Washerwoman

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1. As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed As soon as Fred gets out of bed, His underwear goes on his head. His mother laughs, “Don’t put it there, A head’s no place for underwear!” But near his ears, above his brains, Is where Fred’s underwear remains. At night when Fred goes back to bed, He deftly plucks it off his head. His […]...
2. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
3. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
4. From Spring Days To Winter (For Music) In the glad springtime when leaves were green, O merrily the throstle sings! I sought, amid the tangled sheen, Love whom mine eyes had never seen, O the glad dove has golden wings! Between the blossoms red and white, O merrily the throstle sings! My love first came into my sight, O perfect vision of […]...
5. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
6. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
7. The Fury Of God's Goodbye One day He Tipped His top hat And walked Out of the room, Ending the argument. He stomped off Saying: I don’t give guarantees. I was left Quite alone Using up the darkness I rolled up My sweater, Up in a ball, And took it To bed with me, A kind of stand-in For God, […]...
8. The Spring (After Rilke) Spring has returned! Everything has returned! The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes Poems, so many poems. … Look, she has learned So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes! Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white Of the old man’s beard, bright like the snow’s: Now we may ask […]...
9. South Country After the whey-faced anonymity Of river-gums and scribbly-gums and bush, After the rubbing and the hit of brush, You come to the South Country As if the argument of trees were done, The doubts and quarrelling, the plots and pains, All ended by these clear and gliding planes Like an abrupt solution. And over the […]...
10. The Ships that Won't Go Down We hear a great commotion ‘Bout the ship that comes to grief, That founders in mid-ocean, Or is driven on a reef; Because it’s cheap and brittle A score of sinners drown. But we hear but mighty little Of the ships that won’t go down. Here’s honour to the builders – The builders of the […]...
11. Poor Cock Robin My garden robin in the Spring Was rapturous with glee, And followed me with wistful wing From pear to apple tree; His melodies the summer long He carolled with delight, As if he could with jewelled song Find favour in my sight. And now that Autumn’s in the air He’s singing singing still, And yet […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. Mortal Limit I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming. It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags. There west were the Tetons. Snow-peaks would soon be In dark profile to break constellations. Beyond what height Hangs now […]...
15. I cannot be ashamed I cannot be ashamed Because I cannot see The love you offer Magnitude Reverses Modesty And I cannot be proud Because a Height so high Involves Alpine Requirements And Services of Snow....
16. When The Year Grows Old I cannot but remember When the year grows old- October-November- How she disliked the cold! She used to watch the swallows Go down across the sky, And turn from the window With a little sharp sigh. And often when the brown leaves Were brittle on the ground, And the wind in the chimney Made a […]...
17. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
18. From The Shore A LONE gray bird, Dim-dipping, far-flying, Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults Of night and the sea And the stars and storms. Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers, Out into the gloom it swings and batters, Out into the wind and the rain and the vast, Out into the pit of […]...
19. 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...
20. Another Song Words go on travelling from voice To voice while the phones are still And the wires hum in the cold. Now And then dark winter birds settle Slowly on the crossbars, where huddled They caw out their loneliness. Except For them the March world is white And barely alive. The train to Providence Moans somewhere […]...
21. 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...
22. 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 […]...
23. Ascent To The Sierras Beyond the great valley an odd instinctive rising Begins to possess the ground, the flatness gathers to little humps and Barrows, low aimless ridges, A sudden violence of rock crowns them. The crowded orchards end, they Have come to a stone knife; The farms are finished; the sudden foot of the slerra. Hill over hill, […]...
24. Before the ice is in the pools Before the ice is in the pools Before the skaters go, Or any check at nightfall Is tarnished by the snow Before the fields have finished, Before the Christmas tree, Wonder upon wonder Will arrive to me! What we touch the hems of On a summer’s day What is only walking Just a bridge away […]...
25. Winter When icicles hang by the wall And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When Blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who: a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When […]...
26. Spring and Winter ii WHEN icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all […]...
27. 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!...
28. 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...
29. 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 […]...
30. Pigeon THE FLUTTER of blue pigeon’s wings Under a river bridge Hunting a clean dry arch, A corner for a sleep- This flutters here in a woman’s hand. A singing sleep cry, A drunken poignant two lines of song, Somebody looking clean into yesterday And remembering, or looking clean into To-morrow, and reading,- This sings here […]...
31. Sierra Kid “I’ve been where it hurts.” the Kid He becomes Sierra Kid I passed Slimgullion, Morgan Mine, Camp Seco, and the rotting Lode. Dark walls of sugar pine, And where I left the road I left myself behind; Talked to no one, thought Of nothing. When my luck ran out Lived on berries, nuts, bleached grass. […]...
32. Snow In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast!” And still it fell through that dusky brightness On the child crying for the bird of the snow....
33. 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 […]...
34. Victory All night the ways of Heaven were desolate, Long roads across a gleaming empty sky. Outcast and doomed and driven, you and I, Alone, serene beyond all love or hate, Terror or triumph, were content to wait, We, silent and all-knowing. Suddenly Swept through the heaven low-crouching from on high, One horseman, downward to the […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. The Forge To at last be indestructible, a poem Must first glow, almost flammable, upon A thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone, Then bend this way and that, and slowly cool At arms-length, something irreducible Drawn out with caution, toughened in a pool Of water so contrary just a hiss Escapes it-water instantly a mist. […]...
37. Hemlock and Cedar THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs… near the shingle mill… winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard… circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland… brown… soft… tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires… funnel of yellow smoke… spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled […]...
38. ASTROPOETRY ON THE PEAK cocooned in thermal underwear Thick overcoat, scarf and woolly hat To withstand the biting mountain air In the valley below we see the lights Of little houses twinkling in the dark And beyond the next peak The glow from a distant city We scale to these dizzy heights Ignore the pain in our necks Gaze […]...
39. Hohenlinden 1 On Linden, when the sun was low, 2 All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, 3 And dark as winter was the flow 4 Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 5 But Linden saw another sight 6 When the drum beat at dead of night, 7 Commanding fires of death to light 8 The darkness of her […]...
40. Helga THE WISHES on this child’s mouth Came like snow on marsh cranberries; The tamarack kept something for her; The wind is ready to help her shoes. The north has loved her; she will be A grandmother feeding geese on frosty Mornings; she will understand Early snow on the cranberries Better and better then....