Riprap

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1. Loam IN the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pass And the break of stars, From the loam, then, The soft warm loam, We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder. We stand, then, To a whiff of life, Lifted to the silver of the […]...
2. Tor House If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes: Perhaps of my planted forest a few May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast cypress, haggard With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils. Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers had the art To make stone love stone, you […]...
3. Above Eurunderee There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not, On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot. Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees, There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange, But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range. Still I […]...
4. Irony An arid daylight shines along the beach Dried to a grey monotony of tone, And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach The skeletons of fishes, every bone Polished and stark, like traceries of stone, The joints and knuckles hardened each to each. […]...
5. Reedy River Ten miles down Reedy River A pool of water lies, And all the year it mirrors The changes in the skies, And in that pool’s broad bosom Is room for all the stars; Its bed of sand has drifted O’er countless rocky bars. Around the lower edges There waves a bed of reeds, Where water […]...
6. Redbud Trail – Winter It’s two muddy miles from Highway 20, Just past the north fork of Cache Creek, Across the broad meadow, through Blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge, And back down to the creek bank, The crossing point, me striding with Mud caking my old hiking boots. For a millennia the Miwok people walked These […]...
7. Water It was a Maine lobster town- Each morning boatloads of hands Pushed off for granite Quarries on the islands, And left dozens of bleak White frame houses stuck Like oyster shells On a hill of rock, And below us, the sea lapped The raw little match-stick Mazes of a weir, Where the fish for bait […]...
8. Spelling My daughter plays on the floor With plastic letters, Red, blue & hard yellow, Learning how to spell, Spelling, How to make spells. * I wonder how many women Denied themselves daughters, Closed themselves in rooms, Drew the curtains So they could mainline words. * A child is not a poem, A poem is not […]...
9. To The House I am heaping the bones of the old mother To build us a hold against the host of the air; Granite the blood-heat of her youth Held molten in hot darkness against the heart Hardened to temper under the feet Of the ocean cavalry that are maned with snow And march from the remotest west. […]...
10. The Burial 1904(C. F. Rhodes, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902) When that great Kings return to clay, Or Emperors in their pride, Grief of a day shall fill a day, Because its creature died. But we we reck on not with those Whom the mere Fates ordain, This Power that wrought on us and goes […]...
11. Chiarascuro: Rose He Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal. Sit at the western window. Take the sun Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal, Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still, And meditate on the beauty of your existence; The beauty of this, that you exist at […]...
12. Farmer, Dying for Hank and Nancy Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow From his cough. These limp days, his anger, Legend forty years from moon to Stevensville, Lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore. Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam Unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves Of cottonwoods […]...
13. The Old Gray Wall Time out of mind I have stood Fronting the frost and the sun, That the dream of the world might endure, And the goodly will be done. Did the hand of the builder guess, As he laid me stone by stone, A heart in the granite lurked, Patient and fond as his own? Lovers have […]...
14. I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their hearts desire: Jingle pockets full of gold, Marry when they’re seven years old. Every fairy child may keep Two ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; […]...
15. The Man Rock A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits For a longtime to be over. It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man Inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when He got outside. A rock asks only what is a rock. A rock waits to […]...
16. The Sentence And the stone word fell On my still-living breast. Never mind, I was ready. I will manage somehow. Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again Unless. . . Summer’s ardent rustling Is like a […]...
17. Sonnet XL: My Heart the Anvil My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, […]...
18. Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember […]...
19. Sonnet XIV: If He From Heav'n If he from Heav’n that filch’d that living fire Condemn’d by Jove to endless torment be, I greatly marvel how you still go free That far beyond Prometheus did aspire. The fire he stole, although of heav’nly kind, Which from above he craftily did take, Of lifeless clods us living men to make, He did […]...
20. The Plough Of Time Night closed my windows and The sky became a crystal house The crystal windows glowed The moon Shown through them Through the whole house of crystal A single star beamed down Its crystal cable And drew a plough through the earth Unearthing bodies clasped together Couples embracing Around the earth They clung together everywhere Emitting […]...
21. The Carver See, as the carver carves a rose, A wing, a toad, a serpent’s eye, In cruel granite, to disclose The soft things that in hardness lie, So this one, taking up his heart, Which time and change had made a stone, Carved out of it with dolorous art, Laboring yearlong and alone, The thing there […]...
22. One Year When I got to his marker, I sat on it, Like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed And I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite. I took some tears from my jaw and neck And started to wash a corner of his stone. Then a black and amber ant Ran out onto the granite, and […]...
23. The Rock and The Bubble Oh! a bare, brown rock Stood up in the sea, The waves at its feet Dancing merrily. A little bubble Once came sailing by, And thus to the rock Did it gayly cry, “Ho! clumsy brown stone, Quick, make way for me: I’m the fairest thing That floats on the sea. “See my rainbow-robe, See […]...
24. UPON LOVE A crystal vial Cupid brought, Which had a juice in it: Of which who drank, he said, no thought Of Love he should admit. I, greedy of the prize, did drink, And emptied soon the glass; Which burnt me so, that I do think The fire of hell it was. Give me my earthen cups […]...
25. Ladies And Gentlemen In Outer Space Here is my philosophy: Everything changes (the word “everything” Has just changed as the Word “change” has: it now Means “no change”) so Quickly that it literally surpasses my belief, Charges right past it Like some of the giant Ideas in this area. I had no beginning and I shall have No end: the beam […]...
26. Amor Vincit Omnia Love is no more. It died as the mind dies: the pure desire Relinquishing the blissful form it wore, The ample joy and clarity expire. Regret is vain. Then do not grieve for what you would efface, The sudden failure of the past, the pain Of its unwilling change, and the disgrace. Leave innocence, And […]...
27. Advice to a Prophet When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city, Mad-eyed from stating the obvious, Not proclaiming our fall but begging us In God’s name to have self-pity, Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range, The long numbers that rocket the mind; Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be […]...
28. Snow No breath of wind, No gleam of sun – Still the white snow Whirls softly down Twig and bough And blade and thorn All in an icy Quiet, forlorn. Whispering, rustling, Through the air On still and stone, Roof, – everywhere, It heaps its powdery Crystal flakes, Of every tree A mountain makes; ‘Til pale […]...
29. Knife Something Just now Moved through my heart Like the thinnest of blades As that red-tail pumped Once with its great wings And flew above the gray, cracked Rock wall. It wasn’t About the bird, it was Something about the way Stone stays Mute and put, whatever Goes flashing by. Sometimes, When I sit like this, […]...
30. Love and Law TRUE Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance In stones of Forbearance and mortar of pain. The workman lays wearily granite on granite, And bleeds for his castle, ‘mid sunshine and rain. Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet, Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone. ‘Tis stern as the ages and […]...
31. The Book of Urizen: Chapter IV a 1. Los smitten with astonishment Frightend at the hurtling bones 2. And at the surging sulphureous Perturbed Immortal mad raging 3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre Round the furious limbs of Los 4. And Los formed nets & gins And threw the nets round about 5. He watch’d in shuddring fear The dark […]...
32. The Death Of Autumn When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes, And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes, Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak, Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,- Then leans on me the weight of the year, […]...
33. Sanctuary This is the bricklayer; hear the thud Of his heavy load dumped down on stone. His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood, His smoking mortar whiter than bone. Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick Straight by the plumb-line’s shivering length; Make my marvelous wall so thick Dead nor living may shake its strength. Full as a […]...
34. Pan … Among the shadows of the groaning elms, Amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves… … Once there were paths that led to coracles That clung to piers like loosening barnacles… … where we cannot return, because we lost The pebbles and the playthings, and the moss… … hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair Who […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. Meditation On Saviors I When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element and smelt it like water, Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a little troublesome, a little terrible. I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death nor in a walled garden, In lies […]...
37. Sacrifice THOSE delicate wanderers, The wind, the star, the cloud, Ever before mine eyes, As to an altar bowed, Light and dew-laden airs Offer in sacrifice. The offerings arise: Hazes of rainbow light, Pure crystal, blue, and gold, Through dreamland take their flight; And ‘mid the sacrifice God moveth as of old. In miracles of fire […]...
38. Berenda Slough Earth and water without form, Change, or pause: as if the third Day had not come, this calm norm Of chaos denies the Word. One sees only a surface Pocked with rushes, the starved clumps Pressed between water and space Rootless, perennial stumps Fixed in position, entombed In nothing; it is too late To bring […]...
39. On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines Streets of the roaring town, Hush for him, hus, be still! He comes, who was stricken down Doing the word of our will. Hush! Let him have his state, Give him his soldier’s crown. The grists of trade can wait Their grinding at the mill, But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet […]...
40. Oversoul THE EAST was crowned with snow-cold bloom And hung with veils of pearly fleece: They died away into the gloom, Vistas of peace-and deeper peace. And earth and air and wave and fire In awe and breathless silence stood; For One who passed into their choir Linked them in mystic brotherhood. Twilight of amethyst, amid […]...