A Coin

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1. Early Moon THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west. A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon. One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers. O foxes, baby […]...
2. To An Athlete Dying Young The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away […]...
3. E Coin Behind Your Ear Before you knew you owned it It was gone, stolen, and you were a fool. How you never felt it is the wonder, Heavy and thick, Lodged deep in your hair like a burr. You still see the smile of the magician As he turned the coin in his long fingers, Which had so disturbed […]...
4. Buffalo Bill BOY heart of Johnny Jones-aching to-day? Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town? Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians? Some of us know All about it, Johnny Jones. Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes, A slanting look under a hat on a horse. He sits on a horse and a passing look is […]...
5. Niagara I Within the town of Buffalo Are prosy men with leaden eyes. Like ants they worry to and fro, (Important men, in Buffalo.) But only twenty miles away A deathless glory is at play: Niagara, Niagara. The women buy their lace and cry: – “O such a delicate design,” And over ostrich feathers sigh, By […]...
6. Child Margaret THE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers. All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child’s room. Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps. The 6 and 9 […]...
7. Salute Past is past, and if one Remembers what one meant To do and never did, is Not to have thought to do Enough? Like that gather- Ing of one each I Planned, to gather one Of each kind of clover, Daisy, paintbrush that Grew in that field The cabin stood in and Study them one […]...
8. Time Long Past Like the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last, Was Time long past. There were sweet dreams in the night Of Time long past: And, was it sadness or delight, […]...
9. Women Washing Their Hair THEY have painted and sung The women washing their hair, And the plaits and strands in the sun, And the golden combs And the combs of elephant tusks And the combs of buffalo horn and hoof. The sun has been good to women, Drying their heads of hair As they stooped and shook their shoulders […]...
10. By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said “Good-by” I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Paula NOTHING else in this song-only your face. Nothing else here-only your drinking, night-gray eyes. The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel. I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings. It is not your eyes, your face, I remember. It is not your dancing, race-horse feet. It is […]...
13. My Indian In-laws I remember India: Palm trees, monkey families, Fresh lime juice in the streets, The sensual inundation Of sights and smells And excess in everything. I was exotic and believable there. I was walking through dirt In my sari, To temples of the deities Following the lead Of my Indian in-laws. I was scooping up fire […]...
14. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
15. The Wood Nymph A glint of her hair or a flash of her shoulder – That is the most I can boast to have seen, Then all is lost as the shadows enfold her, Forest glades making a screen of their green, Could I cast off all the cares of tomorrow – Could I forget all the fret […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. Five Cent Balloons PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string. They flutter and dance pulling Pietro’s arm. A nickel apiece is what they sell for. Wishing children tag Pietro’s heels. He sells out and goes the streets alone....
18. The Instructor At times when under cover I ‘ave said, To keep my spirits up an’ raise a laugh, ‘Earin ‘im pass so busy over-‘ead Old Nickel-Neck, ‘oo is n’t on the Staff “There’s one above is greater than us all” Before ‘im I ‘ave seen my Colonel fall, An ‘watched ‘im write my Captain’s epitaph, So […]...
19. Joy-Bells Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells To the green-vista’d gladness of the past That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells To a joyful chime; but let it be the last. What means this metal in windy belfries hung When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells Whose tones are tuned […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. A Curse For A Nation I heard an angel speak last night, And he said ‘Write! Write a Nation’s curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.’ I faltered, taking up the word: ‘Not so, my lord! If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother. ‘For I am bound by gratitude, By love […]...
22. Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead Came the Darker Way Carriages Be Sure and Guests too But for Holiday ‘Tis more pitiful Endeavor Than did Loaded Sea O’er the Curls attempt to caper It had cast away Never Bride had such Assembling Never kinsmen kneeled To salute so fair a Forehead Garland be indeed […]...
23. The Man Who Could Write Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen, Is a dismal failure is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore “I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.” Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, […]...
24. Said The Poet To The Analyst My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget who one words is able […]...
25. Buffalo Country Out where the grey streams glide, Sullen and deep and slow, And the alligators slide From the mud to the depths below Or drift on the stream like a floating death, Where the fever comes on the south wind’s breath, There is the buffalo. Out of the big lagoons, Where the Regia lilies float, And […]...
26. The Shovel Man ON the street Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across, Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches; Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve And a flimsy shirt open at the throat, I know […]...
27. Messidor Put in the sickles and reap; For the morning of harvest is red, And the long large ranks of the corn Coloured and clothed as the morn Stand thick in the fields and deep For them that faint to be fed. Let all that hunger and weep Come hither, and who would have bread Put […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Nationality In Drinks I. My heart sank with our Claret-flask, Just now, beneath the heavy sedges That serve this Pond’s black face for mask And still at yonder broken edges O’ the hole, where up the bubbles glisten, After my heart I look and listen. II. Our laughing little flask, compelled Thro’ depth to depth more bleak and […]...
30. The Loss of Love All through an empty place I go, And find her not in any room; The candles and the lamps I light Go down before a wind of gloom. Thick-spraddled lies the dust about, A fit, sad place to write her name Or draw her face the way she looked That legendary night she came. The […]...
31. Portrait of a Motor Car IT’S a lean car… a long-legged dog of a car… a gray-ghost eagle car. The feet of it eat the dirt of a road… the wings of it eat the hills. Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep. It is in Danny’s life […]...
32. The Appology ‘Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule I am alone forbid to play the fool To follow through the Groves a wand’ring Muse And fain’d Idea’s for my pleasures chuse Why shou’d it in my Pen be held a fault Whilst Mira paints her face, to paint a thought Whilst Lamia to […]...
33. The Heart Of The Sourdough There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon, There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon, And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June. There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows; There where the silences are spawned, and the light […]...
34. Called Into Play Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry: Some flurries have whitened the edges of roads And lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: & Turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to Find something to write about I haven’t already Written away: I will have to stop short, look Down, look […]...
35. Mammy Hums THIS is the song I rested with: The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on. The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat. The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under. The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot […]...
36. Purple Martins IF we were such and so, the same as these, Maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, Tumbling half over in the water mirrors, Tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, Tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple […]...
37. A Song Of Sixty-Five Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one, And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer; And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run, Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I’d […]...
38. Luke Havergal Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal, There where the vines cling crimson on the wall, And in the twilight wait for what will come. The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall; But go, and if you trust her she will call. Go to […]...
39. Sonnet XXXV: Some, Misbelieving To Miracle Some, misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say, that thou art flattered by me, Who only write my skill in verse to prove. See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born Muse made t’express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One […]...
40. 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 […]...