My wife’s new pink slippers have gay pom-poms. There is not a spot or a stain on their satin toes or their sides. All night they lie together under her bed’s edge. Shivering I catch sight of them and smile, in the morning. Later I watch them descending the stair, hurrying through the doors and […]
Good-night, my love, for I have dreamed of thee In waking dreams, until my soul is lost— Is lost in passion’s wide and shoreless sea, Where, like a ship, unruddered, it is tost Hither and thither at the wild waves’ will. There is no potent Master’s voice to still This newer, more tempestuous Galilee! The […]
(For Robert Lowell) This is the time of year when almost every night the frail, illegal fire balloons appear. Climbing the mountain height, rising toward a saint still honored in these parts, the paper chambers flush and fill with light that comes and goes, like hearts. Once up against the sky it’s hard to tell […]
There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in […]
by Pat Bennett We believe in God the maker and shaper of our pathways; who sent Jesus to show us the narrow way, and who is the beginning and end of our travelling. We believe in Jesus Christ the sharer of our flesh; who entered and experienced the human journey, and who walks beside us […]
I | II | III | IV | V I In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old […]
Why do we call ourselves ‘Imagists’? Well, why not? People say, ‘Oh, because it looks silly, and everyone is some sort of an “ist,” and why give yourselves a tag, and what on earth does it mean, and it’s dam cheek any way.’ Well, I think it a very good and descriptive title, and it […]
Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is […]
as collected by the Venerable Bede, translated from the Old English Now must we praise heaven-kingdom’s guardian, the measurer’s might and his mind-thoughts the work of the Gloryfather, how he of each wonder, Eternal Lord, established a beginning. He first shaped for men’s sons heaven as a roof, the Holy Shaper; then middle-earth mankind’s guardian […]
Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest,My Soule, this wholsome meditation,How God the Spirit, by Angels waited onIn heaven, doth make his Temple in thy brest.The Father having begot a Sonne most blest,And still begetting, (for he ne’r begonne)Hath deign’d to chuse thee by adoption,Co-heire to’his glory,’and Sabbaths endless rest.And as a robb’d […]
