The Long Race

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1. Rio Grande's Last Race Now this was what Macpherson told While waiting in the stand; A reckless rider, over-bold, The only man with hands to hold The rushing Rio Grande. He said, ‘This day I bid good-bye To bit and bridle rein, To ditches deep and fences high, For I have dreamed a dream, and I Shall never ride […]...
2. It Blows A Snowing Gale IT blows a snowing gale in the winter of the year; The boats are on the sea and the crews are on the pier. The needle of the vane, it is veering to and fro, A flash of sun is on the veering of the vane. Autumn leaves and rain, The passion of the gale....
3. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
4. Atalanta's Race Through thick Arcadian woods a hunter went, Following the beasts upon a fresh spring day; But since his horn-tipped bow but seldom bent, Now at the noontide nought had happed to slay, Within a vale he called his hounds away, Hearkening the echoes of his lone voice cling About the cliffs and through the beech-trees […]...
5. The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, A deep rolling bass. Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and […]...
6. Race Some bite from the others A leg an arm or whatever Take it between their teeth Run out as fast as they can Cover it up with earth The others scatter everywhere Sniff look sniff look Dig up the whole earth If they are lucky and find an arm Or leg or whatever It’s their […]...
7. The Race Of Banquo Fly, son of Banquo! Fleance, fly! Leave thy guilty sire to die. O’er the heath the stripling fled, The wild storm howling round his head. Fear mightier thro’ the shades of night Urged his feet, and wing’d his flight; And still he heard his father cry Fly, son of Banquo! Fleance, fly. Fly, son of […]...
8. Race of Veterans RACE of veterans! Race of victors! Race of the soil, ready for conflict! race of the conquering march! (No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race;) Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself; Race of passion and the storm. 5...
9. The Angle of a Landscape The Angle of a Landscape That every time I wake Between my Curtain and the Wall Upon an ample Crack Like a Venetian waiting Accosts my open eye Is just a Bough of Apples Held slanting, in the Sky The Pattern of a Chimney The Forehead of a Hill Sometimes a Vane’s Forefinger But that’s […]...
10. A shady friend for Torrid days A shady friend for Torrid days Is easier to find Than one of higher temperature For Frigid hour of Mind The Vane a little to the East Scares Muslin souls away If Broadcloth Hearts are firmer Than those of Organdy Who is to blame? The Weaver? Ah, the bewildering thread! The Tapestries of Paradise So […]...
11. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
12. Spring At the first hour, it was as if one said, “Arise.” At the second hour, it was as if one said, “Go forth.” And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes Sank below the white horizon at the north. At the third hour, it was as if one said, “I thirst”; At the fourth […]...
13. My Faith is larger than the Hills My Faith is larger than the Hills So when the Hills decay My Faith must take the Purple Wheel To show the Sun the way ‘Tis first He steps upon the Vane And then upon the Hill And then abroad the World He go To do His Golden Will And if His Yellow feet should […]...
14. A Tale This youth too long has heard the break Of waters in a land of change. He goes to see what suns can make From soil more indurate and strange. He cuts what holds his days together And shuts him in, as lock on lock: The arrowed vane announcing weather, The tripping racket of a clock; […]...
15. Talisman it is written The act of writing is Holy words are Sacred and your breath Brings out the God in them I write these words Quickly repeat them Softly to myself This talisman for you Fold this prayer Around your neck fortify Your back with these Whispers May you walk ever Loved and in love […]...
16. A Ballad of Jakkko Hill One moment bid the horses wait, Since tiffin is not laid till three, Below the upward path and straight You climbed a year ago with me. Love came upon us suddenly And loosed an idle hour to kill A headless, armless armory That smote us both on Jakko Hill. Ah Heaven! we would wait and […]...
17. The Missal Makers To visit the Escurial We took a motor bus, And there a guide mercurial Took charge of us. He showed us through room after room, And talked hour after hour, Of place, crypt and royal tomb, Of pomp and power. But in bewilderment of grace What pleased me most of all Were ancient missals proud […]...
18. February 23 Light rain is falling in Central Park But not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West Where sun and sky are yellow and blue Winds are gusting on Washington Square Through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place But calm is the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue Which reminds me of something […]...
19. Weathers This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at ‘The Traveller’s Rest,’ And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the south and west, And so do I. This […]...
20. Corn Hut Talk WRITE your wishes on the door and come in. Stand outside in the pools of the harvest moon. Bring in the handshake of the pumpkins. There’s a wish for every hazel nut? There’s a hope for every corn shock? There’s a kiss for every clumsy climbing shadow? Clover and the bumblebees once, High winds and […]...
21. October's Bright Blue Weather O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather; When loud the bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes are fragrant; When gentians roll their fingers tight To save them for the morning, […]...
22. Especially When The October Wind Especially when the October wind With frosty fingers punishes my hair, Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire And cast a shadow crab upon the land, By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds, Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks, My busy heart who shudders as she talks Sheds the syllabic […]...
23. Said The Poet To The Analyst My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget who one words is able […]...
24. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
25. Mount Zhongnan Its massive height near the City of Heaven Joins a thousand mountains to the corner of the sea. Clouds, when I look back, close behind me, Mists, when I enter them, are gone. A central peak divides the wilds And weather into many valleys. …Needing a place to spend the night, I call to a […]...
26. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
27. XVII (Thinking, Tangling Shadows…) Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, Burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there! Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes, Taciturn miller, Night falls on you face downward, far from the city. Your presence is foreign, as strange to […]...
28. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
29. PRAY AND PROSPER First offer incense; then, thy field and meads Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads. The spangling dew dredged o’er the grass shall be Turn’d all to mell and manna there for thee. Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil, Shall run as rivers all throughout thy soil. Would’st thou to sincere […]...
30. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
31. Boot And Saddle Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens the blue from its silvery grey, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!” Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay, (Chorus) “Boot, saddle, […]...
32. Cavalier Tunes: Boot and Saddle Boot, saddle, to horse and away! Rescue my Castle, before the hot day Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, (Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say; Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray “God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay (Chorus) Boot, saddle, […]...
33. Easter, 1916 I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe […]...
34. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
35. Hughley Steeple LXI The vane on Hughley steeple Veers bright, a far-known sign, And there lie Hughley people, And there lie friends of mine. Tall in their midst the tower Divides the shade and sun, And the clock strikes the hour And tells the time to none. To south the headstones cluster, The sunny mounds lie thick; […]...
36. Ode To Pornography If you could write down the words Moving through a man’s mind as He masturbates you’d have a quick Bonus bonk read, I used to think. But words were never adequate Or the point in the bar where the girl Is a boy the boy is a girl the two girls Exchange underpants the one […]...
37. A Noon Song There are songs for the morning and songs for the night, For sunrise and sunset, the stars and the moon; But who will give praise to the fulness of light, And sing us a song of the glory of noon? Oh, the high noon, the clear noon, The noon with golden crest; When the blue […]...
38. Girl (three) and the black horse i want to hold the horse’s string Cried the girl (three) stamping her foot Told by adults she was much too young The black horse stood staring at the wall It worries us you may get hurt The adults whispered – meaning to offer Comfort to the little madam (not convinced) The black horse stood […]...
39. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
40. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...