Goodreads helps you follow your favorite authors. Be the first to learn about new releases!
Start by following Douglas Dunn.
Showing 1-5 of 5
“The red sun drips its molten dusk. Wet fires
embrace the barren orchards, these gardens in
A city of cold slumbers. I am trapped in it.”
― Elegies
embrace the barren orchards, these gardens in
A city of cold slumbers. I am trapped in it.”
― Elegies
“It is summer, and we are in a house
That is not ours, sitting at a table
Enjoying minutes of a rented silence,
The upstairs people gone. The pigeons lull
To sleep the under-tens and invalids,
The tree shakes out its shadows to the grass,
The roses rove through the wilds of my neglect.
Our lives flap, and we have no hope of better
Happiness than this, not much to show for love
Than how we are, or how this evening is,
Unpeopled, silent, and where we are alive
In a domestic love, seemingly alone,
All other lives worn down to trees and sunlight,
Looking forward to a visit from the cat.”
― Selected Poems 1964-1983
That is not ours, sitting at a table
Enjoying minutes of a rented silence,
The upstairs people gone. The pigeons lull
To sleep the under-tens and invalids,
The tree shakes out its shadows to the grass,
The roses rove through the wilds of my neglect.
Our lives flap, and we have no hope of better
Happiness than this, not much to show for love
Than how we are, or how this evening is,
Unpeopled, silent, and where we are alive
In a domestic love, seemingly alone,
All other lives worn down to trees and sunlight,
Looking forward to a visit from the cat.”
― Selected Poems 1964-1983
“I dropped my penny in the well of dreams,
Into a deep, dark, distant, delayed splash.
The world was everything that thinks and seems
When I was twelve years old and dogging off
Into a free mind, writing reams and reams—
Invisible paper, invisible ink …
from “Disenchantments”
― Dante's Drum Kit
Into a deep, dark, distant, delayed splash.
The world was everything that thinks and seems
When I was twelve years old and dogging off
Into a free mind, writing reams and reams—
Invisible paper, invisible ink …
from “Disenchantments”
― Dante's Drum Kit
“The way of the world, with its doors and its walls.
Is this all because I’ve no Muse in my sack?
I don’t feel like Sisyphus, I feel like his boulder –
Something used, or abused, for a task that’s not ended,
That won’t be, and certainly not with this.”
― The Noise of a Fly
Is this all because I’ve no Muse in my sack?
I don’t feel like Sisyphus, I feel like his boulder –
Something used, or abused, for a task that’s not ended,
That won’t be, and certainly not with this.”
― The Noise of a Fly
“The Worst of all Loves - Douglas Dunn
Where do they go, the faces, the people seen
In glances and longed for, who smile back
Wondering where the next kiss is coming from?
They are seen suddenly, from the top decks of buses
On railway platforms, at the tea machine
When the sleep of travelling makes us look for them.
A whiff of perfume, an eye, a hat, a shoe,
Bring back vague memories of names,
Thingummy, that bloke, what's-her-name.
What great things have I lost, that faces in a crowd
Should make me look at them for one I know?
What are faces that they must be looked for?
But there's one face, seen only once,
A fragment of a crowd. I know enough of her.
That face makes me dissatisfied with myself.
Those we secretly love, who never know of us,
What happens to them? Only this is known.
They will never meet us suddenly in pleasant rooms.”
―
Where do they go, the faces, the people seen
In glances and longed for, who smile back
Wondering where the next kiss is coming from?
They are seen suddenly, from the top decks of buses
On railway platforms, at the tea machine
When the sleep of travelling makes us look for them.
A whiff of perfume, an eye, a hat, a shoe,
Bring back vague memories of names,
Thingummy, that bloke, what's-her-name.
What great things have I lost, that faces in a crowd
Should make me look at them for one I know?
What are faces that they must be looked for?
But there's one face, seen only once,
A fragment of a crowd. I know enough of her.
That face makes me dissatisfied with myself.
Those we secretly love, who never know of us,
What happens to them? Only this is known.
They will never meet us suddenly in pleasant rooms.”
―
