mind were clear WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE First Line: There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill Last Line: To have you listen at all, it's necessary %to talk about trees Variant Title(s): What Kind Of Times Are Thes WHEN THIS CLANGOR IN THE BRAIN First Line: Say a master of the track Last Line: I claim till then, and nothing less WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN First Line: Trying to tell you how Last Line: Flowering in tar, a blue energy piercing %the massed atoms of a bedrock disbelief WHEN/THEN First Line: Tell us %how we'll be together Last Line: Floor, bad dreams, a torn newspaper, someone's blood in a scarped basin WHITE NIGHT First Line: Light at a window. Someone up WHY ELSE BUT TO FORESTALL THIS HOUR, I STAYED Last Line: I am too full of years to reason why WILD SKY First Line: Here from the corridor of an english train Last Line: And I remember I am native there WILL TO CHANGE: 1. First Line: That chinese restaurant was a joke Last Line: And all whose murders accrue %past your death WILL TO CHANGE: 2. First Line: Knocked down in the canefield Last Line: Defaced by the gag WILL TO CHANGE: 3 First Line: Beardless again, phoning Last Line: For one american weekend WILL TO CHANGE: 4 First Line: At the wings of the mirror, peacock plumes Last Line: As the trains tear us apart WILL TO CHANGE: 5 First Line: The cabdriver from the bronx Last Line: The artists talking of freedom %in their chains WINTER First Line: Dead, dead, dead, dead %a beast of the middle ages Last Line: Sea-zones away, and the meaning grows colder WOMAN DEAD IN HER FORTIES First Line: Your breasts - sliced-off - the scars Last Line: To where your breasts had been %but we never did such things Subject(s): Cancer, Breast WOMAN MOURNED BY DAUGHTERS First Line: Now, not a tear begun Last Line: Anywhere, save exactly %as you would wish it done Subject(s): Mothers And Daughters WOMEN Poem Text First Line: My three sisters are sitting Subject(s): Women WOMEN First Line: My three sisters are sitting Last Line: Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful Subject(s): Women YOM KIPPUR 1984 Poem Text First Line: What is a jew in solitude? Subject(s): Fasts & Feasts; Jews; Yom Kippur; Judaism YOM KIPPUR 1984 First Line: What is a jew in solitude? Last Line: In that world as it may be, newborn and haunted, what will solitude mean? Subject(s): Fasts And Feasts; Jews; Yom Kippur YOUR LETTER First Line: Blinds me %like the light of that surf Last Line: Was steady, smogged & tame |
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