Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone. I climb a slight rise of grass. I do not want to disturb the ants Who are walking single file ...

Seen from within a heated room, On a sunny February afternoon, London looks like Any other summer's day. Step out in only Your shirt and...

What can I tell you with all these miles pulled taut between us and time split like fruit so everything happens to me two whole hours before...

From this point onward we become aware Of valleys to the sea. Closed as they are From passengers with intent they fly behind Lost in their t...

What I love about love is its diagnosis What I hate about love is its prognosis What I hate about love is its me me me What I love about lov...

Hopping frog, hop here and be seen. I'll not pelt you with stick or stone: Your cap is laced and your coat is green; Goodbye, we'll ...

The vastest things are those we may not learn. We are not taught to die, nor to be born, Nor how to burn With love. How pitiful is our enfor...

His sadness was double, it had two edges. One looked out - onto skylines, and streets with ice-cream men, and cars, and clouds like cut cott...

There are not enough of us How much verse is magnificent? Point oh oh oh oh one per cent. How much poetry is second-rate? Around point oh oh...

A book is a life, and this White paper death, I roll it on the drum and write, Rum-courage on my breath. The truth is no less hard Than it w...

It needed torching, all that boring moor above the village. I planted seeds in several places till the spindly gorse bore crimson flowers al...

Go, burning sighs, unto the frozen heart, Go break the ice which pity's painful dart Might never pierce; and if mortal prayer In heaven ...

Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past ...

like a ship the shape of flight or like the weight that keeps it upright or like a skyline crossed by breath or like the planking bent benea...

I was twenty, and crossing a field near Bridgefoot when I saw something glossing the toe of my boot and bent down to spread the bracken and ...

Midnight Faring Slow-under-Wool Settle Down Wallow Lullaby Lea Lullaby Lea Long reckoning Tremble Noctis Market Looming Venge Lullaby Lea Lu...

David Legend, a drop of dew cupped in the morning leaf not true and not untrue legend before belief shepherd and youngest son giantkiller an...

Where do clowns go? Where do clowns sleep? Where do clowns eat? What do clowns do when no one but no one at all laughs any more Mummy? trans...

An old man suddenly died alone in his garden under an elderberry bush. He lay there til dark, when the bees fell silent. A lovely way to die...

Guinea Corn, I long to see you Guinea Corn, I long to plant you Guinea Corn, I long to mould you Guinea Corn, I long to weed you Guinea Corn...

Gather out of star-dust Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust Not for sale. (to Contents) .

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry ; But where's that wise man, that would not be I, If she would n...

I took the giant's walk on top of the world, peak-striding, each step a viaduct. I dropped hankies, cut from a cloth of hills, and beat ...

Whilst making love a necklace broke. A row of pearls mislaid. One sixth fell to the floor. One fifth upon the bed. The young woman saved one...

Look away just for a moment. Then look back and see How the fireweed's taking the strain. This song's in praise of strong neglect In...

Snow inexhaustibly falling on snow! Those whom we fight are so many, Finland so small, where shall we ever find room to bury them all? (to C...

I shall recall a single incident No more. I spoke of mining engineering As the career on which my mind was bent, But for some time my fancie...

Roughly-silvered leaves that are the snow On Ararat seen through those leaves. The sun lays down a foliage of shade. A drinking fountain pul...

Wolves also cry, just as worms sometimes fly. A mouse will spit on a dead cat. A poem laughs when you tell it to sit. And some trees are wis...

Someday I will learn to capture the wet crow in words. I will write about the wing-shoulders hunched a shade of sleek and the faded evening ...

Why does your brand sae drop wi' bluid Edward, Edward? Why does your brand sae drop wi' bluid? And why so sad gang thee, O? O, I hae...

Here is a door. You know that I am behind it for no other reason that you saw me enter it, for you will never be still long enough to hear t...

I know a man who's got a pebble. he found it and he sucked it during the war. He found it and he sucked it when they ran out of water. H...

From the first to the second Warily, from the tip to the palm Third leaf (the blackthorn done) From the fourth to the fifth and (Larix, Cast...

A storm-beaten old watch-tower, A blind hermit rings the hour. All-destroying sword blade still carried by the wandering fool. Gold-sewn sil...

I am Ireland Older than the Hag of beara. Great my pride, I gave birth to brave Cuchulain. Great my shame, My own children killed their moth...

No more dams I'll make for fish Nor fetch in firing At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I co...

This is not exactly what I mean Any more than the sun is the sun. But how to mean more closely If the sun shines but approximately? What a w...

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose somet...

The soul, he said, is composed Of the external world. There are men of the East, he said, Who are the East. There are men of a province Who ...

My dearest dust, could not thy hasty day Afford thy drowsy patience leave to stay One hour longer: so that we might either Sit up, or gone t...

I found it and I named it, being versed in taxonomic Latin; thus became godfather to an insect and its first describer -- and I want no othe...

People that build their houses inland, People that buy a plot of ground Shaped like a house, and build a house there, Far from the sea-board...

Freeze-Frame None of those once known is disknown, hidden, lost, I see them in clouds in streets in trees Often and often, or in dreams, or ...

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light! (to Contents) .

A thousand years went by. The Buddha sat under the Bo tree rhyming. God burned in the sky as of old. The family waited for him who would not...

Some people, no matter what you give them, still want the moon. The bread, the salt, white meat and dark, still hungry. The marriage bed and...

Meeting poets I am disconcerted sometimes by the colour of their socks the suspicion of a wig the wasp in the voice and an air, sometimes, o...

I saw people Thronging the streets Where the Eastway with the old Roman Wall meets - But none though of old Gloucester blood brought, Loved ...

Toward the sun the drenched May-hedges lift White rounded masses like still ocean-drift, And days fill with heavy scent of that gift. There ...

Time, the deer, is in Hallaig Wood There's a board nailed across the window I looked through to see the west And my love is a birch fore...

Pangur Ban I and Pangur Ban my cat, 'Tis a like task we are at: Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night. Better far t...

I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows: My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes -- They rise and vani...

Language has not the power to speak what love indites: The Soul lies buried in the ink that writes. (to Contents) .

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is, How hot the scent is of the summer rose, How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky, How drea...

I caught this morning morning's minion, king- xxxx dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding xxxx Of the ro...

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning: The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a fing...

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge I enter water. Who am I to split The ...

The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold; When all is told We cannot beg for par...

There was a road ran past our house Too lovely to explore. I asked my mother once -- she said That if you followed where it led It brought y...

He knocks at the door and listens to his heart approaching. (to Contents) .

In the song Are waterfruits; In the plush and flow Firestars eternally fixed. Guitar strings lash My back, draw blood - The out-of-control v...

one. May I for my own self song's truth reckon, Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days Hardship endured oft... trans. by Ezra Pound t...

THE WORLD TO BE STAMMERED AFTER in which I'll have been guest, a name, sweated down from the wall up which a wound licks. trans. by Ian ...

Follow, followe, Through with mischiefe Arm'd, like whirlewind, Now she flyes thee; Time can conquer Loves unkindnes; Love can alter Tim...

Fine Madame Would-Be, wherefore should you feare, That love to make so well, a child to beare? The world reputes you barren; but I know Your...

She asked me to luncheon in fur. Far from the loud laughter of men, our secret life stirred. I remember her eyes, the slim rope of her spine...

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust A mountain down and down. Between my feet a loch shines in the brown, It's silver paper crinkl...

When Lazarus Was helped from his cold tomb Into air cut by bird-calls, While a branch swayed And the ground felt unsteady: I must, like him,...

It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet when larks rose on long thin strings of singing and the air shifted with the shimmer of ac...

My mother's old leather handbag, crowded with letters she carried all through the war. The smell of my mother's handbag: mints and l...

They still inhabit language, caught between the unsaid and the unsayable, hands dappled as apricots in the latticed light making their mark ...

My candle burned alone in an immense valley. Beams of the huge night converged upon it, Until the wind blew. The beams of the huge night Con...

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it...

Tinily a star goes down behind a black cloud. Odd that your wristwatch still should lie on the shiny dressing-table its tick so faint I cann...

I was no tree walking. I was still. They ignored me, the birds, the migrants on their way south. They re-leafed the trees, budding them with...

When you go, if you go, And I should want to die, there's nothing I'd be saved by more than the time you fell asleep in my arms in a...

When horsemen at the inn-yards say 'Return to her' I stay beside the barrel, drinking. When the old women urge, 'Bring her a gif...

That night she called his name, not mine xxxx and could not call it back I shamed myself, and thought of that blind xxxx girl in Kodiak who ...

His baby cry was of a cub tearing the neck of the lioness because he was fatherless. The gods boiled his blood in a clay pot of passion to c...

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse, and the mouse looked good. "Where are you going to, little brown...

I am a poet. I am very fond of bananas. I am bananas. I am very fond of a poet. I am a poet of bananas. I am very fond. A fond poet of '...

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck trying to recite "The boy stood on the burning deck". Love's the son xxxx stood ...

Dinogad's speckled petticoat was made of skins of speckled stoat: whip whip whipalong eight times we'll sing the song. When your fat...

How are you so smooth-faced So slender-waisted? Have you braided the sun's hair Swept the moon's courtyards clean? I haven't bra...

The Duchess of Mecklenburg straightens her back, surveys her fellow enthusiasts, all digging in soft Salzkammergut rain. She swaps her matto...

The green paths down the hillside are channels for streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of water running between the ridges,...

On stern Blencartha's perilous height The winds are tyrannous and strong; And flashing forth unsteady light From stern Blencartha's ...

The stars are sliding wanton through the trees, The sky is sliding steady over all. Great bear to Gemini will lose his place And Cygnus over...

To have carved on the days of our vanity A sun A ship A star A cornstalk Also a few marks From an ancient forgotten time A child may read Th...

Therefore he no more troubled the pool of silence. But put on mask and cloak, Strung a guitar And moved among the folk. Dancing they cried, ...

Remarking, 'It is not my taste To Wheeze on a white pillow Nor to toil gravewards on a stick, murdered slowly By avarice, envy, lust,...

As a white stone draws down the fish she on the seafloor of the afternoon draws down men's glances and their cruel wish for love. Slyly ...

I'm thinking of you. What else can I say? The palm trees on the reverse are a delusion; so is the pink sand. What we have are the usual ...

Dearest Evelyn, I often think of you Out with the guns in the jungle stew Yesterday I hittapotamus I put the measurements down for you but t...

Poem 98 – Catullus (trans. Peter Whigham) The same can be said of you, Victius as of any open mouthed bore xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx suffering...

She is struggling through grass-mesh - not flying, Her wide-winged, stiff, weightless basket-work of limbs Rocking, like an antique wain, a ...

Inside Ayers Rock is lit with paired fluorescent lights on steel pillars supporting the ceiling of haze-blue marquee cloth high above the no...

Cruelty has a Human Heart, And Jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And Secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged I...