A couple of my favorites, from Kenneth Patchen, who is not widely read these days.



The Snow Is Deep on the Ground
by Kenneth Patchen

The snow is deep on the ground.
Always the light falls
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.

This is a good world.
The war has failed.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the snow waits where love is.

Only a few go mad.
The sky moves in its whiteness
Like the withered hand of an old king.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the sky knows of our love.

The snow is beautiful on the ground.
And always the lights of heaven glow
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.


Kenneth Patchen, "The Snow Is Deep on the Ground" from Collected Poems. Copyright 1943 by Kenneth Patchen. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: Selected Poems (1957).


"As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other"
by Kenneth Patchen

As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies

O my lady, my fairest dear, my sweetest, loveliest one
Your lips have splashed my dull house with the speech of flowers
My hands are hallowed where they touched over your
       soft curving.

It is good to be weary from that brilliant work
It is being God to feel your breathing under me

A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning . . .
Don't let anyone in to wake us.


" 'As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other' " by Kenneth Patchen, from The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen, copyright © 1942 by Kenneth Patchen. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Source: The Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen (1968).