As the Starved Maelstrom laps the Navies

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1. It would have starved a Gnat It would have starved a Gnat To live so small as I And yet I was a living Child With Food’s necessity Upon me like a Claw I could no more remove Than I could coax a Leech away Or make a Dragon move Not like the Gnat had I The privilege to fly And […]...
2. The Song of Right and Wrong Feast on wine or fast on water And your honour shall stand sure, God Almighty’s son and daughter He the valiant, she the pure; If an angel out of heaven Brings you other things to drink, Thank him for his kind attentions, Go and pour them down the sink. Tea is like the East he […]...
3. 'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch ‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch, That nearer, every Day, Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel Until the Agony Toyed coolly with the final inch Of your delirious Hem And you dropt, lost, When something broke And let you from a Dream As if a Goblin with a Gauge Kept measuring the Hours Until you […]...
4. Deprived of other Banquet Deprived of other Banquet, I entertained Myself At first a scant nutrition An insufficient Loaf But grown by slender addings To so esteemed a size ‘Tis sumptuous enough for me And almost to suffice A Robin’s famine able Red Pilgrim, He and I A Berry from our table Reserve for charity...
5. Dialogue Children Pray dearest mother if you please Cut up your double-curded cheese, The oldest of the brotherhood. It’s ripe, no doubt and nicely good! Your reputation will rise treble As we the lucious morsel nibble. Praise will flow from each partaker Both on the morsel and the maker! Madame Your suit is vain, upon my […]...
6. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
7. 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...
8. 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...
9. 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 […]...
10. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
11. The Ambition Bird So it has come to this Insomnia at 3:15 A. M., The clock tolling its engine Like a frog following A sundial yet having an electric Seizure at the quarter hour. The business of words keeps me awake. I am drinking cocoa, That warm brown mama. I would like a simple life Yet all night […]...
12. 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!...
13. She laid her docile Crescent down She laid her docile Crescent down And this confiding Stone Still states to Dates that have forgot The News that she is gone So constant to its stolid trust, The Shaft that never knew It shames the Constancy that fled Before its emblem flew...
14. 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...
15. A Little Girl's Prayer Grant me the moment, the lovely moment That I may lean forth to see The other buds, the other blooms, The other leaves on the tree: That I may take into my bosom The breeze that is like his brother, But stiller, lighter, whose faint laughter Exhoes the joy of the other. Above on the […]...
16. 372. Song-Kellyburn Braes THERE lived a carl in Kellyburn Braes, Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme; And he had a wife was the plague of his days, And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime. Ae day as the carl gaed up the lang glen, Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme; […]...
17. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
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. Love stopped before it began It would have been love, I am sure of it, And I held her hand torn between concern and pride Whilst she cried and cried on her first day at school. We walked to where her brother mowed the lawns With many others, racing with their mowers At manic speed in tight formation. Fascination Dared […]...
20. Forever it composed of Nows Forever it composed of Nows ‘Tis not a different time Except for Infiniteness And Latitude of Home From this experienced Here Remove the Dates to These Let Months dissolve in further Months And Years exhale in Years Without Debate or Pause Or Celebrated Days No different Our Years would be From Anno Domini’s...
21. I lost a World the other day! I lost a World the other day! Has Anybody found? You’ll know it by the Row of Stars Around its forehead bound. A Rich man might not notice it Yet to my frugal Eye, Of more Esteem than Ducats Oh find it Sir for me!...
22. To the President of Magdalen College, Oxford Since now from woodland mist and flooded clay I am fled beside the steep Devonian shore, Nor stand for welcome at your gothic door, ‘Neath the fair tower of Magdalen and May, Such tribute, Warren, as fond poets pay For generous esteem, I write, not more Enhearten’d than my need is, reckoning o’er My life-long […]...
23. Forget! The lady with the Amulet Forget! The lady with the Amulet Forget she wore it at her Heart Because she breathed against Was Treason twixt? Deny! Did Rose her Bee For Privilege of Play Or Wile of Butterfly Or Opportunity Her Lord away? The lady with the Amulet will face The Bee in Mausoleum laid Discard his Bride But longer […]...
24. The British Church I joy, dear mother, when I view Thy perfect lineaments, and hue Both sweet and bright. Beauty in thee takes up her place, And dates her letters from thy face, When she doth write. A fine aspect in fit array, Neither too mean nor yet too gay, Shows who is best. Outlandish looks may not […]...
25. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
26. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
27. Which is best? Heaven Which is best? Heaven Or only Heaven to come With that old Codicil of Doubt? I cannot help esteem The “Bird within the Hand” Superior to the one The “Bush” may yield me Or may not Too late to choose again....
28. I think to Live may be a Bliss I think to Live may be a Bliss To those who dare to try Beyond my limit to conceive My lip to testify I think the Heart I former wore Could widen till to me The Other, like the little Bank Appear unto the Sea I think the Days could every one In Ordination stand […]...
29. COPTIC SONG LEAVE we the pedants to quarrel and strive, Rigid and cautious the teachers to be! All of the wisest men e’er seen alive Smile, nod, and join in the chorus with me: “Vain ’tis to wait till the dolt grows less silly! Play then the fool with the fool, willy-nilly, Children of wisdom, remember the […]...
30. The Idea of Ancestry Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black Faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand- Fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, Cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare Across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know Their dark eyes, they know mine. I know […]...
31. The Future The future: time’s excuse To frighten us; too vast A project, too large a morsel For the heart’s mouth. Future, who won’t wait for you? Everyone is going there. It suffices you to deepen The absence that we are....
32. Art thou the thing I wanted? Art thou the thing I wanted? Begone my Tooth has grown Supply the minor Palate That has not starved so long I tell thee while I waited The mystery of Food Increased till I abjured it And dine without Like God Art thou the thing I wanted? Begone my Tooth has grown Affront a minor […]...
33. A Week Later A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be written; now it is folded, and folded, And folded, like a note in school. And in my dream Someone was playing […]...
34. 'Tis Opposites entice ‘Tis Opposites entice Deformed Men ponder Grace Bright fires the Blanketless The Lost Day’s face The Blind esteem it be Enough Estate to see The Captive strangles new For deeming Beggars play To lack enamor Thee Tho’ the Divinity Be only Me...
35. How much the present moment means How much the present moment means To those who’ve nothing more The Fop the Carp the Atheist Stake an entire store Upon a Moment’s shallow Rim While their commuted Feet The Torrents of Eternity Do all but inundate...
36. At the grave of Anastasia Baluk – Cross Stone Anastasia And the sad snow falling A toiling sky And a long white line of hills A distant birthplace Short span and early dying Pain from what heaven Sorrowed your slope of life? Through valley’s throat Run double veins of water Feverish river Somnolent canal – the vein of the metal rail And the trundling […]...
37. 'Tis true They shut me in the Cold ‘Tis true They shut me in the Cold But then Themselves were warm And could not know the feeling ’twas Forget it Lord of Them Let not my Witness hinder Them In Heavenly esteem No Paradise could be Conferred Through Their beloved Blame The Harm They did was short And since Myself who bore it […]...
38. I bring an unaccustomed wine I bring an unaccustomed wine To lips long parching Next to mine, And summon them to drink; Crackling with fever, they Essay, I turn my brimming eyes away, And come next hour to look. The hands still hug the tardy glass The lips I would have cooled, alas Are so superfluous Cold I would as […]...
39. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
40. 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 […]...