A Sphinx

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1. Answers I keep my answers small and keep them near; Big questions bruised my mind but still I let Small answers be a bulwark to my fear. The huge abstractions I keep from the light; Small things I handled and caressed and loved. I let the stars assume the whole of night. But the big answers […]...
2. The Sphinx The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. “Who’ll tell me my secret, The ages have kept? I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept: “The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown; Daedalian plan; Out of sleeping a […]...
3. The Sphinx (To Marcel Schwob in friendship and in admiration) In a dim corner of my room for longer than My fancy thinks A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me Through the shifting gloom. Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she Does not stir For silver moons are naught to her and naught To her […]...
4. Mother and sphinx (EGYPTIAN FOLK-SONG) Grim is the face that looks into the night Over the stretch of sands; A sullen rock in a sea of white A ghostly shadow in ghostly light, Peering and moaning it stands. “Oh, is it the king that rides this way Oh, is it the king that rides so free? I have […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Parent's Pantoum for Maxine Kumin Where did these enormous children come from, More ladylike than we have ever been? Some of ours look older than we feel. How did they appear in their long dresses More ladylike than we have ever been? But they moan about their aging more than we do, In their fragile heels and […]...
7. People With Proud Chins I TELL them where the wind comes from, Where the music goes when the fiddle is in the box. Kids-I saw one with a proud chin, a sleepyhead, And the moonline creeping white on her pillow. I have seen their heads in the starlight And their proud chins marching in a mist of stars. They […]...
8. Lover's Gifts XVIII: Your Days Your days will be full of cares, if you must give me your heart. My house by the cross-roads has its doors open and my mind is Absent, – for I sing. I shall never be made to answer for it, if you must give me Your heart. If I pledge my word to you […]...
9. It's Raining In Love I don’t know what it is, but I distrust myself when I start to like a girl a lot. It makes me nervous. I don’t say the right things or perhaps I start to examine, evaluate, compute what I am saying. If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?” and she says, “I […]...
10. Child The young child, Christ, is straight and wise And asks questions of the old men, questions Found under running water for all children And found under shadows thrown on still waters By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled. Found to the eyes of children alone, untold, Singing a low song in the loneliness. And […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Do you know who is thinking of you? If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way It’s little wonder what other people think of you, but The ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close In their hearts, who’re always thinking of you; Do you know, do you know, Do you know who is thinking of […]...
13. Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
14. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
15. Myself and Mine MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever, To stand the cold or heat-to take good aim with a gun-to sail a boat-to manage horses-to beget superb children, To speak readily and clearly-to feel at home among common people, And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea. Not for an embroiderer; (There will always […]...
16. The School of Night What did I study in your School of Night? When your mouth’s first unfathomable yes Opened your body to be my book, I read My answers there and learned the spell aright, Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess What spirits it raised nor where their questions led. Those others, familiar tenants of […]...
17. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
18. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
19. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
20. Questions and a Prayer For a New Born Baby So, here you are once more – in a brand new perfect body; An old soul with a brand new life to explore. And my mind is filled with so many things I want to ask you, So many questions that I’ve forgotten the answers to. I don’t want to ask you about your future, […]...
21. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
22. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
23. Ghost There is a jaggle of masonry here, on a small hill Above the gray-mouthed Pacific, cottages and a thick-walled tower, all made of rough sea rock And Portland cement. I imagine, fifty years from now, A mist-gray figure moping about this place in mad moonlight, examining the mortar-joints, pawing the Parasite ivy: “Does the place […]...
24. Nights Nothings Again WHO knows what I know When I have asked the night questions And the night has answered nothing Only the old answers? Who picked a crimson cryptogram, The tail light of a motor car turning a corner, Or the midnight sign of a chile con carne place, Or a man out of the ashes of […]...
25. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
26. Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front Love the quick profit, the annual raise, Vacation with pay. Want more Of everything ready-made. Be afraid To know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery Any more. Your mind will be punched in a card And shut away in […]...
27. Dream Song 24: Oh servant Henry lectured till Oh servant Henry lectured till The crows commenced and then He bulbed his voice & lectured on some more. This happened again & again, like war, — The Indian p. a.’s, such as they were, A weapon on his side, for the birds. Vexations held a field-monsoon. He was Introduced, and then he was Summed-up. […]...
28. Mount Zhongnan Its massive height near the City of Heaven Joins a thousand mountains to the corner of the sea. Clouds, when I look back, close behind me, Mists, when I enter them, are gone. A central peak divides the wilds And weather into many valleys. …Needing a place to spend the night, I call to a […]...
29. Rest O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hush’d in and curtain’d with a blessed dearth Of all that irk’d her from […]...
30. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
31. Kin BROTHER, I am fire Surging under the ocean floor. I shall never meet you, brother Not for years, anyhow; Maybe thousands of years, brother. Then I will warm you, Hold you close, wrap you in circles, Use you and change you Maybe thousands of years, brother. Where the moon slants and wavers....
32. Limited I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains Of the nation. Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air Go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people. (All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men And women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall Pass […]...
33. Under the Harvest Moon Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With […]...
34. God's World O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close […]...
35. The Moon, how definite its orb! (fragment) The Moon, how definite its orb! Yet gaze again, and with a steady gaze ‘Tis there indeed, but where is it not? It is suffused o’er all the sapphire Heaven, Trees, herbage, snake-like stream, unwrinkled Lake, Whose very murmur does of it partake And low and close the broad smooth mountain Is more a thing […]...
36. "It Might Have Been&quot We will be what we could be. Do not say, “It might have been, had not this, or that, or this.” No fate can keep us from the chosen way; He only might who is. We will do what we could do. Do not dream Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve. I hold, […]...
37. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
38. Zermatt to the Matterhorn Thirty-two years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height, And four lives paid for what the seven had won. They were the first by whom the deed was done, And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight To that day’s tragic […]...
39. Unless Who has not wanted, does not guess What plenty is. Who has not groped In depths of doubt and hopelessness, Has never truly hoped. Unless, sometimes, a shaow falls Upon his mirth, and veils his sight, And from the darkness drifts the light Of love at intervals. And that most dear of everything, I hold, […]...
40. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...