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Slight difference
I read word as world
that ledge of a letter
like the interstice between
the swallow and the air
Poems on the topic: swallow
Poems on the topic “swallow” on Poets.by.
Message of the Barn-Swallows
Between granite and sky occurs
the culture of a barn—
a parliament of odors,
treaties of seed.
Every one of those barn-swallows
transports a secret word
under its wing until at dusk
a statement gathers—
a large calling
with accents of loam. Day
utters this immense phrase
to night. The message
concerns entirety.
Old Ben
Sad is old Ben Thistlewaite,
Now his day is done,
And all his children
Far away are gone.
He sits beneath his jasmined porch,
His stick between his knees,
His eyes fixed vacant
On his moss-grown trees.
Grass springs in the green path,
His flowers are lean and dry,
His thatch hangs in wisps against
The evening sky.
He has no heart to care now,
Though the winds will blow
Whistling in his casement,
And the rain drip thro'.
Rome
Oh for the rising moon
Over the roofs of Rome,
And swallows in the dusk
Circling a darkened dome!
Oh for the measured dawns
That pass with folded wings--
How can I let them go
With unremembered things?
Deep in the Night
Deep in the night the cry of a swallow,
Under the stars he flew,
Keen as pain was his call to follow
Over the world to you.
Love in my heart is a cry forever
Lost as the swallow's flight,
Seeking for you and never, never
Stilled by the stars at night.
Irradiations XXXII
Today you shall have but little song from me,
For I belong to the sunlight.
This I would not barter for any kingdom.
I am a wheeling swallow,
Blue all over is my delight.
I am a drowsy grass-blade
In the greenest shadow.
The Throne of Osiris
In the roof the swallow has built her nest,
And the martins under the eaves,
And all winged things have a chamber of rest
In the shadow of swaying leaves.
The rabbit has dug for himself a hole,
The green worm lies at the heart of the rose,
And there is rest for the vagrant soul
Wherever the shallowest river flows.
Thomas Ross, Jr.
This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff—swallow
Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank
There near Miller’s Ford.
But no sooner were the young hatched
Than a snake crawled up to the nest
To devour the brood.
Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings
And shrill cries
Fought at the snake,
Blinding him with the beat of her wings,
Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,
Fell backward down the bank
Into Spoon River and was drowned.
Scarcely an hour passed
Until a shrike
Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn.
Elegy
The sun immense and rosy
Must have sunk and become extinct
The night you closed your eyes for ever against me.
Grey days, and wan, dree dawnings
Since then, with fritter of flowers--
Day wearies me with its ostentation and fawnings.
Still, you left me the nights,
The great dark glittery window,
The bubble hemming this empty existence with lights.
Still in the vast hollow
Like a breath in a bubble spinning
Brushing the stars, goes my soul, that skims the bounds like a swallow!
I can look through
The film of the bubble night, to where you are.
Through the film I can almost touch you.
Homing Swallows
Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main,
O rain-birds racing merrily away
From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain
Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say--
When at the noon-hour from the chapel school
The children dash and scamper down the dale,
Scornful of teacher’s rod and binding rule
Forever broken and without avail,
Do they still stop beneath the giant tree
To gather locusts in their childish greed,
And chuckle when they break the pods to see
The golden powder clustered round the seed?
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