THE INNOCENT EYE

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1. I Want to Pray In the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Psalm 51 That young man Firing his Kalashnikov Into the playground Has been made to know The hidden part. Me, I want to pray. I’m on my knees. But all I am is screaming I don’t know what for. Maybe The best God can […]...
2. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
3. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol, Balliol in the rain. The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you, As you became that road through silent […]...
6. Slant Yesterday, for a long while, The early morning sunlight In the trees was sufficient, Replaced by a hello From a long-limbed woman Pedaling her bike, Whereupon the wind came up, Dispersing the mosquitoes. Blessings, all. I’d come so far, it seemed, Happily looking for so little. But then I saw a cow in a room […]...
7. Thirty-nine O hapless day! O wretched day! I hoped you’d pass me by Alas, the years have sneaked away And all is changed but I! Had I the power, I would remand You to a gloom condign, But here you’ve crept upon me and I I am thirty-nine! Now, were I thirty-five, I could Assume a […]...
8. Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day Calmly we walk through this April’s day, Metropolitan poetry here and there, In the park sit pauper and rentier, The screaming children, the motor-car Fugitive about us, running away, Between the worker and the millionaire Number provides all distances, It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now, Many great dears are taken away, What will become of you […]...
9. Lament Where are those dazzling hills touched by the sun, Those crags in childhood that I used to climb? Hidden, hidden under mist is yonder mountain, Hidden is the heart. A day of cloud, a lifetime falls between, Gone are the heather moors and the pure stream, Gone are the rocky places and the green, Hidden, […]...
10. Stanley Kunitz I used to imagine him Coming from his house, like Merlin Strolling with important gestures Through the garden Where everything grows so thickly, Where birds sing, little snakes lie On the boughs, thinking of nothing But their own good lives, Where petals float upward, Their colors exploding, And trees open their moist Pages of thunder […]...
11. Christmas Trees (A Christmas Circular Letter) THE CITY had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, who looked the city, Yet did in country fashion in that there He […]...
12. Le Gout du Néant Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L’Espoir, dont l’éperon attisait ton ardeur, Ne veut plus t’enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur, Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle bute. Résigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute. Esprit vaincu, fourbu! Pour toi, vieux maraudeur, L’amour n’a plus de gout, non plus que la dispute; Adieu […]...
13. Unwanted The poster with my picture on it Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office. I stand by it hoping to be recognized Posing first full face and then profile But everybody passes by and I have to admit The photograph was taken some years ago. I was unwanted then and I’m unwanted […]...
14. UNCLE BOB Shell-shocked from Korea A grenade that left him The platoon’s only survivor, Put him in Stanley Royd For thirty years. He tailored there And out on weekend leaves He made and mended Everybody’s clothes, Crying copiously While he sewed. When they cleared out The chronic cases Uncle Bob came home, Shopping for Edna, Doing the […]...
15. Prairie States, The A NEWER garden of creation, no primal solitude, Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed-freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society, The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations, To justify the past....
16. The Mocking Fairy ‘Won’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’ Quoth the Fairy, nidding, nodding in the garden; ‘Can’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’ Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden; But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still, And the ivy-tod neath the empty sill, And never from her […]...
17. Reunion For more than thirty years we hadn’t met. I remembered the bright query of your face, That single-minded look, intense and stern, Yet most important – how could I forget?- Was what your taught me inadvertantly (tutored by books and parents, even more By my own awe at what was yet to learn): The finest […]...
18. Milkweed Remember how unimportant They seemed, growing loosely In the open fields we crossed On the way to school. We Would carve wooden swords And slash at the luscious trunks Until the white milk started And then flowed. Then we’d Go on to the long day After day of the History of History Or the tables […]...
19. The Evening Of The Mind Now comes the evening of the mind. Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood; Here is the shadow moving down the page Where you sit reading by the garden wall. Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises, Shudder and droop. Your know their voices now, Faintly the martyred peaches crying out Your […]...
20. Early Spring Harshness vanished. A sudden softness Has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed Their singing accents. Tendernesses, Hesitantly, reach toward the earth From space, and country lanes are showing These unexpected subtle risings That find expression in the empty trees....
21. Affirmation To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, We glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads When a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer Pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage, That began without harm, scatters Into debris on the shore, And a […]...
22. Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Starting To Rain Oh, Marcia, I want your long blonde beauty To be taught in high school, So kids will learn that God Lives like music in the skin And sounds like a sunshine harpsicord. I want high school report cards To look like this: Playing with Gentle Glass Things A Computer Magic A Writing Letters to Those […]...
23. The Red Dance There was a girl Who danced in the city that night, That April 22nd, All along the Charles River. It was as if one hundred men were watching Or do I mean the one hundred eyes of God? The yellow patches in the sycamores Glowed like miniature flashlights. The shadows, the skin of them Were […]...
24. In the Valley of Cauteretz All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walk’d with one I loved two and thirty years ago. All along the valley, while I walk’d to-day, The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away; […]...
25. Cotton Song Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Cant blame God if we dont roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! Cotton bales are the fleecy way, Weary sinner’s bare feet […]...
26. Under the Shadow of Kiley's Hill This is the place where they all were bred; Some of the rafters are standing still; Now they are scattered and lost and dead, Every one from the old nest fled, Out of the shadow of Kiley’s Hill. Better it is that they ne’er came back Changes and chances are quickly rung; Now the old […]...
27. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
28. A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty Unwillingly Miranda wakes, Feels the sun with terror, One unwilling step she takes, Shuddering to the mirror. Miranda in Miranda’s sight Is old and gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty. Shining like the morning star, Like the twilight shining, Haunted by a calendar, Miranda is a-pining. Silly girl, […]...
29. LETTER TO MICHAEL HOROVITZ It is time after thirty years We had our Poetry Renaissance Rise, Children of Albion, rise! It is time after nightmares of sleep When we walked the streets of inner cities Our poems among the burnt-out houses And cars, whispering compassion To the addicts shaking and the homeless Waking and those who have come apart […]...
30. My playmates The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush’s evening song and the robin’s morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know […]...
31. In the New Garden in all the Parts IN the new garden, in all the parts, In cities now, modern, I wander, Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet, Days, places, indifferent-though various, the same, Time, Paradise, the Mannahatta, the prairies, finding me unchanged, Death indifferent-Is it that I lived long since? Was I buried very long ago? For […]...
32. A Birthday Candle Thirty today, I saw The trees flare briefly like The candles on a cake, As the sun went down the sky, A momentary flash, Yet there was time to wish...
33. Mrs. Merritt Silent before the jury, Returning no word to the judge when he asked me If I had aught to say against the sentence, Only shaking my head. What could I say to people who thought That a woman of thirty-five was at fault When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? Even though she had […]...
34. No Neck-Tie Party A prisoner speaks: Majority of twenty-three, I face the Judge with joy and glee; For am I not a lucky chap – No more hanging, no more cap; A “lifer,” yes, but well I know In fifteen years they’ll let me go; For I’ll be pious in my prison, Sing with gusto: Christ Is Risen; […]...
35. To Any Reader As from the house your mother sees You playing round the garden trees, So you may see, if you will look Through the windows of this book, Another child, far, far away, And in another garden, play. But do not think you can at all, By knocking on the window, call That child to hear […]...
36. Nellie Clark I was only eight years old; And before I grew up and knew what it meant I had no words for it, except That I was frightened and told my Mother; And that my Father got a pistol And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. […]...
37. The Fruit Garden Path The path runs straight between the flowering rows, A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose. ‘T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume. Over […]...
38. Toads Revisited Walking around in the park Should feel better than work: The lake, the sunshine, The grass to lie on, Blurred playground noises Beyond black-stockinged nurses – Not a bad place to be. Yet it doesn’t suit me. Being one of the men You meet of an afternoon: Palsied old step-takers, Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters, […]...
39. Sonnet CXXII Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Full character’d with lasting memory, Which shall above that idle rank remain Beyond all date, even to eternity; Or at the least, so long as brain and heart Have faculty by nature to subsist; Till each to razed oblivion yield his part Of thee, thy record never […]...
40. Sonnet 122: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Full charactered with lasting memory, Which shall above that idle rank remain Beyond all date even to eternity- Or at the least, so long as brain and heart Have faculty by nature to subsist; Till each to razed oblivion yield his part Of thee, thy record never […]...