Sestina

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1. Sestina I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, To the short day and to the whitening hills, When the colour is all lost from the grass, Though my desire will not lose its green, So rooted is it in this hardest stone, That speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And […]...
2. Sestina: Here In Katmandu We have climbed the mountain. There’s nothing more to do. It is terrible to come down To the valley Where, amidst many flowers, One thinks of snow, As formerly, amidst snow, Climbing the mountain, One thought of flowers, Tremulous, ruddy with dew, In the valley. One caught their scent coming down. It is difficult to […]...
3. Portrait A child draws the outline of a body. She draws what she can, but it is white all through, She cannot fill in what she knows is there. Within the unsupported line, she knows That life is missing; she has cut One background from another. Like a child, She turns to her mother. And you […]...
4. In Childhood things don’t die or remain damaged But return: stumps grow back hands, A head reconnects to a neck, A whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. Later this vision is not True: The grandmother remains dead Not hibernating in a wolf’s belly. Or the blue parakeet does not return From the little grave in the […]...
5. The Kitchen Chimney Builder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear […]...
6. Poem In October It was my thirtieth year to heaven Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore The morning beckon With water praying and call of seagull and rook And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Myself to set foot That second In […]...
7. Enigma Some men are born to gather women’s tears, To give a harbour to their timorous fears, To take them as the dry earth takes the rain, As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain; Yet their own tears remain unshed, Their own tumultuous fears unsaid, And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the […]...
8. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
9. Saints In our family, there were two saints, My aunt and my grandmother. But their lives were different. My grandmother’s was tranquil, even at the end. She was like a person walking in calm water; For some reason The sea couldn’t bring itself to hurt her. When my aunt took the same path, The waves broke […]...
10. Mad Day In March Beaten like an old hound Whimpering by the stove, I complicate the pain That smarts with promised love. The oilstove falls, the rain, Forecast, licks at my wound; Ice forms, clips the green shoot, And strikes the wren house mute. May commoner and king, The barren bride and nun Begrudge the season’s dues. May children […]...
11. The Lost Dances of Cranes Your fields are empty now. Only your ghosts dance While cranes of another kind Dance cities into being. All that remain of you are A fading crackle of your energy And some grainy video footage That people in the new cities Will watch to marvel At the wonders the world Once held....
12. Rita Matlock Gruenberg Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys, And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six, Here is your little Rita at last Grown old, grown forty-nine; Here stretched on your grave under the winter stars, With the rustle of oak leaves over my head; Piecing together strength for the act, Last thoughts, memories, asking how […]...
13. The Orient Express One looks from the train Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight What I see still seems to me plain, I am safe; but at evening As the lands darken, a questioning Precariousness comes over everything. Once after a day of rain I lay longing to be cold; after a while I […]...
14. If I were dead ‘IF I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’ The dear lips quiver’d as they spake, And the tears brake From eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled. Poor Child, poor Child! I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song. It is not true that Love will do no wrong. Poor Child! […]...
15. Sestina: Altaforte LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell For that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug Him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. “Papiols” is his Jongleur. “The Leopard,” the device of Richard Coeur de Lion. I Damn it all! all […]...
16. Sestina Otiosa Our great work, the Otia Merseiana, Edited by learned Mister Sampson, And supported by Professor Woodward, Is financed by numerous Bogus Meetings Hastily convened by Kuno Meyer To impose upon the Man of Business. All in vain! The accomplished Man of Business Disapproves of Otia Merseiana, Turns his back on Doctor Kuno Meyer; Cannot be […]...
17. Hallelujah: A Sestina A wind’s word, the Hebrew Hallelujah. I wonder they never gave it to a boy (Hal for short) boy with wind-wild hair. It means Praise God, as well it should since praise Is what God’s for. Why didn’t they call my father Hallelujah instead of Ebenezer? Eben, of course, but christened Ebenezer, Product of Nova […]...
18. Sestina for Jim Cummins In Iowa, Jim dreamed that Della Street was Anne Sexton’s Twin. Dave drew a comic strip called the “Adventures of Whitman,” About a bearded beer-guzzler in Superman uniform. Donna dressed like Wallace Stevens In a seersucker summer suit. To town came Ted Berrigan, Saying, “My idea of a bad poet is Marvin […]...
19. Sestina Of The Tramp-Royal Speakin’ in general, I’ave tried ’em all The ‘appy roads that take you o’er the world. Speakin’ in general, I’ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get ‘ence, the same as I’ave done, An’ go observin’ matters till they die. What do it matter where or ‘ow […]...
20. House TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe. Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don’t want him around. The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer […]...
21. Fruit of the Flower My father is a quiet man With sober, steady ways; For simile, a folded fan; His nights are like his days. My mother’s life is puritan, No hint of cavalier, A pool so calm you’re sure it can Have little depth to fear. And yet my father’s eyes can boast How full his life has […]...
22. AUTUMN FEELINGS FLOURISH greener, as ye clamber, Oh ye leaves, to seek my chamber, Up the trellis’d vine on high! May ye swell, twin-berries tender, Juicier far, and with more splendour Ripen, and more speedily! O’er ye broods the sun at even As he sinks to rest, and heaven Softly breathes into your ear All its fertilising […]...
23. 338. Song-My Tocher's the Jewel O MEIKLE thinks my luve o’ my beauty, And meikle thinks my luve o’ my kin; But little thinks my luve I ken brawlie My tocher’s the jewel has charms for him. It’s a’ for the apple he’ll nourish the tree, It’s a’ for the hinny he’ll cherish the bee, My laddie’s sae meikle in […]...
24. The House In The Woods At the back of the houses there is the wood. While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song, Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House In the Wood. It is […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Our Hired Girl Our hired girl, she’s ‘Lizabuth Ann; An’ she can cook best things to eat! She ist puts dough in our pie-pan, An’ pours in somepin’ ‘at’s good an’ sweet; An’ nen she salts it all on top With cinnamon; an’ nen she’ll stop An’ stoop an’ slide it, ist as slow, In th’ old cook-stove, […]...
27. The Stolen Child Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water-rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For […]...
28. The End of the Day The night darkens fast & the shadows darken, Clouds & the rain gather about mine house, Only the wood-dove moans, hearken, O hearken! The moan of the wood-dove in the rain-wet boughs. Loneliness & the night! The night is lonely Star-covered the night takes to a tender breast Wrapping them in her veil these dark […]...
29. Song For The Rainy Season Hidden, oh hidden In the high fog The house we live in, Beneath the magnetic rock, Rain-, rainbow-ridden, Where blood-black Bromelias, lichens, Owls, and the lint Of the waterfalls cling, Familiar, unbidden. In a dim age Of water The brook sings loud From a rib cage Of giant fern; vapor Climbs up the thick growth […]...
30. Low-Tide These wet rocks where the tide has been, Barnacled white and weeded brown And slimed beneath to a beautiful green, These wet rocks where the tide went down Will show again when the tide is high Faint and perilous, far from shore, No place to dream, but a place to die,- The bottom of the […]...
31. Faith Healing Slowly the women file to where he stands Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair, Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands, Within whose warm spring rain of loving care Each dwells some twenty seconds. Now, dear child, What’s wrong, the deep American voice demands, And, scarcely pausing, goes […]...
32. Transit of the Gods Strange that the self’s continuum should outlast The Virgin, Aphrodite, and the Mourning Mother, All loves and griefs, successive deities That hold their kingdom in the human breast. Abandoned by the gods, woman with an ageing body That half remembers the Annunciation The passion and the travail and the grief That wore the mask of […]...
33. Butterfly Laughter In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the Butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor Butterfly.” That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. […]...
34. Helga THE WISHES on this child’s mouth Came like snow on marsh cranberries; The tamarack kept something for her; The wind is ready to help her shoes. The north has loved her; she will be A grandmother feeding geese on frosty Mornings; she will understand Early snow on the cranberries Better and better then....
35. Only a Curl I. FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land Unvisited over the sea, Who tell me how lonely you stand With a single gold curl in the hand Held up to be looked at by me, II. While you ask me to ponder and say What a father and mother can do, With the bright fellow-locks […]...
36. Alzheimer's My grandmother’s teeth stare at her From a mason jar on the nightstand. The radio turns itself on, Sunlight crawls through the window, And she thinks she feels her bright blue eyes Rolling out her head. She’s certain her blood has turned to dirt, That beetles haunt the dark hollow of her bones. The clock […]...
37. The Death Of Santa Claus He’s had the chest pains for weeks, But doctors don’t make house Calls to the North Pole, He’s let his Blue Cross lapse, Blood tests make him faint, Hospital gown always flap Open, waiting rooms upset His stomach, and it’s only Indigestion anyway, he thinks, Until, feeding the reindeer, He feels as if a monster […]...
38. Sonnet XXXIV: Marvel Not, Love To Admiration Marvel not, Love, though I thy power admire, Ravish’d a world beyond the farthest thought, And knowing more than ever hath been taught, That I am only starv’d in my desire. Marvel not, Love, though I thy power admire, Aiming at things exceeding all perfection, To Wisdom’s self to minister correction, That I […]...
39. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain. . . It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls Down golden-windowed walls. We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while […]...
40. HIS GRANGE, OR PRIVATE WEALTH Though clock, To tell how night draws hence, I’ve none, A cock I have to sing how day draws on: I have A maid, my Prue, by good luck sent, To save That little, Fates me gave or lent. A hen I keep, which, creeking day by day, Tells when She goes her long white […]...