Perhaps I asked too large

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1. As if I asked a common Alms As if I asked a common Alms, And in my wondering hand A Stranger pressed a Kingdom, And I, bewildered, stand As if I asked the Orient Had it for me a Morn And it should lift its purple Dikes, And shatter me with Dawn!...
2. I asked no other thing I asked no other thing No other was denied I offered Being for it The Mighty Merchant sneered Brazil? He twirled a Button Without a glance my way “But Madam is there nothing else That We can show Today?”...
3. You Asked How (formerly Even Now She Is Turning, Saying Everything I Always Wanted Her to Say) At the end there were straws In her glove compartment, I’d split them open To taste the familiar bitter residue, near the end I ate all her Percodans, hungry to know How far they could take me. A bottle of red wine each night moved her along As she wrote, I feel too much, again […]...
4. Whose are the little beds, I asked Whose are the little beds, I asked Which in the valleys lie? Some shook their heads, and others smiled And no one made reply. Perhaps they did not hear, I said, I will inquire again Whose are the beds the tiny beds So thick upon the plain? ‘Tis Daisy, in the shortest A little further […]...
5. Large Bad Picture Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or Some northerly harbor of Labrador, Before he became a schoolteacher A great-uncle painted a big picture. Receding for miles on either side Into a flushed, still sky Are overhanging pale blue cliffs Hundreds of feet high, Their bases fretted by little arches, The entrances to caves Running in […]...
6. The Gardener XIII: I Asked Nothing I asked nothing, only stood at the Edge of the wood behind the tree. Languor was still upon the eyes Of the dawn, and the dew in the air. The lazy smell of the damp grass Hung in the thin mist above the earth. Under the banyan tree you were Milking the cow with your […]...
7. So large my Will So large my Will The little that I may Embarrasses Like gentle infamy Affront to Him For whom the Whole were small Affront to me Who know His Meed of all. Earth at the best Is but a scanty Toy Bought, carried Home To Immortality. It looks so small We chiefly wonder then At our […]...
8. The Spider holds a Silver Ball The Spider holds a Silver Ball In unperceived Hands And dancing softly to Himself His Yarn of Pearl unwinds He plies from Nought to Nought In unsubstantial Trade Supplants our Tapestries with His In half the period An Hour to rear supreme His Continents of Light Then dangle from the Housewife’s Broom His Boundaries forgot...
9. A Large Number Four billion people on this earth, But my imagination is the way it’s always been: Bad with large numbers. It is still moved by particularity. It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam, Disclosing only random faces, While the rest go blindly by, Unthought of, unpitied. Not even a Dante could have stopped that. […]...
10. 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 […]...
11. Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market Among the market greens, A bullet From the ocean Depths, A swimming Projectile, I saw you, Dead. All around you Were lettuces, Sea foam Of the earth, Carrots, Grapes, But Of the ocean Truth, Of the unknown, Of the Unfathomable Shadow, the Depths Of the sea, The abyss, Only you had survived, A pitch-black, varnished […]...
12. 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....
13. As if some little Arctic flower As if some little Arctic flower Upon the polar hem Went wandering down the Latitudes Until it puzzled came To continents of summer To firmaments of sun To strange, bright crowds of flowers And birds, of foreign tongue! I say, As if this little flower To Eden, wandered in What then? Why nothing, Only, your […]...
14. Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned into pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn’t tell. And then they clearly flew instead of fell....
15. 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...
16. 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...
17. 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 […]...
18. 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!...
19. 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...
20. Sonnet 85: My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill, And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words, And like unlettered clerk still cry “Amen” To every hymn that able spirit affords In polished form […]...
21. Sonnet LXXXV My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts whilst other write good words, And like unletter’d clerk still cry ‘Amen’ To every hymn that able spirit affords In polish’d form […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. 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 […]...
24. Maternity There once was a Square, such a square little Square, And he loved a trim Triangle; But she was a flirt and around her skirt Vainly she made him dangle. Oh he wanted to wed and he had no dread Of domestic woes and wrangles; For he thought that his fate was to procreate Cute […]...
25. At Cheyenne Young Lochinvar came in from the West, With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, His No. Brogans were chuck full of feet, His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. The fair Mariana sate […]...
26. Earth-Moon Once upon a time there was a person He was walking along He met the full burning moon Rolling slowly twoards him Crushing the stones and houses by the wayside. She shut his eyes from the glare. He drew his dagger And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. The cry that quit the moon’s wounds Circled […]...
27. Except the smaller size Except the smaller size No lives are round These hurry to a sphere And show and end The larger slower grow And later hang The Summers of Hesperides Are long....
28. Me, change! Me, alter! Me, change! Me, alter! Then I will, when on the Everlasting Hill A Smaller Purple grows At sunset, or a lesser glow Flickers upon Cordillera At Day’s superior close!...
29. Who Giants know, with lesser Men Who Giants know, with lesser Men Are incomplete, and shy For Greatness, that is ill at ease In minor Company A Smaller, could not be perturbed The Summer Gnat displays Unconscious that his single Fleet Do not comprise the skies...
30. Dream Song 78: Op. posth. no. 1 Darkened his eye, his wild smile disappeared, Inapprehensible his studies grew, Nourished he less & less His subject body with good food & rest, Something bizarre about Henry, slowly sheared Off, unlike you & you, Smaller & smaller, till in question stood His eyeteeth and one block of memories These were enough for him Implying […]...
31. Outside History These are outsiders, always. These stars- These iron inklings of an Irish January, Whose light happened Thousands of years before Our pain did; they are, they have always been Outside history. They keep their distance. Under them remains A place where you found You were human, and A landscape in which you know you are […]...
32. 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...
33. The Spirit is the Conscious Ear The Spirit is the Conscious Ear. We actually Hear When We inspect that’s audible That is admitted Here For other Services as Sound There hangs a smaller Ear Outside the Castle that Contain The other only Hear...
34. Poet And Peer They asked the Bard of Ayr to dine; The banquet hall was fit and fine, With gracing it a Lord; The poet came; his face was grim To find the place reserved for him Was at the butler’s board. So when the gentry called him in, He entered with a knavish grin And sipped a […]...
35. The Test of Love is Death The Test of Love is Death Our Lord “so loved” it saith What Largest Lover hath Another doth If smaller Patience be Through less Infinity If Bravo, sometimes swerve Through fainter Nerve Accept its Most And overlook the Dust Last Least The Cross’ Request...
36. Asparagus Mr. Ramsbottom went to the races, A thing as he’d ne’er done before, And as luck always follers beginners, Won five pounds, no-less and no-more. He felt himself suddenly tempted To indulge in some reckless orgee, So he went to a caffy-a-teerer And had a dressed crab with his tea. He were crunching the claws […]...
37. Renunciation is a piercing Virtue Renunciation is a piercing Virtue The letting go A Presence for an Expectation Not now The putting out of Eyes Just Sunrise Lest Day Day’s Great Progenitor Outvie Renunciation is the Choosing Against itself Itself to justify Unto itself When larger function Make that appear Smaller that Covered Vision Here...
38. The Judges Of The Little Box to Karl Max Ostojic Why do you stare at the little box That in her emptiness Holds the whole world If the little box holds The world in her emptiness Then the antiworld Holds the little box in its antihand Who’ll bite off the antiworld’s antihand And on that hand Five hundred antifingers Do you […]...
39. Love is that later Thing than Death Love is that later Thing than Death More previous than Life Confirms it at its entrance And Usurps it of itself Tastes Death the first to hand the sting The Second to its friend Disarms the little interval Deposits Him with God Then hovers an inferior Guard Lest this Beloved Charge Need once in an […]...
40. 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 […]...