16 poems about Sadness

There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;
Still will the tamaracks be raining
After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the stubble,
Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.
Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
Nothing will know that you are gone,
Saving alone some sullen plough-land
None but yourself sets foot upon;
Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed
Nothing will know that you are dead,—
These, and perhaps a useless wagon
Standing beside some tumbled shed.
Oh, there will pass with your great passing
Little of beauty not your own,—
Only the light from common water,
Only the grace from simple stone!

Love has gone and left me
and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,
— and would that night were here!
But ah! — to lie awake and hear
the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!
— with twilight near!
Love has gone and left me
and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will
is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin
I leave before I'm through, —
There's little use in anything
as far as I can see.
Love has gone and left me,
— and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever
like the gnawing of a mouse, —
And to-morrow and to-morrow
and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street
and this little house.

Afternoon On A Hill
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

Each poem a bird fleeing
the place marked out by the plague.
Each poem a garment of death
through flooded streets and squares,
drenched in the lethal wax of the defeated.

Each poem a step toward death,
a counterfeit coin of deliverance,
a shot at a target in the middle of the night,
piercing the bridges above the river,
whose sleeping waters travel
from the old city toward the fields
where the day prepares its pyres.

Each poem a lifeless touch
of the one lying upon the slab in the clinics,
a ravenous hook that drags through
the soft silt of the graves.

Each poem a slow shipwreck of desire,
a creaking of masts and rigging
that bear the weight of life.

Each poem a crash of canvas collapsing
over the frozen roar of the waters,
the white rigging of the sails.

Each poem invading and tearing apart
the bitter web of boredom.

Each poem is born from a blind sentinel
who cries out into the deep hollow of the night
the password of his misfortune.

Water of dreams, fountain of ash,
porous stone of the slaughterhouses,
wood in the shadow of the everlasting flowers,
metal that tolls for the condemned,
funeral oil, double-edged,
the poet’s daily shroud,
each poem scatters over the world
the bitter grain of agony.

Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,
And drink your rushing words with eager lips,
And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,
And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.
When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can you ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.
And you believe, so well I know my part,
That I am gay as morning, light as snow,
And all the straining things within my heart
You'll never know.
Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,
And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --
Of ladies delicately indiscreet,
Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.
And you are pleased with me, and strive anew
To sing me sagas of your late delights.
Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,
Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.
And when, in search of novelty, you stray,
Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....
And what goes on, my love, while you're away,
You'll never know.
You'll never know.