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Émigré
I exchange my head for a lawyer
the sea for a cure
and I clear off
yesterday I hear is now very new
Poems on the topic: exile
Poems on the topic “exile” on Poets.by.
Self-exile
I went among others
to be mended. But
their beautiful company
showed me an old bag—
my ill condition. Nobody
could make me desire to be.
I do not know
the trick of trust.
Homeless
I miss the sea in other places
I cannot find a home.
Call me an ambassador to
the first place that put me
out of myself.
Burroughs
alone in far Tangier
who will have me
a bird in a theater of flags
at night I send a token hand
among the poor
Yucca
Aboveground, I am all blade,
shedding filaments to keep
my edges keen. I can go months
& months without water.
My connections to this sand-
stone ridge run deep.
But I don’t know why when I blossom,
nothing happens. My nights
have never turned incandescent
at the touch of fabled wings.
My panicle is a pale flag
that no one ever salutes.
This couldn’t be exile, could it?
There’s desert enough here
for those who wait.
All through the dry season,
In Exile
Since now Time matters to me
Only as weekends that I can go home
To console myself, I count the weeks backward -
Not looking forward to the future I have to spend here
In exile-
But backward
As yet another week slips past
As one less
In exile.
Exile
He went
the symbol of sorrow
into that huge country
knowing neither language
nor custom
to remain
always
the stranger among strangers
to stand in his age
straight as a board
with lancers
of the non-existent army
Twelve Hokku on a Canadian Theme 4
Silver-haired Marquise!
You were transplanted, one Spring,
Into wild New France.
Sonnets 1917: Home-Sickness
When we go wandering the wide air’s blue spaces,
Bare, unhappy, exiled souls of men;
How will our thoughts over and over again
Return to Earth’s familiar lovely places,
Where light with shadow ever interlaces--
No blanks of blue, nor ways beyond man’s ken--
Where birds are, and flowers, as violet, and wren,
Blackbird, bluebell, hedge-sparrow, tiny daisies.
O tiny things, but very stuff of soul
To us ... so frail.... Remember what we are;
Set us not on some strange outlandish star,
But one caring for Love. Give us a Home.
There we may wait while the long ages roll
Content, unfrightened by vast Time-to-come.
Exiled
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.
Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;
Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.
The Tropics in New York
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.
My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
The Spanish Needle
Lovely dainty Spanish needle
With your yellow flower and white,
Dew bedecked and softly sleeping,
Do you think of me to-night?
Shadowed by the spreading mango,
Nodding o’er the rippling stream,
Tell me, dear plant of my childhood,
Do you of the exile dream?
Do you see me by the brook’s side
Catching crayfish ’neath the stone,
As you did the day you whispered:
Leave the harmless dears alone?
Do you see me in the meadow
Coming from the woodland spring
With a bamboo on my shoulder
And a pail slung from a string?
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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