Mom poems
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Ekka
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The Ekka institution bares us all, though call it Exhibition, Royal
Queensland Show, its that time of year when you will go in
liberal spirit where the spectacle of fantasies escrow.
Burns
© Charles Harpur
MY OWN WILD BURNS! these rude-wrought rhymes of thine
In golden worth are like the unshapely coin
Of some new realm, yet pure as from the mine
And Art may well be spared with such alloy
As dims the bullion to improve the die!
Consciousness Of Our Return
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Night's grating of steel on stone and splash
of water crashing from the buckets
brings back that moment in a flash;
the night burnt bright in limb's caress
and flesh yielding flesh in passions
blessed by sealed lips.
Congratulations
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Congratulations, youve succeeded,
youve acknowledged 60% of you at least
are the incredibly dense and mindless people
needed to make sense of incomprehensible
Faustus And Helen
© Arthur Symons
HELEN
Have I slept long? You waken me from sleep.
I have forgotten something: what is it?
Bretton Wood
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It happened by Bretton Wood (although that
wasnt its real name) and I recall a clear, grey dawn
and the tall sky fallow with torpid clouds;
we went on before to watch how they sundered out
The Farewell to Clarimonde
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Adieu, Romauld! But thou canst not forget me.
Although no more I haunt thy dreams at night,
Thy hungering heart forever must regret me,
And starve for those lost moments of delight.
A Crystalline Awakening
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Beds of icicles protrude from tussock bare patches,
needle pointed lances thrusting skyward
as if some new sprung lawn,
awaiting the crushing blows of booted feet,
soon to wilt in the onslaught of day.
The Métier of Blossoming
© Denise Levertov
Fully occupied with growing--that's
the amaryllis. Growing especially
at night: it would take
only a bit more patience than I've got
Sonnet. To A Lady Seen For A Few Moments At Vauxhall
© John Keats
Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,
Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,
Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web,
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.
On the Mystery of the Incarnation
© Denise Levertov
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
Seeing For A Moment
© Denise Levertov
I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire
it was deep water.
The Golden Legend: VI. The School Of Salerno
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
_Doctor Serafino._ I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.
The Cold Change
© Caroline Norton
In the cold change which time hath wrought on love
(The snowy winter of his summer prime),
"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.
The Banks Of Wye - Book I
© Robert Bloomfield
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 Warning
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
PATIENCE! I yet may pierce the rind
Wherewith are shrewdly girded round
The subtle secrets of his mind:
A dark, unwholesome core is bound
Perchance within it! Sir, you see,
Men are not what they seem to be!
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter
© Conrad Aiken
From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 09: Cabaret
© Conrad Aiken
We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.
You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing
As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .'
Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only,
'How deathly pale my face looks in that glass . . .'
