Myself
“La patience est amère; mais le fruit en est doux!” I Away down into the shadowy depths of the Real I once lived. I thought that to seem was to be. But the waters of Marah were beautiful, yet they were bitter. I waited, and hoped, and prayed; Counting the heart-throbs and the tears […]
My Heritage
“My heritage!” It is to live within The marts of Pleasure and of Gain, yet be No willing worshiper at either shrine; To think, and speak, and act, not for my pleasure, But others’. The veriest slave of time And circumstances. Fortune’s toy! To hear of fraud, injustice, and oppression, And feel who is […]
Miserimus
“Sounding through the silent dimness Where I faint and weary lay, Spake a poet: ‘I will lead thee To the land of song to-day.’” I O bards! weak heritors of passion and of pain! Dwellers in the shadowy Palace of Dreams! With your unmated souls flying insanely at the stars! Why have you led […]
Memory
I see her yet, that dark-eyed one, Whose bounding heart God folded up In His, as shuts when day is done, Upon the elf the blossom’s cup. On many an hour like this we met, And as my lips did fondly greet her, I blessed her as love’s amulet: Earth hath no treasure, dearer, […]
Karazah Karl
Come back to me! my life is young, My soul is scarcely on her way, And all the starry songs she’s sung, Are prelude to a grander lay. Come back to me! Let this song-born soul receive thee, Glowing its fondest truth to prove; Why so early did’st thou leave me, Are our heaven-grand […]
Judith
“Repent, or I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight thee with the sword of my mouth.” -Revelation ii. 16. I Ashkelon is not cut off with the remnant of a valley. Baldness dwells not upon Gaza. The field of the valley is mine, and it is clothed in verdure. The steepness of […]
Infelix
Where is the promise of my years; Once written on my brow? Ere errors, agonies and fears Brought with them all that speaks in tears, Ere I had sunk beneath my peers; Where sleeps that promise now? Naught lingers to redeem those hours, Still, still to memory sweet! The flowers that bloomed in sunny […]
Hemlock Furrows
I O crownless soul of Ishmael! Uplifting and unfolding the white tent of dreams against the sunless base of eternity! Looking up through thy dumb desolation for white hands to reach out over the shadows, downward, from the golden bastions of God’s eternal Citadel! Praying for Love to unloose the blushing bindings of his […]
Genius
“Where’er there’s a life to be kindled by love, Wherever a soul to inspire, Strike this key-note of God that trembles above Night’s silver-tongued voices of fire.” Genius is power. The power that grasps in the universe, that dives out beyond space, and grapples with the starry worlds of heaven. If genius achieves nothing, […]
Fragment
“Oh! I am sick of what I am. Of all Which I in life can ever hope to be. Angels of light be pitiful to me.” The cold chain of life presseth heavily on me tonight. The thundering pace of thought is curbed, and, like a fiery steed, dasheth against the gloomy walls of […]
Dying
I Leave me; oh! leave me, Lest I find this low earth sweeter than the skies. Leave me lest I deem Faith’s white bosom bared to the betraying arms of Death. Hush your fond voice, lest it shut out the angel trumpet-call! See my o’erwearied feet bleed for rest. Loose the clinging and the […]
Dreams Beauty
Visions of Beauty, of Light, and of Love, Born in the soul of a Dream, Lost, like the phantom-bird under the dove, When she flies over a stream- Come ye through portals where angel wings droop, Moved by the heaven of sleep? Or, are ye mockeries, crazing a soul, Doomed with its waking to […]
Depths
I Lost-lost-lost! To me, for ever, the seat near the blood of the feast. To me, for ever, the station near the Throne of Love! To me, for ever, the Kingdom of Heaven-and I the least. Oh, the least in love- The least in joy- The least in life- The least in death- The […]
Battle Stars
Alone on the hill of storms The voice of the wind shrieks through the mountain. The torrent rushes down the rocks. Red are hundred streams of the light-covered paths of the dead. Shield me in from the storm, I that am a daughter of the stars, and wear the purple and gold of bards, […]
Aspiration
Poor, impious Soul! that fixes its high hopes In the dim distance, on a throne of clouds, And from the morning’s mist would make the ropes To draw it up amid acclaim of crowds- Beware! That soaring path is lined with shrouds; And he who braves it, though of sturdy breath, May meet, half […]
Answer Me
I In from the night. The storm is lifting his black arms up to the sky. Friend of my heart, who so gently marks out the lifetrack for me, draw near to-night; Forget the wailing of the low-voiced wind: Shut out the moanings of the freezing, and the starving, and the dying, and bend […]
Adelina Patti
Thou Pleiad of the lyric world Where Pasta, Garcia shone, Come back with thy sweet voice again, And gem the starry zone. Though faded, still the vision sees The loveliest child of night, The fairest of the Pleiades, Its glory and its light. How fell with music from thy tongue The picture which it […]
Water Strider
Water-Strider by Aaron Baker Though winged, he walks on water. Skates between elements, skitters like thought through the cattails. A snake slips unseen through the underbrush. The forest shifts and sighs, once again won’t speak its secret. Between the trees, my father glides through sunlight, then shadow. Surface tension: the strider rows forward with middle […]
The Infernal Regions
The Infernal Regions by Aaron Baker Relax. No more the thinness of ceremony. Largemouth bass at the bottom of Kapowsin Lake grow still as his thoughts. No swish and silt, no father and flail. And once perfectly still, they grow even stiller. Nothing’s wasted, says the Lord of the Underworld. Stillness is economy, and economy […]
Honeycomb
Honeycomb by Aaron Baker Here is the dream where dust, gathered and blowing over the field, turns suddenly against the wind and moves with the shape of a body. Here the shape of a body forms and reforms as it crosses the sky, and then you hear it, the hum of the swarm, the resurrection […]
Dark Matter
Dark Matter by Aaron Baker We say the heart is sick, meaning something else. But when we say the body is broken, and it is, the poem, like a great engine long given up to the weather, begins to move. Outside, fireweed among the ruins. We’ve known the seed of failure in action, how […]
When I Was Young the Silk poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
When I was young the silk of my mind hard as a peony head unfurled and wind bloomed the parachute: The air-head tugged me up, tore my roots loose and drove high, so high I want to touch down now and taste the ground I want to take in my silk and ask where I […]
Weathering poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
A day without rain is like a day without sunshine Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh Poems in English More external links […]
Their Sex Life poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
One failure on Top of another Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh Poems in English More external links (open in a new […]
The City Limits poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold itself but pours its abundance without selection into every nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider the radiance, […]
Still poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I said I will find what is lowly and put the roots of my identity down there: each day I’ll wake up and find the lowly nearby, a handy focus and reminder, a ready measure of my significance, the voice by which I would be heard, the wills, the kinds of selfishness I could freely […]
So I Said I Am Ezra poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
So I said I am Ezra and the wind whipped my throat gaming for the sounds of my voice I listened to the wind go over my head and up into the night Turning to the sea I said I am Ezra but there were no echoes from the waves The words were swallowed up […]
Small Song poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh Poems in English More […]
Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
You’ll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are: gosling shit (which J. Williams said something was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit, sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit (awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit, horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar […]
Rogue Elephant poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
The reason to be autonomous is to stand there, a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search the moral realm and actual conditions for what needs to be done and to do it: fine, the best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then […]
Rivulose poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
You think the ridge hills flowing, breaking with ups and downs will, though, building constancy into the black foreground for each sunset, hold on to you, if dreams wander, give reality recurrence enough to keep an image clear, but then you realize, time going on, that time’s residual like the last ice age’s cool still […]
Release poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
After a long muggy hanging day the raindrops started so sparse the bumblebee flew between them home Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all […]
Recovery poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
All afternoon the tree shadows, accelerating, lengthened till sunset shot them black into infinity: next morning darkness returned from the other infinity and the shadows caught ground and through the morning, slowing, hardened into noon. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking […]
Rapids poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Fall’s leaves are redder than spring’s flowers, have no pollen, and also sometimes fly, as the wind schools them out or down in shoals or droves: though I have not been here long, I can look up at the sky at night and tell how things are likely to go for the next hundred million […]
Poetics poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I look for the way things will turn out spiralling from a center, the shape things will take to come forth in so that the birch tree white touched black at branches will stand out wind-glittering totally its apparent self: I look for the forms things want to come as from what black wells of […]
Mule Song poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Silver will lie where she lies sun-out, whatever turning the world does, longeared in her ashen, earless, floating world: indifferent to sores and greengage colic, where oats need not come to, bleached by crystals of her trembling time: beyond all brunt of seasons, blind forever to all blinds, inhabited by brooks still she may wraith […]
In Memoriam Mae Noblitt poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
This is just a place: we go around, distanced, yearly in a star’s atmosphere, turning daily into and out of direct light and slanting through the quadrant seasons: deep space begins at our heels, nearly rousing us loose: we look up or out so high, sight’s silk almost draws us away: this is just a […]
Identity poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
1) An individual spider web identifies a species: an order of instinct prevails through all accidents of circumstance, though possibility is high along the peripheries of spider webs: you can go all around the fringing attachments and find disorder ripe, entropy rich, high levels of random, numerous occasions of accident: 2) the possible settings of […]
Hymn poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth and go on out over the sea marshes and the brant in bays and over the hills of tall hickory and over the crater lakes and canyons and on up through the spheres of diminishing air past the blackset noctilucent clouds where […]
Gravelly Run poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient to see and hear whatever coming and going is, losing the self to the victory of stones and trees, of bending sandpit lakes, crescent round groves of dwarf pine: for it is not so much to know the self as to know it as it is known by […]