Limited

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1. Omaha RED barns and red heifers spot the green Grass circles around Omaha-the farmers Haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese. Shale hogbacks across the river at Council Bluffs-and shanties hang by an eyelash to The hill slants back around Omaha. A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and Nebraska across […]...
2. That the Science of Cartography Is Limited -and not simply by the fact that this shading of Forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam, The gloom of cypresses, Is what I wish to prove. When you and I were first in love we drove To the borders of Connacht And entered a wood there. Look down you said: this was once a […]...
3. Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window INTO the blue river hills The red sun runners go And the long sand changes And to-day is a goner And to-day is not worth haggling over. Here in Omaha The gloaming is bitter As in Chicago Or Kenosha. The long sand changes. To-day is a goner. Time knocks in another brass nail. Another yellow […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Convalescent How shall I wail, that wasn’t meant for weeping? Love has run and left me, oh, what then? Dream, then, I must, who never can be sleeping; What if I should meet Love, once again? What if I met him, walking on the highway? Let him see how lightly I should care. He’d travel his […]...
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. Never Born THE TIME has gone by. The child is dead. The child was never even born. Why go on? Why so much as begin? How can we turn the clock back now And not laugh at each other As ashes laugh at ashes?...
9. Shirt I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in the wind. Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the stuff. And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the singing voice of […]...
10. Losers IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark And came out alive after all. If I pass the burial spot of Nero I shall say to the wind, “Well, well!”- I who have fiddled in a world […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Pods PEA pods cling to stems. Neponset, the village, Clings to the Burlington railway main line. Terrible midnight limiteds roar through Hauling sleepers to the Rockies and Sierras. The earth is slightly shaken And Neponset trembles slightly in its sleep....
13. Grey Hairs These are ashes of treasures: Of hurt and loss. These are ashes in face of which Granite is dross. Dove, naked and brilliant, It has no mate. Solomon’s ashes Over vanity that’s great. Time’s menacing chalkmark, Not to be overthrown. Means God knocks at the door Once the house has burned down! Not choked yet […]...
14. Let Love Go On LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone. Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins. Let the […]...
15. Young A thousand doors ago When I was a lonely kid In a big house with four Garages and it was summer As long as I could remember, I lay on the lawn at night, Clover wrinkling over me, The wise stars bedding over me, My mother’s window a funnel Of yellow heat running out, My […]...
16. 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...
17. Bath A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and Cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all Faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to Dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a Useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman […]...
18. One Cigarette No smoke without you, my fire. After you left, Your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray And sent up a long thread of such quiet grey I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal Of so much love. One cigarette In the non-smoker’s tray. As the last spire Trembles up, a sudden draught Blows […]...
19. The Year IA STORM of white petals, Buds throwing open baby fists Into hands of broad flowers. IIRed roses running upward, Clambering to the clutches of life Soaked in crimson. IIIRabbles of tattered leaves Holding golden flimsy hopes Against the tramplings Into the pits and gullies. IVHoarfrost and silence: Only the muffling Of winds dark and lonesome- […]...
20. 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...
21. 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 […]...
22. Chicago Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders; They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your Painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me […]...
23. 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!...
24. 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...
25. Pull A String, A Puppet Moves each man must realize That it can all disappear very Quickly: The cat, the woman, the job, The front tire, The bed, the walls, the Room; all our necessities Including love, Rest on foundations of sand – And any given cause, No matter how unrelated: The death of a boy in Hong Kong Or a […]...
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. 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 […]...
28. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
29. The House Of Dust: Introduction THE HOUSE OF DUST A Symphony BY CONRAD AIKEN To Jessie NOTE . . . Parts of this poem have been printed in “The North American Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review”. . . . I am Indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called “The Screen Maiden” In Part II. This text […]...
30. Chant For Dark Hours Some men, some men Cannot pass a Book shop. (Lady, make your mind up, and wait your life away.) Some men, some men Cannot pass a Crap game. (He said he’d come at moonrise, and here’s another day!) Some men, some men Cannot pass a Bar-room. (Wait about, and hang about, and that’s the way […]...
31. Prayers After World War WANDERING oversea dreamer, Hunting and hoarse, Oh daughter and mother, Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood, Child of the hair let down, and tears, Child of the cross in the south And the star in the north, Keeper of Egypt and Russia and France, Keeper of England and Poland and Spain, Make us […]...
32. Docker There, in the corner, staring at his drink. The cap juts like a gantry’s crossbeam, Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw. Speech is clamped in the lips’ vice. That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic – Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again; The only Roman collar he tolerates Smiles all […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. A Sphinx Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never Let out a whisper. Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you Answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips Never talking. Not one croak of anything you know has come from your Cat crouch of ages. I am one of those who know all you know and […]...
35. Gethsemane 1914-18 The Garden called Gethsemane In Picardy it was, And there the people came to see The English soldiers pass. We used to pass we used to pass Or halt, as it might be, And ship our masks in case of gas Beyond Gethsemane. The Garden called Gethsemane, It held a pretty lass, But all […]...
36. Beat! Beat! Drums! 1 BEAT! beat! drums!-Blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation; Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet-no happiness must he have now with his bride; Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his […]...
37. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
38. 1926 The porchlight coming on again, Early November, the dead leaves Raked in piles, the wicker swing Creaking. Across the lots A phonograph is playing Ja-Da. An orange moon. I see the lives Of neighbors, mapped and marred Like all the wars ahead, and R. Insane, B. with his throat cut, Fifteen years from now, in […]...
39. There's been a Death, in the Opposite House There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House, As lately as Today I know it, by the numb look Such Houses have alway The Neighbors rustle in and out The Doctor drives away A Window opens like a Pod Abrupt mechanically Somebody flings a Mattress out The Children hurry by They wonder if it died […]...
40. Sonnet VI: How Many Paltry Things How many paltry, foolish, painted things, That now is coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no Poet sings, Ere they be well wrapt in their winding-sheet. Where I to thee eternity shall give, When nothing else remaineth of these days, And Queens hereafter shall be glad to live Upon the alms of thy […]...