The Final Tax

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1. Book Borrower I am a mild man, you’ll agree, But red my rage is, When folks who borrow books from me Turn down their pages. Or when a chap a book I lend, And find he’s loaned it Without permission to a friend – As if he owned it. But worst of all I hate those crooks […]...
2. Her final Summer was it Her final Summer was it And yet We guessed it not If tenderer industriousness Pervaded Her, We thought A further force of life Developed from within When Death lit all the shortness up It made the hurry plain We wondered at our blindness When nothing was to see But Her Carrara Guide post At Our […]...
3. The Final Poem A forge burns in my heart. I am redder than dawn, Deeper than seaweed, More distant than gulls, More hollow than wells. But I only give birth To seeds and to shells. My tongue becomes tangled in words: I no longer speak white, Nor utter black, Nor whisper gray of a wind-worn cliff, Barely do […]...
4. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
5. A final journeying Steve is gone, I hardly can believe The man wont cry again, I cannot credit that His energy wont bloom And burst the candid pane That kept us so aware of just How much he really, really cared. I grieve for Bindi Sue And Robert who’ll despair, For Terri who has lost the man With […]...
6. Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: Within a single thing, a single […]...
7. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
8. The Gascon I AM always inclined to suspect The best story under the sun As soon as by chance I detect That teller and hero are one. We’re all of us prone to conceit, And like to proclaim our own glory, But our purpose we’re apt to defeat As actors in chief of our story. To prove […]...
9. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
10. No Sunday Chicken I could have sold him up because His rent was long past due; And Grimes, my lawyer, said it was The proper thing to do: But how could I be so inhuman? And me a gentle-woman. Yet I am poor as chapel mouse, Pinching to make ends meet, And have to let my little house […]...
11. Money Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me: ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully? I am all you never had of goods and sex, You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’ So I look at others, what they do with theirs: They certainly don’t keep it upstairs. By now they’ve a second […]...
12. War Profit Litany To Ezra Pound These are the names of the companies that have made money from this war Nineteenhundredsixtyeight Annodomini fourthousand eighty Hebraic These are the Corporations who have profited by merchan- dising skinburning phosphorous or shells fragmented to thousands of fleshpiercing needles And here listed money millions gained by each combine for manufacture And here […]...
13. Money When I had money, money, O! I knew no joy till I went poor; For many a false man as a friend Came knocking all day at my door. Then felt I like a child that holds A trumpet that he must not blow Because a man is dead; I dared Not speak to let […]...
14. Soiled Dove Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus. Before then she never took anybody’s money and paid for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing. She loved one man and he loved six women and the […]...
15. The impact of a dollar upon the heart The impact of a dollar upon the heart Smiles warm red light, Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table, With the hanging cool velvet shadows Moving softly upon the door. The impact of a million dollars Is a crash of flunkeys, And yawning emblems of Persia Cheeked against oak, France and a sabre, […]...
16. My Masterpiece It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; Its words are simple, stalwart too; Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. Its pages scintillate with wit; Its pathos clutches at my throat: Oh, how I love each line of it! That Little Book I Never Wrote. In […]...
17. Roadways ONE road leads to London, One road leads to Wales, My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails. One road leads to the river, And it goes singing slow; My road leads to shipping, Where the bronzed sailors go. Leads me, lures me, calls me To salt green tossing sea; A road without […]...
18. 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 […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. On Being Asked For A War Poem I think it better that in times like these A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of medding who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter’s night....
21. The Instructor At times when under cover I ‘ave said, To keep my spirits up an’ raise a laugh, ‘Earin ‘im pass so busy over-‘ead Old Nickel-Neck, ‘oo is n’t on the Staff “There’s one above is greater than us all” Before ‘im I ‘ave seen my Colonel fall, An ‘watched ‘im write my Captain’s epitaph, So […]...
22. The Truth of Woman Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust – Write the characters in the dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon’s pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean. I have strain’d the spider’s thread ‘Gainst the promise of […]...
23. The Difference Between Pepsi And Coke Can’t swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat intolerable feelings of inadequacy; Won’t admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind numerous marital infidelities; Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence, breaks mother’s plates in fights; Buys when the market is too high, and panics during the inevitable descent; Still, Pop can always […]...
24. 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...
25. By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said “Good-by” I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, […]...
26. 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...
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28. A Curse For A Nation I heard an angel speak last night, And he said ‘Write! Write a Nation’s curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.’ I faltered, taking up the word: ‘Not so, my lord! If curses must be, choose another To send thy curse against my brother. ‘For I am bound by gratitude, By love […]...
29. Careers Father is quite the greatest poet That ever lived anywhere. You say you’re going to write great music – I chose that first: it’s unfair. Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and do Christ and angels, or lovely pears and apples and grapes on a green dish, or storms at sea, or anything […]...
30. A faded Boy in sallow Clothes A faded Boy in sallow Clothes Who drove a lonesome Cow To pastures of Oblivion A statesman’s Embryo The Boys that whistled are extinct The Cows that fed and thanked Remanded to a Ballad’s Barn Or Clover’s Retrospect...
31. 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 […]...
32. The Tramps Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God’s land together, And we sang the old, old Earth-song, for our youth was very sweet; When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked at tie and tether, Along the road to Anywhere, the wide world at our feet Along the road to Anywhere, when […]...
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34. Rules and Regulations A short direction To avoid dejection, By variations In occupations, And prolongation Of relaxation, And combinations Of recreations, And disputation On the state of the nation In adaptation To your station, By invitations To friends and relations, By evitation Of amputation, By permutation In conversation, And deep reflection You’ll avoid dejection. Learn well your grammar, […]...
35. Ballad of the Old Cypress In front of the temple of Chu-ko Liang there is an old cypress. Its branches Are like green bronze; its roots like rocks; around its great girth of forty Spans its rimy bark withstands the washing of the rain. Its jet-colored top Rises two thousand feet to greet the sky. Prince and statesman have long […]...
36. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
37. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
38. 246. Song-Robin Shure in Hairst HIS face with smile eternal drest, Just like the Landlord’s to his Guest’s, High as they hang with creaking din, To index out the Country Inn. He looked just as your sign-post Lions do, With aspect fierce, and quite as harmless too. A head, pure, sinless quite of brain and soul, The very image of […]...
39. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
40. One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; So many things seem filled with the intent To be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster Of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: Places, […]...