Famous Long Fruit Poems

Famous Long Fruit Poems. Long Fruit Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Fruit long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 AN INDIAN LEGEND.

[This very fine Ballad was also first given in the Horen.]
(MAHADEVA is one of the numerous names of Seeva, the destroyer,--
the great god of the Brahmins.)


MAHADEVA,* Lord of earth

For the sixth time comes below,

As a man of mortal birth,--

Like him, feeling joy and woe.

Hither loves he to repair,

And his power behind to leave;

If to punish or to spare,

Men as man he'd fain perceive.
And when he the town as a trav'ller hath seen,
Observing the mighty, regarding the mean,
He quits it, to go on his journey, at eve.


He was leaving now the place,

When an outcast met his eyes,--

Fair in form, with painted face,--

Where some straggling dwellings rise.

"Maiden, hail!"--"Thanks! welcome here!

Stay!--I'll join thee in the road.'

"Who art thou?"--"A Bayadere,

And this house is love's abode."
The cymbal she hastens to play for the dance,
Well skill'd in its mazes the sight to entrance,
Then by her with grace is the nosegay bestow'd.



Then she draws him, as in play,

O'er the threshold eagerly:

"Beauteous stranger, light as day

Thou shalt soon this cottage see.

I'll refresh thee, if thou'rt tired,

And will bathe thy weary feet;

Take whate'er by thee's desired,

Toying, rest, or rapture sweet."--
She busily seeks his feign'd suff'rings to ease;
Then smiles the Immortal; with pleasure he sees
That with kindness...
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 Who's she, that one in your arms?

She's the one I carried my bones to
and built a house that was just a cot
and built a life that was over an hour
and built a castle where no one lives
and built, in the end, a song
to go with the ceremony.

Why have you brought her here?
Why do you knock on my door
with your little stores and songs?

I had joined her the way a man joins
a woman and yet there was no place
for festivities or formalities
and these things matter to a woman
and, you see, we live in a cold climate
and are not permitted to kiss on the street
so I made up a song that wasn't true.
I made up a song called Marriage.

You come to me out of wedlock
and kick your foot on my stoop
and ask me to measure such things?

Never. Never. Not my real wife.
She's my real witch, my fork, my mare,
my mother of tears, my skirtful of hell,
the stamp of my sorrows, the stamp of my bruises
and also the children she might bear
and also a private place, a body of bones
that I would honestly buy, if I could buy,
that I would marry, if I could marry.

And should I torment you for that?
Each man...
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 In Ionia whence sprang old poets' fame,
From whom that sea did first derive her name,
The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,
Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,
Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,
First unto Athens brought philosophy:
In this fair region on a goodly plain,
Stretching her bounds unto the bord'ring main,
The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,
Smiling to see the ocean billows play:
Latmus, where young Endymion used to keep
His fairest flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
To whom Silvanus often would resort,
At barley-brake to see the Satyrs sport;
And when rude Pan his tabret list to sound,
To see the fair Nymphs foot it in a round,
Under the trees which on this mountain grew,
As yet the like Arabia never knew;
For all the pleasures Nature could devise
Within this plot she did imparadise;
And great Diana of her special grace
With vestal rites had hallowed all the place.
Upon this mount there stood a stately grove,
Whose reaching arms to clip the welkin strove,
Of tufted cedars, and the branching pine,
Whose bushy tops themselves do so entwine,
As seem'd, when Nature first this work begun,
She then conspir'd against the piercing sun;
Under whose covert (thus divinely made)
Ph{oe}bus' green laurel flourish'd in the shade,
Fair Venus' myrtle, Mars his warlike fir,
Minerva's olive, and the weeping myrrh,
The patient palm, which...
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 Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass
Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was
That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be?
For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing.
--Our lady of love by you is unbeholden;
For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden
Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we
That love, we know her more fair than anything.
--Is she a queen, having great gifts to give?
--Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live
Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain,
Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears;
And when she bids die he shall surely die.
And he shall leave all things under the sky
And go forth naked under sun and rain
And work and wait and watch out all his years.

--Hath she on earth no place of habitation?
--Age to age calling, nation answering nation,
Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say;
For if she be not in the spirit of men,
For if in the inward soul she hath no place,
In vain they cry unto her, seeking her face,
In vain their mouths make much of her; for they
Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again.

--O ye that...
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 The glory of God in creation and providence.

My soul, thy great Creator praise:
When clothed in his celestial rays,
He in full majesty appears,
And, like a robe, his glory wears.

The heav'ns are for his curtains spread,
The unfathomed deep he makes his bed.
Clouds are his chariot when he flies
On winged storms across the skies.

Angels, whom his own breath inspires,
His ministers, are flaming fires;
And swift as thought their armies move
To bear his vengeance or his love.

The world's foundations by his hand
Are poised, and shall for ever stand;
He binds the ocean in his chain,
Lest it should drown the earth again.

When earth was covered with the flood,
Which high above the mountains stood,
He thundered, and the ocean fled,
Confined to its appointed bed.

The swelling billows know their bound,
And in their channels walk their round;
Yet thence conveyed by secret veins,
They spring on hills and drench the plains.

He bids the crystal fountains flow,
And cheer the valleys as they go;
Tame heifers there their thirst allay,
And for the stream wild asses bray.

From pleasant trees which shade the brink,
The lark and linnet light to drink
Their songs the lark and linnet raise,
And chide our silence in his praise.

PAUSE I.

God from his cloudy cistern pours
On the parched earth enriching showers;
The grove, the garden, and...
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 I

I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken. 

II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.

I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And...
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Every angel is terrifying. And yet alas
I invoked you almost deadly birds of the soul
knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias
when one of you veiling his radiance stood at the front door  
slightly disguised for the journey no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now perilous from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart beating
higher and higher would bear us to death. Who are you?

Early successes Creation's pampered favorites
mountain-ranges peaks growing red in the dawn
of all Beginning -pollen of the flowering godhead
joints of pure light corridors stairways thrones
space formed from essence shields made of ecstasy storms
of emotion whirled into rapture and suddenly alone:
mirrors which scoop up the beauty that has streamed from their face
and gather it back into themselves entire.

But we when moved by deep feeling evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter like a perfume. Though someone may tell us:
Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime
is filled with you¡­ -what does it matter? he can't contain us
we vanish inside him and around him. And those who are beautiful
oh who can retain them?...
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  II. — TO PENSHURST.                Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told ; Or stair, or courts ;  but stand'st an ancient pile, And these grudg'd at, art reverenced the while. Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, Of wood, of water ;  therein thou art fair. Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport : Thy mount, to which thy Dryads do resort,That taller tree, which of a nut was set, At his great birth, where all the Muses met. There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames ; And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke The lighter fauns, to reach thy lady's oak. Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there, That never fails to serve thee season'd deer,Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed ; The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed. Each bank doth yield thee conies ; and the tops Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sydneys copp's, To crown thy open table, doth provide The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side : The painted partridge lies in ev'ry field, And for thy mess is willing to be kill'd.Fat...
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 I 

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit 
and the long journey towards oblivion. 

The apples falling like great drops of dew 
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves. 

And it is time to go, to bid farewell 
to one's own self, and find an exit 
from the fallen self. 

II 

Have you built your ship of death, O have you? 
O build your ship of death, for you will need it. 

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall 
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth. 

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes! 
Ah! can't you smell it? 
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul 
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold 
that blows upon it through the orifices. 

III 

And can a man his own quietus make 
with a bare bodkin? 

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make 
a bruise or break of exit for his life; 
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus? 

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder 
ever a quietus make? 

IV 

O let us talk of quiet that we know, 
that we can know, the deep and...
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 Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her uterus an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall prick herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew...
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 What tree may not the fig be gathered from?  
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew to be a little boyish girl
My brother could not always leave at home.
But that beginning was wiped out in fear
The day I swung suspended with the grapes,
And was come after like Eurydice
And brought down safely from the upper regions;
And the life I live now's an extra life
I can waste as I please on whom I please.
So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,
And give myself out of two different ages,
One of them five years younger than I look-

One day my brother led me to a glade
Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,
Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,
And heavy on her heavy hair behind,
Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.
Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.
One bunch of them, and there began to be
Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
The way they grew round...
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 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 ‘Orgasm 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...
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 My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,
As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;
As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,
To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.

I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow
Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set;
Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow
The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.

Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound,
To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er,
The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around
With their insatiate need to wonder and adore.

The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands,
The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine,
Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beaded strands
A radiant visage rose, serene, august, divine.

A noise of summer wind astir in starlit trees,
A song where sensual love's delirium rose and fell,
Were rites that moved my soul more than the devotee's
When from the blazing choir rings out the altar bell.

I woke amid the pomp of a proud palace; writ
In tinted arabesque on walls that gems o'erlay,
The names of caliphs were who once held court in it,
Their baths and bowers were mine to...
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 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald
Nonetheless for being...
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 At the chill high tide of the night,
At the turn of the fluctuant hours,
When the waters of time are at height,
In a vision arose on my sight
The kingdoms of earth and the powers.

In a dream without lightening of eyes
I saw them, children of earth,
Nations and races arise,
Each one after his wise,
Signed with the sign of his birth.

Sound was none of their feet,
Light was none of their faces;
In their lips breath was not, or heat,
But a subtle murmur and sweet
As of water in wan waste places.

Pale as from passionate years,
Years unassuaged of desire,
Sang they soft in mine ears,
Crowned with jewels of tears,
Girt with girdles of fire.

A slow song beaten and broken,
As it were from the dust and the dead,
As of spirits athirst unsloken,
As of things unspeakable spoken,
As of tears unendurable shed.

In the manifold sound remote,
In the molten murmur of song,
There was but a sharp sole note
Alive on the night and afloat,
The cry of the world's heart's wrong.

As the sea in the strait sea-caves,
The sound came straitened and strange;
A noise of the rending of graves,
A tidal thunder of waves,
The music of death and of change.

"We have waited so long," they say,
"For a sound of the God, for a breath,
For a ripple...
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