Collected Poetry

Some of my favorite poems:

Days	Philip Larkin
The Stolen Child	William Butler Yeats
Blind Men	Charles Baudelaire
The name - of it - is "Autumn"	Emily Dickinson
The Heart asks Pleasure - first -	Emily Dickinson
The Future - never spoke -	Emily Dickinson
Leaves Before the Wind	May Sarton
The Glass	Sharon Olds
Tears, Idle Tears	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I Am	John Clare
The Bells	Edgar Allan Poe
To One in Paradise	Edgar Allan Poe
A Drinking Song	William Butler Yeats
Not Waving But Drowning	Stevie Smith
The Collar	George Herbert
Still Falls the Rain	Dame Edith Sitwell
Japanese Death Poems

My own poems

A Short Story:

The Masque of the Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
The come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we've hid our faery vats.

Full of berries,

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping

than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances,

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon had taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping

than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout,

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams,

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping

than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,

The solemn-eyed:

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside;

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

For he comes, the human child,

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

From a world more full of weeping than

he can understand.

Blind Men

Consider them, my soul: how hideous!
Eerie as sleepwalkers, vaguely absurd
as dummies are - dummies that can walk,
blinking their useless lids at nothingness.

Their eyes are quenched, and yet they seem to stare
at something, somewhere, questioning the sky
and never bending their benighted heads
in reverie toward the cobblestones.

What difference between their infinite dark
and the eternal silence? Round us all,
meanwhile, the city sings, and laughs, and screams,

man in pursuit of pleasure, whereas I ...
I too drag by, but wonder, duller still,
what Heaven holds for them, all these blind men?

Leaves before the Wind

We have walked, looked at the actual trees:
The chesnut leaves wide-open like a hand,
The beech leaves bronzing under every breeze,
We have felt flowing through our knees

As if we were the wind.

We have sat silent when two horses came,
Jangling their harness, to mow the long grass.
We have sat long and never found a name
For this suspension in the heart of flame


That does not pass.

We have said nothing; we have parted often,
Not looking back, as if departure took
An absolute of will--once not again
(But this is each day's feat, as when


The heart first shook).

Where fervor opens every instant so,
There is no instant that is not a curve,
And we are always coming as we go;
We lean toward the meeting that will show


Love's very nerve.

And so exposed (O leaves before the wind!)
We bear this flowing fire, forever free,
And learn through devious paths to find
The whole, the center, and perhaps unbind


The mystery

Where there are no roots, only fervent leaves,
Nourished on meditations and the air,
Where all that comes is also all that leaves,
And every hope compassionately lives


Close to despair.

The Glass

I think of it with wonder now,
the glass of mucus that stood on the table
next to my father all weekend. The cancer
is growing fast in his throat now,
and as it grows it sends out pus like the
sun sending out flares, those pouring
tongues. So my father has to gargle, hack,
spit a mouth full of thick stuff
into the glass every ten minutes or so,
scraping the rim up his lower lip to
get the last bit off his skin, then he
sets the glass down on the table and it
sits there, like a glass of beer foam,
shiny and faintly golden, he gurlges and
coughs and reaches for it again and
gets the heavy sputum out,
full of bubbles and moving around like yeast--
he is like some god producing food from his own mouth.
He himself can eat nothing anymore,
just a swallow of milk sometimes,
cut with water, and even then it
can't always get past the tumor,
and the next time the saliva comes up it's
chalkish and ropey, he has to roll it in his
throat to form it and get it up and dis-
gorge the elliptical globule into the cup--
and the wonder to me is that it did not disgust me,
that glass of phlegm that stood there all day and
filled slowly with the compound globes and I'd
empty it and it would fill again and
shimmer there on the table until the
room seemed to turn around it
in an orderly way, a model of the solar system
turning around the gold sun,
my father the dark earth that used to
lie at the center of the universe
now turning with the rest of us
around the bright glass of spit
on the table, these last mouthfuls.

Tears, Idle Tears

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

That brings our friends up from the underworld,

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows:

My friends forsake me like a memory lost,

I am the self-consumer of my woes--

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes--

And yet I am, and live--like vapors tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

Even the dearest, that I love the best,

And strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,

A place where woman never smiled or wept--

There to abide with my Creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,

The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

The Bells

Hear the sledges with the bells--

Silver bells--

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens, seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells,--

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding-bells,

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight

From the molten-golden notes!

And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats

On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells,

What a gust of euphony voluminously wells!

How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! how it tells

Of rapture that impels

To the swinging and the ringing

Of the bells, bells, bells--

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells--

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells--

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulancy tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire

Leaping higher, higher, higher

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor,

Now--now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear, it fully knows,

By the twanging

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking of the swelling in the anger of the bells--

Of the bells--

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells,--

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells--

Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!

In a silence of the night

How we shiver with affright

At the meloncholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats,

Is a groan:

And the people--ah, the people--

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone--

They are neither man nor woman--

They are neither brute nor human--

They are Ghouls!

And their king it is who tolls;

And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,

A paean from the bells!

And his merry bosom swells

With the paean of the bells!

And he dances and he yells;

Keeping time, time, time

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the paean of the bells--

Of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells--

Of the bells, bells, bells,

To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells,--

Of the bells, bells, bells--

To the tolling of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells,--

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

To One in Paradise

Thou wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine --

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, Dream too bright to last!

Ah starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the future cries,

"On! on!" -- but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er!

No more -- no more -- no more --

(Such language holds the solomn sea

To the sands upon the shore)

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy grey eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams --

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

A Drinking Song

Wine comes in at the mouth,

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at you, and I sigh.

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning;

I was much futher out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he's dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

Notes on the poem printed in 1633:

• Herbert was an Anglican Priest, hence the "collar"
• board: table with allusion to communion table
• cordial: reinvigorating
• bays: laurel wreaths
• death's-head: Christians frequently kept skulls about them to remind them of life's inevitable end

Still Falls the Rain

Still falls the Rain--

Dark as the world of man, black as our loss--

Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails

Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain

With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammerbeat

In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:

Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain

Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain

At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.

Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us--

On Dives and on Lazarus:

Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain--

Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side

He bears in his Heart all wounds,--those of the light that died,

The last faint spark

In the self-murdered hear, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,

The wounds of the baited bear,--

The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat

On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain--

Then--O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune--

See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:

It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart

That holds the fires of the world,--dark-smirched with pain

As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man

Was once a child who among the beasts has lain--

`Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.'

Dame Edith Sitwell, 1940

Japanese Death Poems

Morikawa Kyoriku

Till now I thought

that death befell

the untalented alone.

If those with talent, too, must die

surely they make a better manure?

Gaki

Died on the twenty-fourth day of July, 1927 at the age of thirty six.

One spot, alone,
left glowing in the dark:
my snotty nose.

Gaki's real name was Akutagawa Ryunosuke. He gave this poem to his aunt on the night of the twenty third and asked her to deliver it to his doctor who was also a haiku poet. That night he committed suicide by drinking poison.

Choko

Died on the second day of the tenth month 1731 ath the age of forty-six.

This final scene I'll not see
to the end--my dream
is fraying.

The "scene" may also be referring to that part of his life before he reaches the age of fifty.

Getsurei

Died on the 29th of January 1919 at the age of forty.

Stumble,
fall,
slide down the snow slope.

Hyakuri

Died on the twelth day of the fifth month, 1727 at the age of sixty-two.

When I die
what I shall see will be
the lustrous moon

Ippu

Died on the twenty fourth day of the fifth month, 1731 at the age of sixty-seven.

Falling in the wind
a gust
of evergreen leaves.

"The setting of Ippu's death poem is in the fall, but it is not taken from nature as evergreen trees do not shed their leaves. The paradox seems to arise from man's wonder in the face of death. As long as he is alive he sees himself as an 'evergreen,' and the falling of leaves has no part in his world. However when the 'death wind' blows..."

Keido

Died in about 1750 past the age of thirty.

The cuckoo's voice
is all the more intriguing
as I die.

Bufu

Died on the twenty fourth day of the seventh month, 1792

Oh, I don't care
where the autumn clouds
are drifting to.

Namaichi

Died on the second day of January, 1893

Ice in a hot world:
My life
melts.

Rosen

Died on the twenty-third of the eigth month, 1743 at the age of eighty-three.

Sweep away
the pile of ashes
into autumn waters.

"Autumn waters" refer to clear waters, and indicate the season in which Rosen died. The poem refers to the final act of cleaning his site of cremation. Rosen prefaced this poem with the words: "The soul will return to the sky and the body will dwell in the earth."