Not Love Perhaps

This is not Love, perhaps, Love that lays down its life, That many waters cannot quench, Nor the floods drown, But something written in lighter ink, Said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially

Earthfast

Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock, Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core; Leave more than the painter’s or poet’s snail-bright trail

Sea

1 (Windless Summer) Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes. 2 (Winter) Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks, Noosing, slipping and noosing again

Cinema Screen

Light’s patterns freeze: Frost on our faces. Light’s pollen sifts Through the lids of our eyes… Light sinks and rusts In water; is broken By glass… rests On deserted dust. Light lies like torn

Epilogue

“Why can’t you say what you mean straight out in prose?” Well, say it yourself: then say “It’s that, but more, Or less perhaps, or not that way, or not That after all.” The

Epitaph On A Disturber Of His Times

We expected the violin’s finger on the upturned nerve; Its importunate cry, too laxly curved: And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute; Unadorned statement, accurately carved. We expected the screen, the background

Any Man Speaks

I, after difficult entry through my mother’s blood And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world); I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned; Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking A dialect shared by

Never

Suddenly, desperately I thought, “No, never In millions of minutes Can I for one second Calm-leaving my own self Like clothes on a chair-back And quietly opening The door of one house (No, not

Wet City Night

Light drunkenly reels into shadow; Blurs, slurs uneasily; Slides off the eyeballs: The segments shatter. Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged Fluttering wet strips. The cup of the sky-sign is filled too full; It slushes

Tube Station

The tube lift mounts, sap in a stem, And blossoms its load, a black, untidy rose. The fountain of the escalator curls at the crest, breaks and scatters A winnow of men, a sickle

Don Juan

Under the lips and limbs, the embraces, faces, Under the sharp circumference, the brightness, Under the fence of shadows, Is something I am seeking; Under the faces a face, Under the new an old

Epitaph For Our Children

Blame us for these who were cradled and rocked in our chaos; Watching our sidelong watching, fearing our fear; Playing their blind-man’s-bluff in our gutted mansions, Their follow-my-leader on a stair that ended in
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