Paul McNeely

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1. The Pitcher THE simple Jane was sent to bring Fresh water from the neighb’ring spring; The matter pressed, no time to waste, Jane took her jug, and ran in haste The well to reach, but in her flurry (The more the speed the worse the hurry), Tripped on a rolling stone, and broke Her precious pitcher, ah! […]...
2. Mary McNeely Passer-by, To love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one. When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul Then you have lost your soul. It is written: “I have a friend, But my sorrow has no friend.” Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my […]...
3. Rice Pudding What is the matter with Mary Jane? She’s crying with all her might and main, And she won’t eat her dinner – rice pudding again – What is the matter with Mary Jane? What is the matter with Mary Jane? I’ve promised her dolls and a daisy-chain, And a book about animals – all in […]...
4. In Memoriam Paul Celan Lay these words into the dead man’s grave Next to the almonds and black cherries – Tiny skulls and flowering blood-drops, eyes, And Thou, O bitterness that pillows his head. Lay these words on the dead man’s eyelids Like eyebrights, like medieval trumpet flowers That will flourish, this time, in the shade. Let the beheaded […]...
5. Washington McNeely Rich, honored by my fellow citizens, The father of many children, born of a noble mother, All raised there In the great mansion-house, at the edge of town. Note the cedar tree on the lawn! I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, The while my life went on, […]...
6. Elegy For Jane Kenyon Jane is big With death, Don Sad and kind – Jane Though she’s dying Is full of mind We talk about the table The little walnut one How it’s like Emily Dickinson’s But Don says No Dickinson’s Was made of iron. No Said Jane Of flesh....
7. Jane and Eliza There were two little girls, neither handsome nor plain; One’s name was Eliza, the other’s was Jane: They were both of one height, as I’ve heard people say, They were both of one age, I believe, to a day. ‘Twas fancied by some, who but slightly had seen them, That scarcely a difference was there […]...
8. John Gorham “Tell me what you’re doing over here, John Gorham, Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you’re not; Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.”- “I’m over here to tell you what the moon […]...
9. The Captive's Dream Methought I saw him but I knew him not; He was so changed from what he used to be, There was no redness on his woe-worn cheek, No sunny smile upon his ashy lips, His hollow wandering eyes looked wild and fierce, And grief was printed on his marble brow, And O I thought he […]...
10. In Bertram's Garden Jane looks down at her organdy skirt As if it somehow were the thing disgraced, For being there, on the floor, in the dirt, And she catches it up about her waist, Smooths it out along one hip, And pulls it over the crumpled slip. On the porch, green-shuttered, cool, Asleep is Bertram that bronze […]...
11. Presentiment ‘ SISTER, you’ve sat there all the day, Come to the hearth awhile; The wind so wildly sweeps away, The clouds so darkly pile. That open book has lain, unread, For hours upon your knee; You’ve never smiled nor turned your head What can you, sister, see? ‘ ‘ Come hither, Jane, look down the […]...
12. The Landlord's Tale; Paul Revere's Ride Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft […]...
13. An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. John Can we not force from widow’d poetry, Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust, Though with unkneaded dough-bak’d prose, thy dust, Such as th’ unscissor’d churchman from the flower Of fading rhetoric, short-liv’d as his hour, Dry as the sand that measures it, should […]...
14. Aubade JANE, Jane, Tall as a crane, The morning light creaks down again; Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair, Jane, Jane, come down the stair. Each dull blunt wooden stalactite Of rain creaks, hardened by the light, Sounding like an overtone From some lonely world unknown. But the creaking empty light Will never harden into sight, Will never […]...
15. Paul's Wife To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, “How is the wife, Paul?” and he’d disappear. Some said it was because be bad no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject; Others because he’d come within a day Or so of having one, and […]...
16. Ike Walton's Prayer I crave, dear Lord, No boundless hoard Of gold and gear, Nor jewels fine, Nor lands, nor kine, Nor treasure-heaps of anything.- Let but a little hut be mine Where at the hearthstore I may hear The cricket sing, And have the shine Of one glad woman’s eyes to make, For my poor sake, Our […]...
17. Dreaming The Breasts Mother, Strange goddess face Above my milk home, That delicate asylum, I ate you up. All my need took You down like a meal. What you gave I remember in a dream: The freckled arms binding me, The laugh somewhere over my woolly hat, The blood fingers tying my shoe, The breasts hanging like two […]...
18. Jane My daughter Jane makes dresses For beautiful Princesses; But though she’s plain is Jane, Of needlework she’s vain, And makes such pretty things For relatives of Kings. She reads the picture papers Where Royalties cut capers, And often says to me: ‘How wealthy they must be, That nearly every day A new robe they can […]...
19. Of Paul and Silas it is said Of Paul and Silas it is said There were in Prison laid But when they went to take them out They were not there instead. Security the same insures To our assaulted Minds The staple must be optional That an Immortal binds....
20. I Have Longed To Move Away I have longed to move away From the hissing of the spent lie And the old terrors’ continual cry Growing more terrible as the day Goes over the hill into the deep sea; I have longed to move away From the repetition of salutes, For there are ghosts in the air And ghostly echoes on […]...
21. Crazy Jane On The Mountain I am tired of cursing the Bishop, (Said Crazy Jane) Nine books or nine hats Would not make him a man. I have found something worse To meditate on. A King had some beautiful cousins. But where are they gone? Battered to death in a cellar, And he stuck to his throne. Last night I […]...
22. The Paroo It was a week from Christmas-time, As near as I remember, And half a year since, in the rear, We’d left the Darling timber. The track was hot and more than drear; The day dragged out for ever; But now we knew that we were near Our camp – the Paroo River. With blighted eyes […]...
23. Aunt Jane When Aunt Jane died we hunted round, And money everywhere we found. How much I do not care to say, But no death duties will we pay, And Aunt Jane will be well content We bilked the bloody Government. While others spent she loved to save, But couldn’t take it to her grave. While others […]...
24. From the Bush The Channel fog has lifted – And see where we have come! Round all the world we’ve drifted, A hundred years from “home”. The fields our parents longed for – Ah! we shall ne’er know how – The wealth that they were wronged for We’ll see as strangers now! The Dover cliffs have passed on […]...
25. The Mare's Nest Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse Was good beyond all earthly need; But, on the other hand, her spouse Was very, very bad indeed. He smoked cigars, called churches slow, And raced but this she did not know. For Belial Machiavelli kept The little fact a secret, and, Though o’er his minor sins she wept, […]...
26. Dream Song 7: 'The Prisoner of Shark Island' with Paul Muni Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers Mr Deeds’ tuba, & the Cameo, & the race in Ben Hur, —The Lost World, with sound, & The Man from Blankey’s, which he did not dig, Nor did he understand one caption of, Bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed. Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One. […]...
27. Sister Jane WHEN Sister Jane, who had produced a child, In prayer and penance all her hours beguiled Her sister-nuns around the lattice pressed; On which the abbess thus her flock addressed: Live like our sister Jane, and bid adieu To worldly cares: have better things in view. YES, they replied, we sage like her shall be, […]...
28. Dear Colette Dear Colette, I want to write to you About being a woman For that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face Enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . Hangs above my desk Like my own muse. I want to tell you how your hands Reach out from your […]...
29. When I hoped I feared When I hoped I feared Since I hoped I dared Everywhere alone As a Church remain Spectre cannot harm Serpent cannot charm He deposes Doom Who hath suffered him...
30. Son He hurried away, young heart of joy, under our Devon sky! And I watched him go, my beautiful boy, and a weary woman was I. For my hair is grey, and his was gold; he’d the best of his life to live; And I’d loved him so, and I’m old, I’m old; and he’s all […]...
31. Vesta O CHRIST of God! whose life and death Our own have reconciled, Most quietly, most tenderly Take home thy star-named child! Thy grace is in her patient eyes, Thy words are on her tongue; The very silence round her seems As if the angels sung. Her smile is as a listening child’s Who hears its […]...
32. The Farewell They say the ice will hold So there I go, Forced to believe them by my act of trusting people, Stepping out on it, And naturally it gaps open And I, forced to carry on coolly By my act of being imperturbable, Slide erectly into the water wearing my captain’s helmet, Waving to the shore […]...
33. Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et Al Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna Of chance and choice to throw a shadow’s element Of disbelief in truth Love is not love Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness If it can be made […]...
34. Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night! See where it casts the shadow of that tree Far out upon the grass. And every gust Of light night wind comes laden with the scent Of opening flowers which never bloom by day: Night-scented stocks, and four-o’clocks, and that Pale yellow disk, upreared on its tall […]...
35. Crazy Jane On The Day Of Judgment ‘Love is all Unsatisfied That cannot take the whole Body and soul’; And that is what Jane said. ‘Take the sour If you take me I can scoff and lour And scold for an hour.’ “That’s certainly the case,’ said he. ‘Naked I lay, The grass my bed; Naked and hidden away, That black day’; […]...
36. Moon And Sea You are the moon, dear love, and I the sea: The tide of hope swells high within my breast, And hides the rough dark rocks of life’s unrest When your fond eyes smile near in perigee. But when that loving face is turned from me, Low falls the tide, and the grim rocks appear, And […]...
37. At The Abbey Theatre (Imitated from Ronsard) Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case. When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things, So bitterly, you’d dream they longed to look All their lives […]...
38. Mother's Loss If I could clasp my little babe Upon my breast to-night, I would not mind the blowing wind That shrieketh in affright. Oh, my lost babe! my little babe, My babe with dreamful eyes; Thy bed is cold; and night wind bold Shrieks woeful lullabies. My breast is softer than the sod; This room, with […]...
39. To Jane The keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them, Dear Jane. The guitar was tinkling, But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again. As the moon’s soft splendour O’er the faint cold starlight of Heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had […]...
40. Marching Song Bring the comb and play upon it! Marching, here we come! Willie cocks his highland bonnet, Johnnie beats the drum. Mary Jane commands the party, Peter leads the rear; Feet in time, alert and hearty, Each a Grenadier! All in the most martial manner Marching double-quick; While the napkin, like a banner, Waves upon the […]...