OBSTACLES

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1. Bridge Over The Aire Book 5 MOORING POSTS 1 The mooring posts marked on the South Leeds map Of 1908 still line the Aire’s side, huge, red With rust, they stand by the Council’s Transpennine Trail opposite the bricked and boarded up Hunslet Mills with trees growing from its top storey, roofless, Open to the enormous skies of our childhood. The […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. Careers Father is quite the greatest poet That ever lived anywhere. You say you’re going to write great music – I chose that first: it’s unfair. Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and do Christ and angels, or lovely pears and apples and grapes on a green dish, or storms at sea, or anything […]...
4. Two Or Three: A Recipe To Make A Cuckold Two or three visits, and two or three bows, Two or three civil things, two or three vows, Two or three kisses, with two or three sighs, Two or three Jesus’s – and let me dies- Two or three squeezes, and two or three towses, With two or three thousand pound lost at their houses, […]...
5. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
6. Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning Lightning lets away Power to perceive His Process With Vitality. Maimed was I yet not by Venture Stone of stolid Boy Nor a Sportsman’s Peradventure Who mine Enemy? Robbed was I intact to Bandit All my Mansion torn Sun withdrawn to Recognition Furthest shining done Yet was not […]...
7. Crying to be written Dawn has reached the ridges to the north and a thin Line of light chased the night west; it is the best Time of day for me – a cup of coffee, Benson & Scud Pretending to sleep in their baskets at my feet, I am seated, ready to write knowing the lounge fire Is […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. The shakes now pay attention (said the teacher) And look up here The children looked up This is william shakespeare Four centuries up On a pedestal Was shakespeare’s head He was what we call A great man The children got sore necks Looking up And some began to look down No no You mustn’t look down (said […]...
10. A Saucer holds a Cup A Saucer holds a Cup In sordid human Life But in a Squirrel’s estimate A Saucer hold a Loaf. A Table of a Tree Demands the little King And every Breeze that run along His Dining Room do swing. His Cutlery he keeps Within his Russer Lips To see it flashing when he dines Do […]...
11. THE DOUBTERS AND THE LOVERS THE DOUBTERS. YE love, and sonnets write! Fate’s strange behest! The heart, its hidden meaning to declare, Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair: Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best. Scarcely with freedom the o’erflowing breast As yet can speak, and well may it beware; Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that’s […]...
12. The Searched Soul When I consider, pro and con, What things my love is built upon A curly mouth; a sinewed wrist; A questioning brow; a pretty twist Of words as old and tried as sin; A pointed ear; a cloven chin; Long, tapered limbs; and slanted eyes Not cold nor kind nor darkly wise When so I […]...
13. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
14. MORNINGS LIKE THIS Mornings like this I awaken and wonder How I have moved so far, how I have moved so little And yet in essence stayed the same Always passionate for the unattainable For Joan Baez to make me her analyst, To tour Ireland with Eddie and Finbar Furey To be made a Chevalier des Palmes for […]...
15. Kinship IN summer time, with high imaginings Of proud Crusaders and of Paynim kings, The children crowned themselves with famous names, And fought there, building up their merry games, Their mimic war, from old majestic things. There was no bitter hate then in the fight, For ancient law ruled victory and flight, And, victory and defeat […]...
16. Over The Land Is April OVER the land is April, Over my heart a rose; Over the high, brown mountain The sound of singing goes. Say, love, do you hear me, Hear my sonnets ring? Over the high, brown mountain, Love, do you hear me sing? By highway, love, and byway The snows succeed the rose. Over the high, brown […]...
17. Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind “The past is a bucket of ashes.” 1 THE WOMAN named To-morrow Sits with a hairpin in her teeth And takes her time And does her hair the way she wants it And fastens at last the last braid and coil And puts the hairpin where it belongs And turns and drawls: Well, what of […]...
18. Why Do Birds Sing? Let poets piece prismatic words, Give me the jewelled joy of birds! What ecstasy moves them to sing? Is it the lyric glee of Spring, The dewy rapture of the rose? Is it the worship born in those Who are of Nature’s self a part, The adoration of the heart? Is it the mating mood […]...
19. Sonnet XXXI: Methinks I See To the Critic Methinks I see some crooked mimic jeer, And tax my Muse with this fantastic grace, Turning my papers asks, “What have we here?” Making withal some filthy antic face. I fear no censure, nor what thou canst say, Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigor lose; Think’st thou my wit shall […]...
20. Wild Orphan Blandly mother Takes him strolling by railroad and by river he’s the son of the absconded hot rod angel And he imagines cars and rides them in his dreams, So lonely growing up among the imaginary automobiles And dead souls of Tarrytown to create Out of his own imagination the beauty of his wild Forebears […]...
21. Griffy the Cooper The cooper should know about tubs. But I learned about life as well, And you who loiter around these graves Think you know life. You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps, In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub. You cannot lift yourself to its rim And see […]...
22. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
23. A Meeting In a dream I meet My dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, And yet he is the same For the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, Grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, Ask: “How you been?” He grins and […]...
24. LETTER FROM HAWORTH Poems do not always satisfy the soul, The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more Than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the unending vistas Of the moor, an infinity of purity that excels even Mallarmй. I sit on the cracked steps to the church, sipping tea With my eye on the Black Bull where […]...
25. The Summer that we did not prize The Summer that we did not prize, Her treasures were so easy Instructs us by departing now And recognition lazy Bestirs itself puts on its Coat, And scans with fatal promptness For Trains that moment out of sight, Unconscious of his smartness....
26. The Poet Words flow onto paper like rain, forming giant rivers Of unseen lands. The very force guides us along a journey That holds of great adventure. We are the explorers of the literary world. We must find the courage to write what Others are unable to, with the greatest Of passion. A poet dreams. and then […]...
27. Bringing in the Wine See how the Yellow River’s water move out of heaven. Entering the ocean, never to return. See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers, Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow. … Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases And never tip his golden cup empty toward […]...
28. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
29. Siren Song I phone from time to time, to see if she’s Changed the music on her answerphone. ‘Tell me in two words’, goes the recording, ‘what you were going to tell in a thousand’. I peer into that thought, like peering out To sea at night, hearing the sound of waves Breaking on rocks, knowing she […]...
30. The Billy-Goat Overland Come all ye lads of the droving days, ye gentlemen unafraid, I’ll tell you all of the greatest trip that ever a drover made, For we rolled our swags, and we packed our bags, and taking our lives in hand, We started away with a thousand goats, on the billy-goat overland. There wasn’t a fence […]...
31. It was your first outing It was your first outing, or more rightly, our first outing With you. We were as proud as new parents could be, Wheeling our son in the crowded Sunday shopping throng, Glancing down again and again to reassure ourselves, and you, That we were indeed one, gazing in awe at your small face And trusting […]...
32. We reflect this day on the essence of intimacy We reflect this day on the essence of intimacy, From its origins in the spring-tide of youth To an afterward secured in distant mist In awe for the reason and to what end it endures. We weigh the consequence, Keen with up-welling sentiment, Sense new love spring before the old Has run its course (but […]...
33. Facts by our side are never sudden Facts by our side are never sudden Until they look around And then they scare us like a spectre Protruding from the Ground The height of our portentous Neighbor We never know Till summoned to his recognition By an Adieu Adieu for whence The sage cannot conjecture The bravest die As ignorant of their resumption […]...
34. It's coming the postponeless Creature It’s coming the postponeless Creature It gains the Block and now it gains the Door Chooses its latch, from all the other fastenings Enters with a “You know Me Sir”? Simple Salute and certain Recognition Bold were it Enemy Brief were it friend Dresses each House in Crape, and Icicle And carries one out of […]...
35. Golgotha Through darkness curves a spume of falling flares That flood the field with shallow, blanching light. The huddled sentry stares On gloom at war with white, And white receding slow, submerged in gloom. Guns into mimic thunder burst and boom, And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night. The sentry keeps his watch where no one […]...
36. Perry Zoll My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association, For this modest boulder, And its little tablet of bronze. Twice I tried to join your honored body, And was rejected, And when my little brochure On the intelligence of plants Began to attract attention You almost voted me in. After that I grew beyond the need […]...
37. My Book Before I drink myself to death, God, let me finish up my Book! At night, I fear, I fight for breath, And wake up whiter than a spook; And crawl off to a bistro near, And drink until my brain is clear. Rare Absinthe! Oh, it gives me strength To write and write; and so […]...
38. The Canonization For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five grey hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his Honour, or his Grace, Or the King’s real, or his stamped […]...
39. Tortures Nothing has changed. The body is susceptible to pain, It must eat and breathe air and sleep, It has thin skin and blood right underneath, An adequate stock of teeth and nails, Its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable. In tortures all this is taken into account. Nothing has changed. The body shudders as […]...
40. A Visitor in Marl A Visitor in Marl Who influences Flowers Till they are orderly as Busts And Elegant as Glass Who visits in the Night And just before the Sun Concludes his glistening interview Caresses and is gone But whom his fingers touched And where his feet have run And whatsoever Mouth be kissed Is as it had […]...