A Pact

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1. The Pact We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of Cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to Kill herself. We kneeled over the Rubber bodies, gave them baths Carefully, scrubbed their little Orange hands, wrapped them up tight, Said goodnight, never […]...
2. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
3. The Star 1 Whatever ’tis, whose beauty here below 2 Attracts thee thus and makes thee stream and flow, 3 And wind and curl, and wink and smile, 4 Shifting thy gate and guile; 5 Though thy close commerce nought at all imbars 6 My present search, for eagles eye not stars, 7 And still the lesser […]...
4. Sestina for Jim Cummins In Iowa, Jim dreamed that Della Street was Anne Sexton’s Twin. Dave drew a comic strip called the “Adventures of Whitman,” About a bearded beer-guzzler in Superman uniform. Donna dressed like Wallace Stevens In a seersucker summer suit. To town came Ted Berrigan, Saying, “My idea of a bad poet is Marvin […]...
5. On Going Unnoticed As vain to raise a voice as a sigh In the tumult of free leaves on high. What are you in the shadow of trees Engaged up there with the light and breeze? Less than the coral-root you know That is content with the daylight low, And has no leaves at all of its own; […]...
6. By my Window have I for Scenery By my Window have I for Scenery Just a Sea with a Stem If the Bird and the Farmer deem it a “Pine” The Opinion will serve for them It has no Port, nor a “Line” but the Jays That split their route to the Sky Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula May be easier […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. A Supermarket In California What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit – Man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees With a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of Your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam […]...
10. The Mask Of Evil On my wall hangs a Japanese carving, The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer. Sympathetically I observe The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating What a strain it is to be evil....
11. 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...
12. 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...
13. 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 […]...
14. Mount Zhongnan Its massive height near the City of Heaven Joins a thousand mountains to the corner of the sea. Clouds, when I look back, close behind me, Mists, when I enter them, are gone. A central peak divides the wilds And weather into many valleys. …Needing a place to spend the night, I call to a […]...
15. 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!...
16. 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 […]...
17. 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...
18. The Leaf And The Tree When will you learn, myself, to be A dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air, That other leaves, and you not there, May bud, and at the autumn’s call Wearing russet, ready to fall? Has not this trunk a deed to do […]...
19. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
20. Hymn 114 Abraham’s blessing on the Gentiles. Rom. 11:16,17. Gentiles by nature, we belong To the wild olive wood; Grace took us from the barren tree, And grafts us in the good. With the same blessings grace endows The Gentile and the Jew; If pure and holy be the root, Such are the branches too. Then let […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. January, 1795 Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing ; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving. Lofty mansions, warm and spacious ; Courtiers clinging and voracious ; Misers scarce the wretched heeding ; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding. Wives who laugh at passive spouses ; Theatres, and meeting-houses ; Balls, where simp’ring misses […]...
23. Doubt No More That Oberon Doubt no more that Oberon- Never doubt that Pan Lived, and played a reed, and ran After nymphs in a dark forest, In the merry, credulous days,- Lived, and led a fairy band Over the indulgent land! Ah, for in this dourest, sorest Age man’s eye has looked upon, Death to fauns and death to […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. All Roads That Lead To God Are Good All roads that lead to God are good. What matters it, your faith, or mine? Both centre at the goal divine Of love’s eternal Brotherhood. The kindly life in house or street – The life of prayer and mystic rite – The student’s search for truth and light – These paths at one great Junction […]...
26. Dream Song 102: The sunburnt terraces which swans make home The sunburnt terraces which swans make home With water purling, Macchu Pichu died Like Delphi long ago— A message to Justinian closing it out, The thousand years’ authority, although Tho’ never found exactly wrong Political patterns did indeed emerge; The Oracle was conservative, like Lippmann, Roared the winds on the height, The Shining Ones behind […]...
27. Rule Britannia When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main; This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: “Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.” The nations, not so blest as thee, Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall: While thou shalt flourish great and […]...
28. To a Common Prostitute BE composed-be at ease with me-I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature; Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you; Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl, I appoint with […]...
29. Love's Gleaning Tide Draw not away thy hands, my love, With wind alone the branches move, And though the leaves be scant above The Autumn shall not shame us. Say; Let the world wax cold and drear, What is the worst of all the year But life, and what can hurt us, dear, Or death, and who shall […]...
30. 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...
31. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
32. Despair I have experienc’d The worst, the World can wreak on me the worst That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb With whisper’d Discontents the dying prayer I have beheld the whole of all, wherein My Heart had any interest in this Life, To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes That nothing now is […]...
33. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
34. The Tree I stood still and was a tree amid the wood, Knowing the truth of things unseen before; Of Daphne and the laurel bow And that god-feasting couple old That grew elm-oak amid the wold. ‘Twas not until the gods had been Kindly entreated, and been brought within Unto the hearth of their heart’s home That […]...
35. Leaves Compared With Flowers A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit. But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark […]...
36. Bluebird there’s a bluebird in my heart that Wants to get out But I’m too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I’m not going To let anybody see You. There’s a bluebird in my heart that Wants to get out But I pur whiskey on him and inhale Cigarette smoke And the whores and […]...
37. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
38. If I should die If I should die, And you should live And time should gurgle on And morn should beam And noon should burn As it has usual done If Birds should build as early And Bees as bustling go One might depart at option From enterprise below! ‘Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand When we […]...
39. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
40. Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing The light along the hills in the morning Comes down slowly, naming the trees White, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate. Notice what this poem is not doing. A house, a house, a barn, the old Quarry, where the river shrugs How much of this place is yours? Notice what this poem is […]...