On the Anthropic Principle

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1. They Were Welcome To Their Belief Grief may have thought it was grief. Care may have thought it was care. They were welcome to their belief, The overimportant pair. No, it took all the snows that clung To the low roof over his bed, Beginning when he was young, To induce the one snow on his head. But whenever the roof […]...
2. The Swan At Edgewater Park Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms in its tidal fringe Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck into the body of a Great Lake, Swilling whatever it is swans swill, Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud, […]...
3. EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE Desks are straining on all fours, flanks Heaving to hurl the hunched riders Down crack and cranny, buck Finger-snapping lids, consume Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth. The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me, Making my neck prick as it scatters dust Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clichй, Anoints its carved channels […]...
4. Oh Who Is That Young Sinner Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they’re taking him to prison for the color of his hair. ‘Tis a shame to human nature, such a head […]...
5. The Otter When you plunged The light of Tuscany wavered And swung through the pool From top to bottom. I loved your wet head and smashing crawl, Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders Surfacing and surfacing again This year and every year since. I sat dry-throated on the warm stones. You were beyond me. The mellowed clarities, […]...
6. Wild Swans I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. And what did I see I had not seen before? Only a question less or a question more: Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild […]...
7. The Color of the Grave is Green The Color of the Grave is Green The Outer Grave I mean You would not know it from the Field Except it own a Stone To help the fond to find it Too infinite asleep To stop and tell them where it is But just a Daisy deep The Color of the Grave is white […]...
8. Psalm Concerning the Castle Let me be at the place of the castle. Let the castle be within me. Let it rise foursquare from the moat’s ring. Let the moat’s waters reflect green plumage of ducks, let the shells of swimming turtles break the surface or be seen through the rippling depths. Let horsemen be stationed at the rim […]...
9. Promises, Promises I am stretched out under the lean-to Of an old tobacco-shed On a farm in North Carolina. A cardinal sings from the dogwood For the love of marijuana. His song goes over my head. There is such splendour in the grass I might be the picture of happiness. Yet I am utterly bereft Of the […]...
10. Psalm 119 part 12 Breathing after comfort and deliverance. Ver. 153 My God, consider my distress, Let mercy plead my cause; Though I have sinned against thy grace, I can’t forget thy laws. Ver. 39,116 Forbid, forbid the sharp reproach Which I so justly fear; Uphold my life, uphold my hopes, Not let my shame appear. Ver. 122,135 Be […]...
11. Paradise Motel Millions were dead; everybody was innocent. I stayed in my room. The President Spoke of war as of a magic love potion. My eyes were opened in astonishment. In a mirror my face appeared to me Like a twice-canceled postage stamp. I lived well, but life was awful. There were so many soldiers that day, […]...
12. The Last Word Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said! Vain thy onset! all stands fast. Thou thyself must break at last! Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese. Let them have it how they will! Thou art tired; best be still! They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore […]...
13. Sonnets 04: Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by […]...
14. The Color of a Queen, is this The Color of a Queen, is this The Color of a Sun At setting this and Amber Beryl and this, at Noon And when at night Auroran widths Fling suddenly on men ‘Tis this and Witchcraft nature keeps A Rank for Iodine...
15. Civilization Send your army home to their wives and children. It is late. Your soldiers are burdened, thirsty. Lock the doors, the windows, and here in darkness lie down beside me. Speak of anything we possess in common: Ground or law or sense. Only speak it softly. Spiders crawl the crevices. Violent voices ruin their balance, […]...
16. The Black Swan When the swans turned my sister into a swan I would go to the lake, at night, from milking: The sun would look out through the reeds like a swan, A swan’s red beak; and the beak would open And inside there was darkness, the stars and the moon. Out on the lake, a girl […]...
17. To His Dead Body When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried, Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died, Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled. Yet, though my dreams that throng the darkened stair Can bring me no report of how you fare, Safe quit of wars, I […]...
18. Never To Dream Of Spiders Time collapses between the lips of strangers My days collapse into a hollow tube Soon implodes against now Like an iron wall My eyes are blocked with rubble A smear of perspectives Blurring each horizon In the breathless precision of silence One word is made. Once the renegade flesh was gone Fall air lay against […]...
19. Moonrise I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning: The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle, Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless, Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa […]...
20. Spiders Is the spider a monster in miniature? His web is a cruel stair, to be sure, Designed artfully, cunningly placed, A delicate trap, carefully spun To bind the fly (innocent or unaware) In a net as strong as a chain or a gun. There are far more spiders than the man in the street supposes […]...
21. Anarchy I saw a city filled with lust and shame, Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light; And sudden, in the midst of it, there came One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right. And speaking, fell before that brutish race Like some poor wren that shrieking eagles tear, While brute Dishonour, with […]...
22. Passing Out The doctor fingers my bruise. “Magnificent,” he says, “black At the edges and purple Cored.” Seated, he spies for clues, Gingerly probing the slack Flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull For air, losing the battle. Faced by his aged diploma, The heavy head of the X – Ray, and the iron saddle, I grow lonely. […]...
23. William Goode To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, To go this way and that way, aimlessly. But here by the river you can see at twilight The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there They must fly so to catch their food. And if you have ever lost your way at night, In the […]...
24. Turtle, Swan Because the road to our house Is a back road, meadowlands punctuated By gravel quarry and lumberyard, There are unexpected travelers Some nights on our way home from work. Once, on the lawn of the Tool And Die Company, a swan; The word doesn’t convey the shock Of the thing, white architecture Rippling like a […]...
25. Forth went the candid man Forth went the candid man And spoke freely to the wind When he looked about him he was in a far strange country. Forth went the candid man And spoke freely to the stars Yellow light tore sight from his eyes. “My good fool,” said a learned bystander, “Your operations are mad.” “You are too […]...
26. Web Intricate and untraceable Weaving and interweaving, Dark strand with light: Designed, beyond All spiderly contrivance, To link, not to entrap: Elation, grief, joy, contrition, entwined; Shaking, changing, Forever Forming, Transforming: All praise, All praise to the Great web....
27. The Instructor At times when under cover I ‘ave said, To keep my spirits up an’ raise a laugh, ‘Earin ‘im pass so busy over-‘ead Old Nickel-Neck, ‘oo is n’t on the Staff “There’s one above is greater than us all” Before ‘im I ‘ave seen my Colonel fall, An ‘watched ‘im write my Captain’s epitaph, So […]...
28. Bells in the Rain Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain, Upon the steep cliffs of the town. Sleep falls; men are at peace again While the small drops fall softly down. The bright drops ring like bells of glass Thinned by the wind, and lightly blown; Sleep cannot fall on peaceful grass So softly as it falls on […]...
29. Sorrow Why does the thin grey strand Floating up from the forgotten Cigarette between my fingers, Why does it trouble me? Ah, you will understand; When I carried my mother downstairs, A few times only, at the beginning Of her soft-foot malady, I should find, for a reprimand To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs […]...
30. 74. Fragment-Her Flwoing Locks HER flowing locks, the raven’s wing, Adown her neck and bosom hing; How sweet unto that breast to cling, And round that neck entwine her! Her lips are roses wat wi’ dew, O’ what a feast her bonie mou’! Her cheeks a mair celestial hue, A crimson still diviner!...
31. I Remember By the first of August The invisible beetles began To snore and the grass was As tough as hemp and was No color no more than The sand was a color and We had worn our bare feet Bare since the twentieth Of June and there were times We forgot to wind up your Alarm […]...
32. The First Dream The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight And as I lean against the door of sleep I begin to think about the first person to dream, How quiet he must have seemed the next morning As the others stood around the fire Draped in the skins of animals Talking to each other only in […]...
33. Rune of the Finland Woman For Sára Karig “You are so wise,” the reindeer said, “you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand.”-H. C. Andersen, “The Snow Queen” She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand. She could find the world’s words in a singing wind. She could lend a weird will to a […]...
34. The Guppy Whales have calves, Cats have kittens, Bears have cubs, Bats have bittens, Swans have cygnets, Seals have puppies, But guppies just have little guppies....
35. The Vulture The Vulture eats between his meals, And that’s the reason why He very, very, rarely feels As well as you and I. His eye is dull, his head is bald, His neck is growing thinner. Oh! what a lesson for us all To only eat at dinner!...
36. Last Poem of my 45th Year I thought of how a whale’s white ribs Could choke the sky’s blue neck, Massive vertebrae half-buried in sand, And how a keel cleaves the sea While the wind zephyrs canvas to swell And propel the long black ship toward shore, Heaven in a blue mussel shell, smooth As the firmament. I believe there is […]...
37. Sapphics For Celebrity In my dream, Celebrity, four pianos Scored the room, and you on an antique sofa Near two dark-haired innocents asked that I play Something immortal. Dust motes grayed the air, and a sage-green shadow Draped the walls in color like sifted powder. I agreed, but wandered, untold, too many Keys to consider....
38. Fleming Helphenstine At first I thought there was a superfine Persuasion in his face; but the free flow That filled it when he stopped and cried, “Hollo!” Shone joyously, and so I let it shine. He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine, But be that as it may;-I only know He talked of this and that and […]...
39. Lovers You were glad to-night: and now you’ve gone away. Flushed in the dark, you put your dreams to bed; But as you fall asleep I hear you say Those tired sweet drowsy words we left unsaid. Sleep well: for I can follow you, to bless And lull your distant beauty where you roam; And with […]...
40. Blood Feud Once, when my husband was a child, there came To his father’s table, one who called him kin, In sunbleached corduroys paler than his skin. His look was grave and kind; he bore the name Of the dead singer of Senlac, and his smile. Shyly and courteously he smiled and spoke; “I’ve been in the […]...