From On Being Fired Again

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1. Mamie MAMIE beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana Town and dreamed of romance and big things off Somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran. She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down Where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and When the newspapers came in on […]...
2. It was once called it comes like a convict Squeezing through bars And is gone before The promptest siren It suddenly turns In the ear or rides The eye of a thought Before dissolving I have it in a faint Taste or shudder An ache like a spring High in the mountains It was once called love And now […]...
3. Ozymandias II I met a guy I used to know, who said: “You take your ’57 Karnak, now, The model that they called their Coop de Veal That had the pointy rubber boobs for bumpers You take that car, owned by a nigger now Likelier’n not, with half its chromium teeth Knocked down its throat and aerial […]...
4. The Captive Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining. When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them, He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them. Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him, […]...
5. My Hero Bares His Nerves My hero bares his nerves along my wrist That rules from wrist to shoulder, Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost, Leans on my mortal ruler, The proud spine spurning turn and twist. And these poor nerves so wired to the skull Ache on the lovelorn paper I hug to love with my unruly […]...
6. The King “Farewell, Romance!” the Cave-men said; “With bone well carved he went away, Flint arms the ignoble arrowhead, And jasper tips the spear to-day. Changed are the Gods of Hunt and Dance, And he with these. Farewell, Romance!” “Farewell, Romance!” the Lake-folk sighed; “We lift the weight of flatling years; The caverns of the mountain-side Hold […]...
7. The Panther His vision, from the constantly passing bars, Has grown so weary that it cannot hold Anything else. It seems to him there are A thousand bars and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, The movement of his powerful soft strides Is like a ritual dance around a […]...
8. Tenth Commandment The woman said yes she would go to Australia with him Unless he heard wrong and she said Argentina Where they could learn the tango and pursue the widows Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant to the end. But no, she said Australia. She’d been born in New Zealand. The difference between the two places was […]...
9. BEFORE A COURT OF JUSTICE THE father’s name ye ne’er shall be told Of my darling unborn life; “Shame, shame,” ye cry, “on the strumpet bold!” Yet I’m an honest wife. To whom I’m wedded, ye ne’er shall be told, Yet he’s both loving and fair; He wears on his neck a chain of gold, And a hat of straw […]...
10. 543. Song-News, lassies, news THERE’S news, lassies, news, Gude news I’ve to tell! There’s a boatfu’ o’ lads Come to our town to sell. Chorus.-The wean wants a cradle, And the cradle wants a cod: I’ll no gang to my bed, Until I get a nod. Father, quo’ she, Mither, quo she, Do what you can, I’ll no gang […]...
11. Juan In Middle Age The appetite which leads him to her bed Is not unlike the lust of boys for cake Except he knows that after he has fed He’ll suffer more than simple belly-ache. He’ll groan to think what others have to pay As price for his obsessive need to know That he’s a champion still, though slightly […]...
12. The House They are building a house Half a block down And I sit up here With the shades down Listening to the sounds, The hammers pounding in nails, Thack thack thack thack, And then I hear birds, And thack thack thack, And I go to bed, I pull the covers to my throat; They have been […]...
13. The Flying Gang And I worked my way to the end, and I Was the head of the “Flying Gang”. ‘Twas a chosen band that was kept at hand In case of an urgent need; Was it south or north, we were started forth And away at our utmost speed. If word reached town that a bridge was […]...
14. Springfield Magical In this, the City of my Discontent, Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass, “Romance, Romance – is here. No Hindu town Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate; No picture-palace in a picture-book Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate!” In this, […]...
15. Towards The Imminent Days (Section 4) In my aunt’s house, the milk jug’s beaded crochet cover Tickles the ear. We’ve eaten boiled things with butter. Pie spiced like islands, dissolving in cream, is now Dissolving in us. We’ve reached the teapot of calm. The table we sit at is fashioned of three immense Beech boards out of England. The minute widths […]...
16. Alone With Everybody the flesh covers the bone And they put a mind In there and Sometimes a soul, And the women break Vases against the walls And the men drink too Much And nobody finds the One But keep Looking Crawling in and out Of beds. Flesh covers The bone and the Flesh searches For more than […]...
17. Katie Drummond My Louis loved me oh so well And spiered me for his wife; He would have haled me from the hell That was my bawdy life: The mother of his bairns to be, Daftlike he saw in me. But I, a hizzie of the town Just telt him we must part; Loving too well to […]...
18. Little Joke Stripping an almond tree in flower The wise apothecary’s skill A single drop of lethal power From perfect sweetness can distill From bitterness in efflorescence, With murderous poisons packed therein; The poet draws pellucid essence Pure as a drop of metheglin....
19. The Blues When the shoe strings break On both your shoes And you’re in a hurry- That’s the blues. When you go to buy a candy bar And you’ve lost the dime you had- Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere- That’s the blues, too, and bad!...
20. The Summer I Was Sixteen The turquoise pool rose up to meet us, Its slide a silver afterthought down which We plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles. We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy. Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted Up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool Lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated, We […]...
21. A Red, Red Rose O my Luve’s like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly played in tune. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry: Till a’ the seas […]...
22. Window Shopper I stood before a candy shop Which with a Christmas radiance shone; I saw my parents pass and stop To grin at me and then go on. The sweets were heaped in gleamy rows; On each I feasted – what a game! Against the glass with flatted nose, Gulping my spittle as it came; So […]...
23. 447. Song-A red, red Rose O MY Luve’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June: O my Luve’s like the melodie, That’s sweetly play’d in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas […]...
24. Oft, in the Stilly Night Oft, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood’s years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm’d and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain […]...
25. The Light of Other Days OFT, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood’s years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm’d and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain […]...
26. Boo to Buddha So it is eighteen years, Helena, since we met! A season so endears, Nor you nor I forget The fresh young faces that once clove In that most fiery dawn of love. We wandered to and fro, Who knew not how to woo, Those eighteen years ago, Sweetheart, when I and you Exchanged high vows […]...
27. Prospects We have set out from here for the sublime Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream; I have no doubt we shall arrive on time. Is all the green of that enameled prime A snapshot recollection or a dream? We have set out from here for the sublime Without provisions, without one thin dime, And […]...
28. THE MINSTREL [This fine poem is introduced in the second Book of Wilhelm Meister.] “WHAT tuneful strains salute mine ear Without the castle walls? Oh, let the song re-echo here, Within our festal halls!” Thus spake the king, the page out-hied; The boy return’d; the monarch cried: “Admit the old man yonder!” “All hail, ye noble lords […]...
29. Pardoned Out I’m pardoned out. Again the stars Shine on me with their myriad eyes. So long I’ve peered ‘twixt iron bars, I’m awed by this expanse of skies. The world is wider than I thought, And yet ‘tis not so wide, I know, But into its remotest spot My tale of shame can go. I’m pardoned […]...
30. To Althea, From Prison When love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye, The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads […]...
31. 228. To Alex. Cunningham, Esq., Writer, Edinburgh MY godlike friend-nay, do not stare, You think the phrase is odd-like; But “God is love,” the saints declare, Then surely thou art god-like. And is thy ardour still the same? And kindled still at ANNA? Others may boast a partial flame, But thou art a volcano! Ev’n Wedlock asks not love beyond Death’s tie-dissolving […]...
32. Parousia Love of my life, you Are lost and I am Young again. A few years pass. The air fills With girlish music; In the front yard The apple tree is Studded with blossoms. I try to win you back, That is the point Of the writing. But you are gone forever, As in Russian novels, […]...
33. 284. Song-Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes (older set) Chorus.-Ca’ the yowes to the knowes, Ca’ them where the heather grows, Ca’ them where the burnie rowes, My bonie dearie AS I gaed down the water-side, There I met my shepherd lad: He row’d me sweetly in his plaid, And he ca’d me his dearie. Ca’ the yowes, &c. Will ye gang down the […]...
34. A Fence NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the Workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that Can stab the life out of any man who falls on them. As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble And all […]...
35. Heroes This war’s dead heroes, who has seen them? They rise in smoke above the burning city, Faint clouds, dissolving into sky – And who sifting the Libyan sand can find The tracery of a human hand, The faint impression of an absent mind, The fade-out of a soldier’s day dream? You’ll know your love no […]...
36. Mama here I am in the ground my mouth open and I can’t even say mama, and The dogs run by and stop and piss On my stone; I get it all Except the sun And my suit is looking bad And yesterday the last of my left arm gone Very little left, all harp-like Without […]...
37. Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking Turned out each year to be an orange, For I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me, A dense node of sleeping fire. I keep it where I read and write. “You’re on chummy terms with dread,” It reminds […]...
38. Snow White's Acne At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice, Or a fleck of her mother’s red nail polish that had flaked off When she’d patted her daughter to sleep the night before. But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering Under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up […]...
39. I know why the caged bird sings A free bird leaps on the back Of the wind and floats downstream Till the current ends and dips his wing In the orange suns rays And dares to claim the sky. But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage Can seldom see through his bars of rage His wings are clipped and his […]...
40. Prisoner ‘Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?’ ‘It was my master,’ said the prisoner. ‘I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, And I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king. When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my […]...