Best America Poems

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
...

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
...

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
...

A woman waits for me- she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.
...

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
...

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
...

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
...

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
...

I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics- each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
...

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
...

America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to crown
with spacious lands
...

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.
...

Once upon a time there was an Italian,
And some people thought he was a rapscallion,
But he wasn't offended,
Because other people thought he was splendid,
...

I.
ADIEU, New-England's smiling meads,
Adieu, the flow'ry plain:
I leave thine op'ning charms, O spring,
...

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
...

Under silver wing
San Francisco's towers sprouting
thru thin gas clouds,
Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
...

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday
...

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
...

'Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
...

A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.
...

Preludium

The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
...

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
...

(Dedicated to you, my Brothers and Sisters)

Powerful words,
Truthful words,
...

AS I sat alone, by blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these mighty days, and of peace return'd, and the dead
that return no more,
...

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
...

I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
...

Castro Alves from Brazil, for whom did you sing?
Did you sing for the flower? For the water
whose beauty whispered words to the stones?
Did you sing to the eyes, to the torn profile
...

Old Eddie's face, wrinkled with river lights,
Looked like a Mississippi man's. The eyes,
Derisive and avuncular at once,
Swivelling, fixed me. They'd seen
...

You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
...

I love thine inland seas,
Thy groves of giant trees,
Thy rolling plains;
Thy rivers' mighty sweep,
...

Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -
...

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
...

Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
...

BEHAVIOR--fresh, native, copious, each one for himself or herself,
Nature and the Soul expressed--America and freedom expressed--In it
the finest art,
In it pride, cleanliness, sympathy, to have their chance,
...

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth
(if the wrong brothers didn’t get hold of it)
...

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
...

The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
       Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
...

'Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen --
...

AN old man's thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself
cannot.

...

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won't
know what you're up to
...

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
...

The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night,
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it.
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world.
...

When the trumpet sounded, it was
all prepared on the earth,
the Jehovah parcelled out the earth
...

SO far, and so far, and on toward the end,
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of
me;
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity,
...

How much do i appreciate you - My Special Lady?
Let me count the ways the whys and the wherefores.
...

Jackson is no more,
Singer at heart and at centre core,
Hundreds or thousands might have wept,
Glorious tradition maintained and lively kept,
...

Great Oracle, why are you staring at me,
do I baffle you, do I make you despair?
I, Americus, the American,
wrought from the dark in my mother long ago,
...

We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were
slipped in. We have levelled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and
dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming.
...

My father and mother, two tiny figures,
side by side, facing the clouds that move
in from the Atlantic. August, '33.
The whole weight of the rain to come, the weight
...

AMERICA always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of
...

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
...

I

Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
...

I came home and found a lion in my room...
[First draft of "The Lion for Real" CP 174-175]
...

Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
...

LAWS for Creations,
For strong artists and leaders--for fresh broods of teachers, and
perfect literats for America,
...

HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown;
We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
...

I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows
of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on
84th Street
...

So I go
…..smile all of friend and foe.
.….the time has come to depart
…..be off a must that do us part.
...

Oh! Teacher, Oh! Teacher,
If you, one day, become my student,
and I become your Teacher.
Before I teach you
...

After dark
Near the South Dakota border,
The moon is out hunting, everywhere,
Delivering fire,
...

OR, from that Sea of Time,
Spray, blown by the wind--a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!
...

.
I watched a movie last night about World War 2,
and the nearly 350,000 allied soldiers
stranded and under fire at Dunkirk
...

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though they never fight.
...

The innocent were slaughtered
So many years ago
In the town of Bethlehem
Slew by an evil foe
...

I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
-of the peoples' hearts, crossing it
...

Kissass is the Part of Peace
America will have to Kissass Mother Earth
...

ONE song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee--the Future.
...

SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic--hour resuming the past!
Inflating my throat--you, divine average!
...

Land of the Free home of the brave
Land of disease home of the slave
Freedom of religion Freedom of speech
Freedom of press and freedom to breach
...

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
...

In measured verse I'll now rehearse
The charms of lovely Anna:
And, first, her mind is unconfined
Like any vast savannah.
...

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
...

I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every songbird, not only in
America but wherever they sing.
...

COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
...

1

Many animals that our fathers killed in America
Had quick eyes.
...

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
...

AS consequent from store of summer rains,
Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing,
Or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations,
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,
...

WITH all thy gifts, America,
(Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,)
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--With these, and like of
these, vouchsafed to thee,
...

O MATER! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
...

A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection--a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing--or hamadryads departing;
...

The perfect voter has a smile but no eyes,
maybe not even a nose or hair on his or her toes,
maybe not even a single sperm cell, ovum, little paramecium.
Politics is a slug copulating in a Poughkeepsie garden.
...

O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next!
...

First
one
foot
...

TO conclude--I announce what comes after me;
I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the
present, depart.
...

'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, --
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
...

They tell me thou art rich, my country: gold
In glittering flood has poured into thy chest;
Thy flocks and herds increase, thy barns are pressed
With harvest, and thy stores can hardly hold
...

Is it really so depraving
I like to eat a lot?
The thought of food I’m craving
Just ties me in a knot
...

well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
...

YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
Your horizon rises--I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation, but other
...

YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights,
life, liberty, equality of man,
...

In flat America, in Chicago,
Graceland cemetery on the German North Side.
Forty feet of Corinthian candle
celebrate Pullman embedded
...

O muse of mine please work with me,
Teach me to write simplisticly
And I shall seek no grander plan;
Just poetry for the common man.
...

She is great, great and great
Chanting the greatness of truth
Hereby I declare that she is
A great noble poetess!
...

RISE, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer
sweep!
Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour'd what the earth gave
...

Mr President,


You are all
...

I.
Clear water; [stinging] like the salt of a child's tears,
the whiteness of women's bodies attacking the sun;
...

AFTER all, not to create only, or found only,
But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
...

To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass,
...

(dedicated to people who love sports)

citius
altius
...

HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
...