Alfonso Churchill

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1. Churchill's Grave I stood beside the grave of him who blazed The comet of a season, and I saw The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed With not the less of sorrow and of awe On that neglected turf and quiet stone, With name no clearer than the names unknown, Which lay unread around it; and asked […]...
2. Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad Of subtly-changing and surprising parts; His moods are storms that frighten and make glad, His eyes were made to capture women’s hearts. Down in the glory-hole Alfonso sings An olden song of wine and clinking glasses And riotous rakes; magnificently flings Gay kisses to imaginary lasses. Alfonso’s voice of […]...
3. The Great Explosion The universe expands and contracts like a great heart. It is expanding, the farthest nebulae Rush with the speed of light into empty space. It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies, dust clouds and nebulae Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one harbor, they stick in one lump And […]...
4. We dream it is good we are dreaming We dream it is good we are dreaming It would hurt us were we awake But since it is playing kill us, And we are playing shriek What harm? Men die externally It is a truth of Blood But we are dying in Drama And Drama is never dead Cautious We jar each other And […]...
5. A Rondeau of College Rhymes Our college rhymes, how light they seem, Like little ghosts of love’s young dream That led our boyish hearts away From lectures and from books, to stray By flowery mead and flowing stream! There’s nothing here, in form or theme, Of thought sublime or art supreme: We would not have the critic weigh Our college […]...
6. TO ORIGINALS In these numbers be express’d Meaning deep, ‘neath merry jest. – TO ORIGINALS. A FELLOW says: “I own no school or college; No master lives whom I acknowledge; And pray don’t entertain the thought That from the dead I e’er learnt aught.” This, if I rightly understand, Means: “I’m a blockhead at first hand.” 1815....
7. October 12 My bag was missing at the airport “Just one bag?” “Yes, but it meant a lot to me” I had seen the bartender before, but where? “You didn’t tell me you had been to Oxford” “Yes, I was at Magdalen College for two years” “What did you do there?” “Drugs.” “Did you know that in […]...
8. Rev. Lemuel Wiley I preached four thousand sermons, I conducted forty revivals, And baptized many converts. Yet no deed of mine Shines brighter in the memory of the world, And none is treasured more by me: Look how I saved the Blisses from divorce, And kept the children free from that disgrace, To grow up into moral men […]...
9. The Dawn of Darkness COME earth’s little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill; Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil. In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song. All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away Stream the tresses […]...
10. Night Funeral In Harlem Night funeral In Harlem: Where did they get Them two fine cars? Insurance man, he did not pay His insurance lapsed the other day Yet they got a satin box For his head to lay. Night funeral In Harlem: Who was it sent That wreath of flowers? Them flowers came From that poor boy’s friends […]...
11. Searcy Foote I wanted to go away to college But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me. So I made gardens and raked the lawns And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings And toiled for the very means of life. I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, But how could I do it with what I earned? And […]...
12. Forgotten Master As you gaze beyond the bay With such wanness in your eyes, You who have out-stayed your day, Seeing other stars arise, Slender though your lifehold be, Still you dream beside the sea. We, alas! may live too long, Know the best part of us die; Echo of your even-song Hushes down the darkling sky. […]...
13. The Inauguration of the University College Good people of Dundee, your voices raise, And to Miss Baxter give great praise; Rejoice and sing and dance with glee, Because she has founded a College in Bonnie Dundee. Therefore loudly in her praise sing, And make Dundee with your voices ring, And give honour to whom honour is due, Because ladies like her […]...
14. I'd rather recollect a setting I’d rather recollect a setting Than own a rising sun Though one is beautiful forgetting And true the other one. Because in going is a Drama Staying cannot confer To die divinely once a Twilight Than wane is easier...
15. An Inspiration However the battle is ended, Though proudly the victor comes With fluttering flags and prancing nags And echoing roll of drums. Still truth proclaims this motto, In letters of living light, – No Question is ever settled, Until it is settled right. Though the heel of the strong oppressor May grind the weak to dust, […]...
16. Settle The Question Right However the battle is ended, Though proudly the victor comes, With flaunting flags and neighing nags And echoing roll of drums; Still truth proclaims this motto In letters of living light, No question is ever settled Until it is settled right. Though the heel of the strong oppressor May grind the weak in the dust, […]...
17. Sadie and Maud Maud went to college. Sadie stayed home. Sadie scraped life With a fine toothed comb. She didn’t leave a tangle in Her comb found every strand. Sadie was one of the livingest chicks In all the land. Sadie bore two babies Under her maiden name. Maud and Ma and Papa Nearly died of shame. When […]...
18. Aspiration When I was daft (as urchins are), And full if fairy lore, I aimed an arrow at a star And hit – the barnyard door. I’ve shot at heaps of stars since then, But always it’s the same – A barnyard door has mocked me when Uranus was my aim. So, I’ll shoot starward as […]...
19. Its little Ether Hood Its little Ether Hood Doth sit upon its Head The millinery supple Of the sagacious God Till when it slip away A nothing at a time And Dandelion’s Drama Expires in a stem....
20. Because Of You Because of you, The world is a much nicer place. Because of you, I have faith in the human race. Because of you, I know what it means to love Unconditionally. Because of you, I know what it means to give Unselfishly. Because of you, I believe in magic and mystery And worlds unseen. Because […]...
21. Why do you strive for greatness, fool? Why do you strive for greatness, fool? Go pluck a bough and wear it. It is as sufficing. My Lord, there are certain barbarians Who tilt their noses As if the stars were flowers, And Thy servant is lost among their shoe-buckles. Fain would I have mine eyes even with their eyes. Fool, go pluck […]...
22. River Moons THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face, The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head. I saw them last […]...
23. Argument Days that cannot bring you near Or will not, Distance trying to appear Something more obstinate, Argue argue argue with me Endlessly Neither proving you less wanted nor less dear. Distance: Remember all that land Beneath the plane; That coastline Of dim beaches deep in sand Stretching indistinguishably All the way, All the way to […]...
24. I Wait For You I wait for you. The years in silence pass And as the image, one, I wait for you again. The distance is in flame and clear one as glass, I, silent, wait with sadness, love and pain. The distance is in flame, and you are coming fast, But I’m afraid that you will change your […]...
25. Whole Gulfs of Red, and Fleets of Red Whole Gulfs of Red, and Fleets of Red And Crews of solid Blood Did place upon the West Tonight As ’twere specific Ground And They appointed Creatures In Authorized Arrays Due promptly as a Drama That bows and disappears...
26. The Good, Great Man “How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits If any man obtain that which he merits Or any merit that which he obtains.” Reply to the Above For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain! What would’st […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. Lydia Humphrey Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that […]...
29. 'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe ‘Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe ‘Tis dimmer than a Lace No stature has it, like a Fog When you approach the place Nor any voice imply it here Or intimate it there A spirit how doth it accost What function hat the Air? This limitless Hyperbole Each one of us shall be ‘Tis Drama […]...
30. The Last Unicorn The last unicorn was never free To chose another ending, The plaintive melody entrained With sweet orchestral strains Describing it was sundered in A soured rendition of Our heaven’s harsh dominion. We were never set to let her free From facile bonds, we fondly loved Mythology too much to let her go And kept her […]...
31. Shakespeare Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask-thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill, Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foiled searching of […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. Urbs Coronata (Song for the City College of New York) O youngest of the giant brood Of cities far-renowned; In wealth and power thou hast passed Thy rivals at a bound; And now thou art a queen, New York; And how wilt thou be crowned? “Weave me no palace-wreath of pride,” The royal city said; “Nor forge […]...
34. Modern Love XXI: We Three Are We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn; My friend being third. He who at love once laughed, Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft Struck through, and tells his passion’s bashful dawn And radiant culmination, glorious crown, When ‘this’ she said: went ‘thus’: most wondrous she. Our eyes grow white, encountering that we […]...
35. Mid-Term Break I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying He had always taken funerals in his stride And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed […]...
36. The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, And frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words Get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according To which nation. French has no word for home, And we have no word […]...
37. Song of the Universal 1 COME, said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the Universal. In this broad Earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed Perfection. By every life a share, or more or less, None born but it […]...
38. Of all the Souls that stand create Of all the Souls that stand create I have elected One When Sense from Spirit files away And Subterfuge is done When that which is and that which was Apart intrinsic stand And this brief Drama in the flesh Is shifted like a Sand When Figures show their royal Front And Mists are carved away, […]...
39. "Morning" means "Milking" to the Farmer “Morning” means “Milking” to the Farmer Dawn to the Teneriffe Dice to the Maid Morning means just Risk to the Lover Just revelation to the Beloved Epicures date a Breakfast by it Brides an Apocalypse Worlds a Flood Faint-going Lives Their Lapse from Sighing Faith The Experiment of Our Lord...
40. Cloony The Clown I’ll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown Who worked in a circus that came through town. His shoes were too big and his hat was too small, But he just wasn’t, just wasn’t funny at all. He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes, He had a green dog and a thousand […]...