Alley Rats

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1. At Grass The eye can hardly pick them out From the cold shade they shelter in, Till wind distresses tail and main; Then one crops grass, and moves about – The other seeming to look on – And stands anonymous again Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps Two dozen distances surficed To fable them: faint afternoons Of Cups […]...
2. In a Back Alley REMEMBRANCE for a great man is this. The newsies are pitching pennies. And on the copper disk is the man’s face. Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?...
3. Over The Alley Here in my office I sit and write Hour on hour, and day on day, With no one to speak to from morn till night, Though I have a neighbour just over the way. Across the alley that yawns between A maiden sits sewing the whole day long; A face more lovely is seldom seen […]...
4. The Cold Night It is cold. The white moon Is up among her scattered stars— Like the bare thighs of The Police Sergeant’s wife—among Her five children. . . No answer. Pale shadows lie upon The frosted grass. One answer: It is midnight, it is still And it is cold. . . ! White thighs of the sky! […]...
5. Letter To N. Y For Louise Crane In your next letter I wish you’d say Where you are going and what you are doing; How are the plays and after the plays What other pleasures you’re pursuing: Taking cabs in the middle of the night, Driving as if to save your soul Where the road gose round and round […]...
6. Jealousy When I see you, who were so wise and cool, Gazing with silly sickness on that fool You’ve given your love to, your adoring hands Touch his so intimately that each understands, I know, most hidden things; and when I know Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow Of his red lips, and that […]...
7. The Drunkards in the Street The Drunkards in the street are calling one another, Heeding not the night-wind, great of heart and gay, – Publicans and wantons – Calling, laughing, calling, While the Spirit bloweth Space and Time away. Why should I feel the sobbing, the secrecy, the glory, This comforter, this fitful wind divine? I the cautious Pharisee, the […]...
8. The Petit Vieux “Sow your wild oats in your youth,” so we’re always told; But I say with deeper sooth: “Sow them when you’re old.” I’ll be wise till I’m about seventy or so: Then, by Gad! I’ll blossom out as an ancient beau. I’ll assume a dashing air, laugh with loud Ha! ha! . . . How […]...
9. Old Deuteronomy Old Deuteronomy’s lived a long time; He’s a Cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme A long while before Queen Victoria’s accession. Old Deuteronomy’s buried nine wives And more I am tempted to say, ninety-nine; And his numerous progeny prospers and thrives And the village […]...
10. Cinderella Cinderella in the street In a ragged gown, Sloven slippers on her feet, Shames our tidy town; Harsh her locks of ashen grey, Vapour vague her stare, By the curb this bitter day Selling papers there. Cinderella once was sweet, Fine and lily fair, Silver slippers on her feet, Ribands in her hair; Solid men […]...
11. A Goodnight Go to sleep-though of course you will not – To tideless waves thundering slantwise against Strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray Dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, Scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady Car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls’ cries in a wind-gust Broken by the wind; calculating wings set […]...
12. Three Ghosts THREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People. The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat Cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each Other thimbles. Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other As misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor, They sat […]...
13. The Sins of Kalamazoo THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab. And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. They run to drabs and grays-and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow-and some: We should worry. […]...
14. A Far Cry From Africa A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies, Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt. Corpses are scattered through a paradise. Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries: “Waste no compassion on these separate dead!” Statistics justify and scholars seize The salients of colonial policy. What is that to the […]...
15. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
16. The Constant Lover Out upon it, I have lov’d Three whole days together; And am like to love three more, If it prove fair weather. Time shall molt away his wings Ere he shall discover In such whole wide world again Such a constant lover. But the spite on’t is, no praise Is due at all to me: […]...
17. Out upon it, I have lov'd Out upon it, I have lov’d Three whole days together; And am like to love three more, If it prove fair weather. Time shall moult away his wings, Ere he shall discover In the whole wide world again Such a constant lover. But the spite on’t is, no praise Is due at all to me; […]...
18. Trying To Write That day i finished A small piece For an obscure magazine I popped it in the box And such a starry elation Came over me That I got whistled at in the street For the first time in a long time. I was dirty and roughly dressed And had circles under my eyes And far […]...
19. The Other Under my bowels, yellow with smoke, It waits. Under my eyes, those milk bunnies, It waits. It is waiting. It is waiting. Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse. Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover. When truth comes spilling out like peas It hangs up the phone. When the child is soothed and resting on the […]...
20. Victory comes late Victory comes late And is held low to freezing lips Too rapt with frost To take it How sweet it would have tasted Just a Drop Was God so economical? His Table’s spread too high for Us Unless We dine on tiptoe Crumbs fit such little mouths Cherries suit Robbins The Eagle’s Golden Breakfast strangles […]...
21. Harvest Song I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger. My […]...
22. Broadway I SHALL never forget you, Broadway Your golden and calling lights. I’ll remember you long, Tall-walled river of rush and play. Hearts that know you hate you And lips that have given you laughter Have gone to their ashes of life and its roses, Cursing the dreams that were lost In the dust of your […]...
23. A Mysterious Naked Man A mysterious naked man has been reported On Cranston Avenue. The police are performing The usual ceremonies with coloured lights and sirens. Almost everyone is outdoors and strangers are conversing Excitedly As they do during disasters when their involvement is Peripheral. ‘What did he look like? ‘ the lieutenant is asking. ‘I don’t know, ‘ […]...
24. Filling Station Oh, but it is dirty! this little filling station, Oil-soaked, oil-permeated To a disturbing, over-all Black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, Oil-soaked monkey suit That cuts him under the arms, And several quick and saucy And greasy sons assist him (it’s a family filling station), All quite thoroughly dirty. Do […]...
25. Rosie Roberts I was sick, but more than that, I was mad At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: “I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, Gradually wasting away. But come and take me, I killed the son Of the merchant […]...
26. The Summer Rain My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read, ‘Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again, What Plutarch read, that […]...
27. WHAT I DID IN THE MOONLIGHT I planted my grief In freshly turned earth A tree grows there now You should see the size of it I filled my wheel-barrow With all my pointless regrets I put them out by the curb A truck will pick them up on Thursday I spent some time following my cat She led me all […]...
28. London in July What ails my senses thus to cheat? What is it ails the place, That all the people in the street Should wear one woman’s face? The London trees are dusty-brown Beneath the summer sky; My love, she dwells in London town, Nor leaves it in July. O various and intricate maze, Wide waste of square […]...
29. The Spirit Medium Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet Because of those new dead That come into my soul and escape Confusion of the bed, Or those begotten or unbegotten Perning in a band, I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand. Or those begotten or unbegotten, For I would not recall […]...
30. Willie Pennington They called me the weakling, the simpleton, For my brothers were strong and beautiful, While I, the last child of parents who had aged, Inherited only their residue of power. But they, my brothers, were eaten up In the fury of the flesh, which I had not, Made pulp in the activity of the senses, […]...
31. Classical Indian Explanation: Music past the hippies Past Ravi Shankar Eons before When the first Asian snake Came alive Stiffened with sound Through some empty shell Some hollow wood Some emptiness The snake Was not so much charmed As listening intently To the accidental flute To that which he knew Must be female Its empty insides Calling him With […]...
32. Momus Momus is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray Against horizons purple, silent. Yes, Momus, Men have flung your face in bronze To gaze in gargoyle downward on […]...
33. Small Comfort Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe, Forsythia lit like a damp match against A thundery sky drunk on its own ozone, The laundry cool and crisp and folded away Again in the lavender closet-too late to find Comfort enough in such small daily moments Of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine People would […]...
34. The Naming Of Cats The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or […]...
35. We say we say blame the teachers Don’t we send our young to school To be taught the simple rules For decent public-spirited behaviour Do we pay such crushing rates To have our children turned to louts We’re sick of all this fuss We say blame the teachers Or the preachers They’re all the same to us […]...
36. MacDougal Street AS I went walking up and down to take the evening air, (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?) I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair; (“Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!”) The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat, (Lay me […]...
37. Mask Fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer. It is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves, masses of green. Your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling. The silk and flare of it is a great soprano leading a chorus Carried along in a rouse of voices reaching for the heart […]...
38. Love Of Jerusalem There is a street where they sell only red meat And there is a street where they sell only clothes and perfumes. And there Is a day when I see only cripples and the blind And those covered with leprosy, and spastics and those with twisted lips. Here they build a house and there they […]...
39. Aprons of Silence MANY things I might have said today. And I kept my mouth shut. So many times I was asked To come and say the same things Everybody was saying, no end To the yes-yes, yes-yes, me-too, me-too. The aprons of silence covered me. A wire and hatch held my tongue. I spit nails into an […]...
40. The Hosting Of The Sidhe The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caoilte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam, Our arms […]...