Written by
Billy Collins |
The early sun is so pale and shadowy,
I could be looking up at a ghost
in the shape of a window,
a tall, rectangular spirit
looking down at me in bed,
about to demand that I avenge
the murder of my father.
But the morning light is only the first line
in the play of this day--
the only day in existence--
the opening chord of its long song,
or think of what is permeating
the thin bedroom curtains
as the beginning of a lecture
I will listen to until it is dark,
a curious student in a V-neck sweater,
angled into the wooden chair of his life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling.
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Written by
Amy Lowell |
"`I can't get
out', said the starling."
Sterne's
`Sentimental Journey'.
Forever the impenetrable wall
Of self confines my poor rebellious soul,
I never see the towering white clouds roll
Before a sturdy wind, save through the small
Barred window of my jail. I live a thrall
With all my outer life a clipped, square hole,
Rectangular; a fraction of a scroll
Unwound and winding like a worsted ball.
My thoughts are grown uneager and depressed
Through being always mine, my fancy's wings
Are moulted and the feathers blown away.
I weary for desires never guessed,
For alien passions, strange imaginings,
To be some other person for a day.
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Written by
John Berryman |
The taxi makes the vegetables fly.
'Dozo kudasai,' I have him wait.
Past the bright lake up into the temple,
shoes off, and
my right leg swings me left.
I do survive beside the garden I
came seven thousand mile the other way
supplied of energies all to see, to see.
Differ them photographs, plans lie:
how big it is!
austere a sea rectangular of sand by the oiled mud wall,
and the sand is not quite white: granite sand, grey,
—from nowhere can one see all the stones—
but helicopters or a Brooklyn reproduction
will fix that—
and the fifteen changeless stones in their five worlds
with a shelving of moving moss
stand me the thought of the ancient maker priest.
Elsewhere occurs—I remember—loss.
Through awes & weathers neither it increased
nor did one blow of all his stone & sand thought die.
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