Poetry quotes

Give me hand for the dances, Ripples at Philae, in and out, And lips, my Lesbian, Wall flowers that once were flame.

Your hair is my Carthage And my arms the bow, And our words arrows To shoot the stars

Who from that misty sea Swarm to destroy us.

Now the little by-path Which leadeth to love Is again joyful with its many; And the great highway From love Is without passers.

I tried to put a bird in a cage.

O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage!

I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

We walked in your father’s grove and saw the great oaks lying with roots ripped from the ground.

Winter has spent this snow out of envy, but spring is here!

He sits at the breakfast table in his yellow hair and disdains even the sun walking outside in spangled slippers:

Brother! —if we were rich we’d stick our chests out and hold our heads high!

It is dreams that have destroyed us.

There is no more pride in horses or in rein holding. We sit hunched together brooding our fate.

There is no more pride in horses or in rein holding. We sit hunched together brooding our fate.

Well⁠— all things turn bitter in the end

whether you choose the right or the left way and— dreams are not a bad thing.

Sweep the house clean, hang fresh curtains in the windows put on a new dress and come with me! The elm is scattering its little loaves of sweet smells from a white sky!

Who shall hear of us in the time to come? Let him say there was a burst of fragrance from black branches.

Artsybashev is a Russian. I am an American.

A wind might blow a lotus petal over the pyramids—but not this wind.

Summer is a dried leaf.

Leaves stir this way then that on the baked asphalt, the wheels of motor cars rush over them,— gas smells mingle with leaf smells.

The priestess has passed into her tomb. The stone has taken up her spirit!

Granite over flesh: who will deny its advantages?

Your death?—water spilled upon the ground— though water will mount again into rose-leaves— but you?—would hold life still, even as a memory, when it is over. Benevolence is rare.

Your death?—water spilled upon the ground— though water will mount again into rose-leaves— but you?—would hold life still, even as a memory, when it is over.

Benevolence is rare.

Climb about this sarcophagus, read what is writ for you in these figures, hard as the granite that has held them with so soft a hand the while your own flesh has been fifty times through the guts of oxen,—read!

The county physician is a damned fool and you can go to hell!

You could have closed the door when you came in; do it when you go out. I’m tired.

Now? Why— whirl-pools of orange and purple flame feather twists of chrome on a green ground funneling down upon the steaming phallus-head of the mad sun himself— blackened crimson! Now?

Love is like water or the air my townspeople; it cleanses, and dissipates evil gases. It is like poetry too and for the same reasons.

Love is so precious my townspeople that if I were you I would have it under lock and key⁠— like the air or the Atlantic or like poetry!

Old men who have studied every leg show in the city Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music— polished or fleeced skulls that stand before the whole theater in silent attitudes of attention,— old men who have taken precedence over young men and …

She grubbed this earth with her own hands, domineered over this grass plot, blackguarded her oldest son into buying it, lived here fifteen years, attained a final loneliness and—

If you can bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out.

You exquisite chunk of mud Kathleen—just like any other chunk of mud! —especially in April! Curl up round their shoes when they try to step on you, spoil the polish! I shall laugh till I am sick at their amazement.

If you can bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out.

You exquisite chunk of mud

Kathleen—just like any other chunk of mud! —especially in April! Curl up round their shoes when they try to step on you, spoil the polish! I shall laugh till I am sick at their amazement. Do they expect the ground to be always solid?

This day has blossomed long enough. I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze instead which will at least warm our hands and stir up the talk. I think we have kept fair time.

Time is a green orchid.

If you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together.

If I were young I would try a new alignment— alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!— Childhood companions linked two and two criss-cross: four, three, two, one. Back into self, tentacles withdrawn. Feel about in warm self-flesh. Since childhood, since childhood!

Childhood is a toad in the garden, a happy toad.

All toads are happy and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana!

… stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine,— like no leaf that ever was— edge the bare garden.

Again I reply to the triple winds running chromatic fifths of derision outside my window: Play louder. You will not succeed.

I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you. And the wind, as before, fingers perfectly its derisive music.

For heaven’s sake I mustn’t forget the halves of green peppers stuffed with cream cheese and whole walnuts!

I have had my dream⁠—like others⁠— and it has come to nothing

, so that I remain now carelessly with feet planted on the ground and look up at the sky— feeling my clothes about me, the weight of my body in my shoes, the rim of my hat, air passing in and out at my nose—and …

I feel the caress of my own fingers on my own neck as I place my collar and think pityingly of the kind women I have known.

Some leaves hang late, some fall before the first frost⁠—so goes the tale of winter branches and old bones.

O my grey hairs! You are truly white as plum blossoms.

O my grey hairs! You are truly white as plum blossoms.

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am, by what devious means do you contrive to remain idle? Teach me, O master.

Leaves are greygreen, the glass broken, bright green.

You say love is this, love is that: Poplar tassels, willow tendrils the wind and the rain comb, tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip— branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.

An old willow with hollow branches slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils and sang:

An old willow with hollow branches slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils and sang:

Love is a young green willow shimmering at the bare wood’s edge.

The dayseye hugging the earth in August, ha!

One turns the thing over in his hand and looks at it from the rear: brownedged, green and pointed scales armor his yellow. But turn and turn, the crisp petals remain brief, translucent, greenfastened, barely touching at the edges: blades of limpid seashell.

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow! It is not a color. It is summer!

It is the wind on a willow, the lap of waves, the shadow under a bush, a bird, a bluebird, three herons, a dead hawk rotting on a pole— Clear yellow!

Nowhere.

Both sides grow older.

And you may be sure not one leaf will lift itself from the ground and become fast to a twig again.

With excellent precision the tulip bed inside the iron fence upreared its gaudy yellow, white and red, rimmed round with grass, reposedly.

The world begins again!

Not wholly insufflated the blackbirds in the rain upon the dead topbranches of the living tree, stuck fast to the low clouds, notate the dawn. Their shrill cries sound announcing appetite and drop among the bending roses and the dripping grass.

But blueflags are blossoming in the reeds which the children pluck chattering in the reeds high over their heads which they part with bare arms to appear with fists of flowers till in the air there comes the smell of calamus from wet, gummy stalks.

Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before

but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers.