All Poems

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Turns And Movies: Rose And Murray

© Conrad Aiken

After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;

On A Nankin Plate

© Henry Austin Dobson

"Ah, me, but it might have been!
Was there ever so dismal a fate?" -
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

Turns And Movies: Duval's Birds

© Conrad Aiken

The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness,
Circled three times above the upturned faces
With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings,
And then returned to stagger on her finger.

"My Fair, no beauty of thine will last"

© Alice Meynell

My Fair, no beauty of thine will last
Save in my love's eternity.
Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,
Are lost for ever--their moment past--
Except the few thou givest to me.

Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs

© Conrad Aiken

Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel,
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.

Lament

© Zbigniew Herbert

And now she has over her head brown clouds of roots
a slim lily of salt on the temples beads of sand
while she sails on the bottle of a boat through foaming nebulas

The Window

© Conrad Aiken

She looks out in the blue morning
and sees a whole wonderful world
she looks out in the morning
and sees a whole world

Now, Fanny, 'tis too bad, you teazèn maïd!
How leäte you be a' come! Where have ye staÿ'd?
How long you have a-meäde me waït about!
I thought you werden gwaïn to come ageän:
I had a mind to goo back hwome ageän.
This idden when you promis'd to come out.

The Room

© Conrad Aiken

Through that windowall else being extinct
Except itself and meI saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw

A Riddle

© William Cowper

I am just two and two, I am warm, I am cold,
And the parent of numbers that cannot be told.
I am lawful, unlawful -- a duty, a fault,
I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought;

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 07: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light

© Conrad Aiken

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

The Valley Of Dunloe

© William Percy French

Have the faries all departed
And left me broken-hearted,
To mourn the little creatures we loved so long ago?
Ah! most of them have vanished
But there's one that isn't banished
For I met her as I wandered in the Valley of Dunloe.

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

© Conrad Aiken

The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry
To go our devious secret ways, forgetting
Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed,
We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.
The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 05: The Bitter Love-Song

© Conrad Aiken

Sharp shafts of music dazzled my eyes and pierced me.
I ran and turned and spun and danced in the sunlight,
Shrank, sometimes, from the freezing silence of beauty,
Or crept once more to the warm white cave of sleep.

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms

© Conrad Aiken

He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room belowhis floor her ceiling
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,

The Banks Of Wye - Book I

No butler's proxies snore supine,
Where the old monarch kept his wine;
No Welch ox roasting, horns and all,
Adorns his throng'd and laughing hall;
But where he pray'd, and told his beads,
A thriving ash luxuriant spreads.

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait

© Conrad Aiken

Or 'one day dies eventless as another,
Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied,
And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'?
Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous,
And beauty shines in vain'?

The Lunatic Girl

Three long and weary months -- yet not a whisper
Of stern reproach for that cold parting! Then
She sat no longer by her favorite fountain!--
She was at rest forever.

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 02: Death: And A Derisive Chorus

© Conrad Aiken

The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.