A Task (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
Berkeley, 1970. Published in The Collected Poems (1988).
Poems
Find and share the perfect poems.
More by this poet
A Song on the End of the World
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
1944
Artificer
Burning, he walks in the stream of flickering letters, clarinets, machines throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk canvases, and he stops under the sky and raises toward it his joined clenched fists. Believers fall on their bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that shines, but those are knuckles, sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends. He cuts the glowing, yellow buildings in two, breaks the walls into motley halves; pensive, he looks at the honey seeping from those huge honeycombs: throbs of pianos, children’s cries, the thud of a head banging against
1931
Ars Poetica? (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
1968