All Poems
/ page 2870 of 3210 /
To The Dead
© Frank Bidart
What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--. . . and again reach the VEINin which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,once we'd been battered by the gorillawe searched the walls, the intricately carved
Self-Portrait, 1969
© Frank Bidart
He's still young--; thirty, but looks younger--
or does he?... In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother,--
puffy; angry; bewildered... Many nights,
Overheard Through The Walls Of The Invisible City
© Frank Bidart
. . . telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,
Love Incarnate
© Frank Bidart
To all those driven berserk or humanized by love
this is offered, for I need help
deciphering my dream.
When we love our lord is LOVE.
If I Could Mourn Like A Mourning Dove
© Frank Bidart
It is what recurs that we believe,
your face not at one moment looking
sideways up at me anguished or
Homo Faber
© Frank Bidart
Whatever lies still uncarried from the abyss within
me as I die dies with me.
Guilty Of Dust
© Frank Bidart
up or down from the infinite C E N T E R
B R I M M I N G at the winking rim of timethe voice in my head saidLOVE IS THE DISTANCE
BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVEWHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE *then I saw the parade of my lovesthose PERFORMERS comics actors singersforgetful of my very self so often I
desired to die to myself to live in themthen my PARENTS my FRIENDS the drained
For The Twentieth Century
© Frank Bidart
*
Therefore you and I and Mozart
must thank the Twentieth Century, for
California Plush
© Frank Bidart
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
Herbert White
© Frank Bidart
and then I did it to her a couple of times,--
but it was funny,--afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it ...
Dark Night
© Frank Bidart
(John of the Cross)
In a dark night, when the light
burning was the burning of love (fortuitous
night, fated, free,--)
Adolescence
© Frank Bidart
He stared up into my eyes with a look
I can almost see now.He had that look in his eyes
that bore right into mine.I could sense that he knew I was
envious of what he was doing; and knew that I'dalways wish I had known at the time
Civilian and Soldier
© Wole Soyinka
My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.
In The Small Hours
© Wole Soyinka
Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.
Dedication
© Wole Soyinka
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life
Young Sea
© Carl Sandburg
The sea is never still.
It pounds on the shore
Restless as a young heart,
Hunting.
Young Bullfrogs
© Carl Sandburg
JIMMY WIMBLETON listened a first week in June.
Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois
Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs.
Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke,
Yes, the Dead Speak to Us
© Carl Sandburg
YES, the Dead speak to us.
This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness.
Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here
Working Girls
© Carl Sandburg
THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Women Washing Their Hair
© Carl Sandburg
THEY have painted and sung
the women washing their hair,
and the plaits and strands in the sun,
and the golden combs
