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1. What Can We Do? at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity. Some understanding and, at times, acts of Courage But all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn’t Have too much. It is like a large animal deep in sleep and Almost nothing can awaken it. When activated it’s best at brutality, Selfishness, unjust judgments, […]...
2. Optimistic Man as a child he never plucked the wings off flies He didn’t tie tin cans to cats’ tails Or lock beetles in matchboxes Or stomp anthills He grew up And all those things were done to him I was at his bedside when he died He said read me a poem About the sun and […]...
3. The Bough of Nonsense AN IDYLL Back from the Somme two Fusiliers Limped painfully home; the elder said, S. “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.” R. “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now, Through these great oaks and see the famous bough “Where once a nonsense built her nest With […]...
4. The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence Silence is a great blue bell Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing, In measure’s pleasure, and in the supple symmetry of the soaring of the immense intense wings glinting against All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their singing. And this is the […]...
5. Sonnet XXII: With Fools and Children To Folly With fools and children, good discretion bears; Then, honest people, bear with Love and me, Nor older yet, nor wiser made by years, Amongst the rest of fools and children be; Love, still a baby, plays with gauds and toys, And, like a wanton, sports with every feather, And idiots still are running […]...
6. Failure He wrote a play; by day and night He strove with passion and delight; Yet knew, long ere the curtain drop, His drama was a sorry flop. In Parliament he sought a seat; Election Day brought dire defeat; Yet he had wooed with word and pen Prodigiously his fellow men. And then he wrote a […]...
7. Elemental Drifts 1 ELEMENTAL drifts! How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me! As I ebb’d with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce […]...
8. The Pig In ev’ry age, and each profession, Men err the most by prepossession; But when the thing is clearly shown, And fairly stated, fully known, We soon applaud what we deride, And penitence succeeds to pride. A certain Baron on a day Having a mind to show away, Invited all the wits and wags, Foot, Massey, […]...
9. A Coat I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But he fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked....
10. Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish I should have been a plumber fixing drains. And mending pure white bathtubs for the great Diogenes (who scorned all lies, all liars, and all tyrannies), And then, perhaps, he would bestow on me majesty! (O modesty aside, forgive my fallen pride, O hidden majesty, The lamp, the lantern, the lucid light he sought for […]...
11. MacGregor's Gathering The moon’s on the lake, and the mist’s on the brae, And the Clan has a name that is nameless by day; Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach! Gather, gather, gather, &c. Our signal for fight, that from monarchs we drew, Must be heard but by night in our vengeful haloo! Then haloo, Grigalach! haloo, Grigalach! […]...
12. The Sorrow Of Love The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man’s image and his cry. A girl arose that had red mournful lips And seemed the greatness of the world in tears, Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships […]...
13. When I read the Book WHEN I read the book, the biography famous, And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life; Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or […]...
14. Model For The Laureate On thrones from China to Peru All sorts of kings have sat That men and women of all sorts Proclaimed both good and great; And what’s the odds if such as these For reason of the State Should keep their lovers waiting, Keep their lovers waiting? Some boast of beggar-kings and kings Of rascals black […]...
15. Sonnet XXVI: Though Dusty Wits Though dusty wits dare scorn astrology, And fools can think those lamps of purest light Whose numbers, ways, greatness, eternity, Promising wonders, wonder do invite, To have for no cause birthright in the sky, But for to spangle the black weeds of night: Or for some brawl, which in that chamber high, They should still […]...
16. 279. Epigram on Francis Grose the Antiquary THE DEVIL got notice that Grose was a-dying So whip! at the summons, old Satan came flying; But when he approached where poor Francis lay moaning, And saw each bed-post with its burthen a-groaning, Astonish’d, confounded, cries Satan-“By G-, I’ll want him, ere I take such a damnable load!”...
17. Quarantine In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people A man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking-they were both walking-north. She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like […]...
18. Later life Something this foggy day, a something which Is neither of this fog nor of today, Has set me dreaming of the winds that play Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach, And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray: Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away, So out of reach while quite within my […]...
19. Matt's Manifesto The Renaissance men are aging now, Having survived Industrialization’s Original Sin And the Information Age flood; The need for specialization Drives wrinkles of obsolescence Through their shriveling faces That have seen too much popular culture, Folk wisdom, colloquialisms, and fads born of boredom To have much patience left For the exaltation of yet another Generation […]...
20. Against Evil Company Why should I join with those in Play, In whom I’ve no delight, Who curse and swear, but never pray, Who call ill Names, and fight. I hate to hear a wanton Song, Their Words offend my Ears: I should not dare defile my Tongue With Language such as theirs. Away from Fools I’ll turn […]...
21. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
22. True Story they found him walking along the freeway All red in Front He had taken a rusty tin can And cut off his sexual Machinery As if to say See what you’ve done to Me? you might as well have the Rest. And he put part of him In one pocket and Part of him in […]...
23. Looking, Walking, Being “The World is not something to Look at, it is something to be in.” Mark Rudman I look and look. Looking’s a way of being: one becomes, Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes Dig and burrow into the world. They touch Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the […]...
24. Vomit The house grows sick in its dining room and begins to vomit. Father cries, the dining room is vomiting. No wonder, the way you eat, it’s enough to make anybody sick, Says his wife. What shall we do? What shall we do? he cries. Call the Vomit Doctor of course. Yes, but all he does […]...
25. Come and Play in the Garden Little sister, come away, And let us in the garden play, For it is a pleasant day. On the grass-plat let us sit, Or, if you please, we’ll play a bit, And run about all over it. But the fruit we will not pick, For that would be a naughty trick, And very likely make […]...
26. The Donkey When forests walked and fishes flew And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood, Then, surely, I was born. With monstrous head and sickening bray And ears like errant wings – The devil’s walking parody Of all four-footed things: The battered outlaw of the earth Of ancient crooked will; Scourge, beat, […]...
27. The beekeeper the population controller Slips into disguise His charming suit His veil of words Conceals his gaze He has laid out the fields And filled them with blossoms And counted the money jars In his SimCity slim city Androgyn sharp Bodies are worry perfect Slicked back souped up Cool as drones The neutered ones Will dance […]...
28. Sonnet LIX: As Love and I As Love and I, late harbor’d in one inn, With proverbs thus each other entertain: “In Love there is no lack,” thus I begin; “Fair words make fools,” replieth he again; “Who spares to speak doth spare to speed,” quoth I; “As well,” saith he, “too forward as too slow”; “Fortune assists the boldest,” I […]...
29. The New Mistress “Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be? You may be good for something, but you are not good for me. Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here. And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear. “I will go where I […]...
30. Zilpha Marsh At four o’clock in late October I sat alone in the country school-house Back from the road ‘mid stricken fields, And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane, And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove, With its open door blurring the shadows With the spectral glow of a dying fire. In an […]...
31. The Real Work It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come our real work, And that when we no longer know which way to go We have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings....
32. Another Day having the low down blues and going Into a restraunt to eat. You sit at a table. The waitress smiles at you. She’s dumpy. her ass is too big. She radiates kindess and symphaty. Live with her 3 months and a man would no real agony. O. k., you’ll tip her 15 percent. You order […]...
33. Like Mighty Foot Lights burned the Red Like Mighty Foot Lights burned the Red At Bases of the Trees The far Theatricals of Day Exhibiting to These ‘Twas Universe that did applaud While Chiefest of the Crowd Enabled by his Royal Dress Myself distinguished God...
34. Sex With A Famous Poet I had sex with a famous poet last night And when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered Because I was married to someone else, Because I wasn’t supposed to have been drinking, Because I was in fancy hotel room I didn’t recognize. I would have told you Right off this was […]...
35. What Then? His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read, After certain years he won Sufficient money for his need, Friends that have been friends indeed; ‘What […]...
36. I Shall Not Burn I have done with love and lust, I reck not for gold or fame; I await familiar dust These frail fingers to reclaim: Not for me the tiger flame. Not for me the furnace glow, Rage of fire and ashen doom; To sweet earth my bones bestow Where above a lowly tomb January roses bloom. […]...
37. Sonnet CXXIV If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d’ As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, […]...
38. Sign-Post Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how. Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity, Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow, Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let […]...
39. Alone In The Woods Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures At man So […]...
40. A Channel Passage The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew I must think hard of something, or be sick; And could think hard of only one thing YOU! You, you alone could hold my fancy ever! And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole. Now […]...