VIEW FROM THE INNER CITY

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1. Hymn of the City Not in the solitude Alone may man commune with heaven, or see Only in savage wood And sunny vale, the present Deity; Or only hear his voice Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice. Even here do I behold Thy steps, Almighty! here, amidst the crowd, Through the great city rolled, With everlasting murmur […]...
2. Sonnet: O City, City To live between terms, to live where death Has his loud picture in the subway ride, Being amid six million souls, their breath An empty song suppressed on every side, Where the sliding auto’s catastrophe Is a gust past the curb, where numb and high The office building rises to its tyranny, Is our anguished […]...
3. The unquiet city we are succulents Our cool jade arms open Over clean tables our fine bone China minds pull the strings Of our tongues together we plait Our thoughts with the television Back through the aerials and Transmission towers prodding Through the literal fog The mechanics of which distance Does not startle us or the ears Pretend […]...
4. My Portion is Defeat today My Portion is Defeat today A paler luck than Victory Less Paeans fewer Bells The Drums don’t follow Me with tunes Defeat a somewhat slower means More Arduous than Balls ‘Tis populous with Bone and stain And Men too straight to stoop again, And Piles of solid Moan And Chips of Blank in Boyish Eyes […]...
5. Refrain The air is dark, the night is sad, I lie sleepless and I groan. Nobody cares when a man goes mad: He is sorry, God is glad. Shadow changes into bone. Every shadow has a name; When I think of mine I moan, I hear rumors of such fame. Not for pride, but only shame, […]...
6. Block City What are you able to build with your blocks? Castles and palaces, temples and docks. Rain may keep raining, and others go roam, But I can be happy and building at home. Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, There I’ll establish a city for me: A kirk and a mill and a […]...
7. The City In The Sea Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by […]...
8. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 06: Over the darkened city, the city of towers Over the darkened city, the city of towers, The city of a thousand gates, Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers, Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates, The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls, With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls. On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea, […]...
9. AUBADE Dawn’s my Mr Right, already Cocks have crowed, birds flown from nests, The neon lights of Leeds last night still Sovereign in my sights, limousines and Pink baloons, tee shirts with green stencilled Dates of wedding days to come, the worn dance floor, Jingling arcades where chrome fendered fruit machines Rest on plush carpets like […]...
10. A Pig's-Eye View Of Literature The Lives and Times of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron Byron and Shelley and Keats Were a trio of Lyrical treats. The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls, And Keats never was a descendant of earls, And Byron walked out with a number of girls, But it didn’t […]...
11. A View of the Han River With its three southern branches reaching the Chu border, And its nine streams touching the gateway of Jing, This river runs beyond heaven and earth, Where the colour of mountains both is and is not. The dwellings of men seem floating along On ripples of the distant sky These beautiful days here in Xiangyang Make […]...
12. The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit A BROADSIDE DISTRIBUTED IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS Censers are swinging, Over the town; Censers are swinging, Look overhead! Censers are swinging, Heaven comes down. City, dead city, Awake from the dead! Censers, tremendous, Gleam overhead. Wind-harps are ringing, Wind-harps unseen- Calling and calling:- “Wake from the dead. Rise, little city, Shine like a queen.” Soldiers of […]...
13. On A Distant View Of Harrow Ye scenes of my childhood, whose lov’d recollection Embitters the present, compar’d with the past; Where science first dawn’d on the powers of reflection, And friendships were form’d, too romantic to last; Where fancy, yet, joys to retrace the resemblance Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied; How welcome to me your ne’er fading remembrance, […]...
14. To Put One Brick Upon Another To put one brick upon another, Add a third and then a forth, Leaves no time to wonder whether What you do has any worth. But to sit with bricks around you While the winds of heaven bawl Weighing what you should or can do Leaves no doubt of it at all....
15. XIV. On a Distant View of England AH! from my eyes the tears unbidden start, Albion! as now thy cliffs (that bright appear Far o’er the wave, and their proud summits rear To meet the beams of morn) my beating heart, With eager hope, and filial transport hails! Scenes of my youth, reviving gales ye bring. As when, ere while, the tuneful […]...
16. View Of The Capitol From The Library Of Congress Moving from left to left, the light Is heavy on the Dome, and coarse. One small lunette turns it aside And blankly stares off to the side Like a big white old wall-eyed horse. On the east steps the Air Force Band In uniforms of Air Force blue Is playing hard and loud, but queer […]...
17. Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, Utt’ring bare truth, even so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned, But those same tongues that give thee so thine own […]...
18. All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters All day I hear the noise of waters Making moan, Sad as the sea-bird is when, going Forth alone, He hears the winds cry to the water’s Monotone. The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing Where I go. I hear the noise of many waters Far below. All day, all night, I hear them […]...
19. TO LEEDS BIG ISSUE SELLERS When I come from the Smoke to visit my son on the ward I see you everywhere: by the station, by the neon sign of ‘Squares’ By every shopping mall. Leeds seems to have more of you than anywhere: How do you stand there for so many hours in freezing winds When most you solicit […]...
20. The City of Perth Beautiful Ancient City of Perth, One of the fairest on the earth, With your stately mansions and scenery most fine, Which seems very beautiful in the summer time; And the beautiful silvery Tay, Rolling smoothly on its way, And glittering like silver in the sunshine – And the Railway Bridge across it is really sublime. […]...
21. Christo's Two Workmen were carrying a sheet of asbestos Down the main street of Dingle; It must have been nailed, at a slight angle, To the same-sized gap between Brandon And whichever’s the next mountain. Nine o’clock. We watched the village dogs Take turns to spritz the hotel’s refuse-sacks. I remembered Tralee’s unbiodegradable flags From the […]...
22. A flame is in my blood A flame is in my blood Burning dry life, to the bone. I do not sing of stone, Now, I sing of wood. It is light and coarse: Made of a single spar, The oak’s deep heart, And the fisherman’s oar. Drive them deep, the piles: Hammer them in tight, Around wooden Paradise, Where everything […]...
23. Henry James in the Heart of the City We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City. Nothing would surprise him. The beast in the jungle was what he saw Edith Wharton’s obfuscating older brother. . . He fled the demons Of Manhattan For fear they would devour His inner ones (the ones who wrote the books) […]...
24. City Visions I As the blind Milton’s memory of light, The deaf Beethoven’s phantasy of tone, Wroght joys for them surpassing all things known In our restricted sphere of sound and sight, So while the glaring streets of brick and stone Vix with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night, I will give rein to Fancy, […]...
25. THE DREAMER, THE SLEEP L’orage qui s’attarde, le lit dйfait Yves Bonnefoy Here am I, lying lacklustre in an unmade bed A Sunday in December while all Leeds lies in around me In the silent streets, frost on roof slates, gas fires And kettles whistle as I read Bonnefoy on the eternal. Too tired to fantasize, unsummoned images float […]...
26. The Birds He. Where thou dwellest, in what grove, Tell me Fair One, tell me Love; Where thou thy charming nest dost build, O thou pride of every field! She. Yonder stands a lonely tree, There I live and mourn for thee; Morning drinks my silent tear, And evening winds my sorrow bear. He. O thou summer’s […]...
27. Sanctuary This is the bricklayer; hear the thud Of his heavy load dumped down on stone. His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood, His smoking mortar whiter than bone. Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick Straight by the plumb-line’s shivering length; Make my marvelous wall so thick Dead nor living may shake its strength. Full as a […]...
28. The Kitchen Chimney Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear […]...
29. SORRY I MISSED YOU (or ‘Huddersfield the Second Poetry Capital of England Re-visited’) What was it Janice Simmons said to me as James lay dying in Ireland? “Phone Peter Pegnall in Leeds, an ex-pupil of Jimmy’s. He’s organising A benefit reading, he’d love to hear from you and have your help.” ‘Like hell he would’ I thought but I […]...
30. The Dream-Follower A dream of mine flew over the mead To the halls where my old Love reigns; And it drew me on to follow its lead: And I stood at her window-panes; And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone Speeding on to its cleft in the clay; And my dream was scared, and […]...
31. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
32. The Garden Wall Bricks of the wall, So much older than the house – Taken I think from a farm pulled down When the street was built – Narrow bricks of another century. Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, A wall behind the flowers – Roses and hollyhocks, the silver Pods of lupine, sweet-tasting Phlox, gray Lavender […]...
33. LEFTOVERS Empty chocolate boxes, a pillowcase with an orange at the bottom, Nuts and tinsel with its idiosyncratic rustle and brilliant sheen And the reflection in it of paper-chains hand-made and stuck with Flour-paste stretching from the light-bowl to every corner of the room. Father Christmas himself was plastic and his vast stomach painted red With […]...
34. A Shropshire Lad The gas was on in the Institute, The flare was up in the gym, A man was running a mineral line, A lass was singing a hymn, When Captain Webb the Dawley man, Captain Webb from Dawley, Came swimming along the old canal That carried the bricks to Lawley. Swimming along – Swimming along – […]...
35. A Valentine For Hands names, silence-quietest minutes (building like rain or returning like seas) Since they have touched me, your warm hands have sown Gentlest sounds, touches and hours (or, building like rain, turning, like seas) (building like rain, or returning like seas) Ripples and springs-the shiniest rivers- Since they have known me your warm hands have gathered Smallest, […]...
36. How Solemn as One by One HOW solemn, as one by one, As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty-as the men file by where I stand; As the faces, the masks appear-as I glance at the faces, studying the masks; (As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you are;) How solemn the thought of […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. The Heap of Rags One night when I went down Thames’ side, in London Town, A heap of rags saw I, And sat me down close by. That thing could shout and bawl, But showed no face at all; When any steamer passed And blew a loud shrill blast, That heap of rags would sit And make a sound […]...
39. The City WHAT domination of what darkness dies this hour, And through what new, rejoicing, winged, ethereal power O’erthrown, the cells opened, the heart released from fear? Gay twilight and grave twilight pass. The stars appear O’er the prodigious, smouldering, dusky, city flare. The hanging gardens of Babylon were not more fair Than these blue flickering glades, […]...
40. The City You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, Find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong And my heart lies buried like something dead. How long can I let my mind moulder in this place? Wherever I turn, wherever I look, I […]...