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Last night I fled until I came To streets where leaking casements dripped Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame A nervous window bled.

Allen Tate

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Allen Tate
Age: 79 †
Born: 1899
Born: November 19
Died: 1979
Died: February 9
Author
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Came
Corpse
Lasts
Stale
Last
Corpses
Night
Flame
Lamplight
Flames
Dripped
Nervous
Bled
Window
Leaking
Streets
Fled

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What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
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Let us lie down once more by the breathing side Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!
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The twilight is long fingers and black hair.
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
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What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.
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Swimmer of noonday, lean for the perfect dive To the dead Mother's face, whose subtile down You had not seen take amber light alive.
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Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.
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There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
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The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace.
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I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw not seen even by me.
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For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.
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For often at Church I've seen the stained high glass Pour out the Virgin and Saints, twist and untwist The mortal youth of Christ astride an ass.
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The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.
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I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.
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Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
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So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.
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I believe the term modulation denotes in music the uninterrupted shift from one key to another: I do not know the term for change of rhythm without change of measure.
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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
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