New and Selected Poems
Page 22
Ever So Tragic, [>]
“Everybody knows the story . . . , [>]
Everything about you, [>]
Everything you didn’t understand, [>]
Every worm is a martyr, [>]
Explaining a Few Things, [>]
Extraordinary efforts are being made, [>]
Eyes Fastened with Pins, [>]
Factory, [>]
Father-confessor, [>]
Father studied theology through the mail, [>]
Fear, [>]
Fear passes from man to man, [>]
February, [>]
Figure or figures unknown, [>]
Filthy Landscape, [>]
First Frost, [>]
First Thing in the Morning, [>]
Five, six chairs piled up in the yard, [>]
Folk Songs, [>]
For imaginary visitors, I had a chair, [>]
Fork, [>]
For surely, there’s no difficulty in understanding, [>]
For the Sake of Amelia, [>]
For the Very Soul of Me, [>]
For those troubled in mind, [>]
Four of them holding hands like a family, [>]
Friends of the small hours of the night:, [>]
Frightening Toys, [>]
From the closed, block-long post office, [>]
From the heel, [>]
Furniture Mover, [>]
Gallows Etiquette, [>]
Ghosts, [>]
Ghost stories written as algebraic . . . , [>]
Give me a long dark night and no sleep, [>]
God’s refuted but the devil’s not, [>]
Go inside a stone, [>]
Grandma laughing on her deathbed, [>]
Grandmothers who wring the necks, [>]
Grandpa’s Spells, [>]
Grayheaded Schoolchildren, [>]
Gray sewage bubbling up out of street sewers, [>]
Great are the Hittites, [>]
Green Buddhas, [>]
Grocery, [>]
Hangs by a thread—, [>]
Haunted Mind, [>]
Have You Met Miss Jones?, [>]
Head of a Doll, [>]
Heart—as in Latin pop songs, [>]
Heavy mirror carried, [>]
He gives excellent advice by example, [>]
He held the beast of the Apocalypse . . . , [>]
He is thinking of us, [>]
He let the whole world know, [>]
Help me to find what I’ve lost, [>]
Help Wanted, [>]
Here’s a woman’s black glove, [>]
He took a flea, [>]
He was kneeling down to tie his shoes, which she mistook for a proposal of marriage, [>]
He was writing the History of Optimism, [>]
History, [>]
History practicing its scissor-clips, [>]
Hotel Insomnia, [>]
Hotel Starry Sky, [>]
House of Cards, [>]
How much death works, [>]
Hurricane Season, [>]
I accused History of gluttony;, [>]
I am the last Napoleonic . . . , [>]
I believe in the soul; so far, [>]
Icarus’s Dog, [>]
I could’ve been that kid, [>]
I didn’t notice, [>]
I failed miserably at imagining nothing, [>]
I found a key, [>]
If you didn’t see the six-legged dog, [>]
I grew up bent over, [>]
I had a small, nonspeaking part, [>]
I hate to hear birds sing, [>]
I have. At the funeral, [>]
I have my excuse, Mr. Death, [>]
I left parts of myself everywhere, [>]
I liked my little hole, [>]
I like it when, [>]
I’ll go to the island of Cythera, [>]
I love breasts, hard, [>]
I love to stay in bed, [>]
I’m Charles, [>]
I’m going over to see what those weeds, [>]
I miss you winter evenings, [>]
I’m just a storefront dentist, [>]
Imported Novelties, [>]
I’m still living at all the old addresses, [>]
I’m telling you, this was the real thing, the same one they kicked out of Aesthetics, told her she didn’t exist!, [>]
I’m the furtive inspector of dimly lit corridors, [>]
In a Dark House, [>]
In a neighborhood once called Hell’s Kitchen, [>]
I never gave them a thought. Years had gone by, [>]
I never run into anyone from the old days, [>]
In his fear of solitude, he made us, [>]
In India I was greatly taken up, [>]
In Midsummer Quiet, [>]
In my great-grandmother’s time, [>]
In my long late-night talks with the jailers, [>]
In Praise of Worms, [>]
In pursuit of happiness, you may yet, [>]
In Rome, on the street of that name, [>]
In San Francisco, that winter, [>]
In summer’s idle time, [>]
In That Big House, [>]
In the Afternoon, [>]
In the Egyptian Wing of the Museum, [>]
In the fine print of her face, [>]
In the frying pan, [>]
In the Junk Store, [>]
In the Library, [>]
In the Planetarium, [>]
In the Street, [>]
In the woods one fair Sunday, [>]
Invention of Nothing, [>]
I only have a measly ant, [>]
I only have faith in you, Mr. Worm, [>]
I preferred the fleeting, [>]
I saw a high window struck blind, [>]
I say to the lead, [>]
Is that foolish youth still sawing, [>]
It hangs from heaven to earth, [>]
It isn’t the body, [>]
It likes empty churches, [>]
It’ll be a while before my friends, [>]
It looks so dark the end of the world may be near, [>]
It makes my heart glad to hear one of these, [>]
It must have a reason for concealing, [>]
It never had a name, [>]
It occurs to me now, [>]
It seemed the kind of life we wanted, [>]
It’s just a boarded-up shack with a steeple, [>]
It’s like fishing in the dark, [>]
It’s Mr. Brown looking much better, [>]
It snows, [>]
It was always here, [>]
It was early one Sunday morning, [>]
It was the epoch of the masters . . . , [>]
“I was lucky to have a Bible with me, [>]
I was stolen by the gypsies . . . , [>]
I, who am only an incomprehensible, [>]
Jackstraws, [>]
Juggler of hats and live hand grenades, [>]
Just as the world was ending, [>]
Just so that each stark, [>]
Knife, [>]
Labor and Capital, [>]
Late Arrival, [>]
Late Call, [>]
Late September, [>]
Late Train, [>]
Lay the knife and fork by your plate, [>]
Leaves, [>]
Lewis and Clark, [>]
Like those who were eyewitnesses, [>]
Lingering Ghosts, [>]
Listen, [>]
Little candy in death’s candy shop, [>]
Little Unwritten Book, [>]
Lost Glove, [>]
Lots of people around here . . . , [>]
Love Flea, [>]
Lover of endless disappointments . . . , [>]
Lovers hold hands in never-opened novels, [>]
Lovers who take pleasure, [>]
Madame Gabrielle, were you really French?, [>]
Madame Thebes, [>]
Madmen Are Running the World, [>]
Madonnas Touched Up with Goatees, [>]
Margaret
was copying a recipe . . . , [>]
Marina’s Epic, [>]
Master of Disguises, [>]
Memories of the Future, [>]
Midpoint, [>]
Millions of empty rooms with TV sets turned on, [>]
Millions were dead; everybody was innocent, [>]
Minds Roaming, [>]
Minister of our coming doom, preaching, [>]
Miracle Glass Co., [>]
Mirrors at 4 A.M., [>]
Missing Child, [>]
Monk at the Five Spot, [>]
Monumental, millennial decrepitude, [>]
Most ancient Metaphysics (poor Metaphysics!), [>]
Mother Tongue, [>]
Mummy’s Curse, [>]
Munching on pages edged in gold, [>]
My Beloved, [>]
My beloved, you who spend your nights, [>]
My chicken soup thickened with pounded young almonds, [>]
My dear trees, I no longer recognize you, [>]
My Father Attributed Immortality to Waiters, [>]
My father loved the strange books . . . , [>]
My grandmother prophesied the end, [>]
My guardian angel is afraid . . . , [>]
My insignificance is a sign of my greatness, [>]
My mother was a braid of black smoke, [>]
My mother works here, [>]
My neighbor was telling me, [>]
My Noiseless Entourage, [>]
My Quarrel with the Infinite, [>]
My Secret Identity Is, [>]
My shadow and your shadow on the wall, [>]
My Shoes, [>]
Mystic Life, [>]
Mystics, [>]
My Turn to Confess, [>]
My Weariness of Epic Proportions, [>]
My Wife Lifts a Finger to Her Lips, [>]
Nancy Jane, [>]
Never-yet-equaled, wide-screen blockbuster, [>]
Night Clerk in a Roach Hotel, [>]
Night fell without asking, [>]
Night is coming, [>]
Nineteen Thirty-eight, [>]
Nobody reads it but the insomniacs, [>]
No sooner had I left A, [>]
Note, [>]
Note, [>]
Note Slipped Under a Door, [>]
Nothing Else, [>]
Obscurely Occupied, [>]
October Arriving, [>]
October Light, [>]
O exegetes, somber hermeneuts, [>]
Of the light in my room:, [>]
Old Man, [>]
Old men have bad dreams, [>]
On a gray evening, [>]
Once I knew, then I forgot . . . , [>]
One-Man Circus, [>]
One night, as I was dropping off to sleep, [>]
One night I went to keep the clock company, [>]
One night you and I were walking, [>]
One saw signs of it in certain families, [>]
Only brooms, [>]
Only you understood, [>]
On the counter among many, [>]
On the Farm, [>]
On the first page of my dreambook, [>]
On the Meadow, [>]
Our sainted great-great-, [>]
Out of poverty, [>]
Outside a Dirtroad Trailer, [>]
Outside Biaggi’s Funeral Home, [>]
O witches! O poverty! . . . , [>]
Paper Dolls Cut Out of a Newspaper, [>]
Paradise, [>]
Paradise Motel, [>]
Pascal’s Idea, [>]
Past-Lives Therapy, [>]
Pastoral Harpsichord, [>]
Peaceful Trees, [>]
People Eating Lunch, [>]
Pigeons at Dawn, [>]
Poem Without a Title, [>]
Poet of the dead leaves driven like ghosts, [>]
Popular Mechanics, [>]
Postcard from S., [>]
Preachers Warn, [>]
Prison Guards Silhouetted Against the Sky, [>]
Prodigy, [>]
Progress Report, [>]
Prophesy, [>]
Psalm, [>]
Punch Minus Judy, [>]
Puppet Maker, [>]
Reading History, [>]
Relaxing in a Madhouse, [>]
Rocky was a regular guy, a loyal friend, [>]
Romantic Landscape, [>]
Romantic Sonnet, [>]
Sausage makers of History, [>]
Savageries to come, [>]
School for Visionaries, [>]
Secret History, [>]
Seems like a long time, [>]
Self-Portrait in Bed, [>]
Separate Truths, [>]
Serving Time, [>]
Shaving, [>]
Shelley, [>]
She’s pressing me gently . . . , [>]
She was about to chop the head, [>]
Shirt, [>]
Shoes, secret face of my inner life:, [>]
Sightseeing in the Capital, [>]
Sky’s gravedigger, [>]
Slaughterhouse Flies, [>]
Snowy Morning Blues, [>]
So far I’ve met here two Homers and one Virgil, [>]
Softly, [>]
So, hurry up!, [>]
Solitude, [>]
Solitude in Hotels, [>]
So many crutches. Now even the daylight, [>]
Someone shuffles by my door . . . , [>]
Sometimes walking late at night, [>]
so that’s what it’s like to be a wheel, [>]
Spoon, [>]
St. John of the Cross wore dark glasses, [>]
Stone, [>]
Strange Feast, [>]
Strictly Bucolic, [>]
St. Thomas Aquinas, [>]
Stub of a Red Pencil, [>]
Such skies came to worry men, [>]
Summer Light, [>]
Summer Morning, [>]
Summer Storm, [>]
Sunday Papers, [>]
Sunlight, [>]
Sunset’s Coloring Book, [>]
Surely, he could make it easier, [>]
Surely, he walks among us unrecognized:, [>]
Swaying handcuffed, [>]
Sweetest, [>]
Take down its ears first, [>]
Taken as a whole, it’s a mystery, [>]
Talking to the Ceiling, [>]
Talking to yourself on the front porch, [>]
Talk Radio, [>]
Tapestry, [>]
Tattooed City, [>]
Tending a cliff-hanging Grand Hotel, [>]
That awful deceit of appearances, [>]
That Little Something, [>]
That same light by which I saw her last, [>]
That’s the one the butcher, [>]
That’s the only image, [>]
That was the year the Nazis marched into Vienna, [>]
The Absentee Landlord, [>]
The Altar, [>]
The Ballad of the Wheel, [>]
The Bather, [>]
The Betrothal, [>]
The Big War, [>]
The Bird, [>]
The Black Queen raised high, [>]
The blue trees are arguing with the red wind, [>]
The brightly painted horse, [>]
The butchery of the innocent, [>]
The Chair, [>]
The Chicken Without a Head, [>]
The church is an iceberg, [>]
The City, [>]
The city had fallen. We came . . . , [>]
The Clocks of the Dead, [>]
The Cold, [>]
The Common Insects of America, [>]
The cows are to be slaughtered, [>]
The Dead in Photographs, [>]
The devil likes the chicken coop, [>]
The Devils, [>]
The ear threading, [>]
The Emperor, [>]
The Emperor must not be told night is coming, [>]
The Empress, [>]
The enormous engineering problems, [>]
T
he epoch of a streetcar drawn by horses, [>]
The Eskimos were ravaging Peru, [>]
The fat sisters, [>]
The Fly, [>]
The Foundlings, [>]
The Friends of Heraclitus, [>]
The Future, [>]
The great labor was always to efface oneself, [>]
The hundred-year-old china . . . , [>]
The hundred-year-old servants, [>]
The Immortal, [>]
The Improbable, [>]
The Inanimate Object, [>]
The Initiate, [>]
The Inner Man, [>]
The Invisible, [>]
The last customer will stagger out of the door, [>]
The Lesson, [>]
The Lights Are On Everywhere, [>]
The likelihood of ever finding it is small, [>]
The Little Pins of Memory, [>]
The Little Tear Gland That Says, [>]
The Lives of the Alchemists, [>]
The Lovers, [>]
The machines were gone, and so were those who worked them, [>]
The madwoman went marking X’s, [>]
The mail truck goes down the coast, [>]
The Massacre of the Innocents, [>]
The Melon, [>]
The moths rustle the pages of evening papers, [>]
Then there’s aesthetic paradox, [>]
Then there was Johann, [>]
The obvious is difficult, [>]
The old farmer in overalls . . . , [>]
The Old World, [>]
The One to Worry About, [>]
The one who lights the wood stove, [>]
The pages of all the books are blank, [>]
The Partial Explanation, [>]
The Pieces of the Clock Lie Scattered, [>]
The pink-cheeked Jesus, [>]
The Place, [>]
The plastic statue of the Virgin, [>]
The poets of the Late Tang Dynasty, [>]
The president smiles to himself; he loves war, [>]
The Prisoner, [>]
The Prodigal, [>]
There are one or two murderers in any crowd, [>]
There may be words left, [>]
There now, where the first crumb, [>]
There’s a book called, [>]
There’s a thing in the world, [>]
There was a child’s Sunday suit, [>]
There was a melon fresh from the garden, [>]
There were three of them, always three, [>]
The room is empty, [>]
The Scarecrow, [>]
The season of lurid wildflowers, [>]
The Secret, [>]
These grand old buildings, [>]
These rows of tall palm trees, [>]
The snail gives off stillness, [>]
The softness of this motel bed, [>]
The Soul Has Many Brides, [>]
The Starry Sky, [>