Poems begining by C
/ page 89 of 99 /
Crutches
© Robert Herrick
Thou see'st me, Lucia, this year droop;
Three zodiacs fill'd more, I shall stoop;
Let crutches then provided be
To shore up my debility:
Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve
© Robert Herrick
Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
Cock-crow
© Robert Herrick
Bell-man of night, if I about shall go
For to deny my Master, do thou crow!
Thou stop'st Saint Peter in the midst of sin;
Stay me, by crowing, ere I do begin;
Better it is, premonish'd, for to shun
A sin, than fall to weeping when 'tis done.
Cherry Ripe
© Robert Herrick
Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,
Full and fair ones; come, and buy:
If so be you ask me where
They do grow? I answer, there
Corinna's Going A-Maying
© Robert Herrick
Get up, get up for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air!
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
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.
Curse of a Rich Polish Peasant on His Sister Who Ran Away With a Wild Man
© Carl Sandburg
FELIKSOWA has gone again from our house and this time for good, I hope.
She and her husband took with them the cow father gave them, and they sold it.
She went like a swine, because she called neither on me, her brother, nor on her father, before leaving for those forests.
That is where she ought to live, with bears, not with men.
Cumulatives
© Carl Sandburg
STORMS have beaten on this point of land
And ships gone to wreck here
and the passers-by remember it
with talk on the deck at night
as they near it.
Cripple
© Carl Sandburg
ONCE when I saw a cripple
Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,
Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,
Desperately gesturing with wasted hands
Crimson Rambler
© Carl Sandburg
NOW that a crimson rambler
begins to crawl over the house
of our two lives
Crimson Changes People
© Carl Sandburg
DID I see a crucifix in your eyes
and nails and Roman soldiers
and a dusk Golgotha?
Crimson
© Carl Sandburg
CRIMSON is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold,
Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire.
(A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his
coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows
and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)
Crapshooters
© Carl Sandburg
SOMEBODY loses whenever somebody wins.
This was known to the Chaldeans long ago.
And more: somebody wins whenever somebody loses.
This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.
Crabapple Blossoms
© Carl Sandburg
SOMEBODYS little girlhow easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.
Somebodys little girlshe played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.
It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horses Head.
Cool Tombs
© Carl Sandburg
WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin
in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes
in the dust, in the cool tombs.
Clocks
© Carl Sandburg
HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail.
And of course
there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France
Clinton South of Polk
© Carl Sandburg
I WANDER down on Clinton street south of Polk
And listen to the voices of Italian children quarreling.
It is a cataract of coloratura
And I could sleep to their musical threats and accusations.
