1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
New York City at sunset

Photo by Muzammil Soorma on Unsplash

The sun is near set  
And the tall buildings  
Become teeth  
Tearing bloodily at the sky’s throat; 
The blank wall by my window 
Becomes night sky over the marches  
When there is no moon, and no wind,  
And little fishes splash in the pools. 

I had lit my candle to make a song for you,  
But I have forgotten it for I am very tired; 
And the candle … a yellow moth … 
Flutters, flutters,  
Deep in my brain.  
My song was about, ‘a foreign lady 
Who was beautiful and sad,  
Who was forsaken, and who died  
A thousand years ago.’ 
But the cracked cup at my elbow, 
With dregs of tea in it,  
Fixes my tired thought more surely  
Than the song I made for you and forgot … 
That I might give you this.  

I am tired.  

I am so tired 
That my soul is a great plain  
Made desolate, 
And the beating of a million hearts  
Is but the whisper of night winds 
Blowing across it. 

Skipwith Cannell (1887–1957)  was an American poet.

To read more poems, click here.