10 Best Famous Sockets Poems

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

• All Famous Sockets Poems

 WEBSTER was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

 When I cannot look at your face 
I look at your feet. 
Your feet of arched bone, 
your hard little feet. 
I know that they support you, 
and that your sweet weight 
rises upon them. 
Your waist and your breasts, 
the doubled purple 
of your nipples, 
the sockets of your eyes 
that have just flown away, 
your wide fruit mouth, 
your red tresses, 
my little tower. 
But I love your feet 
only because they walked 
upon the earth and upon 
the wind and upon the waters, 
until they found me.

 The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters, 
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons, 
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass. 
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every time in a tantrum.
Tanagers embarrassed by their flashiness,
and pelicans whose delight it is to clown;
who coast for fun on the strong tidal currents
in and out among the mangrove islands
and stand on the sand-bars drying their damp gold wings
on sun-lit evenings.
Enormous turtles, helpless and mild,
die and leave their barnacled shells on the beaches,
and their large white skulls with round eye-sockets
twice the size of a man's.
The palm trees clatter in the stiff breeze
like the bills of the pelicans. The tropical rain comes down
to freshen the tide-looped strings of fading shells:
Job's Tear, the Chinese Alphabet, the scarce Junonia, 
parti-colored pectins and Ladies' Ears,
arranged as on a gray rag of rotted calico, 
the buried Indian Princess's skirt;
with these the monotonous, endless, sagging coast-line
is delicately ornamented.

Thirty or more buzzards are drifting down, down, down,
over something they have spotted in the swamp,
in circles like stirred-up flakes of sediment
sinking through water.
Smoke from woods-fires filters fine blue solvents.
On stumps and dead trees the charring is like black velvet.
The mosquitoes
go hunting to the tune of their ferocious obbligatos.
After dark, the fireflies map the heavens in the marsh
until the moon rises.
Cold white, not bright, the moonlight is coarse-meshed,
and the careless, corrupt state is all black specks
too far apart, and ugly whites; the poorest
post-card of itself.
After dark, the pools seem to have slipped away.
The alligator, who has five distinct calls:
friendliness, love, mating, war, and a warning--
whimpers and speaks in the throat
of the Indian Princess.

 [How different people and different animals look upon the moon: showing that each creature finds in it his own mood and disposition]


The Old Horse in the City

The moon's a peck of corn. It lies 
Heaped up for me to eat. 
I wish that I might climb the path 
And taste that supper sweet. 

Men feed me straw and scanty grain 
And beat me till I'm sore. 
Some day I'll break the halter-rope 
And smash the stable-door, 

Run down the street and mount the hill 
Just as the corn appears. 
I've seen it rise at certain times 
For years and years and years. 


What the Hyena Said

The moon is but a golden skull, 
She mounts the heavens now, 
And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms 
Are wreathed around her brow. 

The Moon-Worms are a doughty race: 
They eat her gray and golden face. 
Her eye-sockets dead, and molding head: 
These caverns are their dwelling-place. 

The Moon-Worms, serpents of the skies, 
From the great hollows of her eyes 
Behold all souls, and they are wise: 
With tiny, keen and icy eyes, 
Behold how each man sins and dies. 

When Earth in gold-corruption lies 
Long dead, the moon-worm butterflies 
On cyclone wings will reach this place — 
Yea, rear their brood on earth's dead face. 


What the Snow Man Said

The Moon's a snowball. See the drifts 
Of white that cross the sphere. 
The Moon's a snowball, melted down 
A dozen times a year. 

Yet rolled again in hot July 
When all my days are done 
And cool to greet the weary eye 
After the scorching sun. 

The moon's a piece of winter fair 
Renewed the year around, 
Behold it, deathless and unstained, 
Above the grimy ground! 

It rolls on high so brave and white 
Where the clear air-rivers flow, 
Proclaiming Christmas all the time 
And the glory of the snow! 


What the Scare-crow Said

The dim-winged spirits of the night 
Do fear and serve me well. 
They creep from out the hedges of 
The garden where I dwell. 

I wave my arms across the walk. 
The troops obey the sign, 
And bring me shimmering shadow-robes 
And cups of cowslip-wine. 

Then dig a treasure called the moon, 
A very precious thing, 
And keep it in the air for me 
Because I am a King. 


What Grandpa Mouse Said

The moon's a holy owl-queen. 
She keeps them in a jar 
Under her arm till evening, 
Then sallies forth to war. 

She pours the owls upon us. 
They hoot with horrid noise 
And eat the naughty mousie-girls 
And wicked mousie-boys. 

So climb the moonvine every night 
And to the owl-queen pray: 
Leave good green cheese by moonlit trees 
For her to take away. 

And never squeak, my children, 
Nor gnaw the smoke-house door: 
The owl-queen then will love us 
And send her birds no more. 


The Beggar Speaks

"What Mister Moon Said to Me."

Come, eat the bread of idleness, 
Come, sit beside the spring: 
Some of the flowers will keep awake, 
Some of the birds will sing. 

Come, eat the bread no man has sought 
For half a hundred years: 
Men hurry so they have no griefs, 
Nor even idle tears: 

They hurry so they have no loves: 
They cannot curse nor laugh — 
Their hearts die in their youth with neither 
Grave nor epitaph. 

My bread would make them careless, 
And never quite on time — 
Their eyelids would be heavy, 
Their fancies full of rhyme: 

Each soul a mystic rose-tree, 
Or a curious incense tree: 
Come, eat the bread of idleness, 
Said Mister Moon to me. 


What the Forester Said

The moon is but a candle-glow 
That flickers thro' the gloom: 
The starry space, a castle hall: 
And Earth, the children's room, 
Where all night long the old trees stand 
To watch the streams asleep: 
Grandmothers guarding trundle-beds: 
Good shepherds guarding sheep.

 Images leap with him from branch to branch. His eyes
brighten, his head cocks, he pauses under a green bough,
alert.
And when I see him I want to hide him somewhere.
The other wood is past the hill. But he will enter it, and find the particular maple. He will walk through the door of the maple, and his arms will pull out of their sockets, and the blood will bubble from his mouth, his ears, his *****, and his nostrils. His body will rot. His body will dry in ropey tatters. Maybe he will grow his body again, three years later. Maybe he won't.
There is nothing to do, to keep this from happening.
It occurs to me that the greatest gentleness would put a bullet into his bright eye. And when I look in his eye, it is not his eye that I see.

 He hangs on dangling handholds
As the train sways and careens
Endless nondescript buildings unfold
Their secrets as the tired warrior returns.

The day is over the night falls
Thickly through the barricaded windows
The man’s sleepy head lolls
On his shoulder in a dream disturbed.

The days are a hard white collar brawl
The sleepless night stretches ahead
There’s no space for a fly to crawl
The morning paper is still unread.

You who sleep standing
Don’t drool on his shirt
It will cost him a lot of spending
If you pour on him all your dirt.

Plastic bags, umbrellas, Tiffin
The rack is full and the seats overflow
What is that smell Peter Griffin?
Is it the Sewri sewers overflowing?

Beware of pickers of pockets
Who surround and slash with knife
Careful of your arm’s sockets
Lest they dislocate and misery make life.

Welcome to Bombay’s bustling trains
Hold on fast as if you are insane!

When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half awakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while
Exchanges a casual passing word
Standing in the Rembrandtesque clefts
And the multipled ma'm'selle trips out:
Neat and slick.
They say you meet the girls at parties
And get deeper than swine in orgies.

When at five-thirty
The fisherman's chilled chips
Lie soggy and heeled under the Arch
Where patchy transparent wrappers cling
To slippery hands jingling the inexact change
That mounted the trustful fisherman's credit:
The stub legged fisher of diplomat
And cool cat
And the prostitutes' confidant;
Each shivering pimp's warming pan.

Then at five-thirty
The bowels of Hyde Park
Improperly growled and shunted
And shook the half-night-long
Lazily swaggering double deckers,
Suddenly as in a rude recollection,
To break and pull, grind and swing away
And around, drawing the knotting air after
Curling and unfurling on the pavements.

And at five-thirty
The prostrate mindful old refugee
Dares not stir
Nor cares to wake and swallow
The precisely half-downed bottle
Of Coke clinging to the pearly dew
Nor lick the clasp knife clean
Lying bare by a tin of' skewed top
Corned beef, incisively culled

Look! that garden all spruced up
An incongruous lot of hair on that bald pate
No soul stirs in there but the foul air
No parking alongside but from eight to eight.
Learning so hard and late
No time to scratch the bald pate.
        At five-thirty-one
        A minute just gone
The thud is on, the sledge-hammer yawns
And in the back of ears, strange noises
As from afar and a million feet tramp.
One infinitesimal particle knocks another
And the whirl begins in a silent rage
And the human heart beats harder
While in and around, this London
This atomic mammoth roams
In the wastes of wars and tumbling empires.

 Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
the suffering brother of the wood walls,
the forty-eight keys of the typewriter
each an eyeball that is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a dog coffin made of Naugahyde,
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels and toes,
the fireplace
a knife waiting for someone to pick it up,
the sofa, exhausted with the exertion of a whore,
the phone
two flowers taking root in its crotch,
the doors
opening and closing like sea clams,
the lights
poking at me,
lighting up both the soil and the laugh.
The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart.
Each day I feed the world out there
although birds explode
right and left.
I feed the world in here too,
offering the desk puppy biscuits.
However, nothing is just what it seems to be.
My objects dream and wear new costumes,
compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands
and the sea that bangs in my throat.

 Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
-- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

 I
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies 
white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness 
sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The 
air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, 
and beside it stand
two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.

See! She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair.
She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill,
between the geranium stalks. He laughs, and crumples 
his paper
as he leans forward to look. "The Basket Filled with 
Moonlight",
what a title for a book!
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops.

He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums. He 
is beating
his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse. She 
sits
on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap. And tap! She 
cracks a nut.
And tap! Another. Tap! Tap! Tap! The 
shells ricochet upon the roof,
and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear.
"It is very *****," thinks Peter, "the basket was 
empty, I'm sure.
How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?"
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, 
and the roof glitters
like ice.

II
Five o'clock. The geraniums are very 
gay in their crimson array.
The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs 
goes Peter
to pay his morning's work with a holiday.
"Annette, it is I. Have you finished? Can 
I come?"
Peter jumps through the window.
"Dear, are you alone?"
"Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done. This 
gold thread
is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have
seen me bankrupt. Sit down, now tell me, is your story 
going well?"
The golden dome glittered in the orange of the 
setting sun. On the walls,
at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles,
and coffin palls. All stiff with rich embroidery, and 
stitched with
so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds
new-opened on their stems.

Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky.
"No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread 
of such a red.
My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison. Heigh-ho! See 
my little
pecking dove? I'm in love with my own temple. Only 
that halo's wrong.
The colour's too strong, or not strong enough. I don't 
know. My eyes
are tired. Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable. I 
won't do
any more. I promise. You tyrannise, Dear, 
that's enough. Now sit down
and amuse me while I rest."
The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor, 
and begin to climb
the opposite wall.

Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting,
and undulant in the orange glow. His senses flow towards 
her,
where she lies supine and dreaming. Seeming drowned in 
a golden halo.
The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear.

He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid 
hands.
His lips are hot and speechless. He woos her, quivering, 
and the room
is filled with shadows, for the sun has set. But she 
only understands
the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one 
colour
on another. She does not see that this is the same, and 
querulously murmurs
his name.
"Peter, I don't want it. I am tired."
And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed.
There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky.

III
"Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full 
moon. I must be alone."
"How soon the moon is full again! Annette, 
let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love,
I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You 
write
`No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange, 
my Dear,
that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would 
marriage
strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied
the rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the 
whole of me,
you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat.
Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you 
know it. I cannot
feed my life on being a poet. Let me stay."
"As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me 
if you do. It will
crush your heart and squeeze the love out."
He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about."
"Only remember one thing from to-night. My 
work is taxing and I must
have sight! I MUST!"
The clear moon looks in between the geraniums. On 
the wall,
the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman
by a silver thread.

They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, 
for there
are no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises 
are cased
in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The 
basket
is heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites 
and throws them away.
They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce
over the edge and disappear. But she is here, quietly 
sitting
on the window-sill, eating human eyes.
The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, 
and the roof shines
like ice.

IV
How hot the sheets are! His skin is 
tormented with pricks,
and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye. It lights 
the sky with blood,
and drips blood. And the drops sizzle on his bare skin, 
and he smells them
burning in, and branding his body with the name "Annette".
The blood-red sky is outside his window now. Is 
it blood or fire?
Merciful God! Fire! And his heart wrenches 
and pounds "Annette!"
The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets, 
gets to the edge,
bounces over and disappears.
The bellying clouds are red as they swing over 
the housetops.

V
The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is 
liquid with moonlight.
How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice! Only two 
black holes swallow
the brilliance of the moon. Deflowered windows, sockets 
without sight.
A man stands before the house. He sees 
the silver-blue moonlight,
and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium 
red.

Annette!