Index of Last Lines
An ongoing compendium of last lines of all poems featured on Read A Little Poetry
2. The easy way: get to know him better.
& someone stands there waiting
a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.
a dog. What can I do but be happy for him?
a friend of mine. See, I hold her face in trembling, passionate hands.
A light would pass over her face.
A love like that can ruin you for love.
about love. Now there is nothing left but this.
accepts the sacrifice and turns away.
–after which our separating selves become museums filled with skilfully stuffed memories
Again. His breath stops, and we are all speechless.
Along its ledges urged me don’t, don’t jump.
Am I supposed to make out of this crap?”
among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.
and a child and her father cross the glistening street.
and anger moment by moment balanced.
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
and bending to be never broken
And bowing not knowing to what
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.
and can wound others with such deadly ease?
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
and clutches what it must release.
and delicious to lose everything.
And don’t have any kids yourself.
and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.
and getting more precious all the way
and harder than what passes there for life.
And have you changed your life?
and her toes turn like scallops in the grass.
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.
and I will learn to love you as a zebra whom I did not love as a human being.
And in the deep valleys of the hand.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.
and joy may come, and make its test of us.
and listen to each other breathe.
And miles to go before I sleep.
and more light than we can imagine.
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
And not forget this constant love of Trude’s.
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.
And she said, Ok, still looking in that direction.
and the delicate sadness of dusk.
and the doors of darkness open.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.
and the love whatever it was, an infection.
and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.
and the weakness too is love, a constant falling.
And the world owes me nothing.
and then you will wash your face.
and there’s no story if there’s no hope of change.
and these the last verses that I write for her.
And things just keep going. I guess.
and watched him, knowing, satisfied.
And went with half my life about my ways.
And what is more generous than a window?
and words we can grow old and die in.
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Another fact: We fall in love twice. Maybe more, if we’re lucky.
Answer: be the bird. Answer: be the sky.
any early morning talk about it.
are going to be, is who and how we best love.
are my startled guests as this morning proceeds normally
are there tonight, how many of us must stay awake and listen?
Are tiny, tiny on my windowpane.
As always I was beside myself.
as around the edges of the great swamp.
as I say, more than it was called for.
as possible in the fields of barley and weeds.
As the unanswered challenge to the dreamer’s art.
as they made their turn into the empty highway.
As you walk beside it on its long couch.
Asters bloom one way or another.
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.
At center my heart is red and true.
at magpahanggang-wakas lambat lamang ng ulan.
at once like a pitcher with light.
At, sa tingin ko, hindi na, hindi babalik.
awakened in the middle of the night.
away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are.
ay naaagnas ding marahang-marahan…
be exiled, never again, from your arms.
beautiful? wasn’t she beautiful?
because I want life to return the favor.
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
before someone else. Everything, I said.
Begin again the story of your life.
beneath a heavy snow of sheets.
beyond this work and this gift of struggle.
big heap of driftwood on the beach.
Brilliant day, deserted house.
bulge of the hip-joint, border of the pelvic cradle.
but always says the wrong thing.
but because it never forgot what it could do.
But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.
But how those two nights are worlds apart, look, for heaven’s sake.
But I don’t think it is weird that I put him in this poem
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
but nothing else, nothing else.
But the corkscrew had gone as well.
but wood, with a gift for burning
Catching of happiness is called.
cheek of earth and say, “There, there, child.”
clenching and opening one small hand.
cling to it as to a life line.
come back to, this is your hand.
comfortless, so let evening come.
Could anyone alive survive it?
crackle after the blazing dies.
cross my legs like his, and listen.
Days you are sick, we get dressed slow.
define language that speaks the truth.
Diminishing, our own getting in the way.
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.
Do not tell me it was just a misunderstanding.
Doesn’t particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.
Don’t breathe upon my neck so much.
Each one, becoming finned and whole, swims off.
Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.
entered the pit I did not want ever to come up out of it.
eons-deep before I was born, a meteor.
especially when they fight, and when they sing.
Even in winter, even in the rain.
Eyes open, uncovered to the bone.
fell open, I did not go through.
First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
for weeks, no land was visible.
for your looking and laughing.
Frankly, my dear, frankly, my dear, frankly
from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.
Giving and taking, perfectly understood.
Glum was the woman in the ostrich feather hat.
gradually taught me the meaninglessness of that term.
Half past twelve. How the years have passed.
happy to have them simply answered.
have invaded it searching for food
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?
He’s not coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.
Her broad feet shovelled up the world.
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.
Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.
how a little love goes a long long long way.
how small they were, how far away.
Hudyat ng tag-ulang bubugso, kakalat.
I am going to buy you a sandwich.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
I ask pardon for one thing: I loved you before.
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
I do it for love. For love, I disappear.
I do not think it goes all the way
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.
I had absolutely nothing to do with.
I have as much freedom as I take.
I make my lament against destruction.
I never saw light that way again.
I once knew an eccentric electrician.
I promise to be happy tomorrow.
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
I should retire at half-past eight?
I still shall keep my true-red heart.
I still want to kill the carrots because I can.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I think I’ll be alone for a little while.
I was asleep while you were dying.
I was just whispering into her mouth.
I’m ashamed we failed at forever.
I’m on my knees. I beg of you.
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If I loved you, being this close would kill me.
If I suffered what else could I do
If this is Wednesday, it’s trash night.
if only there had been a flower.
If you can resolve, at last, to pay attention.
if you’re going to say “I lived”…
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
In a particular dream, they cannot always be seen.
in every new and beautiful light.
in our bed to reach the body within the body.
in the direction I needed to be going.
in the head, filling and pounding, a kicked ear.
in the raw wind of the new world.
in your palm, the ripe weight.
in your renouncing is it truly there.
invite you to the long party that your life is.
is all my own and what that ever got me.
Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.
isn’t it enough that riverbanks come in pairs?
It appears the gift could not be refused.
it cracks. You put on its face when it sees us.
It is a false spring this year.
it takes something different with it every time.
It was always the other way round.
It was just a stupid body, closed up and voracious.
It was my husband paying tribute to my art.
it will not be simple, it will become your will
it’s not big enough to hold us.
just a little time left now for quiet joy.
just because you don’t know what work is.
Kayong muli—tiyak na hindi na!—magkakangitian.
known, you know, to dress up extravagantly for such grand occasions.
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
leaving us nothing to overhear.
let heaven rejoice, let the earth be glad.
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
Like an animal dragging a great trap.
Like farmers plowing under the ancient sun.
like the earth split open by lightning.
like the Wen River, endlessly flowing.
little father I ransom with my life.
Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.
“Made it again! Made it again!”
moan, so grateful to be held this way.
mortals: private accommodations. Magpie beauty.
Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.
My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.
never to waken in that world again.
no matter how slowly they fell.
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.
No one has such small hands, Shahid, not even the rain.
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
not the songs of love, but love beneath disguise.
not walking, not eating. Only to cry comes naturally.
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Of a door that closes—quietly, forever.
of a girl, beside the ancient hill?
of my ribs, and I close my eyes and chime.
of the growing aloneness when I clicked the latch.
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.
Often a someone drifts off down their long hair and is lost
on a park bench and simply hold your hand?
On the broken sofa in my study.
on the sunset’s patchy rust seems like enough.
on which the sun shone brilliantly.
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!”
one by one. I am the turnstile.
One day I plan to be riding it.
one heart to every falling thing.
one more cracked rendition of your singular, aspirant song.
or between the teeth, pips, a metal taste.
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.
or tell her how badly we missed her.
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.
“Over the hills and far away.”
Part of the difference between floating and going down.
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”
peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.
Petals on a wet, black bough .
Places where we will always be together.
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
rant, no, the sky, now, that icy whiteness.
red label on a little butterfly.
refreshed but tired by the weekend.
Remembering the speeches of your hair.
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.
right? You could make this place beautiful.
rise above an ancient graveyard?
Sa katahimikang walang bintana, pintuan.
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.
Siren girls sang somewhere. Nice, she said. Nice.
slides over, makes room for its superior.
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
something that identifies him as God.
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?
Sometimes I feel like there are birds flying out of me.
Sometimes I want to die because of this.
stitching a word to a river. Then another.
streetlights deliriously flicker.
strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.
swim? What will I do now, with my hands?
tears. Do you hear what I’m telling you?
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
Than ever to have loved and won.
Than to places you can reach by going on.
Thank you for whatever’s left.
that feels like burning and flight and running away.
that have only memories to feed them, and only you to keep them clean.
that never occurred between us.
that our shining faces rock with grief.
that sudden rush of the world.
That they readily meet invasions, when they come.
That was what I wanted: to be naked.
That we will, although time stretches terribly in between…
that you would save them again.
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
The clocks are sorry, the clocks are very sad.
The endless repetitions of his own murmurous blood.
The face he did not see to be his own.
the happy genius of my household?
the last of the oxygen and the remote.
The man in the moon. The sea rose. The living room.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
the pleasure, but how stabbing deep the pain.
the rhyme, the period; but in the sending.
the saddest person in the world.
The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.
the silence from which it came.
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads…
the swish of tomorrow’s donkey-threshed grain.
The utter factuality of the few true things.
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
The worst was this; my love was my decay.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Then decide what to do with your time.
Then I locked up, and rang the janitor’s bell.
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
there’s never enough world for you
There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive.
These accents seem their own defense.
think / please / please let me remember this //
This field is a bride. How are we to say goodbye?
this life this life this life.
This morning was a hundred years ago.
Though this might take me a little time.
Thrown between me and the sky.
to be close, so why should you?
to cry out against the unretrievableness.
to find out what it really means.
to mine, mine, shining with imagined rain.
to reach that world, and breathe, and write these poems.
to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams?
to sit out in the sun and listen.
to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
to the fields where they can only die.
to those who have fashioned it.
tock and such deep wagons on so many panged wheels.
torment, its astonishment, its endlessness.
too many to count, but could only say it in counting.
toward the twilight erasing statues.
until only the mountain remains.
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.
Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?
watching to see how it’s done.
we both know the winter has only begun.
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.
We start to row, and will for as long as this lasts.
we were never meant to survive
We will give it to each other.
“What fools we were, not to have seen.”
What has no shadow has no strength to live.
What you did is all it ever means.
what you know because what else is there?
when I kneel to wash my floors again?
when they untie them in the evening.
when you mistook being here for being there.
where it must have touched your cheek
where it takes me, how it ends.
where love ends—and love asks nothing.
Where will we go when they send us away from here?
Where you are. You must let it find you.
whether they are aware of it or not.
which carried the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
which is of course to never have been born.
which stirs in dust behind stone horizons.
While the moon comes out of the sea.
Who finds you here and lies down by your side.
will be waiting when you return.
will come from the dead with that shirt on.
will give us back to ourselves.
Will pierce your shit-filled heart.
Will you always stand there shivering?
Wind rising. Whatever might rise.
with footprints so deep, like a track meet in wet cement.
with its faded no vacancy sign.
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.
with the seeds of their children.
with the silence that surrounds Beethoven’s head.
with the smallest movements of your mouth?
With white faces like town children.
without losing the world, I’ll have to praise it.
wouldn’t want to be in a world where you don’t exist.
years. I meant all of them with you.
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.
Yet the landscape, these billboards, age as rapidly as before.
you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone.
You ask it ten thousand times.
You do not smoke. You have to try.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
you don’t refuse to breathe do you
You have nothing to be sad about.
You have only these minutes and years.
You held my earth, you held my sky.
you met and decided to marry in four days.
you say. This time you are speaking to me.
You try & rise but you cannot.
Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.
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