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1. 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 […]...
2. Illinois Farmer BURY this old Illinois farmer with respect. He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois cornfields. Now he goes on a long sleep. The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind that combed his red beard zero mornings when the snow lay white on […]...
3. Killers I AM singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs, Held where he cannot move: Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for shining teeth, Sharp eyes, hard legs, And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs […]...
4. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
5. Humdrum IF I had a million lives to live and a million deaths to die in a million humdrum worlds, I’d like to change my name and have a new house number to go by each and every time I died and started life all over again. I wouldn’t want the same name every time and […]...
6. Potomac Town in February THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am. The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up. The white water says: I go on; around, under, over, I go on. A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they nearly got me last year. […]...
7. Ashes Of Life Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; Eat I must, and sleep I will,-and would that night were here! But ah!-to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! Would that it were day again!-with twilight near! Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do; […]...
8. Bewick Finzer Time was when his half million drew The breath of six per cent; But soon the worm of what-was-not Fed hard on his content; And something crumbled in his brain When his half million went. Time passed, and filled along with his The place of many more; Time came, and hardly one of us Had […]...
9. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
10. New Year's Chimes What is the song the stars sing? (And a million songs are as song of one) This is the song the stars sing: (Sweeter song’s none) One to set, and many to sing, (And a million songs are as song of one) One to stand, and many to cling, The many things, and the one […]...
11. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
12. I Keep Six Honest I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west; But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest. I let them rest […]...
13. A Million Young Workmen, 1915 A MILLION young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads, And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses. Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands. And oh, it would have been […]...
14. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
15. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
16. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
17. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
18. The Stretcher-Bearer My stretcher is one scarlet stain, And as I tries to scrape it clean, I tell you wot I’m sick with pain For all I’ve ‘eard, for all I’ve seen; Around me is the ‘ellish night, And as the war’s red rim I trace, I wonder if in ‘Eaven’s height, Our God don’t turn away […]...
19. Valley Song YOUR eyes and the valley are memories. Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl. It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline. It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. And your eyes and the moon swept the valley. I will see you again to-morrow. I will see you again in […]...
20. Two Strangers Breakfast THE LAW says you and I belong to each other, George. The law says you are mine and I am yours, George. And there are a million miles of white snowstorms, a million furnaces of hell, Between the chair where you sit and the chair where I sit. The law says two strangers shall eat […]...
21. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
22. The Last Judgment With beating heart and lagging feet, Lord, I approach the Judgment-seat. All bring hither the fruits of toil, Measures of wheat and measures of oil; Gold and jewels and precious wine; No hands bare like these hands of mine. The treasure I have nor weighs nor gleams: Lord, I can bring you only dreams. In […]...
23. The Rain and the Wind The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain They are with us like a disease: They worry the heart, they work the brain, As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane, And savage the helpless trees. What does it profit a man to know These tattered and tumbling skies A million stately […]...
24. The Telephone To-night in million-voiced London I Was lonely as the million-pointed sky Until your single voice. Ah! So the sun Peoples all heaven, although he be but one....
25. 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 […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far; Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen The silver strings of heavenly harp atween: And let there glide by many a pearly car Pink robes, and wavy hair, and […]...
28. The Days that we can spare The Days that we can spare Are those a Function die Or Friend or Nature stranded then In our Economy Our Estimates a Scheme Our Ultimates a Sham We let go all of Time without Arithmetic of him...
29. Long Odds How many million galaxies there are Who knows? and each has countless stars in it, And each rolls through eternities afar Beneath the threshold of the Infinite. How is it that will all that space to roam I should have found this mote that spins and leaps In what unutterable sunlight, foam Of what unfathomable […]...
30. It Is Much Women of night life amid the lights Where the line of your full, round throats Matches in gleam the glint of your eyes And the ring of your heart-deep laughter: It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow. Women of night life along the shadows, Lean at your throats and skulking the walls, […]...
31. The World's All Right Be honest, kindly, simple, true; Seek good in all, scorn but pretence; Whatever sorrow come to you, Believe in Life’s Beneficence! The World’s all right; serene I sit, And cease to puzzle over it. There’s much that’s mighty strange, no doubt; But Nature knows what she’s about; And in a million years or so We’ll […]...
32. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
33. Still I Love To Rhyme STILL I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander Far from the commoner way; Old-time trills and falls by the brook-side still do I ponder, Dreaming to-morrow to-day. Come here, come, revive me, Sun-God, teach me, Apollo, Measures descanted before; Since I ancient verses, I emulous follow, Prints in the marbles of yore. […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all You hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which […]...
36. Sandhill People I TOOK away three pictures. One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan. One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come. One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing […]...
37. Statistics NAPOLEON shifted, Restless in the old sarcophagus And murmured to a watchguard: “Who goes there?” “Twenty-one million men, Soldiers, armies, guns, Twenty-one million Afoot, horseback, In the air, Under the sea.” And Napoleon turned to his sleep: “It is not my world answering; It is some dreamer who knows not The world I marched in […]...
38. Blue Ridge BORN a million years ago you stay here a million years… Watching the women come and live and be laid away… You and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely. So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star. I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains....
39. 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 […]...
40. Village in Late Summer LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers....