The Idea of Ancestry

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1. My Great Great Etc. Uncle Patrick Henry There’s a fortune to be made in just about everything In this country, somebody’s father had to invent Everything baby food, tractors, rat poisoning. My family’s obviously done nothing since the beginning Of time. They invented poverty and bad taste And getting by and taking it from the boss. O my mother goes around chewing […]...
2. Mother o' Mine If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother […]...
3. A Fixed Idea What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You […]...
4. The Mad Yak I am watching them churn the last milk they’ll ever get From me. They are waiting for me to die; They want to make buttons out of my bones. Where are my sisters and brothers? That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap. And that idiot student of his I never […]...
5. Idea LI: Calling to mind since first my love begun Calling to mind since first my love begun, Th’ incertain times oft varying in their course, How things still unexpectedly have run, As t’ please the fates by their resistless force: Lastly, mine eyes amazedly have seen Essex’ great fall, Tyrone his peace to gain, The quiet end of that long-living Queen, This King’s fair […]...
6. The Sightseers My father and mother, my brother and sister And I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle, Had set out that Sunday afternoon in July In his broken-down Ford Not to visit some graveyard-one died of shingles, One of fever, another’s knees turned to jelly- But the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley, The first in mid-Ulster. […]...
7. Three Balls JABOWSKY’S place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls. When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation: A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone, And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left […]...
8. The Little Big Man I am small because I am a little child. I shall be big when I am As old as my father is. My teacher will come and say, “It is late, bring your slate And your books.” I shall tell him, ” Do you not know I am as big as father? And I must […]...
9. All In a Family Way My banks are all furnished with rags, So thick, even Freddy can’t thin ’em; I’ve torn up my old money-bags, Having little or nought to put in ’em. My tradesman are smashing by dozens, But this is all nothing, they say; For bankrupts, since Adam, are cousins, So, it’s all in the family way. My […]...
10. Concerning The Synthetic Unity Of Apperception “Trash, trash!” the king my uncle said, “The spirit’s smoke and weak as smoke ascends. “Sit in the sun and not among the dead, “Eat oranges! Pish tosh! the car attends. “All ghosts came back. they do not like it there, “No silky water and no big brown bear, “No beer and no siestas up […]...
11. A Stone Is Nobody's A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner. Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the Rest of his life. His mother asked why. He said, because it’s held captive, because it is Captured. Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know Whether it’s […]...
12. Touched my family Even from afar came shouts of recognition Joyful voices rang across the years disdained and Faces of our childhood unforgot fit instantly familiar names; Voices still the same despite the extra grey, the extra lines, Like sacred family metaphors not blurred with passing time. Uncles greeted cousins, nieces hailed their aunts in private spaces Kept […]...
13. Idea XXXVII: Dear, why should you command me to my rest Dear, why should you command me to my rest When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best; Night was ordain’d together friends to keep. How happy are all other living things Which, though the day disjoin by sev’ral flight, The quiet ev’ning yet together brings, And each returns […]...
14. Easter Morning I have a life that did not become, That turned aside and stopped, Astonished: I hold it in me like a pregnancy or As on my lap a child Not to grow old but dwell on It is to his grave I most Frequently return and return To ask what is wrong, what was Wrong, […]...
15. Charlene-n-Booker 4ever And the old men, supervising grown grandsons, nephews, Any man a boy given this chance of making A new sidewalk outside the apartment building where Some of them live, three old men and their wives, The aging unmarrying children, and the child Who is a cousin, whose mother has sent her here Because she doesn’t […]...
16. House TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe. Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don’t want him around. The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer […]...
17. Uncle Harry Oh, never let on to your own true love That ever you drank a drop; That ever you played in a two-up school Or slept in a sly-grog shop; That ever a bad girl nursed you round – That ever you sank so low. But she pulled you through, and it’s only you And your […]...
18. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
19. Ginza Samba A monosyllabic European called Sax Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting Infinitely upward through an upturned Swollen golden bell rimmed Like a gloxinia flowering In Sax’s Belgian […]...
20. The Idea Of Order At Key West She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. […]...
21. Idea LIII: To the River Ancor Clear Ancor, on whose silver-sanded shore My soul-shrin’d saint, my fair Idea lies, O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore Thy crystal stream, refined by her eyes, Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the spring Gently distills his nectar-dropping showers, Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers; Say thus, fair brook, […]...
22. Idea XX: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still, Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess’d, Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill, Nor gives me once but one poor minute’s rest. In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake; And when by means to drive it out I try, With greater torments […]...
23. Nancy Knapp Well, don’t you see this was the way of it: We bought the farm with what he inherited, And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning His fathers mind against the rest of them. And we never had any peace with our treasure. The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. And lightning […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. Song of Myself I was a Poet! But I did not know it, Neither did my Mother, Nor my Sister nor my Brother. The Rich were not aware of it; The Poor took no care of it. The Reverend Mr. Drewitt Never knew it. The High did not suspect it; The Low could not detect it. Aunt Sue […]...
26. A House upon the Height A House upon the Height That Wagon never reached No Dead, were ever carried down No Peddler’s Cart approached Whose Chimney never smoked Whose Windows Night and Morn Caught Sunrise first and Sunset last Then held an Empty Pane Whose fate Conjecture knew No other neighbor did And what it was we never lisped Because […]...
27. Uncle Bill My Uncle Bill! My Uncle Bill! How doth my heart with anguish thrill! For he, our chief, our Robin Hood, Has gone to jail for stealing wood! With tears and sobs my voice I raise To celebrate my uncle’s praise; With all my strength, with all my skill, I’ll sing the song of Uncle Bill.” […]...
28. September On Jessore Road Millions of babies watching the skies Bellies swollen, with big round eyes On Jessore Road long bamboo huts Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts Millions of fathers in rain Millions of mothers in pain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of sisters nowhere to go One Million aunts are dying for bread One Million […]...
29. The Moss Of His Skin “Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next To their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses Of the tribes…” Harold Feldman, “Children of the Desert” Psychoanalysis And Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958 It was only important To smile and hold still, To lie down beside him And to rest awhile, To be folded […]...
30. Our Hills Dear Mother-Earth Of Titan birth, Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry To drink my mother’s-milk so near the sky. O ye hill-stains, Red, for all rains! The blood that made you has all bled for us, The hearts that paid you are all dead […]...
31. Halley's Comet Miss Murphy in first grade Wrote its name in chalk Across the board and told us It was roaring down the stormtracks Of the Milky Way at frightful speed And if it wandered off its course And smashed into the earth There’d be no school tomorrow. A red-bearded preacher from the hills With a wild […]...
32. Girl In A Miniskirt Reading The Bible Outside My Window Sunday, I am eating a Grapefruit, church is over at the Russian Orthadox to the West. She is dark Of Eastern descent, Large brown eyes look up from the Bible Then down. a small red and black Bible, and as she reads Her legs keep moving, moving, She is doing a slow rythmic dance Reading […]...
33. Mummia As those of old drank mummia To fire their limbs of lead, Making dead kings from Africa Stand pandar to their bed; Drunk on the dead, and medicined With spiced imperial dust, In a short night they reeled to find Ten centuries of lust. So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme, Stuffed love’s infinity, […]...
34. Infant Sorrow My mother groand! my father wept, Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud: Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my fathers hands: Striving against my swaddling bands: Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mother’s breast....
35. Robin Hood, A Child It was the pleasant season yet, When the stones at cottage doors Dry quickly, while the roads are wet, After the silver showers. The green leaves they looked greener still, And the thrush, renewing his tune, Shook a loud note from his gladsome bill Into the bright blue noon. Robin Hood’s mother looked out, and […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. Are You Content? I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent? Eyes spiritualised by death can judge, I cannot, but I am not content. He that in Sligo at Drumcliff […]...
38. His Wish To God I would to God, that mine old age might have Before my last, but here a living grave; Some one poor almshouse, there to lie, or stir, Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre; A little piggin, and a pipkin by, To hold things fitting my necessity, Which, rightly us’d, both in their time and place, […]...
39. Virginity My mother she had children five and four are dead and gone; While I, least worthy to survive, persist in living on. She looks at me, I must confess, sometimes with spite and bitterness. My mother is three-score and ten, while I am forty-three, You don’t know how it hurts me when we go somewhere […]...
40. Lydia Humphrey Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that […]...