All Poems
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Thinking For Berky
© William Stafford
In the late night listening from bed
I have joined the ambulance or the patrol
screaming toward some drama, the kind of end
that Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead.
Objector
© William Stafford
I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, "You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act." Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.
Upon The Pismire
© John Bunyan
Must we unto the pismire go to school,
To learn of her in summer to provide
Lit Instructor
© William Stafford
Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,
The Voices
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
Graydigger's Home
© William Stafford
The real estate agent is saying, "Utilities . . .
easy payments, a view." I see
my prints in the dirt. Out there
in the wind we talk about credit, security--
there on the bank by Graydigger's home.
Remembering Mountain Men
© William Stafford
I put my foot in cold water
and hold it there: early mornings
they had to wade through broken ice
to find the traps in the deep channel
Stanzas In Meditation: Stanza I
© Gertrude Stein
I caught a bird which made a ball
And they thought better of it.
Across Kansas
© William Stafford
My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.
Room to Roam
© George MacDonald
Strait is the path? He means we must not roam?
Yes; but the strait path leads into a boundless home.
Security
© William Stafford
Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.
Poetry, A Natural Thing
© Robert Duncan
Neither our vices nor our virtues
further the poem. They came up
and died
just like they do every year
on the rocks.
When I Met My Muse
© William Stafford
I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
The Curse
© John Millington Synge
Lord, confound this surly sister,
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,
In her guts a galling give her.
Waking at 3 a.m.
© William Stafford
You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
© William Stafford
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
The Light By The Barn
© William Stafford
The light by the barn that shines all night
pales at dawn when a little breeze comes.A little breeze comes breathing the fields
from their sleep and waking the slow windmill.The slow windmill sings the long day
about anguish and loss to the chickens at work.The little breeze follows the slow windmill
This Life
© William Stafford
We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.
Silence
© Edith Nesbit
So silent is the world to-night
The lamp gives silence out like light,
The latticed windows open wide
Show silence, like the night, outside:
The nightingale's faint song draws near
Like musical silence to mine ear.
