Late Day Sun &
late day sun &
small pieces of ice floating
on the river
Poèmes sur le thème : ice
Poèmes sur le thème « ice » sur Poets.by.
Thirty-Seven
I become wary
of the huckleberries
inveigling ice down
my neck, no matter
how I turn.
Twenty
Between us,
some three hundred
miles of ice? —
It's not so much.
Questionnaire
Have I told any man to be a liar for my sake?
Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the
poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed
brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs
clothed in plaid wool jackets?
Have I given any man an earful too much of my talk —
or asked any man to take a snootful of booze on
my account?
Have I put wool in my own ears when men tried to tell
me what was good for me? Have I been a bum
listener ?
Have I taken dollars from the living and the unborn
while I made speeches on the retributions that
shadow the heels of the dishonest?
Have I done any good under cover? Or have I always
put it in the show windows and the newspapers ?
Ice Handler
I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon icebox,
helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard
pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two
hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the
Hotel Morrison.
He remembers when the union was organized he broke
the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the
wheels came off six different wagons one morning,
and he came around and watched the ice melt in the
street.
After a Storm
You walk under the ice trees.
They sway, and crackle.
And arch themselves splendidly
To deck your going.
The white sun flips them into colour
Before you.
They are blue.
And mauve.
And emerald.
They are amber.
And jade.
And sardonyx.
They are silver fretted to flame
And startled to stillness.
Bunched, splintered, iridescent.
You walk under the ice trees
Middle Age
Like black ice
Scrolled over with unintelligible patterns by an ignorant skater
Is the dulled surface of my heart.
The Lonely Death
In the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself
Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;
I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them a-flame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.
Cancelled Passage of Mont Blanc
There is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale--it is the blast
Descending on the pines--the torrents pour...
Sonnet LXII: When First I Ended
When first I ended, then I first began,
The more I travell'd, further from my rest,
Where most I lost, there most of all I wan,
Pined with hunger rising from a feast.
Methinks I fly, yet want I legs to go,
Wise in conceit, in act a very sot,
Ravish'd with joy amid a hell of woe;
What most I seem, that surest am I not.
I build my hopes a world above the sky,
Yet with the mole I creep into the earth;
In plenty I am starv'd with penury,
And yet I surfeit in the greatest dearth.
I have, I want, despair and yet desire,
Burn'd in a sea of ice and drown'd amidst a fire.
Sonnet 30 (Fire And Ice)
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.