ENGLAND’S OPENERS

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1. Overheard Through The Walls Of The Invisible City . . . telling those who swarm around him his desire Is that an appendage from each of them Fill, invade each of his orifices,- Repeating, chanting, Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached Consummation. -Until telling those who […]...
2. The Naked And The Nude For me, the naked and the nude (By lexicographers construed As synonyms that should express The same deficiency of dress Or shelter) stand as wide apart As love from lies, or truth from art. Lovers without reproach will gaze On bodies naked and ablaze; The Hippocratic eye will see In nakedness, anatomy; And naked shines […]...
3. Attempted Assassination of the Queen God prosper long our noble Queen, And long may she reign! Maclean he tried to shoot her, But it was all in vain. For God He turned the ball aside Maclean aimed at her head; And he felt very angry Because he didn’t shoot her dead. There’s a divinity that hedges a king, And so […]...
4. City Trees The trees along this city street, Save for the traffic and the trains, Would make a sound as thin and sweet As trees in country lanes. And people standing in their shade Out of a shower, undoubtedly Would hear such music as is made Upon a country tree. Oh, little leaves that are so dumb […]...
5. Revolt In The Ranks I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half Handicapping tomorrow’s Card. When am I going to get at the poems? Well, they’ll just have to wait They’ll have to warm their feet in the Anteroom Where they’ll sit gossiping about Me. “this Chinaski, doesn’t he realize that Without us he would have long ago Gone mad, been dead?” […]...
6. The Death of the Queen Alas! our noble and generous Queen Victoria is dead, And I hope her soul to Heaven has fled, To sing and rejoice with saints above, Where ah is joy, peace, and love. ‘Twas on January 22, 1901, in the evening she died at 6.30 o’clock, Which to the civilised world has been a great shock; […]...
7. A Polar Explorer All the huskies are eaten. There is no space Left in the diary, And the beads of quick Words scatter over his spouse’s sepia-shaded face Adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek. Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn’t spare his kin: What’s been reached is the highest possible […]...
8. Cut Grass Cut grass lies frail: Brief is the breath Mown stalks exhale. Long, long the death It dies in the white hours Of young-leafed June With chestnut flowers, With hedges snowlike strewn, White lilac bowed, Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace, And that high-builded cloud Moving at summer’s pace....
9. A Following the phone rang at 1:30 a. m. and it was a man from Denver: “Chinaski, you got a following in Denver…” “yeah?” “yeah, I got a magazine and I want some poems from you…” “FUCK YOU, CHINASKI!” I heard a voice in the background… “I see you have a friend,” I said. “yeah,” he answered, […]...
10. Disobedience James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Took great Care of his Mother, Though he was only three. James James Said to his Mother, “Mother,” he said, said he; “You must never go down To the end of the town, If you don’t go down with me.” James James Morrison’s Mother Put on a golden […]...
11. I know a place where Summer strives I know a place where Summer strives With such a practised Frost She each year leads her Daisies back Recording briefly “Lost” But when the South Wind stirs the Pools And struggles in the lanes Her Heart misgives Her, for Her Vow And she pours soft Refrains Into the lap of Adamant And spices and […]...
12. The Loss of the Victoria Alas! Now o’er Britannia there hangs a gloom, Because over 400 British Tars have met with a watery tomb; Who served aboard the ” Victoria,” the biggest ship in the navy, And one of the finest battleships that ever sailed the sea. And commanded by Sir George Tyron, a noble hero bold, And his name […]...
13. Jasmines Your scent is in the room. Swiftly it overwhelms and conquers me! Jasmines, night jasmines, perfect of perfume, Heavy with dew before the dawn of day! Your face was in the mirror. I could see You smile and vanish suddenly away, Leaving behind the vestige of a tear. Sad suffering face, from parting grown so […]...
14. A HOPE FOR POETRY: REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES There was a hope for poetry in the sixties And for education and society, teachers free To do as they wanted: I could and did teach Poetry and art all day and little else – That was my way. I threw rainbows against the classroom walls, Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and Halls; […]...
15. The Need to Love The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied. Before the beauty of the west on fire, The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed Cloud-like arose the image of desire, And cast out […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. Betrothed You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth, You have said my name as a prayer. Here where trees are planted by the water I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret, And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say, My mother remembers the agony of her womb And long […]...
18. The Disappointment In tears to her mother poor Harriet came, Let us listen to hear what she says: “O see, dear mamma, it is pouring with rain, We cannot go out in the chaise. “All the week I have long’d for this holiday so, And fancied the minutes were hours; And now that I’m dress’d and all […]...
19. Spartan Mother My mother loved her horses and Her hounds of pedigree; She did not kiss the baby hand I held to her in glee. Of course I had a sweet nou-nou Who tended me with care, And mother reined her nag to view Me with a critic air. So I went to a famous school, But […]...
20. Green Fields By this part of the century few are left who believe in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts Of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks are sounds of shadows that possess no future There is still game for the pleasure of killing and there are […]...
21. My Country My Country The love of field and coppice Of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, Brown streams and soft, dim skies I know, but cannot share it, My love is otherwise. I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of […]...
22. Over The Range Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed, Playing alone in the creek-bed dry, In the small green flat on every side Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high; Tell me the tale of your lonely life ‘Mid the great grey forests that know no change. “I never have left my home,” she said, “I have never been over […]...
23. Skunk Hour For Elizabeth Bishop Nautilus Island’s hermit Heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage; Her sheep still graze above the sea. Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer Is first selectman in our village, She’s in her dotage. Thirsting for The hierarchic privacy Of Queen Victoria’s century, She buys up all The eyesores facing her […]...
24. Mother's Loss If I could clasp my little babe Upon my breast to-night, I would not mind the blowing wind That shrieketh in affright. Oh, my lost babe! my little babe, My babe with dreamful eyes; Thy bed is cold; and night wind bold Shrieks woeful lullabies. My breast is softer than the sod; This room, with […]...
25. Together Splashing along the boggy woods all day, And over brambled hedge and holding clay, I shall not think of him: But when the watery fields grow brown and dim, And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire, I know that he’ll be with me on my way Home through the darkness to the evening […]...
26. The Testimony Of Light Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone. Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple. Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women shimmered. They held their arms in front of them like ghosts. The coal bones […]...
27. Poems Done on a Late Night Car I. CHICKENS I am The Great White Way of the city: When you ask what is my desire, I answer: “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, With young faces tired of the cows and barns, Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, Slender supple girls with shapely legs, Lure in the […]...
28. Democracy It’s coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square. It’s coming from the feel that it ain’t exactly real, or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay: […]...
29. The Wifebeater There will be mud on the carpet tonight And blood in the gravy as well. The wifebeater is out, The childbeater is out Eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup. He strides bback and forth In front of my study window Chewing little red pieces of my heart. His eyes flash like a birthday […]...
30. Autobiographical The lover in these poems Is me; The doctor, Love. He appears As husband, lover Analyst & muse, As father, son & maybe even God & surely death. All this is true. The man you turn to In the dark Is many men. This is an open secret Women share & yet agree to hide […]...
31. Early Spring Harshness vanished. A sudden softness Has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed Their singing accents. Tendernesses, Hesitantly, reach toward the earth From space, and country lanes are showing These unexpected subtle risings That find expression in the empty trees....
32. Old Ireland FAR hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty, Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother, Once a queen-now lean and tatter’d, seated on the ground, Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders; At her feet fallen an unused royal harp, Long silent-she too long silent-mourning her shrouded hope and heir; Of all […]...
33. Guenevere I was a queen, and I have lost my crown; A wife, and I have broken all my vows; A lover, and I ruined him I loved: There is no other havoc left to do. A little month ago I was a queen, And mothers held their babies up to see When I came riding […]...
34. North Atlantic WHEN the sea is everywhere From horizon to horizon.. when the salt and blue fill a circle of horizons.. I swear again how I know The sea is older than anything else And the sea younger than anything else. My first father was a landsman. My tenth father was a sea-lover, a gipsy sea-boy, a […]...
35. Rune of the Finland Woman For Sára Karig “You are so wise,” the reindeer said, “you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand.”-H. C. Andersen, “The Snow Queen” She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand. She could find the world’s words in a singing wind. She could lend a weird will to a […]...
36. Blues Those five or six young guys Lunched on the stoop That oven-hot summer night Whistled me over. Nice And friendly. So, I stop. MacDougal or Christopher Street in chains of light. A summer festival. Or some Saint’s. I wasn’t too far from Home, but not too bright For a nigger, and not too dark. I […]...
37. The Blessed Cumhal called out, bending his head, Till Dathi came and stood, With a blink in his eyes, at the cave-mouth, Between the wind and the wood. And Cumhal said, bending his knees, ‘I have come by the windy way To gather the half of your blessedness And learn to pray when you pray. ‘I can […]...
38. Mother’s Day Proclamation Arise then…women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn […]...
39. Enigma Some men are born to gather women’s tears, To give a harbour to their timorous fears, To take them as the dry earth takes the rain, As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain; Yet their own tears remain unshed, Their own tumultuous fears unsaid, And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the […]...
40. Beyond It seemeth such a little way to me Across to that strange country – the Beyond; And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be The home of those whom I am so fond, They make it seem familiar and most dear, As journeying friends bring distant regions near. So close it lies, that […]...