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Best Famous Combs Poems

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

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Written by Gregory Corso | Create an image from this poem

Gregory Corso

 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.
C.
the mace the flail the axe Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine Pushkin Dillinger Bogart And hath not St.
Michael a burning sword St.
George a lance David a sling Bomb you are as cruel as man makes you and you're no crueller than cancer All Man hates you they'd rather die by car-crash lightning drowning Falling off a roof electric-chair heart-attack old age old age O Bomb They'd rather die by anything but you Death's finger is free-lance Not up to man whether you boom or not Death has long since distributed its categorical blue I sing thee Bomb Death's extravagance Death's jubilee Gem of Death's supremest blue The flyer will crash his death will differ with the climbor who'll fall to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork Some die by swamp some by sea and some by the bushy-haired man in the night O there are deaths like witches of Arc Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff No-feeling deaths like birth-death sadless deaths like old pain Bowery Abandoned deaths like Capital Punishment stately deaths like senators And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx girls on Vogue covers my own I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is I can only imagine Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview I scope a city New York City streaming starkeyed subway shelter Scores and scores A fumble of humanity High heels bend Hats whelming away Youth forgetting their combs Ladies not knowing what to do with their shopping bags Unperturbed gum machines Yet dangerous 3rd rail Ritz Brothers from the Bronx caught in the A train The smiling Schenley poster will always smile Impish death Satyr Bomb Bombdeath Turtles exploding over Istanbul The jaguar's flying foot soon to sink in arctic snow Penguins plunged against the Sphinx The top of the Empire state arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens St.
Sophia peeling over Sudan O athletic Death Sportive Bomb the temples of ancient times their grand ruin ceased Electrons Protons Neutrons gathering Hersperean hair walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady joining marble helmsmen entering the final ampitheater with a hymnody feeling of all Troys heralding cypressean torches racing plumes and banners and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace Lo the visiting team of Present the home team of Past Lyre and tube together joined Hark the hotdog soda olive grape gala galaxy robed and uniformed commissary O the happy stands Ethereal root and cheer and boo The billioned all-time attendance The Zeusian pandemonium Hermes racing Owens The Spitball of Buddha Christ striking out Luther stealing third Planeterium Death Hosannah Bomb Gush the final rose O Spring Bomb Come with thy gown of dynamite green unmenace Nature's inviolate eye Before you the wimpled Past behind you the hallooing Future O Bomb Bound in the grassy clarion air like the fox of the tally-ho thy field the universe thy hedge the geo Leap Bomb bound Bomb frolic zig and zag The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag Stick angels on your jubilee feet wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat You are due and behold you are due and the heavens are with you hosanna incalescent glorious liaison BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep set forth awful agenda Carrion stars charnel planets carcass elements Corpse the universe tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop over its long long dead Nor From thy nimbled matted spastic eye exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls From thy appellational womb spew birth-gusts of of great worms Rip open your belly Bomb from your belly outflock vulturic salutations Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps along the brink of Paradise O Bomb O final Pied Piper both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz God abandoned mock-nude beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse He cannot hear thy flute's happy-the-day profanations He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax Clogged clarions untrumpet Him Sealed angels unsing Him A thunderless God A dead God O Bomb thy BOOM His tomb That I lean forward on a desk of science an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose half-smart about wars bombs especially bombs That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love That I can't exist in a world that consents a child in a park a man dying in an electric-chair That I am able to laugh at all things all that I know and do not know thus to conceal my pain That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship That I am manifold a man pursuing the big lies of gold or a poet roaming in bright ashes or that which I imagine myself to be a shark-toothed sleep a man-eater of dreams I need not then be all-smart about bombs Happily so for if I felt bombs were caterpillars I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies There is a hell for bombs They're there I see them there They sit in bits and sing songs mostly German songs And two very long American songs and they wish there were more songs especially Russian and Chinese songs and some more very long American songs Poor little Bomb that'll never be an Eskimo song I love thee I want to put a lollipop in thy furcal mouth A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel along the Hollywoodian screen O Bomb in which all lovely things moral and physical anxiously participate O fairylike plucked from the grandest universe tree O piece of heaven which gives both mountain and anthill a sun I am standing before your fantastic lily door I bring you Midgardian roses Arcadian musk Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven Welcome me fear not thy opened door nor thy cold ghost's grey memory nor the pimps of indefinite weather their cruel terrestial thaw Oppenheimer is seated in the dark pocket of Light Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique Einstein his mythmouth a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head Let me in Bomb rise from that pregnant-rat corner nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world O Bomb I love you I want to kiss your clank eat your boom You are a paean an acme of scream a lyric hat of Mister Thunder O resound thy tanky knees BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains go BANG ye lakes ye oceans BING Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM Ubangi BOOM orangutang BING BANG BONG BOOM bee bear baboon ye BANG ye BONG ye BING the tail the fin the wing Yes Yes into our midst a bomb will fall Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind Pinkbombs will blossom Elkbombs will perk their ears Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look Yet not enough to say a bomb will fall or even contend celestial fire goes out Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine all beautiful and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires fierce with moustaches of gold


Written by Antonio Machado | Create an image from this poem

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

 Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart.
And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that it was God I had here inside my heart.
Written by Laure-Anne Bosselaar | Create an image from this poem

Community Garden

  I watch the man bend over his patch,   
a fat gunny sack at his feet.
He combs the earth with his fingers, picks up pebbles around tiny heads of sorrel.
Clouds bruise in, clog the sky, the first fat drops pock-mark the dust.
The man wipes his hands on his chest, opens the sack, pulls out top halves of broken bottles, and plants them, firmly, over each head of sorrel — tilting the necks toward the rain.
His back is drenched, so am I, his careful gestures clench my throat, wrench a hunger out of me I don't understand, can't turn away from.
The last plant sheltered, the man straightens his back, swings the sack over his shouler, looks at the sky, then at me and — as if to end a conversation — says: I know they'd survive without the bottles, I know.
He leaves the garden, plods downhill, blurs away.
I hear myself say it to no one: I never had a father.
Written by Kenneth Slessor | Create an image from this poem

Five Bells

 Time that is moved by little fidget wheels 
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.
Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.
Deep and dissolving verticals of light Ferry the falls of moonshine down.
Five bells Coldly rung out in a machine's voice.
Night and water Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.
Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth, Gone even from the meaning of a name; Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips And hits and cries against the ports of space, Beating their sides to make its fury heard.
Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face In agonies of speech on speechless panes? Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name! But I hear nothing, nothing.
.
.
only bells, Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.
Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life, There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait - Nothing except the memory of some bones Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud; And unimportant things you might have done, Or once I thought you did; but you forgot, And all have now forgotten - looks and words And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off, Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales Of Irish kings and English perfidy, And dirtier perfidy of publicans Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.
Five bells.
Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark, So dark you bore no body, had no face, But a sheer voice that rattled out of air (As now you'd cry if I could break the glass), A voice that spoke beside me in the bush, Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind, Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man, And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found.
But all I heard was words that didn't join So Milton became melons, melons girls, And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night, And in each tree an Ear was bending down, Or something that had just run, gone behind the grass, When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought, The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky, Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.
There's not so many with so poor a purse Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that, Five miles in darkness on a country track, But when you do, that's what you think.
Five bells.
In Melbourne, your appetite had gone, Your angers too; they had been leeched away By the soft archery of summer rains And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind, And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage, The sodden ectasies of rectitude.
I thought of what you'd written in faint ink, Your journal with the sawn-off lock, that stayed behind With other things you left, all without use, All without meaning now, except a sign That someone had been living who now was dead: "At Labassa.
Room 6 x 8 On top of the tower; because of this, very dark And cold in winter.
Everything has been stowed Into this room - 500 books all shapes And colours, dealt across the floor And over sills and on the laps of chairs; Guns, photoes of many differant things And differant curioes that I obtained.
.
.
" In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper, We argued about blowing up the world, But you were living backward, so each night You crept a moment closer to the breast, And they were living, all of them, those frames And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth, And most your father, the old man gone blind, With fingers always round a fiddle's neck, That graveyard mason whose fair monuments And tablets cut with dreams of piety Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment At cargoes they had never thought to bear, These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.
Where have you gone? The tide is over you, The turn of midnight water's over you, As Time is over you, and mystery, And memory, the flood that does not flow.
You have no suburb, like those easier dead In private berths of dissolution laid - The tide goes over, the waves ride over you And let their shadows down like shining hair, But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed; And you are only part of an Idea.
I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in, The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack, And the short agony, the longer dream, The Nothing that was neither long nor short; But I was bound, and could not go that way, But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.
If I could find an answer, could only find Your meaning, or could say why you were here Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice? I looked out my window in the dark At waves with diamond quills and combs of light That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze, And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each, And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells, Five bells.
Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells.
Written by Jonathan Swift | Create an image from this poem

The Ladys Dressing Room

 Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void And Betty otherwise employed, Stole in and took a strict survey Of all the litter as it lay; Whereof, to make the matter clear, An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared, Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.
Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide And turned it round on every side.
On such a point few words are best, And Strephon bids us guess the rest; And swears how damnably the men lie In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.
Now listen while he next produces The various combs for various uses, Filled up with dirt so closely fixt, No brush could force a way betwixt.
A paste of composition rare, Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair; A forehead cloth with oil upon't To smooth the wrinkles on her front.
Here alum flower to stop the steams Exhaled from sour unsavory streams; There night-gloves made of Tripsy's hide, Bequeath'd by Tripsy when she died, With puppy water, beauty's help, Distilled from Tripsy's darling whelp; Here gallypots and vials placed, Some filled with washes, some with paste, Some with pomatum, paints and slops, And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy basin stands, Fouled with the scouring of her hands; The basin takes whatever comes, The scrapings of her teeth and gums, A nasty compound of all hues, For here she spits, and here she spews.
But oh! it turned poor Strephon's bowels, When he beheld and smelt the towels, Begummed, besmattered, and beslimed With dirt, and sweat, and ear-wax grimed.
No object Strephon's eye escapes: Here petticoats in frowzy heaps; Nor be the handkerchiefs forgot All varnished o'er with snuff and snot.
The stockings, why should I expose, Stained with the marks of stinking toes; Or greasy coifs and pinners reeking, Which Celia slept at least a week in? A pair of tweezers next he found To pluck her brows in arches round, Or hairs that sink the forehead low, Or on her chin like bristles grow.
The virtues we must not let pass, Of Celia's magnifying glass.
When frighted Strephon cast his eye on't It shewed the visage of a giant.
A glass that can to sight disclose The smallest worm in Celia's nose, And faithfully direct her nail To squeeze it out from head to tail; (For catch it nicely by the head, It must come out alive or dead.
) Why Strephon will you tell the rest? And must you needs describe the chest? That careless wench! no creature warn her To move it out from yonder corner; But leave it standing full in sight For you to exercise your spite.
In vain, the workman shewed his wit With rings and hinges counterfeit To make it seem in this disguise A cabinet to vulgar eyes; For Strephon ventured to look in, Resolved to go through thick and thin; He lifts the lid, there needs no more: He smelt it all the time before.
As from within Pandora's box, When Epimetheus oped the locks, A sudden universal crew Of humane evils upwards flew, He still was comforted to find That Hope at last remained behind; So Strephon lifting up the lid To view what in the chest was hid, The vapours flew from out the vent.
But Strephon cautious never meant The bottom of the pan to grope And foul his hands in search of Hope.
O never may such vile machine Be once in Celia's chamber seen! O may she better learn to keep "Those secrets of the hoary deep"! As mutton cutlets, prime of meat, Which, though with art you salt and beat As laws of cookery require And toast them at the clearest fire, If from adown the hopeful chops The fat upon the cinder drops, To stinking smoke it turns the flame Poisoning the flesh from whence it came; And up exhales a greasy stench For which you curse the careless wench; So things which must not be exprest, When plumpt into the reeking chest, Send up an excremental smell To taint the parts from whence they fell, The petticoats and gown perfume, Which waft a stink round every room.
Thus finishing his grand survey, Disgusted Strephon stole away Repeating in his amorous fits, Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits! But vengeance, Goddess never sleeping, Soon punished Strephon for his peeping: His foul Imagination links Each dame he see with all her stinks; And, if unsavory odors fly, Conceives a lady standing by.
All women his description fits, And both ideas jump like wits By vicious fancy coupled fast, And still appearing in contrast.
I pity wretched Strephon blind To all the charms of female kind.
Should I the Queen of Love refuse Because she rose from stinking ooze? To him that looks behind the scene Satira's but some pocky queen.
When Celia in her glory shows, If Strephon would but stop his nose (Who now so impiously blasphemes Her ointments, daubs, and paints and creams, Her washes, slops, and every clout With which he makes so foul a rout), He soon would learn to think like me And bless his ravished sight to see Such order from confusion sprung, Such gaudy tulips raised from dung.


Written by Louise Gluck | Create an image from this poem

The Garden

 How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;
And their uncessant Labours see
Crown'd from some single Herb or Tree,
Whose short and narrow verged Shade
Does prudently their Toyles upbraid;
While all Flow'rs and all Trees do close
To weave the Garlands of repose.
Fair quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence thy Sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busie Companies of Men.
Your sacred Plants, if here below, Only among the Plants will grow.
Society is all but rude, To this delicious Solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green.
Fond Lovers, cruel as their Flame, Cut in these Trees their Mistress name.
Little, Alas, they know, or heed, How far these Beauties Hers exceed! Fair Trees! where s'eer you barkes I wound, No Name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our Passions heat, Love hither makes his best retreat.
The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase, The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase, Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that She might Laurel grow.
And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a Nymph, but for a Reed.
What wond'rous Life in this I lead! Ripe Apples drop about my head; The Luscious Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren, and curious Peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on Melons, as I pass, Insnar'd with Flow'rs, I fall on Grass.
Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness: The Mind, that Ocean where each kind Does streight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other Worlds, and other Seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green Thought in a green Shade.
Here at the Fountains sliding foot, Or at some Fruit-tress mossy root, Casting the Bodies Vest aside, My Soul into the boughs does glide: There like a Bird it sits, and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver Wings; And, till prepar'd for longer flight, Waves in its Plumes the various Light.
Such was that happy Garden-state, While Man there walk'd without a Mate: After a Place so pure, and sweet, What other Help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a Mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two Paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone.
How well the skilful Gardner drew Of flow'rs and herbes this Dial new; Where from above the milder Sun Does through a fragrant Zodiack run; And, as it works, th' industrious Bee Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholsome Hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs!
Written by Emile Verhaeren | Create an image from this poem

THE WIND

Crossing the infinite length of the moorland,
Here comes the wind,
The wind with his trumpet that Heralds November;
Endless and infinite, crossing the downs,
Here comes the wind
That teareth himself and doth fiercely dismember;
Which heavy breaths turbulent smiting the towns,
The savage wind comes, the fierce wind of November!


Each bucket of iron at the wells of the farmyards,
Each bucket and pulley, it creaks and it wails;
By cisterns of farmyards, the pulleys and pails
They creak and they cry,
The whole of sad death in their melancholy.


The wind, it sends scudding dead leaves from the birches
Along o'er the water, the wind of November,
The savage, fierce wind;
The boughs of the trees for the birds' nests it searches,
To bite them and grind.
The wind, as though rasping down iron, grates past,
And, furious and fast, from afar combs the cold
And white avalanches of winter the old.
The savage wind combs them so furious and fast.
The wind of November.


From each miserable shed
The patched garret-windows wave wild overhead
Their foolish, poor tatters of paper and glass.
As the savage, fierce wind of November doth pass!
And there on its hill
Of dingy and dun-coloured turf, the black mill,
Swift up from below, through the empty air slashing,
Swift down from above, like a lightning-stroke flashing,
The black mill so sinister moweth the wind.
The savage, fierce wind of November!


The old, ragged thatches that squat round their steeple,
Are raised on their roof-poles, and fall with a clap,
In the wind the old thatches and pent-houses flap,
In the wind of November, so savage and hard.
The crosses—and they are the arms of dead people—
The crosses that stand in the narrow churchyard
Fall prone on the sod
Like some great flight of black, in the acre of God.


The wind of November!
Have you met him, the savage wind, do you remember?
Did he pass you so fleet,
—Where, yon at the cross, the three hundred roads meet—
With distressfulness panting, and wailing with cold?
Yea, he who breeds fears and puts all things to flight,
Did you see him, that night
When the moon he o'erthrew—when the villages, old
In their rot and decay, past endurance and spent,
Cried, wailing like beasts, 'neath the hurricane bent?


Here comes the wind howling, that heralds dark weather,
The wind blowing infinite over the heather.
The wind with his trumpet that heralds November!
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Stings

 Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed, Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet, The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I Have a thousand clean cells between us, Eight combs of yellow cups, And the hive itself a teacup, White with pink flowers on it, With excessive love I enameled it Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.
' Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells Terrify me, they seem so old.
What am I buying, wormy mahogany? Is there any queen at all in it? If there is, she is old, Her wings torn shawls, her long body Rubbed of its plush ---- Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.
I stand in a column Of winged, unmiraculous women, Honey-drudgers.
I am no drudge Though for years I have eaten dust And dried plates with my dense hair.
And seen my strangeness evaporate, Blue dew from dangerous skin.
Will they hate me, These women who only scurry, Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover? It is almost over.
I am in control.
Here is my honey-machine, It will work without thinking, Opening, in spring, like an industrious virgin To scour the creaming crests As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.
A third person is watching.
He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or with me.
Now he is gone In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat.
Here is his slipper, here is another, And here the square of white linen He wore instead of a hat.
He was sweet, The sweat of his efforts a rain Tugging the world to fruit.
The bees found him out, Molding onto his lips like lies, Complicating his features.
They thought death was worth it, but I Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, With her lion-red body, her wings of glass? Now she is flying More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet Over the engine that killed her ---- The mausoleum, the wax house.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

The Revealer

 (ROOSEVELT)

He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion … And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.
The palms of Mammon have disowned The gift of our complacency; The bells of ages have intoned Again their rhythmic irony; And from the shadow, suddenly, ’Mid echoes of decrepit rage, The seer of our necessity Confronts a Tyrian heritage.
Equipped with unobscured intent He smiles with lions at the gate, Acknowledging the compliment Like one familiar with his fate; The lions, having time to wait, Perceive a small cloud in the skies, Whereon they look, disconsolate, With scared, reactionary eyes.
A shadow falls upon the land,— They sniff, and they are like to roar; For they will never understand What they have never seen before.
They march in order to the door, Not knowing the best thing to seek, Nor caring if the gods restore The lost composite of the Greek.
The shadow fades, the light arrives, And ills that were concealed are seen; The combs of long-defended hives Now drip dishonored and unclean; No Nazarite or Nazarene Compels our questioning to prove The difference that is between Dead lions—or the sweet thereof.
But not for lions, live or dead, Except as we are all as one, Is he the world’s accredited Revealer of what we have done; What You and I and Anderson Are still to do is his reward; If we go back when he is gone— There is an Angel with a Sword.
He cannot close again the doors That now are shattered for our sake; He cannot answer for the floors We crowd on, or for walls that shake; He cannot wholly undertake The cure of our immunity; He cannot hold the stars, or make Of seven years a century.
So Time will give us what we earn Who flaunt the handful for the whole, And leave us all that we may learn Who read the surface for the soul; And we’ll be steering to the goal, For we have said so to our sons: When we who ride can pay the toll, Time humors the far-seeing ones.
Down to our nose’s very end We see, and are invincible,— Too vigilant to comprehend The scope of what we cannot sell; But while we seem to know as well As we know dollars, or our skins, The Titan may not always tell Just where the boundary begins.
Written by Conrad Aiken | Create an image from this poem

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 01: As evening falls

 As evening falls,
And the yellow lights leap one by one
Along high walls;
And along black streets that glisten as if with rain,
The muted city seems
Like one in a restless sleep, who lies and dreams
Of vague desires, and memories, and half-forgotten pain .
.
.
Along dark veins, like lights the quick dreams run, Flash, are extinguished, flash again, To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain And die away .
.
.
As evening falls, A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,— A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare .
.
.
The lovers rise, the harlot combs her hair, The dead man's face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight, The watchman climbs the stair .
.
.
The bank defaulter leers at a chaos of figures, And runs among them, and is beaten down; The sick man coughs and hears the chisels ringing; The tired clown Sees the enormous crowd, a million faces, Motionless in their places, Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush and tear .
.
.
The dancer smooths her hair, Laces her golden slippers, and runs through the door To dance once more, Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise, Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes.
As darkness falls The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach no end.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things