Ye Flags of Picadilly

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1. A London Plane-Tree Green is the plane-tree in the square, The other trees are brown; They droop and pine for country air; The plane-tree loves the town. Here from my garret-pane, I mark The plane-tree bud and blow, Shed her recuperative bark, And spread her shade below. Among her branches, in and out, The city breezes play; The […]...
2. The Unseen Playmate When children are playing alone on the green, In comes the playmate that never was seen. When children are happy and lonely and good, The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood. Nobody heard him, and nobody saw, His is a picture you never could draw, But he’s sure to be present, abroad […]...
3. First Day at School A millionbillionwillion miles from home Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?) Why are they all so big, other children? So noisy? So much at home they Must have been born in uniform Lived all their lives in playgrounds Spent the years inventing games That don’t let me in. Games That are rough, […]...
4. Picnic Boat SUNDAY night and the park policemen tell each other it Is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan. A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach Farms of Saugatuck. Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night’s darkness, a Flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill. […]...
5. Picnic, Lightning It is possible to be struck by a Meteor or a single-engine plane while Reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians Are flattened by safes falling from Rooftops mostly within the panels of The comics, but still, we know it is Possible, as well as the flash of Summer lightning, the thermos toppling Over, spilling […]...
6. The red man says hello the red man says hello The green tree says i’m here All grown-ups are sleeping Only the children hear Decorations are delighted Presents hug the floor The room in its festive hat Hides behind the door Through the glittering day Two worlds split the one Grown-ups lose their tempers Children have the fun The red […]...
7. Sunday The mint bed is in Bloom: lavender haze Day. The grass is More than green and Throws up sharp and Cutting lights to Slice through the Plane tree leaves. And On the cloudless blue I scribble your name....
8. In the Country This life is sweetest; in this wood I hear no children cry for food; I see no woman, white with care; No man, with muscled wasting here. No doubt it is a selfish thing To fly from human suffering; No doubt he is a selfish man, Who shuns poor creatures, sad and wan. But ’tis […]...
9. January 2 The old war is over the new one has begun Between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday In New York light is the variable and structure The content according to Rodrigo Moynihan’s Self-portraits at the Robert Miller Gallery where The painter is serially pictured holding a canvas, Painting his mirror image, shirtless in summer, With […]...
10. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
11. Jottings of New York Oh, mighty city of New York, you are wonderful to behold Your buildings are magnificent the truth be it told They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high; And as for Central Park, it is lovely to be seen Especially in the summer season […]...
12. A Week Later A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be written; now it is folded, and folded, And folded, like a note in school. And in my dream Someone was playing […]...
13. The Apple-Tree Old John had an apple-tree, healthy and green, Which bore the best codlins that ever were seen, So juicy, so mellow, and red; And when they were ripe, he disposed of his store, To children or any who pass’d by his door, To buy him a morsel of bread. Little Dick, his next neighbour, one […]...
14. Devonshire Street W.1 The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet. The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene With Edwardian faience adornment Devonshire Street. No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by. The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm […]...
15. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
16. Yad Mordechai Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here Still look out the windows like sick children Who are not allowed outside to play. And on the hillside, the battle is reenacted For the benefit of hikers and tourists. Soldiers of thin sheet iron Rise and fall and rise again. Sheet iron dead and a sheet iron life […]...
17. My Feud I hate my neighbour Widow Green; I’d like to claw her face; But if I did she’d make a scene And run me round the place: For widows are in way of spleen A most pugnacious race. And yet I must do something quick To keep the hag in line, Since her red rooster chose […]...
18. Very Early Spring The fields are snowbound no longer; There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green. The snow has been caught up into the sky So many white clouds and the blue of the sky is cold. Now the sun walks in the forest, He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers; They […]...
19. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 15. To-night the winds begin to rise To-night the winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day: The last red leaf is whirl’d away, The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d, The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash’d on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world: And but for fancies, […]...
20. The Dinkey Bird In an ocean, ‘way out yonder, (As all sapient people know) Is the land of Wonder-Wander, Whither children love to go; It’s their playing, romping, swinging, That give great joy to me While the Dinkey-Bird goes singing In the amfalula tree! There the gum-drops grow like cherries, And taffy’s thick as peas Caramels you pick […]...
21. On a Line from Valéry (The Gulf War) The whole green sky is dying. The last tree flares With a great burst of supernatural rose Under a canopy of poisonous airs. Could we imagine our return to prayers To end in time before time’s final throes, The green sky dying as the last tree flares? But we were young in judgement, old in […]...
22. Mr. Mine Notice how he has numbered the blue veins In my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles. Now he goes left. Now he goes right. He is buiding a city, a city of flesh. He’s an industrialist. He has starved in cellars And, ladies and gentlemen, he’s been broken by iron, By the blood, by the […]...
23. On a Line From Valery (Gulf War) Tout le ciel vert se meurt Le dernier arbre brûle. The whole green sky is dying. The last tree flares With a great burst of supernatural rose Under a canopy of poisonous airs. Could we imagine our return to prayers To end in time before time’s final throes, The green sky dying as the last […]...
24. Victory The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride, The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside; Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear, The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there, And all flags save Australia’s flag waved high in sun and air! […]...
25. A Memory YOU remember, dear, together Two children, you and I, Sat once in the autumn weather, Watching the autumn sky. There was some one round us straying The whole of the long day through, Who seemed to say, “I am playing At hide and seek with you.” And one thing after another Was whispered out of […]...
26. Tipperary Days Oh, weren’t they the fine boys! You never saw the beat of them, Singing all together with their throats bronze-bare; Fighting-fit and mirth-mad, music in the feet of them, Swinging on to glory and the wrath out there. Laughing by and chaffing by, frolic in the smiles of them, On the road, the white road, […]...
27. Quick! We Have But a Second Quick! we have but a second, Fill round the cup while you may; For time, the churl, hath beckon’d, And we must away, away! Grasp the pleasure that’s flying, For oh, not Orpheus’ strain Could keep sweet hours from dying, Or charm them to life again. Then, quick! we have but a second, Fill round […]...
28. Pentecost Better a jungle in the head Than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered By the fireflies’ crooked street; Winter lamps do not show Where the sidewalk is lost, Nor can these tongues of snow Speak for the Holy Ghost; The self-increasing silence Of words dropped from a roof Points along iron railings, Direction, in not […]...
29. Through the strait pass of suffering Through the strait pass of suffering The Martyrs even trod. Their feet upon Temptations Their faces upon God A stately shriven Company Convulsion playing round Harmless as streaks of Meteor Upon a Planet’s Bond Their faith the everlasting troth Their Expectation fair The Needle to the North Degree Wades so thro’ polar Air!...
30. Betrayal If a man says half himself in the light, adroit Way a tune shakes into equilibrium, Or approximates to a note that never comes: Says half himself in the way two pencil-lines Flow to each other and softly separate, In the resolute way plane lifts and leaps from plane: Who knows what intimacies our eyes […]...
31. Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
32. The Happy Child I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick But not one like the child did pick. I heard the packhounds in green park But no dog like the child heard bark. I heard this day bird after bird But not one like the child has heard. A hundred butterflies saw I But not one like […]...
33. A Seed See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, And through the Winter neglected lay, Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, With tiny root taking hold on the clay As, lifting and strengthening day by day, It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, And cell after cell the Power in it weaves Out of […]...
34. The Leaf And The Tree When will you learn, myself, to be A dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air, That other leaves, and you not there, May bud, and at the autumn’s call Wearing russet, ready to fall? Has not this trunk a deed to do […]...
35. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
36. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
37. Barbara Frietchie Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep, Fair as the garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that pleasant morn […]...
38. To His Two Children In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. In East Luh where my family stay, I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours. I cannot be back in time for the spring doings, Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. The south […]...
39. Song of the Little White Girl Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, what is the matter? Why are you shaking so? Why do you chatter? Because it is just a white baby you see, And it’s the black ones you like, cabbage tree? Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, you’re a strange fellow With your green hair and your legs browny-yellow. Wouldn’t you like to […]...
40. The Little Land When at home alone I sit And am very tired of it, I have just to shut my eyes To go sailing through the skies To go sailing far away To the pleasant Land of Play; To the fairy land afar Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are […]...