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Best Famous Bag Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Bag poems. This is a select list of the best famous Bag poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Bag poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of bag poems.

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Written by Raymond Carver | Create an image from this poem

Happiness

 So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend walking up the road to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters, and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take each other's arm.
It's early in the morning, and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light, though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute death and ambition, even love, doesn't enter into this.
Happiness.
It comes on unexpectedly.
And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.


Written by Charles Bukowski | Create an image from this poem

A Man

 George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T.
V.
His dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash from his rolled cigarettes dropped onto his undershirt.
Some of the ash was still burning.
Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and hit his skin, then he cursed, brushing it away.
There was a knock on the trailer door.
He got slowly to his feet and answered the door.
It was Constance.
She had a fifth of unopened whiskey in a bag.
"George, I left that son of a *****, I couldn't stand that son of a ***** anymore.
" "Sit down.
" George opened the fifth, got two glasses, filled each a third with whiskey, two thirds with water.
He sat down on the bed with Constance.
She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it.
She was drunk and her hands trembled.
"I took his damn money too.
I took his damn money and split while he was at work.
You don't know how I've suffered with that son of a *****.
" " Lemme have a smoke," said George.
She handed it to him and as she leaned near, George put his arm around her, pulled her over and kissed her.
"You son of a *****," she said, "I missed you.
" "I miss those good legs of yours , Connie.
I've really missed those good legs.
" "You still like 'em?" "I get hot just looking.
" "I could never make it with a college guy," said Connie.
"They're too soft, they're milktoast.
And he kept his house clean.
George , it was like having a maid.
He did it all.
The place was spotless.
You could eat beef stew right off the crapper.
He was antisceptic, that's what he was.
" "Drink up, you'll feel better.
" "And he couldn't make love.
" "You mean he couldn't get it up?" "Oh he got it up, he got it up all the time.
But he didn't know how to make a woman happy, you know.
He didn't know what to do.
All that money, all that education, he was useless.
" "I wish I had a college education.
" "You don't need one.
You have everything you need, George.
" "I'm just a flunkey.
All the **** jobs.
" "I said you have everything you need, George.
You know how to make a woman happy.
" "Yeh?" "Yes.
And you know what else? His mother came around! His mother! Two or three times a week.
And she'd sit there looking at me, pretending to like me but all the time she was treating me like I was a whore.
Like I was a big bad whore stealing her son away from her! Her precious Wallace! Christ! What a mess!" "He claimed he loved me.
And I'd say, 'Look at my pussy, Walter!' And he wouldn't look at my pussy.
He said, 'I don't want to look at that thing.
' That thing! That's what he called it! You're not afraid of my pussy, are you, George?" "It's never bit me yet.
" "But you've bit it, you've nibbled it, haven't you George?" "I suppose I have.
" "And you've licked it , sucked it?" "I suppose so.
" "You know damn well, George, what you've done.
" "How much money did you get?" "Six hundred dollars.
" "I don't like people who rob other people, Connie.
" "That's why you're a fucking dishwasher.
You're honest.
But he's such an ass, George.
And he can afford the money, and I've earned it.
.
.
him and his mother and his love, his mother-love, his clean l;ittle wash bowls and toilets and disposal bags and breath chasers and after shave lotions and his little hard-ons and his precious love-making.
All for himself, you understand, all for himself! You know what a woman wants, George.
" "Thanks for the whiskey, Connie.
Lemme have another cigarette.
" George filled them up again.
"I missed your legs, Connie.
I've really missed those legs.
I like the way you wear those high heels.
They drive me crazy.
These modern women don't know what they're missing.
The high heel shapes the calf, the thigh, the ass; it puts rythm into the walk.
It really turns me on!" "You talk like a poet, George.
Sometimes you talk like that.
You are one hell of a dishwasher.
" "You know what I'd really like to do?" "What?" "I'd like to whip you with my belt on the legs, the ass, the thighs.
I'd like to make you quiver and cry and then when you're quivering and crying I'd slam it into you pure love.
" "I don't want that, George.
You've never talked like that to me before.
You've always done right with me.
" "Pull your dress up higher.
" "What?" "Pull your dress up higher, I want to see more of your legs.
" "You like my legs, don't you, George?" "Let the light shine on them!" Constance hiked her dress.
"God christ ****," said George.
"You like my legs?" "I love your legs!" Then george reached across the bed and slapped Constance hard across the face.
Her cigarette flipped out of her mouth.
"what'd you do that for?" "You fucked Walter! You fucked Walter!" "So what the hell?" "So pull your dress up higher!" "No!" "Do what I say!" George slapped again, harder.
Constance hiked her skirt.
"Just up to the panties!" shouted George.
"I don't quite want to see the panties!" "Christ, george, what's gone wrong with you?" "You fucked Walter!" "George, I swear, you've gone crazy.
I want to leave.
Let me out of here, George!" "Don't move or I'll kill you!" "You'd kill me?" "I swear it!" George got up and poured himself a shot of straight whiskey, drank it, and sat down next to Constance.
He took the cigarette and held it against her wrist.
She screamed.
HE held it there, firmly, then pulled it away.
"I'm a man , baby, understand that?" "I know you're a man , George.
" "Here, look at my muscles!" george sat up and flexed both of his arms.
"Beautiful, eh ,baby? Look at that muscle! Feel it! Feel it!" Constance felt one of the arms, then the other.
"Yes, you have a beautiful body, George.
" "I'm a man.
I'm a dishwasher but I'm a man, a real man.
" "I know it, George.
" "I'm not the milkshit you left.
" "I know it.
" "And I can sing, too.
You ought to hear my voice.
" Constance sat there.
George began to sing.
He sang "Old man River.
" Then he sang "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.
" He sang "The St.
Louis Blues.
" He sasng "God Bless America," stopping several times and laughing.
Then he sat down next to Constance.
He said, "Connie, you have beautiful legs.
" He asked for another cigarette.
He smoked it, drank two more drinks, then put his head down on Connie's legs, against the stockings, in her lap, and he said, "Connie, I guess I'm no good, I guess I'm crazy, I'm sorry I hit you, I'm sorry I burned you with that cigarette.
" Constance sat there.
She ran her fingers through George's hair, stroking him, soothing him.
Soon he was asleep.
She waited a while longer.
Then she lifted his head and placed it on the pillow, lifted his legs and straightened them out on the bed.
She stood up, walked to the fifth, poured a jolt of good whiskey in to her glass, added a touch of water and drank it sown.
She walked to the trailer door, pulled it open, stepped out, closed it.
She walked through the backyard, opened the fence gate, walked up the alley under the one o'clock moon.
The sky was clear of clouds.
The same skyful of clouds was up there.
She got out on the boulevard and walked east and reached the entrance of The Blue Mirror.
She walked in, and there was Walter sitting alone and drunk at the end of the bar.
She walked up and sat down next to him.
"Missed me, baby?" she asked.
Walter looked up.
He recognized her.
He didn't answer.
He looked at the bartender and the bartender walked toward them They all knew eachother.
Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

Gus: The Theatre Cat

 Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before, Is really Asparagus.
That's such a fuss To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake, And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats-- But no longer a terror to mice and to rats.
For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime; Though his name was quite famous, he says, in its time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club (Which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub) He loves to regale them, if someone else pays, With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.
For he once was a Star of the highest degree-- He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.
And he likes to relate his success on the Halls, Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.
But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell, Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
"I have played," so he says, "every possible part, And I used to know seventy speeches by heart.
I'd extemporize back-chat, I knew how to gag, And I knew how to let the cat out of the bag.
I knew how to act with my back and my tail; With an hour of rehearsal, I never could fail.
I'd a voice that would soften the hardest of hearts, Whether I took the lead, or in character parts.
I have sat by the bedside of poor Little Nell; When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell.
In the Pantomime season I never fell flat, And I once understudied Dick Whittington's Cat.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell, Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
" Then, if someone will give him a toothful of gin, He will tell how he once played a part in East Lynne.
At a Shakespeare performance he once walked on pat, When some actor suggested the need for a cat.
He once played a Tiger--could do it again-- Which an Indian Colonel purused down a drain.
And he thinks that he still can, much better than most, Produce blood-curdling noises to bring on the Ghost.
And he once crossed the stage on a telegraph wire, To rescue a child when a house was on fire.
And he says: "Now then kittens, they do not get trained As we did in the days when Victoria reigned.
They never get drilled in a regular troupe, And they think they are smart, just to jump through a hoop.
" And he'll say, as he scratches himself with his claws, "Well, the Theatre's certainly not what it was.
These modern productions are all very well, But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell, That moment of mystery When I made history As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
"
Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Forgetfulness

 The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

Victory

 Something spreading underground won't speak to us
under skin won't declare itself
not all life-forms want dialogue with the
machine-gods in their drama hogging down
the deep bush clear-cutting refugees
from ancient or transient villages into
our opportunistic fervor to search
 crazily for a host a lifeboat

Suddenly instead of art we're eyeing
organisms traced and stained on cathedral transparencies
cruel blues embroidered purples succinct yellows
a beautiful tumor

•

I guess you're not alone I fear you're alone
There's, of course, poetry:
awful bridge rising over naked air: I first
took it as just a continuation of the road: 
"a masterpiece of engineering
praised, etc.
" then on the radio: "incline too steep for ease of, etc.
" Drove it nonetheless because I had to this being how— So this is how I find you: alive and more • As if (how many conditionals must we suffer?) I'm driving to your side —an intimate collusion— packed in the trunk my bag of foils for fencing with pain glasses of varying spectrum for sun or fog or sun-struck rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden poetries, old glue shredding from their spines my time exposure of the Leonids over Joshua Tree As if we're going to win this O because • If you have a sister I am not she nor your mother nor you my daughter nor are we lovers or any kind of couple except in the intensive care of poetry and death's master plan architecture-in-progress draft elevations of a black-and-white mosaic dome the master left on your doorstep with a white card in black calligraphy: Make what you will of this As if leaving purple roses • If (how many conditionals must we suffer?) I tell you a letter from the master is lying on my own doorstep glued there with leaves and rain and I haven't bent to it yet if I tell you I surmise he writes differently to me: Do as you will, you have had your life many have not signing it in his olden script: Meister aus Deutschland • In coldest Europe end of that war frozen domes iron railings frozen stoves lit in the streets memory banks of cold the Nike of Samothrace on a staircase wings in blazing backdraft said to me : : to everyone she met Displaced, amputated never discount me Victory indented in disaster striding at the head of stairs for Tory Dent


Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

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 And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene An engine, an engine, Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been sacred of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
(1962)
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

TO THE SOUND OF VIOLINS

 Give me life at its most garish

Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle

And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff

Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants

‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’

And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one

My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard

Making me stand out in the teeming swarm

Of teens and twenties this foetid Friday night

On my way from the ward where our son paces

And fulminates I throw myself into the drowning

Tide of Friday to be rescued by sheer normality.
The mill girl with her mates asks anxiously "Are you on your own? Come and join us What’s your name?" Age has driven my shyness away As I join the crowd beneath the turning purple screens Bannered ‘****** lasts for ever’ and sip unending Halves of bitter, as I circulate among the crowd, Being complete in itself and out for a good night out, A relief from factory, shop floor and market stall Running from the reality of the ward where my son Pounds the ledge with his fist and seems out to blast My very existence with words like bullets.
The need to anaesthetise the pain resurfaces Again and again.
In Leeds City Square where Pugin’s church, the Black Prince and the Central Post Office In its Edwardian grandeur are startled by the arching spumes Or white water fountains and the steel barricades of Novotel Rise from the ruins of a sixties office block.
I hurry past and join Boar Lane’s Friday crew From Keighley and Dewsbury’s mills, hesitating At the thought of being told I’m past my Sell-by-date and turned away by the West Indian Bouncers, black-suited and city-council badged Who checked my bag but smiled at ‘The Lights of Leeds’ and ‘Poets of Our Time’ tucked away as carefully as condoms- Was it guns or drugs they were after I wondered as I crossed the bare boards to the bar.
I stayed near the fruit machine which no-one played, Where the crowd was thickest, the noise drowned out the pain ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’ the chorus rang The girls joined in but the young men knew The words no more than me.
Dancing as we knew it In the sixties has gone, you do your own thing And follow the beat, hampered by my bag I just kept going, letting the music and the crowd Hold me, my camera eye moving in search, in search… What I’m searching for I don’t know Searching’s a way of life that has to grow "All of us who are patients here are searchers after truth" My son kept saying, his legs shaking from the side effects Of God-knows- what, pacing the tiny ward kitchen cum smoking room, Denouncing his ‘illegal section’ and ‘poisonous medication’ To an audience of one.
The prospect of TV, Seroxat and Diazepan fazed me: I was beyond unravelling Meltzer on differentiation Of self and object or Rosine Josef Perelberg on ‘Dreaming and Thinking’ Or even the simpler ‘Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States’ So I went out with West Yorkshire on a Friday night.
Nothing dramatic happened; perhaps I’m a little too used To acute wards or worse where chairs fly across rooms, Windows disintegrate and double doors are triple locked And every nurse carries a white panic button and black pager To pinpoint the moment’s crisis.
Normality was a bit of adrenaline, A wild therapy that drew me in, sanity had won the night.
"Are you on your own, love? Come and join us" People kept asking if I was alright and why I had that damned great shoulder bag.
I was introduced To three young men about to tie the knot, a handsome lothario In his midforties winked at me constantly, Dancing with practised ease with sixteen year olds Who all seemed to know him and determined to show him.
Three hours passed in as many minutes and then the crowds Disappeared to catch the last bus home.
The young aren’t As black as they are painted, one I danced with reminded me Of how Margaret would have been at sixteen With straw gold hair Yeats would have immortalised.
People seemed to guess I was haunted by an inner demon I’d tried to leave in the raftered lofts of City Square But failed to.
Girls from sixteen to twenty six kept grabbing me And making me dance and I found my teenage inhibitions Gone at sixty-one and wildly gyrated to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’ Egged on by the throng by the fruit machine and continuous Thumbs-up signs from passing men.
I had to forgo A cheerful group of Aussies were intent on taking me clubbing "I’d get killed or turned into a pumpkin If I get home after midnight" I quipped to their delight But being there had somehow put things right.
Written by Kenneth Koch | Create an image from this poem

One Train May Hide Another

 (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at Least after the first train is gone.
And so when you read Wait until you have read the next line— Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another, So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man, If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another.
And one person's reputation may hide The reputation of another.
One dog may conceal another On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe; One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb May hide a number of other tombs.
In love, one reproach may hide another, One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another, One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column.
One bath may hide another bath As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein One sentence hides another and is another as well.
And in the laboratory One invention may hide another invention, One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting By someone after Matisse.
One waits at the tracks until they pass, These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses.
One identical twin May hide the other.
And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician Gazes at the Valley of the Var.
We used to live there, my wife and I, but One life hid another life.
And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter.
The daughter hides Her own vivacious daughter in turn.
They are in A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother's And has to carry that one, too.
So one hitchhiker May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee Another, too, until one is over-excited.
One love may hide another love or the same love As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts" Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that" And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too.
In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass So you can see what else is there.
At home, no matter where, Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about, The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities.
Reading A Sentimental Journey look around When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see If it is standing there, it should be, stronger And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome.
One sidewalk May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs Hide the beating of drums.
One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree With one and when you get up to leave there is another Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along.
One teacher, One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man May hide another.
Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one.
It can be important To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Lesbos

 Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless, The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine, Coy paper strips for doors -- Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar, And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor, Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear -- Why she is schizophrenic, Her face is red and white, a panic, You have stuck her kittens outside your window In a sort of cement well Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her, The bastard's a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio Clear of voices and history, the staticky Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens.
Their smell! You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail, From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him.
He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, Me and you.
Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell Floats our heads, two venemous opposites, Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan.
You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.
B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through? Gee baby, you are rare.
' You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in, An old pole for the lightning, The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill, Flogged trolley.
The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill, Splitting like quartz into a million bits.
O jewel! O valuable! That night the moon Dragged its blood bag, sick Animal Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal, Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it, Working it like dough, a mulatto body, The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband.
He went on.
Now I am silent, hate Up to my neck, Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes, I am packing the babies, I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid, It is love you are full of.
You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate That opens to the sea Where it drives in, white and black, Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring, Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that.
That is that.
You peer from the door, Sad hag.
'Every woman's a whore.
I can't communicate.
' I see your cute décor Close on you like the fist of a baby Or an anemone, that sea Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.
Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.
Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

The Old Huntsman

 I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed 
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece.
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough It cost me, what with my daft management, And the mean folk as owed and never paid me, And backing losers; and the local bucks Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged The man I was when huntsman to the Squire.
I’d have been prosperous if I’d took a farm Of fifty acres, drove my gig and haggled At Monday markets; now I’ve squandered all My savings; nigh three hundred pound I got As testimonial when I’d grown too stiff And slow to press a beaten fox.
The Fleece! ’Twas the damned Fleece that wore my Emily out, The wife of thirty years who served me well; (Not like this beldam clattering in the kitchen, That never trims a lamp nor sweeps the floor, And brings me greasy soup in a foul crock.
) Blast the old harridan! What’s fetched her now, Leaving me in the dark, and short of fire? And where’s my pipe? ’Tis lucky I’ve a turn For thinking, and remembering all that’s past.
And now’s my hour, before I hobble to bed, To set the works a-wheezing, wind the clock That keeps the time of life with feeble tick Behind my bleared old face that stares and wonders.
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It’s ***** how, in the dark, comes back to mind Some morning of September.
We’ve been digging In a steep sandy warren, riddled with holes, And I’ve just pulled the terrier out and left A sharp-nosed cub-face blinking there and snapping, Then in a moment seen him mobbed and torn To strips in the baying hurly of the pack.
I picture it so clear: the dusty sunshine On bracken, and the men with spades, that wipe Red faces: one tilts up a mug of ale.
And, having stopped to clean my gory hands, I whistle the jostling beauties out of the wood.
I’m but a daft old fool! I often wish The Squire were back again—ah! he was a man! They don’t breed men like him these days; he’d come For sure, and sit and talk and suck his briar Till the old wife brings up a dish of tea.
Ay, those were days, when I was serving Squire! I never knowed such sport as ’85, The winter afore the one that snowed us silly.
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Once in a way the parson will drop in And read a bit o’ the Bible, if I’m bad, And pray the Lord to make my spirit whole In faith: he leaves some ’baccy on the shelf, And wonders I don’t keep a dog to cheer me Because he knows I’m mortal fond of dogs! I ask you, what’s a gent like that to me As wouldn’t know Elijah if I saw him, Nor have the wit to keep him on the talk? ’Tis kind of parson to be troubling still With such as me; but he’s a town-bred chap, Full of his college notions and Christmas hymns.
Religion beats me.
I’m amazed at folk Drinking the gospels in and never scratching Their heads for questions.
When I was a lad I learned a bit from mother, and never thought To educate myself for prayers and psalms.
But now I’m old and bald and serious-minded, With days to sit and ponder.
I’d no chance When young and gay to get the hang of all This Hell and Heaven: and when the clergy hoick And holloa from their pulpits, I’m asleep, However hard I listen; and when they pray It seems we’re all like children sucking sweets In school, and wondering whether master sees.
I used to dream of Hell when I was first Promoted to a huntsman’s job, and scent Was rotten, and all the foxes disappeared, And hounds were short of blood; and officers From barracks over-rode ’em all day long On weedy, whistling nags that knocked a hole In every fence; good sportsmen to a man And brigadiers by now, but dreadful hard On a young huntsman keen to show some sport.
Ay, Hell was thick with captains, and I rode The lumbering brute that’s beat in half a mile, And blunders into every blind old ditch.
Hell was the coldest scenting land I’ve known, And both my whips were always lost, and hounds Would never get their heads down; and a man On a great yawing chestnut trying to cast ’em While I was in a corner pounded by The ugliest hog-backed stile you’ve clapped your eyes on.
There was an iron-spiked fence round all the coverts, And civil-spoken keepers I couldn’t trust, And the main earth unstopp’d.
The fox I found Was always a three-legged ’un from a bag, Who reeked of aniseed and wouldn’t run.
The farmers were all ploughing their old pasture And bellowing at me when I rode their beans To cast for beaten fox, or galloped on With hounds to a lucky view.
I’d lost my voice Although I shouted fit to burst my guts, And couldn’t blow my horn.
And when I woke, Emily snored, and barn-cocks started crowing, And morn was at the window; and I was glad To be alive because I heard the cry Of hounds like church-bells chiming on a Sunday.
Ay, that’s the song I’d wish to hear in Heaven! The cry of hounds was Heaven for me: I know Parson would call me crazed and wrong to say it, But where’s the use of life and being glad If God’s not in your gladness? I’ve no brains For book-learned studies; but I’ve heard men say There’s much in print that clergy have to wink at: Though many I’ve met were jolly chaps, and rode To hounds, and walked me puppies; and could pick Good legs and loins and necks and shoulders, ay, And feet—’twas necks and feet I looked at first.
Some hounds I’ve known were wise as half your saints, And better hunters.
That old dog of the Duke’s, Harlequin; what a dog he was to draw! And what a note he had, and what a nose When foxes ran down wind and scent was catchy! And that light lemon ***** of the Squire’s, old Dorcas— She were a marvellous hunter, were old Dorcas! Ay, oft I’ve thought, ‘If there were hounds in Heaven, With God as master, taking no subscription; And all His bless?d country farmed by tenants, And a straight-necked old fox in every gorse!’ But when I came to work it out, I found There’d be too many huntsmen wanting places, Though some I’ve known might get a job with Nick! .
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I’ve come to think of God as something like The figure of a man the old Duke was When I was turning hounds to Nimrod King, Before his Grace was took so bad with gout And had to quit the saddle.
Tall and spare, Clean-shaved and grey, with shrewd, kind eyes, that twinkled, And easy walk; who, when he gave good words, Gave them whole-hearted; and would never blame Without just cause.
Lord God might be like that, Sitting alone in a great room of books Some evening after hunting.
Now I’m tired With hearkening to the tick-tack on the shelf; And pondering makes me doubtful.
Riding home On a moonless night of cloud that feels like frost Though stars are hidden (hold your feet up, horse!) And thinking what a task I had to draw A pack with all those lame ’uns, and the lot Wanting a rest from all this open weather; That’s what I’m doing now.
And likely, too, The frost’ll be a long ’un, and the night One sleep.
The parsons say we’ll wake to find A country blinding-white with dazzle of snow.
The naked stars make men feel lonely, wheeling And glinting on the puddles in the road.
And then you listen to the wind, and wonder If folk are quite such bucks as they appear When dressed by London tailors, looking down Their boots at covert side, and thinking big.
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This world’s a funny place to live in.
Soon I’ll need to change my country; but I know ’Tis little enough I’ve understood my life, And a power of sights I’ve missed, and foreign marvels.
I used to feel it, riding on spring days In meadows pied with sun and chasing clouds, And half forget how I was there to catch The foxes; lose the angry, eager feeling A huntsman ought to have, that’s out for blood, And means his hounds to get it! Now I know It’s God that speaks to us when we’re bewitched, Smelling the hay in June and smiling quiet; Or when there’s been a spell of summer drought, Lying awake and listening to the rain.
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I’d like to be the simpleton I was In the old days when I was whipping-in To a little harrier-pack in Worcestershire, And loved a dairymaid, but never knew it Until she’d wed another.
So I’ve loved My life; and when the good years are gone down, Discover what I’ve lost.
I never broke Out of my blundering self into the world, But let it all go past me, like a man Half asleep in a land that’s full of wars.
What a grand thing ’twould be if I could go Back to the kennels now and take my hounds For summer exercise; be riding out With forty couple when the quiet skies Are streaked with sunrise, and the silly birds Grown hoarse with singing; cobwebs on the furze Up on the hill, and all the country strange, With no one stirring; and the horses fresh, Sniffing the air I’ll never breathe again.
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You’ve brought the lamp, then, Martha? I’ve no mind For newspaper to-night, nor bread and cheese.
Give me the candle, and I’ll get to bed.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things