Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

The beauty of manhole covers--what of that?
Like medals struck by a great savage khan,
Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable,
Not like the old electrum, chased and scored,
Mottoed and sculptured to a turn,
But notched and whelked and pocked and smashed
With the great company names
(Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States).
This rustproof artifact of my street,
Long after roads are melted away will lie
Sidewise in the grave of the iron-old world,
Bitten at the edges,
Strong with its cryptic American,
Its dated beauty.
...

After long drought, commotion in the sky;
After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes,
The rain. It slashes leaves, and doubly drums
On tin and shingle; beats and bends awry
The flower heads; puddles dust, and with a sigh
Like love sinks into grasses, where it hums
As bees did once, among chrysanthemums
And asters when the summer thought to die.

The whole world dreamed of this, and has it now.

...

The waves are so calming
The wildfires are alarming
The deathly air bites at you so cold
As the plants cripple and fold
...

COMETH a voice:—‘My children, hear;
From the crowded street and the close-packed mart
I call you back with my message clear,
Back to my lap and my loving heart.
Long have ye left me, journeying on
By range and river and grassy plain,
To the teeming towns where the rest have gone—
Come back, come back to my arms again.

‘So shall ye lose the foolish needs
That gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve
To heal the ills that the city breeds,
The pallid cheek and the fretted nerve.
Treading the turf that ye once loved well,
Instead of the stones of the city’s street,
Ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell,
But the wind that croons in the ripening wheat.

‘Yonder, beneath the smoke-smeared sky,
A city of half a million souls
That struggle and chaffer and strive and cry
By a sullied river that seaward rolls.
But here, blue range and full-filled creek,
And the soil made glad by the welcome rain
Waiting the plough. If peace ye seek,
Come back, come back to my arms again.

‘I that am old have seen long since
Ruin of palaces made with hands
For the soldier-king and the priest and prince

...

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast


...

The Holy Land neath hammer blows -
is this what Jesus prophesied:
when sad-sack's hanged like mistletoes
the sightless see a suicide;
when thousands fall like dominoes
the blind deny it's homicide;
when women fry in thermal throes
the gents reject it's femicide
when rockets slaughter embryos
the fools forget it's feticide

...

Here on the pale beach, in the darkness;
With the full moon just to rise;
They sit alone, and look over the sea,
Or into each other's eyes. . .

She pokes her parasol into the sleepy sand,
Or sifts the lazy whiteness through her hand.

'A lovely night,' he says, 'the moon,
Comes up for you and me.
Just like a blind old spotlight there,
Fizzing across the sea!'

She pays no heed, nor even turns her head:
He slides his arm around her waist instead.

'Why don't we do a sketch together--
Those songs you sing are swell.
Where did you get them, anyway?
They suit you awfully well.'

She will not turn to him--will not resist.
Impassive, she submits to being kissed.

'My husband wrote all four of them.
You know,--my husband drowned.
He was always sickly, soon depressed. . .'
But still she hears the sound

Of a stateroom door shut hard, and footsteps going

...

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That will drink deeply of a century's streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.


...

Help others find joy in their days,
Wipe their tears in so many ways.
A kind word can light up the dark,
And silence melts with love's gentle spark.

With kind words, we can shift the fate,
Change the world, don't hesitate.
Though sadness has marked your path,
Together we can find joy that lasts.


...