Famous One Step Poems by Famous Poets

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The Guardian-Angel

 A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step,...Read more of this...

One Step Backward Taken

 Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun...Read more of this...

Marginalia

 Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up...Read more of this...

The Second Elegy

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...Read more of this...

Come Rest Awhile

 Come, rest awhile, and let us idly stray 
In glimmering valleys, cool and far away. 

Come from the greedy mart, the troubled street, 
And listen to the music, faint and sweet, 

That echoes ever to a listening ear, 
Unheard by those who will not pause to hear­ 

The wayward chimes of memory's pensive bells, 
Wind-blown o'er misty hills and...Read more of this...

Manteau Three

 In the fairy tale the sky
 makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
 to put it 
on. How can it do this?
 It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
 still unconsummated, 
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
 and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books,...Read more of this...

Stay

 For why cometh a time,

When you forget yesterday?

Forgot our vows that we made,

And turn and walk away.
*****
How can a heart forget,

The love we once had?

And turn yourself against me,

And make my soul so sad.
*****
You’ve found someone better,

And you’ll leave us behind;

You think you can change your heart,

And erase your troubled mind.
*****
How can you just quit,

And let our love just...Read more of this...

The Hero

 Mother, let us imagine we are travelling, and passing through a
strange and dangerous country.
You are riding in a palanquin and I am trotting by you on a
red horse.
It is evening and the sun goes down. The waste of Joradighi
lies wan and grey before us. The land is desolate and barren.
You are frightened and thinking-"I know not where we have...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 06: Portrait Of One Dead

 This is the house. On one side there is darkness,
On one side there is light.
Into the darkness you may lift your lanterns—
O, any number—it will still be night.
And here are echoing stairs to lead you downward
To long sonorous halls.
And here is spring forever at these windows,
With roses on the walls.

This is her room. On one side there is music—
On...Read more of this...

Those Were The Days

 The sun came up before breakfast, 
perfectly round and yellow, and we 
dressed in the soft light and shook out 
our long blond curls and waited 
for Maid to brush them flat and place 
the part just where it belonged. 
We came down the carpeted stairs 
one step at a time, in single file, 
gleaming in our sailor suits,...Read more of this...

The Grindstone

 Having a wheel and four legs of its own
Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone
To get it anywhere that I can see.
These hands have helped it go, and even race;
Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,
Not all tke miles it may have thought it went,
Have got it one step from the starting place.
It stands beside the same old apple...Read more of this...

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