The Black Berry wears a Thorn in his side

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1. Black On Black Serrations of chimneys Stone-black perforate Velvet-black dark. A tree coils in core of darkness. My swinging Hands Incise the night. A man slips into a doorway, Black hole in blackness, and drowns there. A second man passing traces The diagram of his steps On invisible pavement. Rain Draws black parallel threads Through the hollow of […]...
2. Other side The dung was recent, not an event Unusual in itself but difficult to explain Of cows grazing the other side of the fence. Too new to be dismissed without a thought, Disturbing evidence which brought A desired state of bovine restraint Into an irksome disgrace. We couldn’t see a beast Ranging free, eating And defecating […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. My Heart, When First The Black-Bird Sings MY heart, when first the blackbird sings, My heart drinks in the song: Cool pleasure fills my bosom through And spreads each nerve along. My bosom eddies quietly, My heart is stirred and cool As when a wind-moved briar sweeps A stone into a pool But unto thee, when thee I meet, My pulses thicken […]...
5. Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?) Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely, Your path struggles on through incomprehensible Mankind. All the more futile perhaps For keeping to its direction, Keeping on toward the future, Toward what has been lost. Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry Of jubilation, unripe. But now the whole tree of […]...
6. The Black Unicorn The black unicorn is greedy. The black unicorn is impatient. ‘The black unicorn was mistaken For a shadow or symbol And taken Through a cold country Where mist painted mockeries Of my fury. It is not on her lap where the horn rests But deep in her moonpit Growing. The black unicorn is restless The […]...
7. Black Bonnet A day of seeming innocence, A glorious sun and sky, And, just above my picket fence, Black Bonnet passing by. In knitted gloves and quaint old dress, Without a spot or smirch, Her worn face lit with peacefulness, Old Granny goes to church. Her hair is richly white, like milk, That long ago was fair […]...
8. Me prove it now Whoever doubt Me prove it now Whoever doubt Me stop to prove it now Make haste the Scruple! Death be scant For Opportunity The River reaches to my feet As yet My Heart be dry Oh Lover Life could not convince Might Death enable Thee The River reaches to My Breast Still still My Hands above Proclaim […]...
9. The Little Black Boy My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white. White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree And sitting down before the heat of day. She took me on her […]...
10. Lines Written by the Side of a River FLOW soft RIVER, gently stray, Still a silent waving tide O’er thy glitt’ring carpet glide, While I chaunt my ROUNDELAY, As I gather from thy bank, Shelter’d by the poplar dank, King-cups, deck’d in golden pride, Harebells sweet, and daisies pied; While beneath the evening sky, Soft the western breezes fly. Gentle RIVER, should’st thou […]...
11. When Katie walks, this simple pair accompany her side When Katie walks, this simple pair accompany her side, When Katie runs unwearied they follow on the road, When Katie kneels, their loving hands still clasp her pious knee Ah! Katie! Smile at Fortune, with two so knit to thee!...
12. Black Harry's Team No soft-skinned Durham steers are they, No Devons plump and red, But brindled, black and iron-grey That mark the mountain-bred; For mountain-bred and mountain-broke, With sullen eyes agleam, No stranger’s hand could put a yoke On old Black Harry’s team. Pull out, pull out, at break of morn The creeks are running white, And Tiger, […]...
13. The Black Virgin One in thy thousand statues we salute thee On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces Walk in a forest calling on one name And, most of all, how this thing may be so Who know thee not are mystified to know That one cries “Here […]...
14. This Beautiful Black Marriage Photograph negative Her black arm: a diving porpoise, Sprawled across the ice-banked pillow. Head: a sheet of falling water. Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light. This woman, Photographed sleeping. The man, Making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain. Sleep stain them both, As if cloudy semen Rubbed shiningly over the surface […]...
15. Black Stone On Top Of Nothing Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon Around the apartment building covering the front door. He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and begins To untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him Wondering what’s going on. A middle-aged woman carrying A loaf of fresh bread asks him […]...
16. Black Moran The mule-skinner was Bill Jerome, the passengers were three; Two tinhorns from the dives of Nome, and Father Tim McGee. And as for sunny Southland bound, through weary woods they sped, The solitude that ringed them round was silent as the dead. Then when the trail crooked crazily, the frost-rimed horses reared, And from behind […]...
17. Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slandered with a bastard shame. For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name no […]...
18. The Black Art A woman who writes feels too much, Those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands Weren’t enough; as if mourners and gossips And vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl. A man who writes knows too […]...
19. Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too Foreigners are people somewhere else, Natives are people at home; If the place you’re at Is your habitat, You’re a foreigner, say in Rome. But the scales of Justice balance true, And tit leads into tat, So the man who’s at home When he stays in Rome Is abroad when he’s where you’re at. When […]...
20. Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane Hard Rock/ was/ “known not to take no shit From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it: Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut Across his temple and plowed through a thick Canopy of kinky hair. The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn’t a […]...
21. Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles Buccaneers of Buzz. Ride abroad in ostentation And subsist on Fuzz. Fuzz ordained not Fuzz contingent Marrows of the Hill. Jugs a Universe’s fracture Could not jar or spill....
22. A Sea-Side Walk We walked beside the sea, After a day which perished silently Of its own glory – like the Princess weird Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared, Uttered with burning breath, ‘Ho! victory!’ And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale; So runs the Arab tale. The sky above us showed An universal and unmoving […]...
23. By The Fire-Side I. How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark autumn-evenings come: And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! II. I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the […]...
24. The Thorn (For the Rev. Charles L. O’Donnell, C. S. C.) The garden of God is a radiant place, And every flower has a holy face: Our Lady like a lily bends above the cloudy sod, But Saint Michael is the thorn on the rosebush of God. David is the song upon God’s lips, And Our Lady […]...
25. The Birds reported from the South The Birds reported from the South A News express to Me A spicy Charge, My little Posts But I am deaf Today The Flowers appealed a timid Throng I reinforced the Door Go blossom for the Bees I said And trouble Me no More The Summer Grace, for Notice strove Remote Her best Array The […]...
26. To Clementina Black More blest than was of old Diogenes, I have not held my lantern up in vain. Not mine, at least, this evil to complain: “There is none honest among all of these.” Our hopes go down that sailed before the breeze; Our creeds upon the rock are rent in twain; Something it is, if at […]...
27. 473. On Chloris requesting a sprig of blossom'd thorn FROM the white-blossom’d sloe my dear Chloris requested A sprig, her fair breast to adorn: No, by Heavens! I exclaim’d, let me perish, if ever I plant in that bosom a thorn!...
28. Holy Sonnet IV: Oh My Black Soul! Now Art Thou Summoned Oh my black soul! now art thou summoned By sickness, death’s herald, and champion; Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done Treason, and durst not turn to whence he is fled; Or like a thief, which till death’s doom be read, Wisheth himself delivered from prison, But damned and haled to execution, Wisheth […]...
29. In Black Despair In grayish doubt and black despair, I drafted hymns to the earth and the air, Pretending to joy, although I lacked it. The age had made lament redundant. So here’s the question who can answer it Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?...
30. Captain Teach alias Black Beard Edward Teach was a native of Bristol, and sailed from that port On board a privateer, in search of sport, As one of the crew, during the French War in that station, And for personal courage he soon gained his Captain’s approbation. ‘Twas in the spring of 1717, Captajn Harnigold and Teach sailed from Providence […]...
31. Facts by our side are never sudden Facts by our side are never sudden Until they look around And then they scare us like a spectre Protruding from the Ground The height of our portentous Neighbor We never know Till summoned to his recognition By an Adieu Adieu for whence The sage cannot conjecture The bravest die As ignorant of their resumption […]...
32. Mystery WHY does this sudden passion smite me? I stretch my hands, all blind to see: I need the lamp of the world to light me, Lead me and set me free. Something a moment seemed to stoop from The night with cool, cool breath on my face: Or did the hair of the twilight droop […]...
33. Forever at His side to walk Forever at His side to walk The smaller of the two! Brain of His Brain Blood of His Blood Two lives One Being now Forever of His fate to taste If grief the largest part If joy to put my piece away For that beloved Heart All life to know each other Whom we can […]...
34. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 04: Up high black walls, up sombre terraces Up high black walls, up sombre terraces, Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs, The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky. From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain, Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye. They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower, Along high terraces quicker […]...
35. Black riders came from the sea Black riders came from the sea. There was clang and clang of spear and shield, And clash and clash of hoof and heel, Wild shouts and the wave of hair In the rush upon the wind: Thus the ride of sin....
36. Now Hollow Fires Burn Out to Black Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread, Look not to left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There’s nothing but the night....
37. Grand-Pa's Whim While for me gapes the greedy grave It don’t make sense That I should have a crazy crave To paint our fence. Yet that is what I aim to do, Though dim my sight: Jest paint them aged pickets blue, Or green or white. Jest squat serenely in the sun Wi’ brush an’ paint, An’ […]...
38. Morning Coffee Reading the menu at the morning service: – Iced Venusberg perhaps, or buttered bum – Orders the usual sex-ersatz, and, nervous, Glances around – Will she or won’t she come? The congregation dissected into pews Gulping their strip teas in the luminous cavern Agape’s sacamental berry stews; The nickel-plated light and clatter of heaven Receive […]...
39. It sifts from Leaden Sieves It sifts from Leaden Sieves It powders all the Wood. It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road It makes an Even Face Of Mountain, and of Plain Unbroken Forehead from the East Unto the East again It reaches to the Fence It wraps it Rail by Rail Till it is lost in […]...
40. The Rock Cries Out to Us Today A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Mark the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, […]...