Picnic, Lightning

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1. Loam IN the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pass And the break of stars, From the loam, then, The soft warm loam, We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder. We stand, then, To a whiff of life, Lifted to the silver of the […]...
2. Lightning The oaks shone Gaunt gold On the lip Of the storm before The wind rose, The shapeless mouth Opened and began Its five-hour howl; The lights Went out fast, branches Sidled over The pitch of the roof, bounced Into the year That grew black Within minutes, except For the lightening – the landscape Bulging forth […]...
3. Dryads When meadows are grey with the morn In the dusk of the woods it is night: The oak and the birch and the pine War with the glimmer of light. Dryads brown as the leaf Move in the gloom of the glade; When meadows are grey with the morn Dim night in the wood has […]...
4. Honey At The Table It fills you with the soft Essence of vanished flowers, it becomes A trickle sharp as a hair that you follow From the honey pot over the table And out the door and over the ground, And all the while it thickens, Grows deeper and wilder, edged With pine boughs and wet boulders, Pawprints of […]...
5. One The mosquito is so small It takes almost nothing to ruin it. Each leaf, the same. And the black ant, hurrying. So many lives, so many fortunes! Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances Down to the ponds and through the pinewoods. Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour Before the slug creeps […]...
6. 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. […]...
7. Picnic-time It’s June ag’in, an’ in my soul I feel the fillin’ joy That’s sure to come this time o’ year to every little boy; For, every June, the Sunday-schools at picnics may be seen, Where “fields beyont the swellin’ floods stand dressed in livin’ green”; Where little girls are skeered to death with spiders, bugs, […]...
8. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
9. The Lightning playeth all the while The Lightning playeth all the while But when He singeth then Ourselves are conscious He exist And we approach Him stern With Insulators and a Glove Whose short sepulchral Bass Alarms us tho’ His Yellow feet May pass and counterpass Upon the Ropes above our Head Continual with the News Nor We so much as […]...
10. 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 […]...
11. The Lightning is a yellow Fork The Lightning is a yellow Fork From Tables in the sky By inadvertent fingers dropt The awful Cutlery Of mansions never quite disclosed And never quite concealed The Apparatus of the Dark To ignorance revealed....
12. The Shepherd's Brow, Fronting Forked Lightning, Owns The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns The horror and the havoc and the glory Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven-a story Of just, majestical, and giant groans. But man-we, scaffold of score brittle bones; Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori – What […]...
13. A Book Full of Pictures Father studied theology through the mail And this was exam time. Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book Full of pictures. Night fell. My hands grew cold touching the faces Of dead kings and queens. There was a black raincoat in the upstairs bedroom Swaying from the ceiling, But what was it doing there? […]...
14. Spring And All By the road to the contagious hospital Under the surge of the blue Mottled clouds driven from the Northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the Waste of broad, muddy fields Brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen Patches of standing water The scattering of tall trees All along the road the reddish Purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy Stuff […]...
15. Birds at Winter Nightfall (Triolet) Around the house the flakes fly faster, And all the berries now are gone From holly and cotoneaster Around the house. The flakes fly! faster Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster We used to see upon the lawn Around the house. The flakes fly faster, And all the berries now are gone!...
16. Graydigger's Home Paw marks near one burrow show Graydigger At home, I bend low, from down there swivel My head, grasstop level the world Goes on forever, the mountains a bigger Burrow, their snow like last winter. From a room Inside the world even the strongest wind Has a soft sound: a new house will hide In […]...
17. Brooding Grief A yellow leaf from the darkness Hops like a frog before me. Why should I start and stand still? I was watching the woman that bore me Stretched in the brindled darkness Of the sick-room, rigid with will To die: and the quick leaf tore me Back to this rainy swill Of leaves and lamps […]...
18. Bag Of Mice I dreamt your suicide note Was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag, & in the bag were six baby mice. The bag Opened into darkness, Smoldering From the top down. The mice, Huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag Across a shorn field. I stood over it & as the burning reached each carbon […]...
19. Sweethearts IT’S gettin’ bits o’ posies, ‘N’ feelin’ mighty good; A-thrillin’ ’cause she loves you, An’ wond’rin’ why she should; An’ stoppin’ sort o’ sudden, Because you’re full o’ thought; An’ quick with res’less feelin’s That make life seem too short! It’s feelin’ ‘s if she’d loved you Before the world was made; As if she […]...
20. Dirge in Woods A wind sways the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the […]...
21. Night Is On The Downland Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland, On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland And the pine-woods roar like the surf. Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely, Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl; None comes here now […]...
22. Transcience Nay, do not grieve tho’ life be full of sadness, Dawn will not veil her spleandor for your grief, Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf. Nay, do not pine, tho’ life be dark with trouble, Time will not pause or tarry on his way; To-day that seems so […]...
23. The Victims Of The Little Box Not even in a dream Should you have anything to do With the little box If you saw her full of stars once You’d wake up Without heart or soul in your chest If you slid your tongue Into her keyhole once You’d wake up with a hole in your forehead If you ground her […]...
24. White Night There will be thunder then. Remember me. Say ‘ She asked for storms.’ The entire World will turn the colour of crimson stone, And your heart, as then, will turn to fire. That day, in Moscow, a true prophecy, When for the last time I say goodbye, Soaring to the heavens that I longed to […]...
25. A March Snow Let the old snow be covered with the new: The trampled snow, so soiled, and stained, and sodden. Let it be hidden wholly from our view By pure white flakes, all trackless and untrodden. When Winter dies, low at the sweet Spring’s feet Let him be mantled in a clean, white sheet. Let the old […]...
26. Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; II: On Malicious Cruelty To Harmless Creatures The cruelty of P. L. Brown- (He had ten toes as good as mine) Was known to every one in town, And, if he never harmed a noun, He loved to make verbs shriek and whine. The “To be” family’s just complaints- (Brown had ten toes as good as mine) Made Brown cast off the […]...
27. Old I’m afraid of needles. I’m tired of rubber sheets and tubes. I’m tired of faces that I don’t know And now I think that death is starting. Death starts like a dream, Full of objects and my sister’s laughter. We are young and we are walking And picking wild blueberries. All the way to Damariscotta. […]...
28. Riprap Lay down these words Before your mind like rocks. placed solid, by hands In coice of place, set Before the body of the mind in space and time: Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall riprap of things: Cobble of milky way, straying planets, These poems, people, lost ponies with Dragging saddles and rocky sure-foot trails. […]...
29. Litany You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine… – Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass And the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, And the marsh […]...
30. The Conjugation of the Paramecium This has nothing To do with Propagating The species Is continued As so many are (among the smaller creatures) By fission (and this species Is very small Next in order to The amoeba, the beginning one) The paramecium Achieves, then, Immortality By dividing But when The paramecium Desires renewal Strength another joy This is what […]...
31. Teeth English Teeth, English Teeth! Shining in the sun A part of British heritage Aye, each and every one. English Teeth, Happy Teeth! Always having fun Clamping down on bits of fish And sausages half done. English Teeth! HEROES’ Teeth! Hear them click! and clack! Let’s sing a song of praise to them – Three Cheers […]...
32. Screw-Guns Smokin’ my pipe on the mountings, sniffin’ the mornin’ cool, I walks in my old brown gaiters along o’ my old brown mule, With seventy gunners be’ind me, an’ never a beggar forgets It’s only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets ‘Tss! ‘Tss! For you all love the screw-guns the […]...
33. The Table And The Chair Said the table to the chair, “You can scarcely be aware How I suffer from the heat And from blisters on my feet! If we took a little walk We might have a little talk. Pray, let us take the air!” Said the table to the chair. Said the chair unto the table, “Now you […]...
34. Our Singing Strength It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm The flakes could find no landing place to form. Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold, And still they failed of any lasting hold. They made no white impression on the black. They disappeared as if earth sent them back. Not till from […]...
35. Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay....
36. Sonnet On Approaching Italy I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned, Italia, my Italia, at thy name: And when from out the mountain’s heart I came And saw the land for which my life had yearned, I laughed as one who some great prize had earned: And musing on the marvel of thy fame I watched the […]...
37. The Eagle and the Mole Avoid the reeking herd, Shun the polluted flock, Live like that stoic bird, The eagle of the rock. The huddled warmth of crowds Begets and fosters hate; He keeps above the clouds His cliff inviolate. When flocks are folded warm, And herds to shelter run, He sails above the storm, He stares into the sun. […]...
38. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
39. 22. Song-Raging Fortune: A Fragment O RAGING Fortune’s withering blast Has laid my leaf full low, O! O raging Fortune’s withering blast Has laid my leaf full low, O! My stem was fair, my bud was green, My blossom sweet did blow, O! The dew fell fresh, the sun rose mild, And made my branches grow, O! But luckless Fortune’s […]...
40. A Red Wheelbarrow Rest and look at this goddamned wheelbarrow. Whatever It is. Dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not For their significance. For their significant. For being human The signs escape you. You, who aren’t very bright Are a signal for them. Not, I mean, the dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not Their significance....