American Literature poems

Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”

Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound, “L'art, 1910”

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,

Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

Ezra Pound, “Alba”

As cool as the pale wet leaves

Tof lily-of-the-valley

She lay beside me in the dawn

Ezra Pound, “Doria”

Be in me as the eternal moods of the bleak wind, and not

As transient things are — gaiety of flowers.

Have me in the strong loneliness of sunless cliffs

And of gray waters.
Let the gods speak softly of us

In days hereafter,
the shadowy flowers of Orcus

Remember thee.

Ezra Pound, “The Jewel Stairs' Grievance”

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,

It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,

And I let down the crystal curtain

And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

Ezra Pound, “A Girl”

The tree has entered my hands,

The sap has ascended my arms,

The tree has grown in my breast -

Downward,

The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,

Moss you are,

You are violets with wind above them.

A child – so high – you are,

And all this is folly to the world. 

Ezra Pound, “Pagani’s, November 8”

Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very beautiful 

                            Normande cocotte 

The eyes of the very learned British Museum assistant.

Ezra Pound, “The Tea Shop”

The girl in the tea shop

Is not so beautiful as she was,

The August has worn against her.

She does not get up the stairs so eagerly;

Yes, she also will turn middle-aged,

And the glow of youth that she spread about us

As she brought us our muffins

Will be spread about us no longer.

She also will turn middle-aged.

William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

William Carlos Williams, “The Great Figure”

Among the rain 

and lights 

I saw the figure 5 

in gold 

on a red 

firetruck 

moving 

tense 

unheeded 

to gong clangs 

siren howls 

and wheels rumbling 

through the dark city. 

William Carlos Williams, “The Rose”

The rose is obsolete

but each petal ends in

an edge, the double facet

cementing the grooved

columns of air ——The edge

cuts without cutting

meets ——nothing ——renews

itself in metal or porcelain ——

Amy Lowell, “A Decade”

When you came, you were like red wine and honey, 
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. 
Now you are like morning bread, 
Smooth and pleasant. 
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, 
But I am completely nourished.

Robert Frost, “After Apple-picking”

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree 

Toward heaven still, 

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill 

Beside it, and there may be two or three 

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. 

But I am done with apple-picking now. 

Essence of winter sleep is on the night, 

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. 

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight 

I got from looking through a pane of glass 

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough 

And held against the world of hoary grass. 

Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

T. S. Eliot, “The Naming of Cats”

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
     It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
     Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
     All of them sensible everyday names.

William Carlos Williams, “By the road to the contagious hospital”

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast — a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

William Carlos Williams, “Portrait of a Lady”

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze — or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?

William Carlos Williams, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”

According to Brueghel

when Icarus fell

it was spring

 

a farmer was ploughing

his field

the whole pageantry

William Carlos Williams, “Young Sycamore”

I must tell you 
this young tree
whose round and firm trunk
between the wet

pavement and the gutter
(where water
is trickling) rises
bodily

Wallace Stevens, “Idea of Order at Key West”

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.   

The water never formed to mind or voice,   

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion   

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,   

That was not ours although we understood,   

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.   

The song and water were not medleyed sound   

Even if what she sang was what she heard,   

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred   

The grinding water and the gasping wind;   

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

H. D., “Oread”

Whirl up, sea—

whirl your pointed pines,

splash your great pines

on our rocks,

hurl your green over us,

cover us with your pools of fir.

H. D., “Orchard”

I saw the first pear
as it fell—
the honey-seeking, golden-banded,
the yellow swarm
was not more fleet than I,
(spare us from loveliness)
and I fell prostrate
crying:
you have flayed us
with your blossoms,
spare us the beauty
of fruit-trees.

H. D., “Eurydice”

I

So you have swept me back,

I who could have walked with the live souls

above the earth,

I who could have slept among the live flowers

at last;

 

so for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I am swept back

where dead lichens drip

dead cinders upon moss of ash;

Langston Hughes, “I, too”

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”

I have done it again.   

One year in every ten   

I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin   

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine   

Jew linen.

Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

You do not do, you do not do   

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot   

For thirty years, poor and white,   

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.   

You died before I had time——

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,   

Ghastly statue with one gray toe   

Big as a Frisco seal

Charles Olson, “Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele”

I. Le Bonheur

dogwood flakes

what is green

 

the petals

from the apple

blow on the road

 

mourning doves

mark the sway

of the afternoon, bees

dig the plum blossoms

Robert Duncan, “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow”

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,   

that is not mine, but is a made place,

 

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,   

an eternal pasture folded in all thought   

so that there
is a hall therein

 

that is a made place, created by light   

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Robert Creeley, “I Know a Man”

As I sd to my   

friend, because I am   

always talking,—John, I

 

sd, which was not his   

name, the darkness sur-

rounds us, what

 

can we do against

it, or else, shall we &

why not, buy a goddamn big car,

 

drive, he sd, for   

christ’s sake, look   

out where yr going.

Robert Creeley, “Mountains in the Desert”

The mountains blue now

at the back of my head,

such geography of self and soul

brought to such limit of sight,

 

I cannot relieve it

nor leave it, my mind locked

in seeing it

as the light fades.

 

Tonight let me go

at last out of whatever

mind I thought to have,

and all the habits of it.

Denise Levertov, “The Jacob’s Ladder”

The stairway is not
a thing of gleaming strands
a radiant evanescence
for angels' feet that only glance in their tread,
and
need not touch the stone.

It is of stone.
A rosy stone that takes
a glowing tone of softness
only because behind it the sky is a doubtful,
a doubting night gray.

Denise Levertov, “Woman Alone”

When she cannot be sure
which of two lovers it was with whom she felt
this or that moment of pleasure, of something fiery
streaking from head to heels, the way the white
flame of a cascade streaks a mountainside
seen from a car across a valley, the car
changing gear, skirting a precipice,
climbing…

Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

John Ashbery, “Worsening Situation”

Like a rainstorm, he said, the braided colors
Wash over me and are no help. Or like one
at a feast who eats not, for he cannot choose
From among the smoking dishes. This severed hand
Stands for life, and wander as it will,
East or west, north or south, it is ever
A stranger who walks beside me.

John Ashbery, “The Painter”

Sitting between the sea and the buildings

He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.

But just as children imagine a prayer

Is merely silence, he expected his subject

To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,

Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

John Ashbery, “Some Trees”

These are amazing: each 
Joining a neighbor, as though speech 
Were a still performance. 
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning 
From the world as agreeing 
With it, you and I 
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are: 
That their merely being there 
Means something; that soon 
We may touch, love, explain.

Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You”

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian,
  Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera
  de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look
  like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly
  because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange
  tulips around the birches

Leslie Marmon Silko, “Lullaby”

The earth is your mother,
she holds you.
The sky is your father,
he protects you.
Sleep,
sleep.
Rainbow is your sister,
she loves you.
The winds are your brothers,
they sing to you.
Sleep,
sleep.
We are together always
We are together always
There never was a time
when this
was not so.