Robert Francis Poems
A collection of select Robert Francis famous poems that were written by Robert Francis or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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by
Francis, Robert
Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice-
Both different blues. And hills row after row
Are colored blue according to how for.
You know the bluejay's double-blur device
Shows best when there are no green leaves to show.
And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star....Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,
Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand,
Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,
Anything under the sun to...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Those who have touched it or been touched by it
Or brushed by something that the vine has brushed,
Or burning it, have stood where the sly smoke
Has touched them-Know the meaning of its name.
The leaf is smooth. Its green is innocence.
A clean, unblemished leaf, glossy when young.
A leaf the unobserving might overlook
And the observing find too prosperous.
I've seen a vine...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
The beautiful is fair. The just is fair.
Yet one is commonplace and one is rare,
One everywhere, one scarcely anywhere.
So fair unfair a world. Had we the wit
To use the surplus for the deficit,
We'd make a fairer fairer world of it....Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
A seated statue of himself he seems.
A bronze slowness becomes him. Patently
The page he contemplates he doesn't see.
The lesson, the long lesson, has been summer.
His mind holds summer, as his skin holds sun.
For once the homework, all of it, was done.
What were the crops, where were the fiery fields
Where for so many days so many hours
The sun...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
O Man! what Inspiration was thy Guide,
Who taught thee Light and Air thus to divide;
To let in all the useful Beams of Day,
Yet force, as subtil Winds, without thy Shash to stay;
T'extract from Embers by a strange Device,
Then polish fair these Flakes of solid Ice;
Which, silver'd o'er, redouble all in place,
And give...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-subtle its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.
A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence.
Words should be looked through, should be windows.
The best word were invisible.
The poem is the thing the poet thinks.
If the impossible were not,
And...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
A wind's word, the Hebrew Hallelujah.
I wonder they never gave it to a boy
(Hal for short) boy with wind-wild hair.
It means Praise God, as well it should since praise
Is what God's for. Why didn't they call my father
Hallelujah instead of Ebenezer?
Eben, of course, but christened Ebenezer,
Product of Nova Scotia (hallelujah).
Daniel, a country doctor, was his father
And my father...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
1
Searock his tower above the sea,
Searock he built, not ivory.
Searock as well his haunted art
Who gave to plunging hawks his hearts.
2
He loved to stand upon his head
To demonstrate he was not dead.
Ah, if his poems misbehave
'Tis only to defy the grave.
3
This exquisite patrician bird
Grooming a neatly folded wing
Guarded for years the Sacred Word.
A while he sang then ceased to...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
My mind matches this understand land.
Outdoors the pencilled tree, the wind-carved drift,
Indoors the constant fire, the careful thrift
Are facts that I accept and understand.
I have brought in red berries and green boughs-
Berries of black alder, boughs of pine.
They and the sunlight on them, both are mine.
I need no florist flowers in my house.
Having lived here the years that are...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Amherst never had a witch
O Coos or of Grafton
But once upon a time
There were three old women.
One wore a small beard
And carried a big umbrella.
One stood in the middle
Of the road hailing cars.
One drove an old cart
All over the town collecting junk.
They were not weird sisters,
No relation to one another.
A duly accredited witch I
Never heard Amherst ever had
But as...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
The first speaker said
Fear fire. Fear furnaces
Incinerators, the city dump
The faint scratch of a match.
The second speaker said
Fear water. Fear drenching rain
Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp
Day and the flush toilet.
The third speaker said
Fear wind. And it needn't be
A hurricane. Drafts, open
Windows, electric fans.
The fourth speaker said
Fear knives. Fear any sharp
Thing, machine, shears
Scissors, lawnmowers.
The fifth speaker...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
From where I stand the sheep stand still
As stones against the stony hill.
The stones are gray
And so are they.
And both are weatherworn and round,
Leading the eye back to the ground.
Two mingled flocks -
The sheep, the rocks.
And still no sheep stirs from its place
Or lifts its Babylonian face....Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
backroad leafmold stonewall chipmunk
underbrush grapevine woodchuck shadblow
woodsmoke cowbarn honeysuckle woodpile
sawhorse bucksaw outhouse wellsweep
backdoor flagstone bulkhead buttermilk
candlestick ragrug firedog brownbread
hilltop outcrop cowbell buttercup
whetstone thunderstorm pitchfork steeplebush
gristmill millstone cornmeal waterwheel
watercress buckwheat firefly jewelweed
gravestone groundpine windbreak bedrock
weathercock snowfall starlight cockcrow...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
How lush, how loose, the uninhibited squash is.
If ever hearts (and these immoderate leaves
Are vegetable hearts) were worn on sleeves,
The squash's are. In green the squash vine gushes.
The flowers are cornucopias of summer,
Briefly exuberant and cheaply golden.
And if they make a show of being hidden,
Are open promiscuously to every comer.
Let the squash be what it was doomed to be
By...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
The winter apples have been picked, the garden turned.
Rain and wind have picked the maple leaves and gone.
The last of them now bank the house or have been burned.
None are left upon the trees or on the lawn.
Green and tall as ever it grew in spring the grass
Grows not too tall, will not be cut again this year.
Geraniums in...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Bull by day
And dozes by night.
Would that the bulldozer
Dozed all the time
Would that the bulldozer
Would rust in peace.
His watchword
Let not a witch live
His battle cry
Better dead than red.
Give me if you must
The bull himself
But not the bulldozer
No, not the bulldozer....Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Lingo of birds was easier than lingo of peasants-
they were elusive, though, the birds, for excellent reasons.
He thought of Virgil, Virgil who wasn't there to chat with.
History he never forgave for letting Latin
lapse into Italian, a renegade jabbering
musical enough but not enough to call music
So he conversed with stones, imperial and papal.
Even the preposterous popes he could condone
a moment...Read more of this...
by
Francis, Robert
Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berry bush
in sun, and I am one.
Such merriment and such sobriety--
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk--
was this not always my true style?
Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?
To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together--for this I have...Read more of this...