Women poems
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Passing Out
© Philip Levine
The doctor fingers my bruise.
"Magnificent," he says, "black
at the edges and purple
cored." Seated, he spies for clues,
gingerly probing the slack
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull
Something Has Fallen
© Philip Levine
Something has fallen wordlessly
and holds still on the black driveway. You find it, like a jewel,
among the empty bottles and cans where the dogs toppled the garbage.
You pick it up, not sure if it is stone or wood
The New World
© Philip Levine
A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."
House Of Silence
© Philip Levine
The winter sun, golden and tired,
settles on the irregular army
of bottles. Outside the trucks
jostle toward the open road,
The Dead
© Philip Levine
A good man is seized by the police
and spirited away. Months later
someone brags that he shot him once
through the back of the head
My Fathers, The Baltic
© Philip Levine
Along the strand stones,
busted shells, wood scraps,
bottle tops, dimpled
and stainless beer cans.
Songs
© Philip Levine
Dawn coming in over the fields
of darkness takes me by surprise
and I look up from my solitary road
pleased not to be alone, the birds
Gin
© Philip Levine
The first time I drank gin
I thought it must be hair tonic.
My brother swiped the bottle
from a guy whose father owned
The Manuscript of Saint Alexius
© Augusta Davies Webster
But, when my father thought my words took shape
of other than boy's prattle, he grew grave,
and answered me "Alexius, thou art young,
and canst not judge of duties; but know this
thine is to serve God, living in the world."
Among Children
© Philip Levine
I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
The Three Fishers
© Charles Kingsley
1 Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
2 Away to the west as the sun went down;
3 Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
4 And the children stood watching them out of the town;
A Ballad upon a Wedding
© Sir John Suckling
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been,
Where I the rarest things have seen,
O, things without compare!
Such sights again cannot be found
In any place on English ground,
Be it at wake or fair.
The Time I've Lost
© Thomas Moore
The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light that lies
In woman's eyes,
The Song of O'Ruark, Prince of Breffni
© Thomas Moore
The valley lay smiling before me,
Where lately I left her behind;
Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me,
That sadden'd the joy of my mind.
Sordello: Book the Fifth
© Robert Browning
"Embrace him, madman!" Palma cried,
Who through the laugh saw sweat-drops burst apace,
And his lips blanching: he did not embrace
Sordello, but he laid Sordello's hand
On his own eyes, mouth, forehead.
Sonnet (II)
© George Herbert
Sure Lord, there is enough in thee to dry
Oceans of Ink ; for, as the Deluge did
Cover the Earth, so doth thy Majesty :
Each Cloud distills thy praise, and doth forbid
A Last Confession
© William Butler Yeats
What lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.
Myself
© Robert Creeley
What, younger, felt
was possible, now knows
is not - but still
not chanted enough -
A Form Of Women
© Robert Creeley
I have come far enough
from where I was not before
to have seen the things
looking in at me from through the open door
Gwin King of Norway
© William Blake
`The land is desolate; our wives
And children cry for bread;
Arise, and pull the tyrant down!
Let Gwin be humbl?d!'
