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Tintype
First phoebe of spring.
He flutters in front of me,
drawn by a slow fly.
In my email, a copy
of a tintype portrait
I sat for last August—
that still moment
five seconds long,
that black box.
Poems on the topic: portrait
Poems on the topic “portrait” on Poets.by.
Theory
I am what is around me.
Women understand this.
One is not duchess
A hundred yards from a carriage.
These, then are portraits:
A black vestibule;
A high bed sheltered by curtains.
These are merely instances.
Portraits
You were in the room, yet your body
Was stone cut in drooping lines
And hued with decorous puzzling pinks and browns.
Even your hair seemed an elfin wig
Carelessly thrown upon your stone head.
And your eyes were hollows cradling broken shadows.
When you spoke your body did not change:
It was as though a flock of sleepy birds
Had issued from your stone mouth.
Vague words tapered off to pale weariness,
And sunlight was night smiling in his sleep.
Your hands moved as though they sought a dying emotion:
Your lips, drawn back, seemed evading sound.
When twilight fell upon us,
Like night striving to forget his dream,
We had long since passed out of the room.
A Portrait
Frail, exquisite, indomitable face,
Where pain has left its trace ...
Where are the words to paint
Her curious austere charm ... elusive, pure,
As the frost etchings on the window-pane.
Ivory, ebony, lace ...
Yes I shall choose that clinging gown of black,
Severely plain, but with such frills of lace
Over the delicate wrists and blue-veined hands
That for an instant one feels all restraint
Quite useless! Ravishing, ecstatic frills
Of lace, or lacy thrills!
Choose either phrase!
She’s no fanatical saint ...
No, after all,
No saint at all!
In the Dark Corner
I brush the dust from this old portrait:
Yes, it is the same face, exactly,
Why does it look at me still with such a look of hate?
I brush the dust from a heap of magazines:
Here there is all what you have written,
All that you struggled long years and went down to darkness for.
O God, to think what I am writing
Will be ever as this!
O God, to think that my own face
May some day glare from this dust!
Portrait
Her eyes? Dark pools of deepest shade,
Like sylvan lakes that lie
In some sequestered forest glade
Beneath a starry sky.
Her cheeks? The ripened chestnut’s hue,--
Rich autumn’s sun-kissed brown!
Caressed by sunbeams dancing through
Red leaves that flutter down.
Her form? A slender pine that sways
Before the murmuring breeze
In summer, when the south wind plays
Soft music through the trees.
Herself? A laughing, joyous sprite
Who smiles from dawn till dark,
As lovely as a summer night
And carefree as a lark.
A Lady to Her Lover
The white snows of Winter
Follow the falling of leaves ;
Therefore
I have had your portrait cut
In snow-white jade.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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