Poems by Maxwell Bodenheim

Sometimes jaded, sometimes tranquil,
Your eyes invade the tumult of your face.
Your lips are ...

I Rows of blankly box-like buildings
Raise their sodden architecture
Into the poised lyric of ...

I This red hush toppling over the sky,
Wanders one step toward the stars
And dies in a questi...

Perspiring violence derides
The pathetic collapse of dirt.
An effervescence of noises
Depends ...

Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch:
A soul you have--strength has always...

We blew a luminous confusion of thoughts
Upon the silence of our souls,
Staining it to little,...

Two walls, dizzy with rain-touch
And suffused with gauzily amorous sunlight,
Creep over a hil...

This street is callous apathy
In a scale of greys and browns.
Its black roof-line suggests
Fla...

Determinedly peppered with signs,
The omnibus ambles with curiosity.
Southampton Row, Malborn...

Upon an arched sarcophagus of pain
Are figures painted in arrested embraces
With outlines so li...

They have carved a battle
Across your hard face:
Transfigured conflict,
Lines like suspended...

Whenever a love dies within you,
Griefs, phosphorescent with unborn tears,
Cut the glowing h...

Three spirits sit upon a low stone wall placed on the top of a hill. Their figures are gray, wit...

A trickle of dawn insinuated itself
Through the crevices of black satiation.
The elderly trees ...

I Because her voice is Schö nberg in a dream
In which his harshness plays with softer keys...