I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, A wild dog and lone; I’m a rough dog, Hunting on my own; I’m a bad dog, a mad dog, Teasing silly sheep; I love to sit and bay the moon To keep fat souls from sleep. I’ll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet, A sleek […]
Lightly, 0 lightly we bear her along, She always like a flower in the wind of our song; She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream, She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream. Gaily, 0 gaily we glide and we sing, We bear her along like a pearl
Going by my passport They call me Indian abroad But in my own land I don’t know who I am. In South Africa I’m coloured In the USA I’m minus red To the English I am a wog I still don’t know who I am. If I am to be known by language Or worse
Father studied theology through mail And this was exam time. Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book Full of pictures. Night fell. My hands grew cold touching the faces Of dead kings and queens. There was a black raincoat In the upstairs bedroom Swaying from the ceiling, But what was it doing there? Mother’s
That night the moon drifted over the pond, Turning the water to milk, and under The boughs of the trees, the blue trees, A young woman walked, and for an instant The future came to her: Rain falling on her husband’s grave, rain falling On the lawns on her children, her own mouth Filling with
The laburnum top is silent, quite still In the afternoon yellow September sunlight, A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen. Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup A suddenness, a startlement, at a branch and Then sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt, She enters the thickness, and a machine starts up
Fallen from heaven, lies across The lap of his mother, broken by world. But water will go on. Issuing from heaven In dumbness uttering spirit brightness Through its broken mouth. Scattered in a million pieces and buried Its dry tombs will split, at a sign in the sky. At a rending of veils. It will
Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band Sits heavily upon
Poor hill farmer astray in the grass: There came a movement and he looked up, but All that he saw was the wind pass. There was a sound of voices on the air, But where, where? It was only the glib stream talking Softly to itself. And once when he was walking Along a lane
The little old house was out with a little new shed In front at the edge of the road where the traffic sped, A roadside stand that too pathetically pled, It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread, But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports The flower
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like
The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day. As long as it takes to pass A ship keeps raising its hull; The wetter ground like glass Reflects a standing gull. The land may vary more; But wherever the
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals-I know what the