A City Winter Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBCDEDEFGFGHH IJJIIJKI LMNNLM OPOPQRQRSTQTHH UVUWQQQQXQXQYZ A2B2B2A2B2A2A2B2 C2HD2HD2C2| A | |
| I understand the boredom of the clerks | B |
| fatigue shifting like dunes within their eyes | C |
| a frightful nausea gumming up the works | B |
| that once was thought aggression in disguise | C |
| Do you remember then how lightly dead | D |
| seemed the moon when over factories | E |
| it languid slid like a barrage of lead | D |
| above the heart the fierce inventories | E |
| of desire Now women wander our dreams | F |
| carrying money and to our sleep's shame | G |
| our hands twitch not for swift blood sunk triremes | F |
| nor languorous white horses nor ill fame | G |
| but clutch the groin that clouds a pallid sky | H |
| where tow'rs are sinking in their common eye | H |
| - | |
| - | |
| My ship is flung upon the gutter's wrist | I |
| and cries for help of storm to violate | J |
| that flesh your curiosity too late | J |
| has flushed The stem your garter tongue would twist | I |
| has sunk upon the waveless bosom's mist | I |
| thigh of the city apparition hate | J |
| and the tower whose doves have delicate | K |
| fled into my blood where they are not kissed | I |
| - | |
| You have left me to the sewer's meanwhile | L |
| and I have answered the sea's open wish | M |
| to love me as a bonfire's watchful hand | N |
| guards red the shore and guards the hairy strand | N |
| our most elegant lascivious bile | L |
| my ship sinking beneath the gutter's fish | M |
| - | |
| - | |
| How can I then my dearest winter lay | O |
| disgorge the tasty worm that eats me up | P |
| falling onto the stem of a highway | O |
| whose ardent rainbow is the spoon's flat cup | P |
| and in the vilest of blue suited force | Q |
| enamored of the heated needle's arm | R |
| finds the ministrant an own tongue's remorse | Q |
| so near the blood and still so far from harm | R |
| thus to be eaten up and gobbled down | S |
| volcanoes of speedometers the strike | T |
| that heats the iris into flame and flow'rs | Q |
| the panting chalice so a turning pike | T |
| you are not how the gods refused to die | H |
| and I am scarred forever neath the eye | H |
| - | |
| - | |
| What are my eyes if they must feed me rank | U |
| with forgetting in the jealous forest | V |
| of lustrous blows so luminously blank | U |
| through smoke and in the light All faint at rest | W |
| yet I am racing towards the fear that kills | Q |
| them off friends and lovers hast'ning through tears | Q |
| like alcohol high in the throat of hills | Q |
| and hills of night alluring their black cheers | Q |
| falling upon my ears like nails And there | X |
| the bars grow thick with onanists and camps | Q |
| and bivouacs of bears with clubs are fair | X |
| with their blows deal death beneath purple lamps | Q |
| and to me I run closer always move | Y |
| crying my name in fields of dead I love | Z |
| - | |
| - | |
| I plunge deep within this frozen lake | A2 |
| whose mirrored fastnesses fill up my heart | B2 |
| where tears drift from frivolity to art | B2 |
| all white and slobbering and by mistake | A2 |
| are the sky I'm no whale to cruise apart | B2 |
| in fields impassive of my stench my sake | A2 |
| my sign to crushing seas that fall like fake | A2 |
| pillars to crash to sow as wake my heart | B2 |
| - | |
| and don't be niggardly The snow drifts low | C2 |
| and yet neglects to cover me and I | H |
| dance just ahead to keep my heart in sight | D2 |
| How like a queen to seek with jealous eye | H |
| the face that flees you hidden city white | D2 |
| swan There's no art to free me blinded so | C2 |
Frank O'hara
(1)
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About A City Winter
A City Winter is a poem by Frank O'hara. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
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