In My Youth I Was a Tireless Dancer

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1. The Lost Dancer Spatial depths of being survive The birth to death recurrences Of feet dancing on earth of sand; Vibrations of the dance survive The sand; the sand, elect, survives The dancer. He can find no source Of magic adequate to bind The sand upon his feet, his feet Upon his dance, his dance upon The diamond […]...
2. In Youth I have Known One How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature’s universal throne; Her woods – her winds – her mountains – the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence! I. In youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held – as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from […]...
3. Dancer THE LADY in red, she in the chile con carne red, Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun, She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade, The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the […]...
4. Spanish Dancer As in one’s hand a lighted match blinds you before It comes aflame and sends out brilliant flickering Tongues to every side so, within the ring of the Spectators, her dance begins in hasty, heated rhythms And spreads itself darting flames around. And suddenly the dance is altogether flame! With a fierce glance she sets […]...
5. Illinois Farmer BURY this old Illinois farmer with respect. He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois cornfields. Now he goes on a long sleep. The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind that combed his red beard zero mornings when the snow lay white on […]...
6. 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; […]...
7. The Angel and the Clown I saw wild domes and bowers And smoking incense towers And mad exotic flowers In Illinois. Where ragged ditches ran Now springs of Heaven began Celestial drink for man In Illinois. There stood beside the town Beneath its incense-crown An angel and a clown In Illinois. He was as Clowns are: She was snow and […]...
8. Weekend Glory Some clichty folks Don’t know the facts, Posin’ and preenin’ And puttin’ on acts, Stretchin’ their backs. They move into condos Up over the ranks, Pawn their souls To the local banks. Buying big cars They can’t afford, Ridin’ around town Actin’ bored. If they want to learn how to live life right They ought […]...
9. Deer Dancer Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the Hardcore. It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but Not us. Of course we noticed when she came in. We were Indian ruins. She Was the end of beauty. No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe […]...
10. Michael Robartes And The Dancer He. Opinion is not worth a rush; In this altar-piece the knight, Who grips his long spear so to push That dragon through the fading light, Loved the lady; and it’s plain The half-dead dragon was her thought, That every morning rose again And dug its claws and shrieked and fought. Could the impossible come […]...
11. From My Last Years FROM my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath, Scatter’d and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West, Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois-through Colorado, California air, For Time to germinate fully....
12. Buckwheat 1THERE was a late autumn cricket, And two smoldering mountain sunsets Under the valley roads of her eyes. There was a late autumn cricket, A hangover of summer song, Scraping a tune Of the late night clocks of summer, In the late winter night fireglow, This in a circle of black velvet at her neck. […]...
13. Midnight On The Great Western In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy, And the roof-lamp’s oily flame Played down on his listless form and face, Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going, Or whence he came. In the band of his hat the journeying boy Had a ticket stuck; and a string Around his neck bore the key […]...
14. Nostalgia Remember the 1340’s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult. You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade, And I was draped in one of those capes that were popular, The ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework. Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon, And at night we […]...
15. October Ay, thou art welcome, heaven’s delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a […]...
16. Olmecs rule The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to Mesoamericans! Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue, Reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum Of everything […]...
17. Hannah Armstrong I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake To discharge my sick boy from the army; But maybe he couldn’t read it. Then I went to town and had James Garber, Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter. But maybe that was lost in the mails. So I traveled all the way […]...
18. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
19. Bilbea BILBEA, I was in Babylon on Saturday night. I saw nothing of you anywhere. I was at the old place and the other girls were there, but no Bilbea. Have you gone to another house? or city? Why don’t you write? I was sorry. I walked home half-sick. Tell me how it goes. Send me […]...
20. Age and Youth WE have left our youth behind: Earth is in its baby years: Void of wisdom cries the wind, And the sunlight knows no tears. When shall twilight feel the awe, All the rapt thought of the sage, And the lips of wind give law Drawn from out their lore of age? When shall earth begin […]...
21. Youth And Age Verse, a Breeze ‘mid blossoms straying, Where HOPE clung feeding, like a bee Both were mine! Life went a-maying With NATURE, HOPE, and POESY, [Image][Image]When I was young! When I was young? Ah, woful WHEN! Ah! for the Change ‘twixt Now and Then! This breathing House not built with hands, This body that does me […]...
22. Indian Dancer EYES ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms aflaming with fire Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens that glimmer around them in fountains of light; O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music that cleaveth the stars like a wail of desire, And beautiful dancers with houri-like faces bewitch the […]...
23. A Leaf Somebody said, in the crowd, last eve, That you were married, or soon to be. I have not thought of you, I believe, Since last we parted. Let me see: Five long Summers have passed since then – Each has been pleasant in its own way – And you are but one of a dozen […]...
24. Late, Late, So Late Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for that we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light: so late! […]...
25. Pleading for and with Youth Sin has undone our wretched race; But Jesus has restored, And brought the sinner face to face With his forgiving Lord. This we repeat from year to year And press upon our youth; Lord, give them an attentive ear, Lord, save them by Thy truth! Blessings upon the rising race! Make this a happy hour, […]...
26. Memento Like a reminder of this life Of trams, sun, sparrows, And the flighty uncontrolledness Of streams leaping like thermometers, And because ducks are quacking somewhere Above the crackling of the last, paper-thin ice, And because children are crying bitterly (remember children’s lives are so sweet!) And because in the drunken, shimmering starlight The new moon […]...
27. Before Her Portrait In Youth As lovers, banished from their lady’s face And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at the lover’s beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin […]...
28. Imitation A dark unfathomed tide Of interminable pride – A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem; I say that dream was fraught With a wild and waking thought Of beings that have been, Which my spirit hath not seen, Had I let them pass me by, With a dreaming eye! Let none of […]...
29. Youth and Calm ‘Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here, And ease from shame, and rest from fear. There’s nothing can dismarble now The smoothness of that limpid brow. But is a calm like this, in truth, The crowning end of life and youth, And when this boon rewards the dead, Are all debts paid, has all been […]...
30. Virgin Youth Now and again All my body springs alive, And the life that is polarised in my eyes, That quivers between my eyes and mouth, Flies like a wild thing across my body, Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous, Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame, Gathering the soft ripples below my breast […]...
31. Now! Out of your whole life give but a moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it, so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense, Merged in a moment which gives me at […]...
32. The Harlem Dancer Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes Blown by black players upon a picnic day. She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, The light gauze hanging loose about her form; To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm Grown lovelier […]...
33. Vaudeville Dancer ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville. The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues. It is long ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father came with the locomotor […]...
34. Dance Me To The End Of Love Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone […]...
35. The Dancer At Cruachan And Cro-Patrick I, proclaiming that there is Among birds or beasts or men One that is perfect or at peace. Danced on Cruachan’s windy plain, Upon Cro-patrick sang aloud; All that could run or leap or swim Whether in wood, water or cloud, Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him....
36. Letter S THE RIVER is gold under a sunset of Illinois. It is a molten gold someone pours and changes. A woman mixing a wedding cake of butter and eggs Knows what the sunset is pouring on the river here. The river twists in a letter S. A gold S now speaks to the Illinois sky....
37. Song (From the diaries of Malte Laurids Brigge) You, whom I do not tell that all night long I lie weeping, Whose very being makes me feel wanting Like a cradle. You, who do not tell me, that you lie awake Thinking of me: What, if we carried all these longings within us Without ever being […]...
38. In Youth Milton, our noblest poet, in the grace Of youth, in those fair eyes and clustering hair, That brow untouched by one faint line of care, To mar its openness, we seem to trace The front of the first lord of the human race, Mid thine own Paradise portrayed so fair, Ere Sin or Sorrow scathed […]...
39. Nimium Fortunatus I have lain in the sun I have toil’d as I might, I have thought as I would, And now it is night. My bed full of sleep, My heart full of content For friends that I met The way that I went. I welcome fatigue While frenzy and care Like thin summer clouds Go […]...
40. Oh! Had We Some Bright Little Isle of Our Own Oh! had we some bright little isle of our own, In a blue summer ocean, far off and alone, Where a leaf never dies in the still blooming bowers, And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers; Where the sun loves to pause With so fond a delay, That the night only […]...