Karl Shapiro Quotes (21 Quotes)


    I see slip to the curb the long machines, Out of whose warm and windowed rooms pirouette, Shellacked with silk and light, The hard legs of our women.

    In the tight belly of the dead, Burrow with hungry head, And inlay maggots like a jewel.

    The doctor punched my vein, the captain called me Cain, upon my belly sat the sow of fear.

    My soul is now her day, my day her night, So I lie down, and so I rise.

    Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.


    O hideous little bat, the size of snot, With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes.

    And in a comic mood, In mid-air take to bed a wife.

    We too are ashes as we watch and hear The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise, Of one whose promised thoughts of other days, Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed, The service record of his youth wiped out, His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.


    But this invites the occult mind, Cancels our physics with a sneer, And spatters all we knew of denouement,Across the expedient and wicked stones.


    He shall eat flowers, Chew honey and spit out gall. They shall all smile, and love and pity him. His death shall be by drowning.

    Lastly, his tomb shall list and founder in the troughs of grass. And none shall speak his name.

    To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

    Sunday at noon through hyaline thin air, Sees down the street, And in the camera of my eye depicts, Row-houses and row-lives Glass after glass, door after door the same.

    The good poet sticks to his real loves, those within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.

    The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?

    Oh, it is I, Incredibly skinny, stooped, and neat as pie, Ignorant as dirt, erotic as an ape, Dreamy as puberty - with dirty hair

    But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.

    Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart, The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide. Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.

    Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?


    More Karl Shapiro Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Smiling - Mind - Laughter - Fathers - Sign & Symbol - Death & Dying - Praise - Nature - Capital - Man - Light - Soul - Fear - Silence - Experience - Sadness - Night - Countries - Literature - View All Karl Shapiro Quotations

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    Rabindranath Tagore - Lord Byron - Khalil Gibran - John Keats - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Horace - Homer - William Somerville - Dylan Thomas - Anne Sexton


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