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Amy Lowell
Jolt of market-carts ;
Steady drip of horses' hoofs on hard pavement ;
A black sky lacquered over with blueness,
And the lights of Battersea Bridge
Pricking pale in the dawn.
The beautiful hours are passing
And still you sleep !
Tired heart of my joy.
Incurved upon your dreams.
Will the day come before you have opened to me ?
The dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
The town is still asleep.
The sky is pale with quickening light.
Quenched, the long night of stars
Swirls under the earth, but one,
That silver planet, Venus, holds
Over the ice-haired lawns
A vernal promise: that love is not lost.
Walk through the streets
With birds and the clatter-clack
Of streetlights as they change,
A little tremble as the chill of night
Dies in a sunburst from the trees,
A vacant house whose owner dies,
A fallen elm, an abscess in the line
Of shops, a broken pane. I hold
My book which is all I may carry away,
The Dawn's awake!
A flash of smoldering flame and fire
Ignites the East. Then, higher, higher,
O'er all the sky so gray, forlorn,
The torch of gold is borne.
The Dawn's awake!
The dawn of a thousand dreams and thrills.
And music singing in the hills
A paean of eternal spring
Voices the new awakening.
The Dawn's awake!
Whispers of pent-up harmonies,
With the mingled fragrance of the trees;
Faint snatches of half-forgotten song--
Fathers! torn and numb,--
The boon of light we craved, awaited long,
Your criss-crossed ringlets of hair
Are tipped with faltering opalescence.
At dawn a lost smile ever returns
And hides in your hair because he fears
The solemn marble profile of your face.
His presence caresses your lips to wings of color
That beat against each other and release
Dulcet, feathery tinges of love descending to your heart.
And thus, each morning, your rising heart
Wears a new bridal robe.
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
a letter from the past
respects no expectation of
a better account
so I clear my mind of such
correspondence
I will have to carve other dice
An hour before dawn, two screech owls start calling,
loud & close.
I feel like an involuntary eavesdropper
on someone else’s scandal-ridden version
of our lives. It passes
from ridge to ridge, shivering over the houses
& the thirty-five acres of goldenrod plundered from the woods,
like a truncated version of the same
open wing that descends nightly
all over the world, leaving only a few pinholes
of available light.
The owls start calling with the suddenness
of all terrible descents.
I have just been thinking about the long stretches
of highway I would have to walk
to visit distant friends, how we have quarreled
pink in the east
as I go home
a small win at cards
i am not equal
to the stars
much less any junkie’s
point of light
my right index
fingernail has gone missing
i share a common tongue
with lawyers and sociopaths
a small white moth spends
the night in one of my shoes
so i avoid the paper
get my blood bath from the dawn
had
you
at sunset
lost
you
at dawn
You'RE INTO IT ALREADY THIRTYthree
years deep while the
dawn comes up like two bulls one
young one old walking down
the hillside, let's run
down and jump a couple, let's
walk down and jump them all.
you're into it already don't
try to deny it it don't
make a differnce some blues
singer shouted
where are the girls
where is forever love
where is every snare and delusion
where is how to write a poem again
where is jesse where is