Most read ▸
Sara Teasdale
I could snatch a day out of the late autumn
And set it trembling like forgotten springs,
There would be sharp blue skies with new leaves shining
And flying shadows cast by flying wings.
I could take the heavy wheel of the world and break it,
But we sit brooding while the ashes fall,
Cowering over an old fire that dwindles,
Waiting for nothing at all.
Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible
whips,
And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree
Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's
Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.
Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender
lash
Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound
Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it
drowned
The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise
of the ash.
to see simply
beyond all words
rendering every body wonderful
to meet others as I find myself
with ash for dinner and a little hope
the frost will break
waiting I am one
with the small sum of a heart
the ash of a warrant
the no one there of water
the sleep of a dead child
a lock torments me
unable to give
more than ash
where ash is ordinary as water
and infinite as hope
this lying sea
I hear so much by chance
a fat plum of a bark
a passionate vapor
and one who with ash and dagger
has moved in under my bed
a corpse going to the grave
how everybody looks
going up and down
like a tress or vine
into the ash of hands
so weary so long
up and to my ash
the unhappy
ever new in my life
if I were clear
I would understand nothing
so I do a weary
elsewhere business at home
and we in other news
have voted to suffer
they who believe
in the sun too long
are ash
walk thin
without being observed
bag people get ash
and air for dinner
brother see me
leaving here again
wren like a public hope
little but neat
as well-dressed as the barber
in a street of ash
the long game is out
the lottery is in
shall the road and the light
come again to be ash