Poems by Conrad Aiken

Sitting in a café, and watching her reflection
Smoke a cigarette, or drinking coffee,
...

After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, ...

How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music?--
Darling, I lo...

I Well, I am tired.. Tired of all these years,
The hazy mornings, the noons, the misty even...

Whatever loveliness is in this music,
Whatever yearning after lovely things, --
Whatever cryin...

He skips out lithe and tense into the light,
Throws off his gown, and smiling, lifts his hand...

The moon distills a soft blue light,
The moon distills silence.
Black clouds huddle across the...

Green light, from the moon,
Pours over the dark blue trees,
Green light from the autumn moon...

Wind in the sunlit trees, and the red leaves fall:
Shadows of leaves on the sunlit wall.
Wind...

Here alone, unknown, in the darkness,
I watched you whirling above your shadow,
Soft in saf...

From the cold fountain's sunlit lip
A shining film of water spreads,
It is shot with sun, it ...

You are as beautiful as white clouds
Flowing among bright stars at night:
You are as beautiful...

Red leaf, red leaf, falling to float
On the blue water among the cold clouds..
If I were a ch...

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
the shadows of tree-trunks and sha...

Moonlight, and shadows of leaves
On the white wall above me--
The shadows gallop and swirl wit...