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Author: riding, laura
Matches Found: 408


Riding, Laura    Poet's Biography
Alternate Author Name(s): Jackson, Laura Riding
408 poems available by this author


A PAIR    Poem Text    
First Line: Those two had sewed themselves a dignity
Last Line: Even had they encompassed a success.
Subject(s): Togetherness


ABSTAINER       
First Line: Only enough scum
Last Line: That pays a piddling toll for what it is afraid entirely not to be


ACROSS A HEDGE       
First Line: She smiled to me behind a hawthorn hedge
Last Line: That could be still with her and run with me


ADDRESSES: 1       
First Line: Mother, you say
Last Line: By then my cloud will have grown strange to me


ADDRESSES: 2       
First Line: Father, I have begun to think
Last Line: A dark house is to have a darker grave


ADDRESSES: 3       
First Line: Wife, wife, you re too much at my side
Last Line: Me to my line and my self to the dust


ADDRESSES: 4       
First Line: Child, what you do insanely criticize
Last Line: For a dream too supernaturally fulfilled


ADDRESSES: 5       
First Line: Outlive me, ghost, along my liveliest ways
Last Line: My resurrection sheds to the antipodes


ADJUSTMENT       
First Line: You thought our arms were to pertly
Last Line: And bravely bolstered jollity


ADORNED       
First Line: Too high here on this quiet crag
Last Line: And crown of death


ADVENTURE IN A TRAIN       
First Line: Iron jaws, devourers of space
Last Line: We would rather wake up at home


AFTER SO MUCH LOSS       
First Line: After so much loss -- %seeming of gain
Last Line: That is the difficult decorum. %nor are the primroses unwelcome


AFTERNOON       
First Line: The fever of afternoon %is called afternoon
Last Line: But the slow fever is called afternoon


AGAINST ADVENTURE       
First Line: I went away one day
Last Line: But where none can die old


AGELESS BROW       
First Line: This resolve: with trouble's brow
Last Line: Of itself, a resolve of calm, %of never, never, and now, now


ALL NOTHING, NOTHING       
First Line: The standing-stillness, %the from foot-to-foot
Last Line: And least purposeful %possible purpose


AMMON'S GRIEF       
First Line: For which of your bloody deeds, ammon
Last Line: A good-humored wickedness


ANCIENT REVISITS       
First Line: They told me, when I lived, because my art
Last Line: Perhaps, once, in my sleep, I dreamed such things?


ANGELICA       
First Line: Dirty bugger, swells around the corner
Last Line: May she survive even utopia


ANNIVERSARY       
First Line: We are old, we are old
Last Line: It ws all on the road, on the road


ANOTHER APPLE       
First Line: Take care what piece of me you take to taste
Last Line: Short wit to who make their last meal of me


ANOTHER KIND OF BIRD       
Last Line: Not till then will it fly away with me


ANOTHER'S TONGUE       
First Line: The tongue of another
Last Line: How it is fastened


APPEARANCES       
First Line: Let me stand wondering on a hilltop
Last Line: Whether I am awake or asleep


ARS MORTIS       
First Line: Listen for the voices to cry danger
Last Line: And we are all muses


AS MANY QUESTIONS AS ANSWERS       
First Line: What is to start? %it is to have feet to start with
Last Line: What is to answer? %is it to find a question?


AS TO A FRONTISPIECE       
First Line: If you will choose the portrait %I will write the word accordingly
Last Line: We may between us illustrate %this subsequent identity


AS WELL AS ANY OTHER       
First Line: As well as any other, erato
Last Line: Construe the word and let the meaning lie %that rarely may be found


AUSPICE OF JEWELS       
First Line: They have connived at those jewelled fascinations


BACCHUS       
First Line: Pandio wove the laughing leaf in his hair
Last Line: Hearing songs across his dreams


BACK TO THE MOTHER BREAST       
First Line: Back to the mother breast %in another place
Last Line: Out of the part %where there is no heart


BALLAD OF THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN OF ROME       
First Line: The pope is dead! And quickly then
Last Line: For a pope to take them home


BASKET       
First Line: On my maiden arm swinging
Last Line: Its own day and night


BE GRAVE, WOMAN       
First Line: Be grave, woman for love
Last Line: Story, on the sense to ponder %thou alone, stark mind


BEAUTY IS KIND       
Last Line: If she forgot %to decorate


BECAUSE OF CLOTHES       
First Line: Without dressmakers to connect
Last Line: We pause between sense and foolishness, %and live


BED-EASE       
First Line: When no more wonderful is misery a horror
Last Line: Close with comfort very sad


BELAGUNA       
First Line: In belaguna, in belaguna
Last Line: In one beloved %in one fair form


BEREAVEMENT       
First Line: Who will there be, life, when I am gone
Last Line: Yet will it be too late to call me back


BEYOND       
First Line: Pain is impossible to describe
Last Line: But pain beyond but here beyond


BIOGRAPHY       
First Line: You were born
Last Line: Tomorrow I shall plant another tree


BIRD SPEAKS       
First Line: You think I am a pretty little bird, don't you
Last Line: And the little eggs home on the nest


BOY WITH VIOLETS       
First Line: The bouquet in his hands
Last Line: Under her slight bosom


BRING ME YOUR PASSION       
Last Line: Till you are limpid


BROTHERS       
First Line: The first denies his nature lives at all
Last Line: Yet tells them all the son of the same mother


BUT LIES       
First Line: Oh, I've never had much good of telling the truth
Last Line: Has no soul to save


BUT WHAT OF TREES       
First Line: There are no jewels now to cover up
Last Line: Might come of their embrace, could they once meet


BUT WICKEDNESS       
First Line: It is not for itself
Last Line: But wickedness has such sweet ways


CADENCE FOR AN ELEGY       
First Line: If you pass my house at night
Last Line: And I have no need of them now


CALL       
First Line: I have lived too tirelessly
Last Line: But only bury deeper these sunken eyes


CALLANDO       
First Line: Every day I went to hear callando speak
Last Line: And I have forgotten all that you told me yesterday


CALLED DEATH       
First Line: Limp he hung in the flabby forestate
Last Line: Called death


CALLERS       
First Line: They come in suave demureness sunday afternoon
Last Line: Leaving the grace of entertainment to a priest


CALOTTE'S LADY       
First Line: She laughed at all her wounds since they were wounds
Last Line: I love, I double love, I am enough


CAN LIPS BE LAID ASIDE       
Last Line: It is false to sight with seeing %name with knowing


CARNIVAL       
First Line: How can a carnival be wearier than a plain day
Last Line: Among the living and a dead man among the dead %go home


CEREMONIAL       
First Line: I shall bow three times
Last Line: Having murdered politely %your heart


CHEAT       
First Line: Magnificent moment of my birth
Last Line: Hoarding her own forever


CHLOE OR ...       
First Line: Chloe or her modern sister, lil
Last Line: Keep death, like all the others, guessing


CHRYSALIS       
First Line: Golden to itself it lay, %its dreams as grains in twinkle-twinkle
Last Line: Come away,' they said, %'out of sight is dead'


CIRCUS       
First Line: The trained men tumble hereditarily
Last Line: To the starved yellow beast


CITY       
First Line: The city was not built of stones
Last Line: Since every last man is the first


CITY OF COLD WOMEN: GARDENS       
First Line: The white gardens of the cold women
Last Line: They have no fragrance to repine in


CITY OF COLD WOMEN: HOUSES       
First Line: The roofs of the city are a bleak mist
Last Line: There are tired lilies, propped to apathy


CITY OF COLD WOMEN: THE LOVERS       
First Line: They come glowing to the gates of the city
Last Line: It is sweet carrion they scatter to him


CITY OF COLD WOMEN: THE SKY       
First Line: The winged stars poise over the city
Last Line: Timorous and benumbed


CITY OF COLD WOMEN: THE WIND       
First Line: The wind shudders through the city
Last Line: The shawls of the chattering wind


CITY OF COLD WOMEN: VOICES       
First Line: Are there words thin enough for such thin lips
Last Line: And their only echo is pain


CITY SEEMS       
First Line: A city seems between us. It is only love
Last Line: Sleep like a populace


COME, WORDS, AWAY       
First Line: Come, words, away from mouths
Last Line: And mouldered mouths writhe to outspeak us


COMING OF AGE       
First Line: Bright moons the children's faces fall down
Last Line: Of flesh translated into death %before it dies


COMPROMISE       
First Line: I am the sun of whatever day may be today
Last Line: All my morrows


CONCLUSION       
First Line: Some part of me is ever away
Last Line: Of that in me I never guessed


CONSOLATION       
First Line: If I loved you yesterday
Last Line: Find it in old loves and lies


CONTRABAND       
First Line: The old feet will never find pavements in the sky
Last Line: Perhaps it is the very magic that contrives the trick


CORDELIA       
First Line: Cordelia's needle had been stitching since
Last Line: Were rimmed in rational eyes for a sane moment


CRICKET'S SPRING       
First Line: The hammocks of the cricket's shrill
Last Line: Of dawn scrapes from a cricket's wing


CRIME OF JOHN ELDRIDGE KATELL       
First Line: In our town there was none so public-spirited
Last Line: Of john eldridge katell the public-spirited


DALLYDILBAREE       
First Line: From the fountain of dallydilbaree
Last Line: In which beauty must drown %though bodies be buried


DAWN       
First Line: Dawn coms, is dawn and flees again
Last Line: Upon tomorrow's dawn of me


DAWN OF DARKNESS       
First Line: I remember the first morning
Last Line: Comes death's bright dark and end of dying


DEAD KNOW NOTHING NOW       
Last Line: Mystery slumbers in bones


DEAR POSSIBLE       
First Line: Dear possible, and if you drown
Last Line: And I mean that, dear possible, %that fate, that dear fate


DEATH AS DEATH       
First Line: To conceive death as death %is difficulty come by easily
Last Line: Gratitude has no language, %foresight no vision


DEDICATION       
First Line: That I might not be lonely
Last Line: Of a chance pilgrimage


DEFENSE       
First Line: Of the public prosecutor
Last Line: Truth on god's next day of judgement


DID I NOT DIE       
First Line: Did I not die yesterday, when
Last Line: God has had his fill


DILEMMA       
First Line: Beloved of many, yet loving none herself
Last Line: In a predicament of kindliness


DIMENSIONS       
First Line: Measure me for a burial
Last Line: To prove that I was nothing at all


DING-DONGING       
First Line: With old hours all befry heads
Last Line: And spread ding-donging back %more and more to yesterdays
Subject(s): Bells


DIRGE FOR SUMMER       
First Line: My life is like the bitten tree, furzy and frazzled
Last Line: Kissing the cold lips of all the trees my moan can find


DISSOLUTION OF ONE       
First Line: The judgement, the atonement
Last Line: Only hell is a place


DIVESTMENT       
First Line: See how I am like a tree, beloved
Last Line: To you then, beloved


DIVESTMENT OF BEAUTY       
First Line: She, she and she and she -- %which of these is not lovely?
Last Line: While she and she, she, she, disclose %the recondite familiar to your candour


DOOM IN BLOOM       
First Line: Now flower the oldest seeds. %the secret of the root no more
Last Line: But risk of all beguiles %fate's wreckage into similar smiles


DOOMED       
First Line: Wear out at last, old earth
Last Line: That both must die on the same day


DOOR AJAR       
First Line: When one spring will be shabbier than the last
Last Line: What men, but for ourselves, we might have been


DOUBTERS       
First Line: The world may guard me well
Last Line: That it's a heaven they've got


DRINKING SONG: 1. BEFORE THE BOWL       
First Line: The melancholy in us scolds
Last Line: And yet another here


DRINKING SONG: 2. AFTER THE BOWL       
First Line: Ah, there is something in the cup
Last Line: Away to anywhere


DRUIDA       
First Line: Above druida, below druida, %round druida when she loved
Last Line: And a hundred passions welcomed him %in a hundred huts


EARTH       
First Line: Have no wide fears for earth


EARTH, GREAT EYEBALL       
First Line: Earth, great eyeball
Last Line: Whose endurance is an endurance of death


EASIER DOOM       
First Line: Wide as a pavement is the moment
Last Line: Where I become terribly %not myself


ECHOES: 1       
First Line: Since learning all in such a tremble last night
Last Line: I have been smiling


ECHOES: 10       
First Line: The optician, in honour of his trade
Last Line: As the romans thought cultivated and natural


ECHOES: 11       
First Line: I shall mend it,' I say %whenever something breaks
Last Line: I come in late always %saying, 'I shall mend it'


ECHOES: 12       
First Line: Gently down the incline of the mind
Last Line: Imperishable matronymic of a species


ECHOES: 13       
First Line: The poppy edifices of sleep
Last Line: The shallow terrors, waking never far


ECHOES: 14       
First Line: Love at a sickbed is a long way
Last Line: The immeasurable areas of distress %....Collapse


ECHOES: 15       
First Line: ...Cheated history
Last Line: And stealing us has only them


ECHOES: 16       
First Line: Now victory has come of age
Last Line: In a ravished world, and calls the pities


ECHOES: 17       
First Line: Forgive me, giver, if I destroy the gift!
Last Line: I cannot but perfect it


ECHOES: 18       
First Line: Worthy of a jewel,' they say of beauty
Last Line: And what the precious thing


ECHOES: 19       
First Line: And if occasionally a rhyme appeared
Last Line: Ailing forgetfulness became


ECHOES: 2       
First Line: Mothering innocents to monsters is
Last Line: In women


ECHOES: 20       
First Line: In short despite of time, that long despite of truth
Last Line: Long-short of it to reason more'


ECHOES: 21       
First Line: Between the word and the world lie
Last Line: Fading eternities of soon


ECHOES: 22       
First Line: When a dog lying on the flagstones
Last Line: He watches it too well


ECHOES: 23       
First Line: Love is very everything, like fire
Last Line: But only one combustion


ECHOES: 24       
First Line: My address? At the cafes, cathedrals
Last Line: Reiterated morsel %expanded into space


ECHOES: 25       
First Line: Let us seem to speak
Last Line: Rescue us from from rescue


ECHOES: 26       
First Line: What a tattle-tattle we
Last Line: What a %what


ECHOES: 3       
First Line: It was the beginning of time
Last Line: When an angel spoke and was quiet again


ECHOES: 4       
First Line: After the count of centuries numbers hang
Last Line: Close to the throat, where memory clasps the lace, %an ancient brooch


ECHOES: 5       
First Line: It is a mission for men to scare and fly
Last Line: Someone must bide, someone must guard the night


ECHOES: 6       
First Line: If there are heroes anywhere
Last Line: As weathermen point with pride to rain


ECHOES: 7       
First Line: Dire necessity made all
Last Line: And haunting meant never to see ghosts


ECHOES: 8       
First Line: Intelligence in ladies and gentlemen
Last Line: The garden of the perpendicular is a sphere


ECHOES: 9       
First Line: Need for a tragic head
Last Line: When tears are thought of and none appear


ELEGY IN A SPIDER'S WEB       
First Line: What to say when the spider
Last Line: What time the spider
Subject(s): Insects; Spiders


END       
First Line: I live to wait
Last Line: Proof of my hopeless heart


EPIGRAMS       
First Line: Because of men and women there is love
Last Line: Love such as this will wake to weep in death


EPITHALAMIUM OF A NUN       
First Line: The christ-embrace has fallen like a curse
Last Line: Holiness, if I know you not, and smile


EVASIONS       
First Line: Streets move evasively and so do people
Last Line: That shunning candor, they find sanity


EVOLUTION OF A CREATURE THROUGH SEVERAL FACES: ASSUMPTION OF A NAME       
First Line: Now the flushed image enters on violence
Last Line: But a precipitous agony of numbers


EVOLUTION OF A CREATURE THROUGH SEVERAL FACES: FROWN OF DISPLEASURE       
First Line: There is to do but what the roaming bear
Last Line: With physiognomy sporting in the brain


EVOLUTION OF A CREATURE THROUGH SEVERAL FACES: THE LOVE FACE       
First Line: The skin creeps close inseparable as apple-peel
Last Line: Of the slow smiling of procreation


FAITH UPON THE WATERS       
First Line: A ghost rose when the waves rose
Last Line: With mortal premonition


FALLACIES       
First Line: He never would have been a man to feed
Last Line: By anybody's taciturnity


FLOORWALKER       
First Line: His ways were ribboned aisles
Last Line: To be nobody's squire


FLOWERING URN       
First Line: And every prodigal greatness %must creep back into strange home
Last Line: The same but for the way in flowering %it speaks of fruits that could not be


FOR ONE WHO WILL BELIEVE       
First Line: It is
Last Line: A faint pride reminiscent of you


FOR ONE WHO WILL BLESS THE DEVIL       
First Line: The body of your virtue
Last Line: For putting a proper end to you


FOR ONE WHO WILL DUST A SHADOW       
First Line: Take out your speckled shadow
Last Line: With nothing left over


FOR ONE WHO WILL GO SHIVERING       
First Line: The twenty sunny shawls you had
Last Line: Should pass and see me wear it


FOR ONE WHO WILL KEEP A MIRROR       
First Line: Beward a loveliness too smiling
Last Line: Even the more abiding voice


FOR ONE WHO WILL LOVE GOD       
First Line: Life and love together came
Last Line: Where god lives on love's breath


FOR ONE WHO WILL REMEMBER       
First Line: Drop the little glass heart on a stone


FOR ONE WHO WILL SING       
First Line: Bind you to the back of a bird
Last Line: How silent a bird may be


FOR ONE WHO WILL STAND IN THE WIND       
First Line: Halt here a minute
Last Line: Irrelevant antithesis


FOR REBECCA WEST (ON READING THE JUDGE)       
First Line: With what compassionate solicitude
Last Line: It would be like my watching god, a little


FOR THOSE WHO STAY UP AT NIGHT       
First Line: Busy, busy
Last Line: Keep watching


FORBIDDEN       
First Line: Republican and democrat
Last Line: If we taught politics to stars


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: IN LADDERY STREET: A SECOND AWAY       
First Line: One, two, three, four, more
Last Line: All over her nose, %all over her nose
Subject(s): Children


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: IN LADDERY STREET: ALL THE WAY BACK       
First Line: Bill bubble in a bowler hat
Last Line: And only perfection matters
Subject(s): Children


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: IN LADDERY STREET: AROUND THE CORNER       
First Line: But don't call mother damnable names
Last Line: Such nonsense is disgraceful among thieves. %off, wench, off'
Subject(s): Children


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: IN LADDERY STREET: CHILDREN       
First Line: Children sleep at night
Last Line: The old ones know. %the old ones are old
Subject(s): Children


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: IN LADDERY STREET: HERSELF       
First Line: I am hands %and face
Last Line: Is it only something inside %that I can't see?
Subject(s): Children


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: IN LADDERY STREET: TOWARD THE CORNER       
First Line: One, two, three. %coming, old trouble, coming
Last Line: Into the great rag-bag you go. %going, old trouble, going
Subject(s): Children


FORGOTTEN GIRLHOOD: INTO LADDERY STREET       
First Line: The stove was grey, the coal was gone
Last Line: For short and for long, %for long, for long
Subject(s): Children


FORMS       
First Line: Life sucks the substance of us up
Last Line: Will do for a ghost


FOURTH ESTATE       
First Line: The newspaper reports people as usual
Last Line: In a forgotten file


FOURTH WALL       
First Line: A man was on each wall of three
Last Line: To kiss the dust that shares its care


FREE       
First Line: Thinking is the poorest way of traveling
Last Line: Vagabond and dead


GHOUL       
First Line: Life is death
Last Line: Who can only be eaten once


GOAT AND AMALTHEA       
First Line: I have been assaulted by the moths
Last Line: For amalthea in her former time %shall weep me longer


GOD'S PROXIES       
First Line: God yawned and threw a cushion at a saint
Last Line: His dreaming and traveling and dying for him


GOLDEN PLOVER       
First Line: Little by little the love that went a golden plover away
Last Line: Find another new nest to comfort in


GRACE       
First Line: This posture and this manner suit
Last Line: I choke upon a piece of my own tongue-meat


GRIEVE, WOMEN       
First Line: Grieve, women, for the sorrows not your own
Last Line: Return to angels


GROPERS       
First Line: The flowers are out to feel
Last Line: Men are closer %pluck more quickly


HARLEQUINADE ON A CURBSTONE       
First Line: Someone is sitting there, gamaliel
Last Line: I've learned, my boy, are very hard to find


HAUNT       
First Line: Content the conscience with a moon of blindness
Last Line: As our brows beam light


HEED       
First Line: All those who know each other too well
Last Line: Lest it lose itself


HELEN'S BURNING    Poem Text    
First Line: Her beauty, which we talk of
Last Line: And lose the gift of prophecy.
Subject(s): Helen Of Troy; Mythology - Classical


HELEN'S FACES       
First Line: Bitterly have I been contested for
Last Line: Contest and bitterness never raged round her


HER PORTION       
First Line: Having as much of pain as she can hold
Last Line: The even share, agree to hold too much, and break


HERACLEA       
First Line: She called, heraclea
Last Line: Afraid to battle for his grave


HIGHER ORDER       
First Line: From man to maggot, each can see
Last Line: Preserve each drop, to grow and wither like the green wood


HILLS       
First Line: The hills would be lovelier afire
Last Line: Or a flame to drench


HOUSE       
First Line: The house arose and how I never knew
Last Line: And curse me for minding what the neighbors said


HOUSES       
First Line: The secret population of the houses
Last Line: These hearts mistook for homes


HOW CAN I DIE       
Last Line: What things may die


HOW DOES A TREE       
First Line: How does a tree hold up the sky
Last Line: And to know how he's crippled and crushed between


HOW I CALLED THE ANT DARLING       
First Line: The moment must have been the same for both
Last Line: Not for an ant and not for murder


I HAD SUCH PURPOSES       
First Line: When you said that my love was like a cloak
Last Line: I had such purposes for punishment


I HAVE A PENANCE TOO       
First Line: Less than the air that is torn
Last Line: Unconquerable up to battle


IF A WOMAN SHOULD BE MESSIAH       
Last Line: No one would


IMPROPRIETIES       
First Line: Your hands are very white
Last Line: And come to me mutely, modestly serious


IN DUE FORM       
First Line: I do not doubt you %I know you love me
Last Line: And not mentionable in a doom-book


IN NINETEEN TWENTY-SEVEN: 1       
First Line: In nineteen twenty-seven, in the spring
Last Line: In gardens and smiles in shops and offices; %and no more real than this


IN NINETEEN TWENTY-SEVEN: 2       
First Line: And they are vast preliminaries
Last Line: Home for a place to lean an elbow


IN NINETEEN TWENTY-SEVEN: 3       
First Line: Fierce is unhappiness, a living god
Last Line: Bold and shy speed and recession %climax and suspension


IN NINETEEN TWENTY-SEVEN: 4       
First Line: Had I remained hidden and unmoved
Last Line: For such weather-vanes of understanding


IN NINETEEN TWENTY-SEVEN: 5       
First Line: Therefore, since all is well
Last Line: An old eternity pleading refutal


IN REVERENCE       
First Line: Her faith was a pope
Last Line: A fallen pope


INCARNATIONS       
First Line: Do not deny, %do not deny, thing out of things
Last Line: This was never I


INITIATION       
First Line: When the women of twelve summers
Last Line: With the loam that lies on the left bank of the teev


INTERLUDE       
First Line: If ever, in the city of the cold women
Last Line: That comes gallantly to prove its warmness


INTERVAL       
First Line: Fandra, fandra, love him not
Last Line: Wait %don't go


INVOCATION FOR BIRDS       
First Line: Mists of our blindness, something be
Last Line: To do for birds when light is dead


JAZZ JUBILATE: 1. THE BLIND BEGGAR IN THE BACK STREET       
First Line: May a joyful noise unto the lord all ye lands
Last Line: Lively to heaven


JAZZ JUBILATE: 2. MOTHER OF PEARL PALACE       
First Line: The wax shines brightly
Last Line: For the soul on its back


JAZZ JUBILATE: 3. SUNDAY       
First Line: Reverend cobbleweb withdrew to his study
Last Line: Come before his presence singing


JAZZ JUBILATE: 4. LADY LOVE AND THE LADIES       
First Line: Lady love, lady love
Last Line: And modern, being greek


JEWS       
First Line: An old enravishment of all the hearts
Last Line: Grinds dark the clouded dust of mystery


JOHN AND I       
First Line: Begin the story with a man; curtail
Last Line: That john and I are better off like this


JORAVALY       
First Line: In the town of joravaly
Last Line: And good men bad


JOWL AND COWL       
First Line: Fresh is the early sin at least
Last Line: Doubling on a wakened angel


JUDGE       
First Line: Flesh finding two lonely lives
Last Line: Which shall wake


JUDGEMENT DAY       
First Line: Into the home of the homeless drifted the waifs
Last Line: Either a common despair or a dreary delight


JUGGLERS       
First Line: What %is this the world in your hands
Last Line: Zealots of agony %exquisite, unendurable


KINDNESS       
First Line: To be alive is to be curious
Last Line: This privilege of boredom to all of you


KING OF LOVE (TO PEDANTS AND PURITANS)       
First Line: The king of love had nothing left but love
Last Line: And lucifer's


KISS       
First Line: My mite of love buried away
Last Line: Deliverance and the brave kiss


LADY OF ALL CREATION       
First Line: Lady of all creation and perverse
Last Line: And let us live in you invisibly


LAST NUPTIALS       
First Line: A husband is for heaven
Last Line: While my lord god slumbered


LAST WOMEN       
First Line: Still, still %red tongues of desire
Last Line: Still, voices, still


LAURA AND FRANCISCA: 1. THE ISLAND, AND HERE       
First Line: My name, as the title shows, %is laura, and hers francisca
Last Line: When it was to-day - and to-morrow, %the long present instead of night?'


LAURA AND FRANCISCA: 2. FRANCISCA, AND SCARCELY MORE       
First Line: Francisca will be wild -- she sings.' %this is the way of looking at a child
Last Line: More death-like and more natural to know


LAURA AND FRANCISCA: 3. HOW THE POEM ENDS       
First Line: For there are still sounds of a world %as if astir where it lay dead
Last Line: Into the stranger you can't do without, %o tourists of neighbourliness


LIAR       
First Line: I deny my moods
Last Line: I affirm my moods


LIFE IS A THING       
First Line: Life is a thing somebody gave to me
Last Line: For all the uses that it made of me


LIGHTNING       
First Line: The cold white lightning
Last Line: The cruel bright lightning is beautiful


LINES IN FAREWELL       
First Line: Where it was hard to say I said goodbye
Last Line: Though senseless, peace and a path


LOCOMOTIVE       
First Line: Birth was the hardy drill and hammering
Last Line: This human name I cannot answer to


LOST ISLE       
First Line: Death flew with me
Last Line: Why should death come


LOVE AND A LADY       
First Line: As were the old chinese, cruel and dead
Last Line: No, no, not very. Child, speak further tell me


LOVE WAS NO TETHER       
First Line: Love was no tether about the heart with me
Last Line: And then %peace


LOVELY MY FLESH       
First Line: Lovely my flesh but extravagance rash
Last Line: That was made but to break


LUCRECE AND NARA       
First Line: Astonished stood lucrece and nara
Last Line: Lucrece, is it you, the quiet?'


LULLABY       
First Line: Every poor fellow reminds me of my father
Last Line: Resentful birth renewing


LYING SPYING    Poem Text    
First Line: (lying spying what men say of dead men
Last Line: Not a thing to tell each other.
Subject(s): Spring


MAGICIANS       
First Line: Iupon his dais like a rider of
Last Line: In each of us, serene and still and dreaming


MAKESHIFT       
First Line: I stood once at the tip of the earth
Last Line: Less secure, perhaps


MAMA TO MARIA       
First Line: Step out, maria, and let mars
Last Line: On such a night


MANY GENTLEMEN       
First Line: Many gentlemen there are born not babes
Last Line: Smiled upward to her learned brow


MAP OF PLACES       
First Line: The map of places passes
Last Line: Holes in maps look through to nowhere


MARY CAREY       
First Line: As forbidden as frenzy on sunday
Last Line: Mary can be pure


MASK       
First Line: Cover up, %oh, quickly cover up
Last Line: The eternal taint wears beauty like a mask. %but a mask eternal


MASTERPIECE OF LOPE JUAN       
First Line: In filamona people never had
Last Line: Bent sharply to the limits of a frame


MATER INVITA       
First Line: Take him away
Last Line: To pardon an old enemy


MELINDA POURS       
First Line: Teacups tinkle china nectar
Last Line: For a human kin of mine


MEMORIES OF MORTALITIES: 1. MY MOTHER AND MY BIRTH       
First Line: My mother was a snake, but warm
Last Line: Save for mortality remembered


MEMORIES OF MORTALITIES: 2. MY FATHER AND MY CHILDHOOD       
First Line: As childhood is to fairies, fancies
Last Line: Whose vocal waking slept inside my own


MEMORIES OF MORTALITIES: 3. SICKNESS AND SCHOOLING       
First Line: The later griping, when we suffer mind-woes
Last Line: As the story grows too different to speak of %in the way the workd speaks


MEN AND THE HYMN       
First Line: Swish the silent silk away
Last Line: Dies a divided harmony %too brave


MORTAL    Poem Text    
First Line: There is a man of me that tills
Last Line: I think there's no way of making anything more than a mortal of me.


MUSIC TEACHER       
First Line: There was a time, I've heard, when she could play
Last Line: A melody to malice in her place


MY HUNGER       
First Line: My hunger has no crumbs but moments
Last Line: And the accursed courage for a close


MYSTERIOUS WHOEVER       
First Line: A film lies over -- not the eyes but over
Last Line: The mysterious whoever %you


NAMED       
First Line: Dance it was and no one dancing
Last Line: Love like a name in her %too dark to stir


NAPOLEON IN THE SHADES       
First Line: The news! The news
Last Line: Bird, the news


NEW ATLAS       
First Line: An underdog, well-grounded at the bottom
Last Line: May I be as a mountain to them then


NIGHT       
First Line: Light was always
Last Line: The hoarse pantomime of day


NO MORE ARE LOVELY PALACES       
First Line: No more are lovely palaces
Last Line: The lovely palaces were too lovely, %true lavish is the terrible


NOR IS IT WRITTEN       
First Line: Nor is it written that you may not grieve
Last Line: To each is given what defeat he will


NOTHING SO FAR       
First Line: Nothing so far but moonlight %where the mind is
Last Line: The look of day with last night's rid of moths


NOTWITHSTANDING LOVE       
First Line: I shall be always just as dark as this
Last Line: That have fattened here


O VOCABLES OF LOVE    Poem Text    
First Line: O vocables of love, / o zones of dreamt responses
Subject(s): Love


O VOCABLES OF LOVE       
First Line: O vocables of love, %o zones of dreamt responses
Last Line: Horizons spread intelligibility %and once more it is yesterday
Subject(s): Love


ODE TO LOVE       
First Line: Oh, more than nothing and surely less than all
Last Line: To love's still south


ODE TO THE STEEL THROATS       
First Line: The prophetic throats were gold
Last Line: As if it understood %or loved


OF STONE IS MY STRONG HEART       
Last Line: Or you, to drink


ON EXACTITUDE       
First Line: To speak as the person of a mind
Last Line: Exact simple human match of that truth


ON EXCAVATING AT TELL EL-AMARNA       
First Line: The sun is a sad eye
Last Line: Over amarna %over the nile


ON HAVING A POEM ACCEPTED BY A MAGAZINE       
First Line: It grew diffidently in my garden
Last Line: Fittingly forgotten


ONLY DAUGHTER       
First Line: Under her gown the girl is
Last Line: Of an only daughter


ORBITS       
First Line: Her first devised intention was a jest
Last Line: And kind and rectilinear carlotto


PASSIONATE WOMEN       
First Line: The passionate women are runners of the hills
Last Line: Running in valleys


PEDESTAL       
First Line: So still the life of mind has seemed to me
Last Line: Myself, or yet this rock that is my song


PERINOT OLAD       
First Line: Perinot olad, of such tongue
Last Line: Be dead, alive, the dead to be alive, dead


PERSPECTIVE       
First Line: Now I have wearied of the intimate range
Last Line: Until you're fittingly remote, apart


PESTILENCE       
First Line: There is either something wrong with muldul
Last Line: And they may be grateful for their infirmities


PIPERS       
First Line: The perennial rats plague the heights
Last Line: The quick terrible brine of joy bottomless


POEMS TO ALASTOR: BEAUTY WAS ONCE       
First Line: Beauty was once, alastor, where you left
Last Line: From the marred sorrow of this barren hour


POEMS TO ALASTOR: GHOSTS       
First Line: Alastor, if I may swoon to you and you a sun
Last Line: Will bear my spiteful memory repeatedly


POEMS TO ALASTOR: INSTEAD       
First Line: Instead, I have resumed the old discard
Last Line: A promised death you should have brought instead


POEMS TO ALASTOR: NUMBERS       
First Line: Being an upward thousand, man
Last Line: Of newly numbering old love


POEMS TO ALASTOR: PLAINT NOT BITTER       
First Line: Love sent alastor to call my soul
Last Line: But of a body without flying feet


POEMS TO ALASTOR: PROTHALAMION       
First Line: Nothing alone, together whole
Last Line: The flesh to keep the spirit fast


POEMS TO ALASTOR: PROTHALAMION II       
First Line: Where the beholding self of me is wrecked
Last Line: Groping along a lost eternity


POEMS TO ALASTOR: THE BRIDGE       
First Line: Love lies alastor like a broken bridge
Last Line: To flight, though now we prowl on the same shore


POEMS TO ALASTOR: THIS SIDE       
First Line: Oh now, alastor, I am well divided
Last Line: There is a little for me here


POSTSCRIPT       
First Line: We never will admit in filamona
Last Line: Lope emblazoned the treasures he had stolen


PREFACE       
First Line: Come to me for truth
Last Line: And then come back again tomorrow


PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE       
First Line: I have been with the trees all day
Last Line: As somebody else


PRESENCES       
First Line: Not as the mechanism of time
Last Line: Perceive the human heart of me


PRISMS       
First Line: What is beheld through glass seems glass
Last Line: Through which one may not put one's hands to touch


QUIDS       
First Line: The little quids, the monstrous quids


QUIET ECHO       
First Line: To whomever our travail will seem
Last Line: Starts back the quiet echo from god


QUIETEST SONG       
First Line: What were birds made for
Last Line: Of dreaming other things


RAPTURE       
First Line: To cry the grief away
Last Line: Where my rapture waits me dead


RECLAMATION       
First Line: Shall her face be down, shall her eyes shine
Last Line: In death, the second self-denial


REJOICE, LIARS       
First Line: Rejoice, the witch of truth has perished
Last Line: Takes on substance, shedding phantomness


REQUITAL       
First Line: Passed like a talisman from hand to hand
Last Line: And be as often divided in the wind


REST       
First Line: Even the lives my flesh has overlooked
Last Line: All the tired lives I have ever lived


REUNION       
First Line: Only what has passed out the golden gates
Last Line: Mandy %sandy %dandy


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 1       
First Line: Woman, reviling term %of man unto the female germ
Last Line: And words no more than mean


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 2       
First Line: Yes!' to you is in the same breath
Last Line: Death and the universe are an earlier pair


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 3       
First Line: Dark image of my mind
Last Line: Then one, then nothing, then you


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 4       
First Line: Our months astonish, as meals come round
Last Line: We gape like the first ones %and look to magic


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 5       
First Line: In these embraces glamour %comes early and is an early go-er
Last Line: And were it more it were %fictitiousness and loving


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 6       
First Line: You bring me messages %from days and years
Last Line: Strangers we seem to love by memory


RHYTHMS OF LOVE: 7       
First Line: A brick and mortar motley %a heart and mind confusion
Last Line: When graduated from love-making


ROMNTIC PROFESSION       
First Line: Begrimed and smudged with earth
Last Line: And god the self I hate


RUGGED BLACK OF ANGER       
First Line: The rugged black of anger %has an uncertain smile-border
Last Line: And share one smile-border %to remain so


SAINT OF DAROS       
First Line: He tapped the rocks until they all ran dry
Last Line: Of crippled love that love had twisted straight


SAME SMALL WAY       
First Line: The careless clues to other passions than ours
Last Line: Fever of decay


SCOURGE       
First Line: I am the woman of no tears
Last Line: What I am like alone


SEA, FALSE PHILOSOPHY (1)    Poem Text    
First Line: Foremost of false philosophies, / the sea harangues the daft
Subject(s): Sea; Ocean


SEA, FALSE PHILOSOPHY (1)       
First Line: Foremost of false philosophies, %the sea harangues the daft
Last Line: And scatter to a watery zero %as the last rash prophecy is spoken
Subject(s): Sea


SEA, FALSE PHILOSOPHY (2)       
First Line: Foremost of false philosophies, %the sea harangues the daft
Last Line: And prophecy expands into extinction


SEVERAL LOVE-STORIES       
First Line: Tjhe formula of recognition %apply themselves to memories
Last Line: Townsfolk, untwirl these casings %from paris and heaven


SHE PITIED ME       
First Line: She pitied me because my ways were smooth
Last Line: And pitying each other


SHORE       
First Line: No water-dragon of the sea I sail
Last Line: Of flesh that bears my agony


SHORES       
First Line: The river around the secret city of age
Last Line: Death cannot make into eternity


SIGNATURE       
First Line: The effort to put my essence in me
Last Line: The clear face spells %a bright illegibility of name


SIN       
First Line: That nun
Last Line: And bares the whiteness of her sin


SLAVES       
First Line: The universe may be
Last Line: That free and strip him ugly to his nakedness


SO SLIGHT       
First Line: It was as near invisible %as night in early dusk
Last Line: Drift off and fall %like thistledown without a bruise


SOBRIETY       
First Line: A goblet is my joy
Last Line: Bitterly at the bottom


SONG FOR A HOT DAY       
First Line: Convey the season to a special climate
Last Line: Forever from its burning land


SONG OF THE LYRE       
First Line: Laughter in love changes every age
Last Line: Not orpheus has the lyre %but eurydice


SPEAKING IN ME       
First Line: The whispering you mark in me
Last Line: To chatter me charitable my brother's keeper


SPIDER       
First Line: Just right, more, or less
Last Line: Of a long legendary folly


SPIRIT OF THIS STRANGE AGE       
First Line: The years he was not here -- what years they were
Last Line: Of time, spirit of this strange age of his


SPRING HAS MANY SILENCES       
First Line: The spring has many sounds
Last Line: The spring has many silences


STARVED       
First Line: Who owns this body of mine
Last Line: Of our poor provender


STONE       
First Line: The simple and the gentle knew this shrine
Last Line: And see the might that lies in him alone


STRANGE       
First Line: Pride and the humble heart have been my banners
Last Line: A smile was all I had. Was this enough


SUBTERFUGE       
First Line: They called philander solomon and not
Last Line: They prove their principles and keep their god


SUMMARY FOR ALASTOR       
First Line: Because my song was bold
Last Line: The dreaming child can smile %and keep on safely sleeping


SUMMONS       
First Line: Come to me, man of my death
Last Line: And not unhappy, since there are no tongues


SWEET ASCETIC       
First Line: Find me the thing to make me less
Last Line: Smile just a little and disappear


TACT       
First Line: God sleeps all week and only wakes on sundays
Last Line: We can't go on like this forever


TAKE HANDS       
First Line: Take hands. %there is no love now
Last Line: How we dwell apart, %and how love triumphs in this


TALE OF MODERNITY: 1       
First Line: Shakespeare knew lust by day
Last Line: O sexual sun, back into my loins, %be night also, as you are'


TALE OF MODERNITY: 2       
First Line: Shakespeare distinguished:earth the obscure
Last Line: And young as the moon, grown girl to self


TALE OF MODERNITY: 3       
First Line: Bishop modernity plucked out his heart
Last Line: Of knowledge-gall, love's maddening part


TALE OF MODERNITY: 4       
First Line: Bishop modernity in the fatal chapel watched
Last Line: Till then she's ghost with me thy ghostly whole!'


TEARS ARE A CELEBRATION       
Last Line: In single peace


THE SAD BOY    Poem Text    
First Line: Ay, his old mother was a glad one
Last Line: And his glad mother and his mad father after him.


THE WIND SUFFERS    Poem Text    
First Line: The wind suffers of blowing
Last Line: By my further dying.
Subject(s): Pain; Suffering; Misery


THERE IS MUCH AT WORK       
First Line: There is much at work to make the world
Last Line: And the revelation will be instantaneous. %we shall all die quickly


THERE IS NO LAND YET       
First Line: The long sea, how short-lasting
Last Line: In water where no land is
Subject(s): Bible; Religion


THESE MEN HAVE BEEN       
Last Line: Of that macedonian %caesar %napoleon


THEY PASS EACH OTHER IN THE DANCE       
First Line: They pass each other in the dance but twice
Last Line: They pass each other in the dance but twice


THIEF       
First Line: He is young and ugly
Last Line: Thief, stand in the light


THREE MILES AWAY       
First Line: Three miles away lay
Last Line: To three miles away


TIGER       
First Line: The tiger in me I know late, not burning bright


TILLAQUILS       
First Line: Dancing lamely on a lacquered plain


TIMOTHY'S LAD       
First Line: He must teach the child
Last Line: While his father was off at war


TO A BROKEN STATUE       
First Line: So fair, so firm and wishful with your stone
Last Line: For that which might have lived, had life been art


TO A CAUTIOUS FRIEND       
First Line: Foresight my mask %as the prophetic faith only until
Last Line: Love touched my throat


TO A GEM       
First Line: I had been looking forever
Last Line: I shall remember too


TO A LOVELESS LOVER: 1       
First Line: How we happened to be both human
Last Line: And the accursed courage for a close


TO A LOVELESS LOVER: 2       
First Line: Did I surprise too truly, then
Last Line: Applaud the way I build the wall again


TO A LOVELESS LOVER: 3       
First Line: The requisite spot of anguish having shown
Last Line: That flaps your piety incognito


TO A LOVELESS LOVER: 4       
First Line: The cycle of revenge comes round, %your expiation ties in me
Last Line: Mercy, mercy for me where I stand %a bigot of forgiveness


TO A PROUD LOVER       
First Line: Until you have beheld her truly
Last Line: Of your destruction %in the possession


TO AN UNBORN CHILD       
First Line: What! Another
Last Line: With one brief moment of being


TO ANOTHER       
First Line: Whom I have understood even less than any
Last Line: Of having without love consoled a woman


TO B.S.B. (INMEMORIAM)       
First Line: He came too sweetly to be strong
Last Line: Forget through loving


TO I----       
First Line: Your voice more than any song a song
Last Line: How far it is behind


TO ONE ABOUT TO BECOME MY FRIEND       
First Line: Stand off
Last Line: I should be none of these to you


TO THE SKY       
First Line: You must have learned little
Last Line: Unwisely beautiful


TO THIS DEATH       
First Line: I shall be lover to the earth
Last Line: To this death


TOCSIN       
First Line: Where are the winnings of the war
Last Line: For love, up from the grave


TOO HAPPY I       
Last Line: Having starved too long


TORCH       
First Line: My little house is all unlit at night
Last Line: To life and a young love be put to sleep


TRAITOR       
First Line: Good that my eyes in going
Last Line: Betray me over and over eternally


TRANSMIGRATION       
First Line: You are tall and straight, eileen
Last Line: Mistress of a mighty isle


TRATCH       
First Line: Wrapped tratch crackling in brown paper
Last Line: Something should have been said about habit


TRIFLE       
First Line: What meanings constitute myself
Last Line: A mere detail


TRINITY       
First Line: Seeds are the flesh of flowers
Last Line: Of mortal three %eternally


TRINITY: 1. SOWING       
First Line: Wherefrom with earth away
Last Line: A common mercy doles their separate pain


TRINITY: 2. THE GARDEN OF DROUGHT       
First Line: Around the garden slept a sea
Last Line: Blew toward the blessed water and died


TRINITY: 3. RAIN       
First Line: The seeds lifted their suns and made a sky
Last Line: Into a sea of night


TRINITY: 4. SUN AND SEA       
First Line: All petaled personalities
Last Line: Souled, deathed, but dead of earth


TRINITY: 5. EVENT       
First Line: Now, seeds religiously
Last Line: And singing third


TRINITY: 6. CELEBRATION       
First Line: Love rose a wind and like a wind
Last Line: Out of an unidentifiable trinity


TRIUMPH       
First Line: Sight is the flashing trick of blindness
Last Line: Grotesque triumph


TROUBLES OF A BOOK       
First Line: To trouble of a book is first to be
Last Line: I reading eyes, be answered with %letters and bookishness


TRUTH       
First Line: We keep looking for truth
Last Line: She'd have to be afraid of dying, then


TWINS       
First Line: The original mother
Last Line: To tell them apart


TWO HELLS: 1. OF PROMETHEUS       
First Line: No suns or seas weather this world
Last Line: Of pride that is your lasting home


TWO HELLS: 2. OF DAMON       
First Line: Overly friend, damon, and fool
Last Line: In his red kiss your pledge fulfill


UNDERGROUND       
First Line: The roots we are
Last Line: For shame %vegetables


UNFORFEITED       
First Line: They hate me in the town where I live
Last Line: Than let them know how much I hate their kind


VICTORY       
First Line: Without millions of pennies and millions of men


VICTORY       
First Line: Before I had a plot and plan
Last Line: Telling both in one death's story


VIRGIN       
First Line: My flesh is at a distance from me
Last Line: A forgotten passion, %before I learn of it
Subject(s): Bible; Religion


WANDERER       
First Line: What hints of china in his eyes
Last Line: Wanderer, wanderer, where is home


WASTE       
First Line: Cruel then too exquisite to be cruel
Last Line: That wastes the one abiding power


WAY IT IS       
First Line: It falls to an idiot to talk wisely
Last Line: And the strangest creature of all %to be natural


WHEN LOVE BECOMES WORDS       
First Line: The yet undone, become the unwritten %by the activity of others
Last Line: With the warm accusation of being poets


WIND, THE CLOCK, THE WE       
First Line: The wind has at last got into the clock
Last Line: Of perhaps meaning otherwise?


WIND, THE CLOCK, THE WE       
First Line: The wind has at last got into the clock
Last Line: Or perhaps meaning otherwise?


WISHING MORE DEAR       
First Line: Can this finding your presence dear
Last Line: I greet you with too fond a look?


WITH THE FACE       
First Line: With the face goes a mirror
Last Line: With such faint brightnesses


WORLD AND I       
First Line: This is not exactly what I mean
Last Line: Fail to meet by a moment, and a word


WORLD'S END       
First Line: The tympanum is worn thin
Last Line: That even nothing can live through love


WRAPPERS       
First Line: How many neat brown packages there are
Last Line: All wrapped and tied demurely -- for another


XENONES AND KYRANOS       
First Line: These were two men
Last Line: Spinning with tidy accuracy


YES AND NO       
First Line: Across a continent imaginary
Last Line: What we know, what we don't know


YOU OR YOU       
First Line: How well, you, you resemble!
Last Line: How well, you, you resemble. %I love you therefore