Today's poet

[Alf]

Boy at the Window

Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

Richard Wilbur

[freckle]

Boy at the Window

Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

Richard Wilbur

beautiful imagery...bitumen eyes or lumps of coal I guess? does make the otherwise jolly snowman sound embittered but "moved" by the little boy...charming

[freckle]

I liked the wilbur poem so much i looked up some more of his stuff...liked this one...

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.

Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.''

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.

[Alf]

I suppose "mincing little fops" might be considered politically incorrect these days but coming from a black female bi-sexual political activist at the turn of the 19/20th century she can probably get away with it


Sonnet

I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,--
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now--unwittingly, you've made me dream
Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

[freckle]

I suppose "mincing little fops" might be considered politically incorrect these days but coming from a black female bi-sexual political activist at the turn of the 19/20th century she can probably get away with it


Sonnet

I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,--
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now--unwittingly, you've made me dream
Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

how cool...........

[Masham Man]

Sweet voice of solitude,the speaking of Spring,
A streamlet of song to our hearts did bring,
Cheerful measured by each passing day,
Yet lost amid Winter's misguided way,
Oh! Thrush,in your beautiful seconds of glory,
Creating sweet music 'mid frosts deep and hoary-
Undaunted in coldness,clear
Throated in rhyme,
It is you we remember as
March falls to time.

[freckle]

Sweet voice of solitude,the speaking of Spring,
A streamlet of song to our hearts did bring,
Cheerful measured by each passing day,
Yet lost amid Winter's misguided way,
Oh! Thrush,in your beautiful seconds of glory,
Creating sweet music 'mid frosts deep and hoary-
Undaunted in coldness,clear
Throated in rhyme,
It is you we remember as
March falls to time.

thats really lovely..full of hope...did you pen it?

[Masham Man]

thats really lovely..full of hope...did you pen it?

No, found it in our local paper and loved it too. Thought it perfectly descibes the season at the mo. A Song Thrush starts to sing most mornings outside my house but soon gives up, totally confused with this cold weather I think.
Just think another 10 days and Swallows could be here!

[freckle]

No, found it in our local paper and loved it too. Thought it perfectly descibes the season at the mo. A Song Thrush starts to sing most mornings outside my house but soon gives up, totally confused with this cold weather I think.
Just think another 10 days and Swallows could be here!

that is indeed a nice thought MM

[Alf]

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.


Dylan Thomas