What Can We Do?

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1. This self-congratulatory nonsense as the Famous gather to applaud their seeming Greatness You Wonder where The real ones are What Giant cave Hides them As The deathly talentless Bow to Accolades As The fools are Fooled Again You Wonder where The real ones are If there are Real ones. This self-congratulatory nonsense Has lasted Decades And […]...
2. To Dorothy Wellesley Stretch towards the moonless midnight of the trees, As though that hand could reach to where they stand, And they but famous old upholsteries Delightful to the touch; tighten that hand As though to draw them closer yet. Rammed full Of that most sensuous silence of the night (For since the horizon’s bought strange dogs […]...
3. A PLAN THE MUSES ENTERTAINED A PLAN the Muses entertain’d Methodically to impart To Psyche the poetic art; Prosaic-pure her soul remain’d. No wondrous sounds escaped her lyre E’en in the fairest Summer night; But Amor came with glance of fire, The lesson soon was learn’d aright. 1827.*...
4. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight In Springfield, Illinois IT is portentious, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house, pacing up and down. Or by his homestead, or by shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, […]...
5. Barney Hainsfeather If the excursion train to Peoria Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life Certainly I should have escaped this place. But as it was burned as well, they mistook me For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery At Chicago, And John for me, so I lie here. It […]...
6. Be Angry At San Pedro I say to my woman, “Jeffers was A great poet. think of a title Like Be Angry At The Sun. don’t you Realize how great that is? “you like that negative stuff.” she Says “positively,” I agree, finishing my Drink and pouring another. “in one of Jeffers’ poems, not the sun poem, This woman fucks […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. As plan for Noon and plan for Night As plan for Noon and plan for Night So differ Life and Death In positive Prospective The Foot upon the Earth At Distance, and Achievement, strains, The Foot upon the Grave Makes effort at conclusion Assisted faint of Love....
9. On such a night, or such a night On such a night, or such a night, Would anybody care If such a little figure Slipped quiet from its chair So quiet Oh how quiet, That nobody might know But that the little figure Rocked softer to and fro On such a dawn, or such a dawn Would anybody sigh That such a little […]...
10. The Battle of Blenheim It was a summer evening; Old Kaspar’s work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun; And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine. She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet In playing there had found. He came to […]...
11. The Trap She was taught desire in the street, Not at the angels’ feet. By the good no word was said Of the worth of the bridal bed. The secret was learned from the vile, Not from her mother’s smile. Home spoke not. And the girl Was caught in the public whirl. Do you say “She gave […]...
12. Segregation I stood beside the silken rope, Five dollars in my hand, And waited in my patient hope To sit anear the Band, And hear the famous Louie play The best hot trumpet of today. And then a waiter loafing near Says in a nasty tone: “Old coon, we don’t want darkies here, Beat it before […]...
13. Comrades Oh bear with me, for I am old And count on fingers five The years this pencil I may hold And hope to be alive; How sadly soon our dreaming ends! How brief the sunset glow! Be kindly to the old, my friends: You’ll miss them when they go. I’ve seen so many disappear That […]...
14. The Doomed Ship The doomed ship drives on helpless through the sea, All that the mariners may do is done And death is left for men to gaze upon, While side by side two friends sit silently; Friends once, foes once, and now by death made free Of Love and Hate, of all things lost or won; Yet […]...
15. 51. On Tam the Chapman AS Tam the chapman on a day, Wi’Death forgather’d by the way, Weel pleas’d, he greets a wight so famous, And Death was nae less pleas’d wi’ Thomas, Wha cheerfully lays down his pack, And there blaws up a hearty crack: His social, friendly, honest heart Sae tickled Death, they could na part; Sae, after […]...
16. Saints In our family, there were two saints, My aunt and my grandmother. But their lives were different. My grandmother’s was tranquil, even at the end. She was like a person walking in calm water; For some reason The sea couldn’t bring itself to hurt her. When my aunt took the same path, The waves broke […]...
17. Eyes Fastened With Pins How much death works, No one knows what a long Day he puts in. The little Wife always alone Ironing death’s laundry. The beautiful daughters Setting death’s supper table. The neighbors playing Pinochle in the backyard Or just sitting on the steps Drinking beer. Death, Meanwhile, in a strange Part of town looking for Someone […]...
18. Now let no charitable hope Now let no charitable hope Confuse my mind with images Of eagle and of antelope: I am by nature none of these. I was, being human, born alone; I am, being woman, hard beset; I live by squeezing from a stone What little nourishment I get. In masks outrageous and austere The years go by […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. To win a game How do you win a football game? Not by skill alone or clever plays, In modern days the game has changed and subterfuge and actors Ways will pave the path to glory. Fitness pays a fair reward to keep A fleetness in the feet, a clearness in the head, and special food And clever drinks […]...
21. The Three Hermits Three old hermits took the air By a cold and desolate sea, First was muttering a prayer, Second rummaged for a flea; On a windy stone, the third, Giddy with his hundredth year, Sang unnoticed like a bird: ‘Though the Door of Death is near And what waits behind the door, Three times in a […]...
22. Sweet Dancer The girl goes dancing there On the leaf-sown, new-mown, smooth Grass plot of the garden; Escaped from bitter youth, Escaped out of her crowd, Or out of her black cloud. Ah, dancer, ah, sweet dancer! If strange men come from the house To lead her away, do not say That she is happy being crazy; […]...
23. Children Selecting Books In A Library With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright. The child’s head, bent to the book-colored shelves, Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering, Moving in blind grace… yet from the mural, Care The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist, Seizes the baby hero by the hair And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children, […]...
24. Love Without Hope Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by....
25. Hope is a subtle Glutton Hope is a subtle Glutton He feeds upon the Fair And yet inspected closely What Abstinence is there His is the Halcyon Table That never seats but One And whatsoever is consumed The same amount remain...
26. To Marcus YOU have been far, and I Been farther yet, Since last, in foul or fair An impecunious pair, Below this northern sky Of ours, we met. Now winter night shall see Again us two, While howls the tempest higher, Sit warmly by the fire And dream and plan, as we Were wont to do. And, […]...
27. Escape is such a thankful Word Escape is such a thankful Word I often in the Night Consider it unto myself No spectacle in sight Escape it is the Basket In which the Heart is caught When down some awful Battlement The rest of Life is dropt ‘Tis not to sight the savior It is to be the saved And that […]...
28. For Death or rather For Death or rather For the Things ‘twould buy This put away Life’s Opportunity The Things that Death will buy Are Room Escape from Circumstances And a Name With Gifts of Life How Death’s Gifts may compare We know not For the Rates lie Here...
29. Let Me Die a Youngman's Death Let me die a youngman’s death Not a clean and inbetween The sheets holywater death Not a famous-last-words Peaceful out of breath death When I’m 73 And in constant good tumour May I be mown down at dawn By a bright red sports car On my way home From an allnight party Or when I’m […]...
30. A School Song “Let us now praise famous men” Men of little showing For their work continueth, And their work continueth, Broad and deep continues, Greater then their knowing! Western wind and open surge Took us from our mothers Flung us on a naked shore (Twelve bleak houses by the shore. Seven summers by the shore! ) ‘Mid […]...
31. Birth-Dues Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely contemptible, the dangled Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice; But limitary pain the rock under the tower and the hewn coping That takes thunder at the head of the turret- Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish carving himself With knives will seem […]...
32. To My Enemy Let those who will of friendship sing, And to its guerdon grateful be, But I a lyric garland bring To crown thee, O, mine enemy! Thanks, endless thanks, to thee I owe For that my lifelong journey through Thine honest hate has done for me What love perchance had failed to do. I had not […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. Examination at the Womb-Door Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death. Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death. Who owns these still-working lungs? Death. Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death. Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death. Who owns these questionable brains? Death. All this messy blood? Death. These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death. This wicked little tongue? Death. This […]...
35. Death Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all; Many times he died, Many times rose again. A great man in his pride Confronting murderous men Casts derision upon Supersession of breath; He knows death to the bone – Man has created death....
36. FROM AN ALBUM OF 1604 HOPE provides wings to thought, and love to hope. Rise up to Cynthia, love, when night is clearest, And say, that as on high her figure changeth, So, upon earth, my joy decays and grows. And whisper in her ear with modest softness, How doubt oft hung its head, and truth oft wept. And oh […]...
37. Silence I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths, Of what use is language? A […]...
38. The Men That Don't Fit In There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain’s crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And […]...
39. After The Last Dynasty Reading in Li Po How “the peach blossom follows the water” I keep thinking of you Because you were so much like Chairman Mao, Naturally with the sex Transposed And the figure slighter. Loving you was a kind Of Chinese guerilla war. Thanks to your lightfoot genius No Eighth Route Army Kept its lines more […]...
40. He Knows All There Is To Know. Now He Is Acquainted With The Day And Night (Robert Frost, 1875-1963) Whose wood this is I think I know: He made it sacred long ago: He will expect me, far or near To watch that wood immense with snow. That famous horse must feel great fear Now that his noble rider’s no longer here: He gives his harness bells to rhyme Perhaps he […]...