WITHOUT THE WHEREWITHALL

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1. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
2. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
3. Pensive and Faltering PENSIVE and faltering, The words, the dead, I write; For living are the Dead; (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition-I the spectre.) 5...
4. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
5. Dream Song 31: Henry Hankovitch, con guítar Henry Hankovitch, con guítar, Did a short Zen pray, On his tatami in a relaxed lotos Fixin his mind on nuffin, rose-blue breasts, And gave his parnel one French kiss; Enslaving himself he withdrew from his blue Florentine leather case an Egyptian black & flickt a zippo. Henry & Phoebe happy as cockroaches In the […]...
6. The Fisherman Although I can see him still. The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It’s long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man. All day I’d looked in the face What I had hoped […]...
7. The Poets O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns […]...
8. Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
9. An Exhortation Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame: If in this wide world of care Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a day? Poets are on this […]...
10. Northern Pike All right. Try this, Then. Every body I know and care for, And every body Else is going To die in a loneliness I can’t imagine and a pain I don’t know. We had To go on living. We Untangled the net, we slit The body of this fish Open from the hinge of the […]...
11. A Certain Man A certain man wishes to be a prince Of this earth; he also wants to be A saint and master of the being-world. Conscience cannot exist in the first: The second cannot exist without conscience. Therefore he, who has enough conscience To be disturbed but not enough to be Compelled, can neither reject the one […]...
12. In Memoriam Mae Noblitt This is just a place: We go around, distanced, Yearly in a star’s Atmosphere, turning Daily into and out of Direct light and Slanting through the Quadrant seasons: deep Space begins at our Heels, nearly rousing Us loose: we look up Or out so high, sight’s Silk almost draws us away: This is just a […]...
13. Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World Whether what we sense of this world Is the what of this world only, or the what Of which of several possible worlds which what? something of what we sense May be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense. For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance Of travelers, eating […]...
14. Memorial Day For The War Dead Memorial day for the war dead. Add now The grief of all your losses to their grief, Even of a woman that has left you. Mix Sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history, Which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning On one day for easy, convenient memory. Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread, In sweet milk […]...
15. The Blue Swallows Across the millstream below the bridge Seven blue swallows divide the air In shapes invisible and evanescent, Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s Or memory’s power to keep them there. “History is where tensions were,” “Form is the diagram of forces.” Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge, While gazing down upon those birds – How strange, to […]...
16. I reckon when I count it all I reckon when I count it all First Poets Then the Sun Then Summer Then the Heaven of God And then the List is done But, looking back the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show So I write Poets All Their Summer lasts a Solid Year They can […]...
17. Gannets I am watching the white gannets Blaze down into the water With the power of blunt spears And a stunning accuracy Even though the sea is riled and boiling And gray with fog And the fish Are nowhere to be seen, They fall, they explode into the water Like white gloves, Then they vanish, Then […]...
18. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
19. INSPIRATION FROM A VISITATION OF MY MUSE Memories bursting like tears or waves On some lonely Adriatic shore Beating again and again Threshings of green sea foam Flecked like the marble Leonardo Chipped for his ‘Moses’. And my tears came as suddenly In that dream, criss-crossed With memory and desire. Grandad Nicky had worked Down the pits for a pittance To bring […]...
20. THE SINGING SCHOOL The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You know its flim-flam on the ether, grants for Jack-the-lads Of both sexes, poets who’ve never been seen in a little magazine […]...
21. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
22. The Poets Of The Tomb The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, ‘Tis time the people passed a law to knock ’em on the head, For ‘twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave Those bards of ‘tears’ and ‘vanished hopes’, those poets of the grave. They say that life’s […]...
23. Monet Refuses The Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes Around the streetlights in Paris And what I see is an aberration Caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life To arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, To soften and blur and finally banish The edges you […]...
24. Sestina Of The Tramp-Royal Speakin’ in general, I’ave tried ’em all The ‘appy roads that take you o’er the world. Speakin’ in general, I’ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get ‘ence, the same as I’ave done, An’ go observin’ matters till they die. What do it matter where or ‘ow […]...
25. Longevity Said Brown: ‘I can’t afford to die For I have bought annuity, And every day of living I Have money coming in to me: While others toil to make their bread I make mine by not being dead.’ Said Jones: ‘I can’t afford to die, For I have books and books to write. I do […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. The Seven Of Pentacles Under a sky the color of pea soup She is looking at her work growing away there Actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans As things grow in the real world, slowly enough. If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water, If you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter […]...
28. On Living I Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to such a degree that, for […]...
29. The Makers Who can remember back to the first poets, The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus? No one has remembered that far back Or now considers, among the artifacts, And bones and cantilevered inference The past is made of, those first and greatest poets, So lofty and disdainful of renown They left us not a name […]...
30. To A Sad Daughter All night long the hockey pictures Gaze down at you Sleeping in your tracksuit. Belligerent goalies are your ideal. Threats of being traded Cuts and wounds all this pleases you. O my god! you say at breakfast Reading the sports page over the Alpen As another player breaks his ankle Or assaults the coach. When […]...
31. The eyes that haunt me there are eyes that refuse to exist In the fresh air – they are invented By the lies of paint or make their mark In a memory that had a truth To feed on but only by distortion Right now they sell a dream I’d like to see the back of – they come With […]...
32. Talking to Grief Ah, Grief, I should not treat you Like a homeless dog Who comes to the back door For a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. I should coax you Into the house and give you Your own corner, A worn mat to lie on, Your own water dish. You think I don’t […]...
33. Occupational Hazard He has slept with accountants and brokers, With a cowgirl (well, someone from Healds). He has slept with non-smokers and smokers In commercial and cultural fields. He has slept with book-keepers, book-binders, Slept with auditors, florists, PAs Child psychologists, even child minders, With directors of firms and of plays. He has slept with the stupid […]...
34. Everybody is an Ezing! everybody is an Ezing to themselves! Oh yes, because reality does not exist, Oh no, even when it seems so. Only action happens, even when it doesn’t. And it does not matter, even when it so appears. It is opinion that matters, and opinion alone, It still matters when it doesn’t so appear. As to […]...
35. Murmurings in a field hospital [They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two Days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.] COME to me only with playthings now. . . A picture of a singing woman with blue eyes Standing at a fence of hollyhocks, poppies and sunflowers. . . Or an […]...
36. To Imagination When weary with the long day’s care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again: Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, While thou canst speak with such a tone! So hopeless is the world without; The world within I doubly prize; […]...
37. Bilbea BILBEA, I was in Babylon on Saturday night. I saw nothing of you anywhere. I was at the old place and the other girls were there, but no Bilbea. Have you gone to another house? or city? Why don’t you write? I was sorry. I walked home half-sick. Tell me how it goes. Send me […]...
38. The Desolate Field Vast and grey, the sky Is a simulacrum To all but him whose days Are vast and grey and- In the tall, dried grasses A goat stirs With nozzle searching the ground. My head is in the air But who am I. . . ? -and my heart stops amazed At the thought of love […]...
39. Vers De Société My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps You’d care to join us? In a pig’s arse, friend. Day comes to an end. The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed. And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I’m afraid Funny how hard it is to […]...
40. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...