"sheaf" poems
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems--not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
5.8k
Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
And said: ‘The rose-tree and the apple-tree
Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
Of the great harvest-marshal, the year’s chief,
Victorious Summer; aye, and ’neath warm sea
Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.
All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.’
4.8k
Get out. Get out of here.
If anybody poisoned the waterhole
it was certainly you.
Put the squish of your smile away
Why sheaf the knife in a lipsticked rictus
if it's going to end up in my back all the same?
Oh, spare me the theatrics.
If you only mean me harm
I'd rather know.
So that I can curtsey
and take the high road.
Mentor, if you taught me anything
during that winter
it was not to be weak.
And so you have my best regards.
And now you may get out.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 7:49 PM UTC
Dad didn't want a coffin.
"Cremate my last remains,"
And so we did.
Cool and dry,
His ashes, urned,
Lie beneath the sod
And prairie sky
Waiting some clarion call,
Some trill of hope,
Bright, re-constitutional,
Faith-affirming.
Mother's wishes rise before us:
No crematory,
No embalmer.
Just her blanket,
Just a hole
Dug beside our Dad.
The law would let her wish be true,
But her children won't.
We're searching coffin plans.
Reverently grim,
Lovingly deferential,
Dutifully rebellious,
Solemn this journey be.
Pine boards to honor her thrift
But smooth and tight,
Rope handles, fitted lid,
Perhaps a little trim,
Perhaps a sheaf of wheat carved
For the old farmer she was.
We'll bury her,
Wrapped in her blanket,
Tucked securely in pine
Beside my father's ashes.
Like a grain of wheat she'll lie
Silent in her final say
Inside our final say
Waiting Resurrection Day.
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 6:11 PM UTC
Shancoduff My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look North towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.
My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves
In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.
The sleety winds ****** the the rushy beards of Shancoduff
While the cattle - drovers sheltering in the Featherna Bush
Look up and say: "Who owns them hungry hills
That the water - hen and snip must have forsaken?
A poet? Then by heavens he must be poor."
I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?
3.2k
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
3k
THE noon was as a crystal bowl
The red wine mantled through;
Around it like a Viking's beard
The red-gold hazes blew,
As tho' he quaffed the ruddy draught
While swift his galley flew.
This mighty Viking was the Night;
He sailed about the earth,
And called the merry harvest-time
To sing him songs of mirth;
And all on earth or in the sea
To melody gave birth.
The valleys of the earth were full
To rocky lip and brim
With golden grain that shone and sang
When woods were still and dim,
A little song from sheaf to sheaf-
Sweet Plenty's cradle-hymn.
O gallant were the high tree-tops,
And gay the strain they sang!
And cheerfully the moon-lit hills
Their echo-music rang!
And what so proud and what so loud
As was the ocean's clang!
But O the little humming song
That sang among the sheaves!
'Twas grander than the airy march
That rattled thro' the leaves,
And prouder, louder, than the deep,
Bold clanging of the waves:
'The lives of men, the lives of men
With every sheaf are bound!
We are the blessing which annuls
The curse upon the ground!
And he who reaps the Golden Grain
The Golden Love hath found.'
2.9k
Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
2.7k
You see that sheaf of slender books
Upon the topmost shelf,
At which no browser ever looks,
Because they're by . . . myself;
They're neatly bound in navy blue,
But no one ever heeds;
Their print is clear and candid too,
Yet no one ever reads.
Poor wistful books! How much they cost
To me in time and gold!
I count them now as labour lost,
For none I ever sold;
No copy could I give away,
For all my friends would shrink,
And look at me as if to say:
"What waste of printer's ink!"
And as I gaze at them on high,
Although my eyes are sad,
I cannot help but breathe a sigh
To think what joy I had -
What ecstasy as I would seek
To make my rhyme come right,
And find at last the phrase unique
Flash fulgent in my sight.
Maybe that rapture was my gain
Far more than cheap success;
So I'll forget my striving vain,
And blot out bitterness.
Oh records of my radiant youth,
No broken heart I'll rue,
For all my best of love and truth
Is there, alive in you.
2.6k
Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
Gathers and garners from all things that are
Their silent penetrative loveliness?
O’er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
And chase night’s gloom, as thou the spirit’s grief.
2.5k
Dear John,
There are things about my life,
that are not understood,
not by me,
not by anyone.
It's the emergency room on a tsumani night,
It's the silent room after surgery failed,
It's the silence in the dark after everyone has gone to bed.
It is not the calm after the storm,
It is the wreckage in the aftermath,
It is the middle of the tornado.
I am the bandit on the highway of love,
I am the runaway bride from hell,
I am the scared, the fear, the innocent child.
Dear John,
I am the carer in the giver,
and I want to give you all i can give,
I want to give you all that life can give,
But i need to give myself air to breathe,
like a fine red wine,
that i would down like it was moonshine.
Dear John,
I am the old oak tree faltering in the breeze,
I am the wheat sheaf, tall and ready to be cut down,
I am the end of the beginning.
But i feel you and it feels me,
and i am so involved but so distant,
I am blue and i am black,
but yet i am bright and i am shiny.
Dear John,
Please be the ***** socks on my bedroom floor,
Please be the voice that tells me to stop using the hot water,
Please be the cup that doth runneth over.
This and that, this and that, this and that.
Dear John,
be the moisturizer on my skin,
be the sublime and the settled,
be the heaven and show me the light there.
I wish i could peel off my skin,
and let you all in,
and see the beauty beneath and my wonderous treasures within.
Dear John,
don't give up,
I am here,
though i am not.
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 8:56 PM UTC
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
2k
Her little face is like a walnut shell
With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns
Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns;
And all about her clings an old, sweet smell.
Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl.
Well might her bonnets have been born on her.
Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother
The subject of a strong religious call?
In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs,
All twinkling smiles and texts and pious tales,
Her mittened hands, that ever give or pray,
Bearing a sheaf of tracts, a bag of buns:
A wee old maid that sweeps the Bridegroom's way,
Strong in a cheerful trust that never fails.
1.9k
COLD, HARD flesh - a very lonely girl in a room filled with fluttering moths and fully-functional nooses
- Makes a game plan, in an effort to:
- penetrate your wavering, wandering, yet wholly conscious mind
(The fate - the fear - lurks in the futility, the fragility, of your unsuspecting ears)
- Equipped with: an anchor (the rock-climbing kind, in order to avoid a metaphor), followed by some paper (and a pen - the use of my blood as script seems overly dramatic), and - a concoction of incredible (and edible!!) proportions
THE GOAL:
- To become the smallest presence possible, to take up the tiniest amount of space in the real and imagined world, and to in turn envelope your very existence - like a Sunday driver in rush hour
- with emphasis on:
The slope of your neck - I could mount my anchor into it and climb for days; I could nest in your ****** Youth cut when I reach the top, I could build the world's smallest fire with the world's saddest hands
STEP ONE:
When secured in predesignated cocoon, I will unleash the first sheaf - a perforated edge - and enclose a minuscule fragment of my still-breathing soul (for your keychain, perhaps, but preferably your pocket)
STEP TWO:
I will mail you a fraction (incidentally, a subject I still can't grasp) every week until:
- I have decreased in size with each turn, I get smaller and smaller until my tangibility disappears entirely and the only presence left of me is a slip that reads:
- apply to areas affected (only as directed)
Wait! No, not only that- my very own subconscious now rests inside your "thinking cap"
- INTRODUCING: Your every day monotony, now littered with:
- 17 scratched mix CDs you didn't want to listen to
- 4 dogs I secretly liked (and only you knew)
- a bright pink dumpster, largely livable
- a rusted mailbox with an ocean in full
- soundless Skype calls in stolen sweaters
- alphabet soup with undiscernable letters
- the unfaltering presence of a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness - confused with the very small and haunted town I couldn't leave to see you - and last but not least -
The ceaseless, repeated chorus of "you belong to me", like an immortal fly in an endless August dream
Sep 15, 2013
Sep 15, 2013 at 12:52 AM UTC
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
Day, when my crown'd estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken'd every living bloom,
And blurr'd the splendour of the sun;
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might'st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look'd the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro' time,
And cancell'd nature's best: but thou,
Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows
Thro' clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
1.7k
Harvest moon
mellow-magic-full
Quiet and smiling
Ritual-keeper
sheaf-reaper
time-and-scythe
Prehistoric
gold
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 8:05 AM UTC
Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs,
For, old or new,
All that is good in them belongs
Only to you;
And, singing as when all was young,
They will recall
Those others, lived but left unsung--
The bent of all.
1.5k
She seemed like a nice, pretty girl, so I had invited her to dinner in a small Italian restaurant. Over aperitifs (spritzer for her, scotch for me) she told me about herself. She was twenty years old, she came from Baltimore, her name was Lucinda, but her family called her Lulu. She had a passion for poetry, in fact she had just finished writing a poem, that very day: would I like to hear it?
In the circumstances, only one answer was possible.
I tried to look suitably impressed, and when eventually it was over, I applauded. "What imagination," I said, "What talent!" She smiled, reached inside her handbag and brought out a sheaf of dog-eared manuscripts. "Dear God," I thought, "There's more!" Oh well; there was still the possibility that after the liqueurs she might ask me back to her place, for *** (Or, as she would probably pronounce it, "coffee".)
So on, and on, she went. The little lady had a talent all right: she could recite and eat simultaneously. Neither the pasta puttanesca nor the saltimbocca di vitello could slow down her almost-rhyming couplets. At last, the papers were all returned to the handbag. She looked at me expectantly. "So, do you think I could get my poetry published?" I paused, to consider my answer. But the pause was too long: she looked right into my eyes, sensed my mood, and in that moment knew what the answer had to be.
During the dessert she crumpled; large, heavy tears fell silently into her zabaglione. Poor lamb! I'd never wanted to hurt her. She didn't deserve the destruction of her dreams.
Who does?
Feb 25, 2012
Feb 25, 2012 at 2:56 PM UTC
She stood breast high amid the corn
Clasp’d by the golden light of morn,
Like the sweetheart of the sun,
Who many a glowing kiss had won.
On her cheek an autumn flush,
Deeply ripen’d;—such a blush
In the midst of brown was born,
Like red poppies grown with corn.
Round her eyes her tresses fell,
Which were blackest none could tell,
But long lashes veil’d a light,
That had else been all too bright.
And her hat, with shady brim,
Made her tressy forehead dim;—
Thus she stood amid the stooks,
Praising God with sweetest looks:—
Sure, I said, Heav’n did not mean,
Where I reap thou shouldst but glean,
Lay thy sheaf adown and come,
Share my harvest and my home.
ሩት
እስከ ጡቷ ከፍታ
የተንጣለለ የበቆሎ ማሳ ውስጥ ገብታ፣
የማለዳው ወርቃማ ጮራ
በዙሪያዋ ዘሃውን እያደራ፣
ሠምጣ ቆመች፣ በእጹብ ድንቅ ግርማ
እንደፀሐዩ ፍቅረኛ ደጋግማ
በጨረር ተስማ ተሸላልማ፡፡
ልክ ከበቆሎ የማሳ ዳራ
ብቅእዳለቸ ዓይን የምታስር አበባ
የተገኘች ከጠይሞች ጎራ፣
እንደበሠለ ፍሬ እንደጎምራ
ጉንጮችዋ ቀልተዋል አፍራ!
ብርቅዬ ጥቁር ሐር
የፀጉሯ ዛላ ተዘናፍሎ
ይስተዋላል ቅንጦቿዋን
ደገፍ ደገፍ ብሎ፣
ግና የዓይኖቿ ሽፋሽፍት
ብርሃን እምቅ አድርገዋል ድብቅ
አሊያ በጣም የሚያንፀባርቅ!
የኮፍያዋ ጥላ ፊቷን አጠይሞት
ከበቆሎው ምርት ቆማለች
ሐአሴት እያደረገች፣
አምላኳን እያመሰገነች!
በርግጥም አልኩ
አምላክ አላሰበም
እኔ ሳጭድ እሷ እንድትሸከም፡፡
በክርንሽ የሸከፍሽውን ለቀሽ
ወደኔ ነይ፣
ምርቴና ቤቴን ተካፈይ!
(ቶማሰ ሁድ) //
Feb 2, 2016
Feb 2, 2016 at 8:05 AM UTC
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
Day, when my crown'd estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken'd every living bloom,
And blurr'd the splendour of the sun;
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might'st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look'd the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro' time,
And cancell'd nature's best: but thou,
Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows
Thro' clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
1.1k
When you fold your legs
and hug your knees;
a pearl encased
in a sheaf of leaves.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 7:01 PM UTC
Sun bleached sheaf
SCHOOL's OUT scrawled
in pencil, as if an uncertain
secret message of summer,
FOUND!
©DWE072013
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 1:50 AM UTC
down the Dearne on a digestive,
up the Thames on a Bourbon,
down the Sheaf on a Garibaldi,
up the Don on a Flapjack.
down the Tyne on a Brandy Snap,
up the Wear on a Hobnob,
down the Severn on a Ginger Nut,
up the Lune on a Custard Creme.
down the Styx on a sunflower seed bun,
up the Lethe on a lemongrass stick,
down the Rhine on a Raisin Slice,
up the Seine on a Belgian Pancake.
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 5:46 AM UTC
Grim Raven- vaunt at the right time
To salvage my corpse from my last lie
I honored my fractured vision
And forgot my righteous mission
I played imprudently with demons
Brewing many wagers with the abyss
I slipped at the cap ‘sheaf of madness
And was beset by my fellow hellions
They all want me to help them
And can’t see that I’m a weapon
It’s obligatory I’ll eventually explode
I’m sorry this was never my goal
Mar 26, 2012
Mar 26, 2012 at 2:02 AM UTC