Pendulum
I have swung to the uttermost reaches of pain,
'Mid the echo of sighs, and a deluge of rain,
But ah! I rebound to the limits of bliss.
On the rapturous swing of an infinite kiss.
Poems on the topic: pain
Poems on the topic “pain” on Poets.by.
Letters Found Near a Suicide: To Mother
I came
In the blinding sweep
Of ecstatic pain,
I go
In the throbbing pulse
Of aching space--
In the eons between
I piled upon you
Pain on pain
Ache on ache
And yet as I go
I shall know
That you will grieve
And want me back....
Questions
What is the secret of your life, browsing ox,
Ox the sweet grass eating ?
Who strung the mighty sinews in your flesh ?
Who set that great heart beating ?
What is the secret of your death, soulless ox.
Ox so patiently waiting ?
Why hath pain wove her net for your brain's anguish ?
If for you Death will gain no life's creating ?
Lotus Hurt by the Cold
How many times, like lotus lilies risen
Upon the surface of a river, there
Have risen floating on my blood the rare
Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.
So I am clothed all over with the light
And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;
Till naked for her in the finest fashion
The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.
And then I offer all myself unto
This woman who likes to love me: but she turns
A look of hate upon the flower that burns
To break and pour her out its precious dew.
And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain,
And all the lotus buds of love sink over
To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover,
Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.
A Baby Asleep After Pain
As a drenched, drowned bee
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,
So clings to me
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears
And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm
Swinging heavily to my movement as I walk.
My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,
Like a burden she hangs on me.
She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,
Reaching downwards;
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee
Are a heaviness, and a weariness.
Futility
Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away,
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather.
But the old fever seizes me to-day,
As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather.
I have given up myself to every urge,
With not a care of precious powers spent,
Have bared my body to the strangest scourge,
To soothe and deaden my heart’s unhealing rent.
But you have torn a nerve out of my frame,
A gut that no physician can replace,
And reft my life of happiness and aim.
Oh what new purpose shall I now embrace?
What substance hold, what lovely form pursue,
When my thought burns through everything to you?
Kreisler
Sell me a violin, mister, of old mysterious wood.
Sell me a fiddle that has kissed dark nights on the forehead
where men kiss sisters they love.
Sell me dried wood that has ached with passion clutching
the knees and arms of a storm.
Sell me horsehair and rosin that has sucked at the breasts
of the morning sun for milk.
Sell me something crushed in the heartsblood of pain
readier than ever for one more song.
The House of Life
Quietly I closed the door.
Then I said to my soul:
"I shall never come back,
Back to this haunted room
Where Sorrow and I have slept."
I turned from that hated door
And passed through the House of Life,
Through its ghostly rooms and glad
And its corridors dim with age.
Then lightly I crossed a threshold
Where the casements showed the sun
And I entered an unknown room,--
And my heart went cold,
For about me stood that Chamber of Pain
I had thought to see no more!
Reward
There is great gain,
Of pride and pain:
Let me be proud to claim the highest for my own:
Let me bear pain, to fight my claim alone.
The Economist
It must be true I love you well
Since your light words are whips of Hell.
But who has pain has songs to sell.
My profitable Friends, farewell!
Faith
I KEEP a bird in my heart,
He lives on sorrow,
His name is Faith.
He is so quick a conjurer that he can borrow
Flesh from a wraith.
He swallows the harsh weeds of pain
And gives me scope,
To tend my little garden-plot again
And wait for Hope.
Tour de Force
Smilingly, out of my pain,
I have woven a little song;
You may take it away with you.
I shall not sing it again,
But when you have learned it through
It will keep you brave and strong.
I wove it out of my pain :
There is not a word of it true.
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