10 Best Famous Ladders Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Ladders poems. This is a select list of the best famous Ladders poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Ladders poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of ladders poems.

• All Famous Ladders Poems

 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.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing dear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

 Down the street as I was drifting with the city's human tide, 
Came a ghost, and for a moment walked in silence by my side -- 
Now my heart was hard and bitter, and a bitter spirit he, 
So I felt no great aversion to his ghostly company. 
Said the Shade: `At finer feelings let your lip in scorn be curled, 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, has ever been the motto for the world.' 

And he said: `If you'd be happy, you must clip your fancy's wings, 
Stretch your conscience at the edges to the size of earthly things; 
Never fight another's battle, for a friend can never know 
When he'll gladly fly for succour to the bosom of the foe. 
At the power of truth and friendship let your lip in scorn be curled -- 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, remember, is the motto of the world. 

`Where Society is mighty, always truckle to her rule; 
Never send an `i' undotted to the teacher of a school; 
Only fight a wrong or falsehood when the crowd is at your back, 
And, till Charity repay you, shut the purse, and let her pack; 
At the fools who would do other let your lip in scorn be curled, 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, remember, that's the motto of the world. 

`Ne'er assail the shaky ladders Fame has from her niches hung, 
Lest unfriendly heels above you grind your fingers from the rung; 
Or the fools who idle under, envious of your fair renown, 
Heedless of the pain you suffer, do their worst to shake you down. 
At the praise of men, or censure, let your lip in scorn be curled, 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, remember, is the motto of the world. 

`Flowing founts of inspiration leave their sources parched and dry, 
Scalding tears of indignation sear the hearts that beat too high; 
Chilly waters thrown upon it drown the fire that's in the bard; 
And the banter of the critic hurts his heart till it grows hard. 
At the fame your muse may offer let your lip in scorn be curled, 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, remember, that's the motto of the world. 

`Shun the fields of love, where lightly, to a low and mocking tune, 
Strong and useful lives are ruined, and the broken hearts are strewn. 
Not a farthing is the value of the honest love you hold; 
Call it lust, and make it serve you! Set your heart on nought but gold. 
At the bliss of purer passions let your lip in scorn be curled -- 
`Self and Pelf', my friend, shall ever be the motto of the world.' 

Then he ceased and looked intently in my face, and nearer drew; 
But a sudden deep repugnance to his presence thrilled me through; 
Then I saw his face was cruel, by the look that o'er it stole, 
Then I felt his breath was poison, by the shuddering of my soul, 
Then I guessed his purpose evil, by his lip in sneering curled, 
And I knew he slandered mankind, by my knowledge of the world. 

But he vanished as a purer brighter presence gained my side -- 
`Heed him not! there's truth and friendship 
in this wondrous world,' she cried, 
And of those who cleave to virtue in their climbing for renown, 
Only they who faint or falter from the height are shaken down. 
At a cynic's baneful teaching let your lip in scorn be curled! 
`Brotherhood and Love and Honour!' is the motto for the world.'

 The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,
Returning to the drifted snow, the rink
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with ladders, by the church
The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,
Are not aware that in the sandy time
To come, the evil waste of history
Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow
Of that same hill: when all their company
Will have been irrecoverably lost,
These men, this particular three in brown
Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say
By their configuration with the trees,
The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,
What place, what time, what morning occasion
Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds
At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,
Thence to return as now we see them and
Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill
Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.

 Right down the shocked street with a
 siren-blast
That sends all else skittering to the
 curb,
Redness, brass, ladders and hats hurl
 past,
 Blurring to sheer verb,

Shift at the corner into uproarious gear
And make it around the turn in a squall
 of traction,
The headlong bell maintaining sure and
 clear,
 Thought is degraded action!

Beautiful, heavy, unweary, loud,
 obvious thing!
I stand here purged of nuance, my
 mind a blank.
All I was brooding upon has taken
 wing,
 And I have you to thank.

As you howl beyond hearing I carry you
 into my mind,
Ladders and brass and all, there to
 admire
Your phoenix-red simplicity, enshrined
 In that not extinguished fire.

 Under my bowels, yellow with smoke,
it waits.
Under my eyes, those milk bunnies,
it waits.
It is waiting.
It is waiting.
Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse.
Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover.
When truth comes spilling out like peas
it hangs up the phone.
When the child is soothed and resting on the breast
it is my other who swallows Lysol.
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet
it is my other who sits in a ball and cries.
My other beats a tin drum in my heart.
My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep.
My other cries and cries and cries
when I put on a cocktail dress.
It cries when I prick a potato.
It cries when I kiss someone hello.
It cries and cries and cries
until I put on a painted mask
and leer at Jesus in His passion.
Then it giggles.
It is a thumbscrew.
Its hatred makes it clairvoyant.
I can only sign over everything,
the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels,
the soul, the family tree, the mailbox.

Then I can sleep.

Maybe.

 I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
a vast landmark, a volcano
poking its head through the clouds,
Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.

I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.

In your offhand, mocking way
you've invited me into your chest.
Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.
I'm supposed to go in with a torch
or maybe hot water bottles
& defrost it by hand
as one defrosts an old refrigerator.
It will shudder & sigh
(the icebox to the insomniac).

Oh there's nothing like love between us.
You're the mountain, I am climbing you.
If I fall, you won't be all to blame,
but you'll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.

 I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
archaic,
not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper
into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,
and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,
and a blue river traveling
in opposite directions.
They would not stop, resolution of will
and helplessness, as the eye
is helpless
when the image forms itself, upside-down, backward,
driving up into
the mind, and the world
unfastens itself
from the deep ocean of the given. . .Justice, aspen
leaves, mother attempting
suicide, the white night-flying moth
the ants dismantled bit by bit and carried in
right through the crack
in my wall. . . .How helpless
the still pool is,
upstream,
awaiting the gold blade
of their hurry. Once, indoors, a child,
I watched, at noon, through slatted wooden blinds,
a man and woman, naked, eyes closed,
climb onto each other,
on the terrace floor,
and ride--two gold currents
wrapping round and round each other, fastening,
unfastening. I hardly knew
what I saw. Whatever shadow there was in that world
it was the one each cast
onto the other,
the thin black seam
they seemed to be trying to work away
between them. I held my breath.
as far as I could tell, the work they did
with sweat and light
was good. I'd say
they traveled far in opposite
directions. What is the light
at the end of the day, deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,
the corridors, light that is no longer light, no longer clarifies,
illuminates, antique, freed from the body of
that air that carries it. What is it
for the space of time
where it is useless, merely
beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance
one from the other
and slept, outstretched,
on the warm tile
of the terrace floor,
smiling, faces pressed against the stone.

 The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, 
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to 
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble 
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening to the news, wondering how to know a 
hundred miles downwind
if and when to make a run for it and where, then a coming bolt awake 
at seven
when the roofers we've been waiting for since winter sent their ladders 
shrieking up our wall,
we still know less than nothing: the utility company continues making 
little of the accident,
the slick federal spokesmen still have their evasions in some semblance 
of order.
Surely we suspect now we're being lied to, but in the meantime, there 
are the roofers,
setting winch-frames, sledging rounds of tar apart, and there I am, on 
the curb across, gawking.

I never realized what brutal work it is, how matter-of-factly and harrow-
ingly dangerous.
The ladders flex and quiver, things skid from the edge, the materials are 
bulky and recalcitrant.
When the rusty, antique nails are levered out, their heads pull off; the 
underroofing crumbles.
Even the battered little furnace, roaring along as patient as a donkey, 
chokes and clogs,
a dense, malignant smoke shoots up, and someone has to fiddle with a 
cock, then hammer it,
before the gush and stench will deintensify, the dark, Dantean broth 
wearily subside.
In its crucible, the stuff looks bland, like licorice, spill it, though, on 
your boots or coveralls,
it sears, and everything is permeated with it, the furnace gunked with 
burst and half-burst bubbles,
the men themselves so completely slashed and mucked they seem almost 
from another realm, like trolls.
When they take their break, they leave their brooms standing at attention 
in the asphalt pails,
work gloves clinging like Br'er Rabbit to the bitten shafts, and they slouch 
along the precipitous lip,
the enormous sky behind them, the heavy noontime air alive with shim-
mers and mirages.

Sometime in the afternoon I had to go inside: the advent of our vigil was 
upon us.
However much we didn't want to, however little we would do about it, 
we'd understood:
we were going to perish of all this, if not now, then soon, if not soon, 
then someday.
Someday, some final generation, hysterically aswarm beneath an at-
mosphere as unrelenting as rock,
would rue us all, anathematize our earthly comforts, curse our surfeits 
and submissions.
I think I know, though I might rather not, why my roofers stay so clear 
to me and why the rest, 
the terror of that time, the reflexive disbelief and distancing, all we should 
hold on to, dims so.
I remember the president in his absurd protective booties, looking 
absolutely unafraid, the fool.
I remember a woman on the front page glaring across the misty Sus-
quehanna at those looming stacks.
But, more vividly, the men, silvered with glitter from the shingles, cling-
ing like starlings beneath the eaves.
Even the leftover carats of tar in the gutter, so black they seemed to suck 
the light out of the air.
By nightfall kids had come across them: every sidewalk on the block was 
scribbled with obscenities and hearts.

 Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin 
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written 
only when the poet is clad in black underwear. 

But that's Jorie for you. Always cracking wise, always where
the action is, the lights, and the sexy lingerie. 
Poems, she said, were meant to be written 
on the run, like ladders on the stockings of a gun moll 
at a bar. Jorie had to introduce the other poet with the fabulous hair
that night. She'd have preferred to work out at the gym. 

She'd have preferred to work out with Jim. 
She'd have preferred to be anywhere 
but here, where young men gawked at her hair 
and old men swooned at the thought of her lingerie. 
"If you've seen one, you've seen the moll," 
Jorie said when asked about C. "Everything she's written

is an imitation of E." Some poems can be written 
only when the poet has fortified herself with gin. 
Others come easily to one as feckless as Moll 
Flanders. Jorie beamed. "It happened here," 
she said. She had worn her best lingerie, 
and D. made the expected pass at her. "My hair 

was big that night, not that I make a fetish of hair, 
but some poems must not be written 
by bald sopranos." That night she lectured on lingerie 
to an enthusiastic audience of female gymnasts and gin-
drinking males. "Utopia," she said, "is nowhere." 
This prompted one critic to declare that, of them all,

all the poets with hair, Jorie was the fairest moll. 
The New York Times voted her "best hair."
Iowa City was said to be the place where 
all aspiring poets went, their poems written 
on water, with blanks instead of words, a tonic
of silence in the heart of noise, and a vision of lingerie

in the bright morning -- the lingerie to be worn by a moll 
holding a tumbler of gin, with her hair 
wet from the shower and her best poems waiting to be written.

 My Grandpapa lives in a wonderful house
With a great many windows and doors,
There are stairs that go up, and stairs that go down,
And such beautiful, slippery floors.
But of all of the rooms, even mother's and mine,
And the bookroom, and parlour and all,
I like the green dining-room so much the best
Because of its ceiling and wall.
Right over your head is a funny round hole
With apples and pears falling through;
There's a big bunch of grapes all purply and sweet,
And melons and pineapples too.
They tumble and tumble, but never come down
Though I've stood underneath a long while
With my mouth open wide, for I always have hoped
Just a cherry would drop from the pile.
No matter how early I run there to look
It has always begun to fall through;
And one night when at bedtime I crept in to see,
It was falling by candle-light too.
I am sure they are magical fruits, and each one
Makes you hear things, or see things, or go
Forever invisible; but it's no use,
And of course I shall just never know.
For the ladder's too heavy to lift, and the chairs
Are not nearly so tall as I need.
I've given up hope, and I feel I shall die
Without having accomplished the deed.
It's a little bit sad, when you seem very near
To adventures and things of that sort,
Which nearly begin, and then don't; and you know
It is only because you are short.