Give me your mouth.Your grace is as beautiful as sleep.You move against me like a waveThat moves in sleep.Your body spreads across my brainLike a bird filled summer;Not like a body, not like a separate thing.But like a nimbus that hoversOver every other thing in all the world — Kenneth Rexroth, from “ When We… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
O heart, heart, so singularlyIntransigent and corruptible,Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,And moments that should each last forever Slide unconsciously by us like water. — Kenneth Rexroth, from “Another Spring,” One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. (New Directions January 17, 1971) Originally published 1956.
We have slept together inA lonely bed. Now my heartTurns towards you, awake at last,Penitent, lost in the lastLoneliness. Speak to me. TalkTo me. Break the black silence.Speak of a tree full of leaves,Of a flying bird, the newMoon in the sunset, a poem,A book, a person – all theCasual hfrankealing speechOf your resonant, quiet… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
[P]otterTreads treads treadsHer wheel shaping a potWith a template cut from your fleshLovers whimper in the duskWe are lost do you hearWe are all lostAs the hundred bells breakAnd the stars speak — Kenneth Rexroth, from “Among the Cypresses at the End of the Way of the Cross,” The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, eds.… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
To think of you surcharged withLoneliness. To hear your voiceOver the recorder say,‘Loneliness.’ The word, the voice,So full of it, and I withYou away, so lost in it— — Kenneth Rexroth, opening lines to poem III “marthe lonely,” from “seven poems for marthe, my wife,” Poetry (vol. LXXXIX, no. 1, October 1956)
There are sparkles of rain on the brightHair over your forehead;Your eyes are wet and your lipsWet and cold, your cheek rigid with cold.Why have you stayedAway so long, why have you onlyCome to me late at nightAfter walking for hours in wind and rain?Take off your dress and stockings;Sit in the deep chair before… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
Whether or not, it is no question now,Of time or place, or even how,It is not time for questions now,Nor yet the place.”The soft lights of your faceArrange themselves in memoriesOf smiles and frowns. — Kenneth Rexroth, from “The Thin Edge of Your Pride VII,” The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (New Directions Publishing… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
Your body spreads across my brainLike a bird filled summer;Not like a body, not like a separate thing,But like a nimbus that hoversOver every other thing in all the world. — Kenneth Rexroth, from “When We with Sappho,” The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, eds. Sam Hamill & Bradford Morrow (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)
…I lie alone in an alien Bed in a strange house and morning More cruel than any midnight Pours its brightness through the window – Cherry branches with the flowers Fading, and behind them the gold Stately baubles of the maple, And behind them the pure immense April sky and a white frayed cloud, And… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
Now I know surely and forever, However much I have blotted our Waking love, its memory is still There. And I know the web, the net, The blind and crippled bird. For then, for One brief instant it was not blind, nor Trapped, nor crippled. For one heart beat the Heart was free and moved… Continue reading Kenneth Rexroth
The Vale of Soul-Making 