Identity of Images by Robert Desnos
Identity of Images by Robert Desnos I am fighting furiously with animals and bottles In a short time perhaps ten hours have passed one after another The beautiful swimmer who was afraid of coral wakes this morning Coral crowned with holly knocks on her door Ah! coal again always coal I conjure you coal tutelary […]
Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos
Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos Many times upon a time There was a man who loved a woman. Many times upon a time There was a woman who loved a man. Many times upon a time There was a man and there was a woman Who did not love the ones who loved them. Once […]
Zero by Robert Creeley
Zero by Robert Creeley for Mark Peters Not just nothing, Not there’s no answer, Not it’s nowhere or Nothing to show for it – It’s like There’s no past like the present. It’s all over with us. There are no doors… Oh my god! Like I wish I had a dog. Oh my god! I […]
Water Music by Robert Creeley
Water Music by Robert Creeley The words are a beautiful music. The words bounce like in water. Water music, loud in the clearing off the boats, birds, leaves. They look for a place to sit and eat– no meaning, no point. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems […]
The Way by Robert Creeley
The Way by Robert Creeley My love’s manners in bed are not to be discussed by me, as mine by her I would not credit comment upon gracefully. Yet I ride by the margin of that lake in the wood, the castle, and the excitement of strongholds; and have a small boy’s notion of doing […]
The Warning by Robert Creeley
The Warning by Robert Creeley For love-I would split open your head and put a candle in behind the eyes. Love is dead in us if we forget the virtues of an amulet and quick surprise. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry […]
The Rain by Robert Creeley
The Rain by Robert Creeley All night the sound had come back again, and again falls this quite, persistent rain. What am I to myself that must be remembered, insisted upon so often? Is it that never the ease, even the hardness, of rain falling will have for me something other than this, something not […]
The Mirror by Robert Creeley
The Mirror by Robert Creeley Seeing is believing. Whatever was thought or said, these persistent, inexorable deaths make faith as such absent, our humanness a question, a disgust for what we are. Whatever the hope, here it is lost. Because we coveted our difference, here is the cost. ————— The End And that’s the End […]
The Innocence by Robert Creeley
The Innocence by Robert Creeley Looking to the sea, it is a line of unbroken mountains. It is the sky. It is the ground. There we live it, on it. It is a mist now tangent to another quiet. Here the leaves come, there is the rock in evidence or evidence. What I come to […]
The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley
The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley You send me your poems, I’ll send you mine. Things tend to awaken even through random communication Let us suddenly proclaim spring. And jeer at the others, all the others. I will send a picture too if you will send me one of you. ————— The End And that’s the […]
The Carnival by Robert Creeley
The Carnival by Robert Creeley Whereas the man who hits the gong dis- proves it, in all its simplicity — Even so the attempt makes for triumph, in another man. Likewise in love I am not foolish or in- competent. My method is not a tenderness, but hope defined. ————— The End And that’s the […]
Song by Robert Creeley
Song by Robert Creeley What I took in my hand grew in weight. You must understand it was not obscene. Night comes. We sleep. Then if you know what say it. Don’t pretend. Guises are what enemies wear. You and I live in a prayer. Helpless. Helpless, should I speak. Would you. What do you […]
Something by Robert Creeley
Something by Robert Creeley I approach with such a careful tremor, always I feel the finally foolish question of how it is, then, supposed to be felt, and by whom. I remember once in a rented room on 27th street, the woman I loved then, literally, after we had made love on the large bed […]
Other by Robert Creeley
Other by Robert Creeley Having begun in thought there in that factual embodied wonder what was lost in the emptied lovers patience and mind I first felt there wondered again and again what for myself so meager and finally singular despite all issued therefrom whether sister or mother or brother and father come to love’s […]
Myself by Robert Creeley
Myself by Robert Creeley What, younger, felt was possible, now knows is not; but still not chanted enough – Walked by the sea, unchanged in memory – evening, as clouds on the far-off rim of water float, pictures of time, smoke, faintness – still the dream. I want, if older, still to know why, human, […]
Love by Robert Creeley
Love by Robert Creeley The thing comes of itself (Look up to see the cat & the squirrel, the one torn, a red thing, & the other somehow immaculate ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world […]
Kore by Robert Creeley
Kore by Robert Creeley As I was walking I came upon chance walking the same road upon. As I sat down by chance to move later if and as I might, light the wood was, light and green, and what I saw before I had not seen. It was a lady accompanied by goat men […]
I Know A Man by Robert Creeley
I Know A Man by Robert Creeley As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking,–John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look […]
Goodbye by Robert Creeley
Goodbye by Robert Creeley She stood at the window. There was a sound, a light. She stood at the window. A face. Was it that she was looking for, he thought. Was it that she was looking for. He said, turn from it, turn from it. The pain is not unpainful. Turn from it. The […]
Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley
Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley Window’s tree trunk’s predominant face a single eye-leveled hole where limb’s torn off another larger contorts to swell growing in around imploding wound beside a clutch of thin twigs hold to one two three four five six dry twisted yellowish brown leaves flat against the other gray trees […]
Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley
Clemente’s Images by Robert Creeley 1) Sleeping birds, lead me, soft birds, be me inside this black room, back of the white moon. In the dark night sight frightens me. 2) Who is it nuzzles there with furred, round headed stare? Who, perched on the skin, body’s float, is holding on? What other one stares […]
Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley
Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley My wife and I lived all alone, contention was our only bone. I fought with her, she fought with me, and things went on right merrily. But now I live here by myself with hardly a damn thing on the shelf, and pass my days with little […]
America by Robert Creeley
America by Robert Creeley America, you ode for reality! Give back the people you took. Let the sun shine again on the four corners of the world you thought of first but do not own, or keep like a convenience. People are your own word, you invented that locus and term. Here, you said and […]
Age by Robert Creeley
Age by Robert Creeley Most explicit– the sense of trap as a narrowing cone one’s got stuck into and any movement forward simply wedges once more– but where or quite when, even with whom, since now there is no one quite with you–Quite? Quiet? English expression: Quait? Language of singular impedance? A dance? An involuntary […]
A Wicker Basket by Robert Creeley
A Wicker Basket by Robert Creeley Comes the time when it’s later and onto your table the headwaiter puts the bill, and very soon after rings out the sound of lively laughter– Picking up change, hands like a walrus, and a face like a barndoor’s, and a head without any apparent size, nothing but two […]
A Token by Robert Creeley
A Token by Robert Creeley My lady fair with soft arms, what can I say to you-words, words as if all worlds were there. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the […]
A Song by Robert Creeley
A Song by Robert Creeley I had wanted a quiet testament and I had wanted, among other things, a song. That was to be of a like monotony. (A grace Simply. Very very quiet. A murmur of some lost thrush, though I have never seen one. Which was you then. Sitting and so, at peace, […]
Zion by Rudyard Kipling
The Doorkeepers of Zion, They do not always stand In helmet and whole armour, With halberds in their hand; But, being sure of Zion, And all her mysteries, They rest awhile in Zion, Sit down and smile in Zion; Ay, even jest in Zion; In Zion, at their ease. The Gatekeepers of Baal, They dare […]
You Must n’t Swim… by Rudyard Kipling
You must n’t swim till you’re six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales Are bad for baby seals. Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can’t be wrong, Child of the […]
With Scindia to Delphi by Rudyard Kipling
More than a hundred years ago, in a great battle fought near Delhi, an Indian Prince rode fifty miles after the day was lost with a beggar-girl, who had loved him and followed him in all his camps, on his saddle-bow. He lost the girl when almost within sight of safety. A Maratta trooper tells […]
Wilful Missing by Rudyard Kipling
(Deserters) There is a world outside the one you know, To which for curiousness ‘Ell can’t compare– It is the place where “wilful-missings” go, As we can testify, for we are there. You may ‘ave read a bullet laid us low, That we was gathered in “with reverent care” And buried proper. But it was […]
White Horses by Rudyard Kipling
Where run your colts at pasture? Where hide your mares to breed? ‘Mid bergs about the Ice-cap Or wove Sargasso weed; By chartless reef and channel, Or crafty coastwise bars, But most the ocean-meadows All purple to the stars! Who holds the rein upon you? The latest gale let free. What meat is in your […]
When the Great Ark by Rudyard Kipling
When the Great Ark, in Vigo Bay, Rode stately through the half-manned fleet, From every ship about her way She heard the mariners entreat– Before we take the seas again Let down your boats and send us men! “We have no lack of victual here With work–God knows!–enough for all, To hand and reef and […]
When ‘Omer Smote ‘Is Bloomin’ Lyre by Rudyard Kipling
When ‘Omer smote ‘is bloomin’ lyre, He’d ‘eard men sing by land an’ sea; An’ what he thought ‘e might require, ‘E went an’ took — the same as me! The market-girls an’ fishermen, The shepherds an’ the sailors, too, They ‘eard old songs turn up again, But kep’ it quiet — same as you! […]
When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted by Rudyard Kipling
When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew. […]
What the People Said by Rudyard Kipling
(June 21st, 1887) By the well, where the bullocks go Silent and blind and slow — By the field where the young corn dies In the face of the sultry skies, They have heard, as the dull Earth hears The voice of the wind of an hour, The sound of the Great Queen’s voice: “My […]
What Happened by Rudyard Kipling
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, pride of Bow Bazaar, Owner of a native press, “Barrishter-at-Lar,” Waited on the Government with a claim to wear Sabres by the bucketful, rifles by the pair. Then the Indian Government winked a wicked wink, Said to Chunder Mookerjee: “Stick to pen and ink. They are safer implements, but, if you insist, […]
Ulster by Rudyard Kipling
The dark eleventh hour Draws on and sees us sold To every evil power We fought against of old. Rebellion, rapine hate Oppression, wrong and greed Are loosed to rule our fate, By England’s act and deed. The Faith in which we stand, The laws we made and guard, Our honour, lives, and land Are […]
Two Months by Rudyard Kipling
June No hope, no change! The clouds have shut us in, And through the cloud the sullen Sun strikes down Full on the bosom of the tortured Town, Till Night falls heavy as remembered sin That will not suffer sleep or thought of ease, And, hour on hour, the dry-eyed Moon in spite Glares through […]
Two Kopjes by Rudyard Kipling
(Made Yeomanry towards End of Boer War) Only two African kopjes, Only the cart-tracks that wind Empty and open between ’em, Only the Transvaal behind; Only an Aldershot column Marching to conquer the land . . . Only a sudden and solemn Visit, unarmed, to the Rand. Then scorn not the African kopje, The kopje […]