AN ODE TO MY JAILED FRIEND

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1. The Damned My days are haunted by the thought Of men in coils of Justice caught With stone and steel, in chain and cell, Of men condemned to living hell, Yet blame them not. In my sun-joy their dark I see: For what they are and had to be Blame Nature, red in tooth and claw, Blame […]...
2. To A Friend Going Blind Today, because I couldn’t find the shortcut through, I had to walk this town’s entire inner Perimeter to find Where the medieval walls break open In an eighteenth century Arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off Through cracks and the gaps For guns. Bruna is teaching me To cut a pattern. Saturdays we buy […]...
3. A Letter From the Trenches to a School Friend I have not brought my Odyssey With me here across the sea; But you’ll remember, when I say How, when they went down Sparta way, To sandy Sparta, long ere dawn Horses were harnessed, rations drawn, Equipment polished sparkling bright, And breakfasts swallowed (as the white Of eastern heavens turned to gold) – The dogs […]...
4. The Friend We sat across the table. He said, cut off your hands. They are always poking at things. They might touch me. I said yes. Food grew cold on the table. He said, burn your body. It is not clean and smells like sex. It rubs my mind sore. I said yes. I love you, I […]...
5. A Confession To A Friend In Trouble Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less Here, far away, than when I tarried near; I even smile old smiles with listlessness Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere. A thought too strange to house within my brain Haunting its outer precincts I discern: That I will not show zeal again to […]...
6. The Grey Monk “I die, I die!” the Mother said, “My children die for lack of bread. What more has the merciless Tyrant said?” The Monk sat down on the stony bed. The blood red ran from the Grey Monk’s side, His hands and feet were wounded wide, His body bent, his arms and knees Like to the […]...
7. Consolation O but there is wisdom In what the sages said; But stretch that body for a while And lay down that head Till I have told the sages Where man is comforted. How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot? But where the […]...
8. To a Republican Friend God knows it, I am with you. If to prize Those virtues, priz’d and practis’d by too few, But priz’d, but lov’d, but eminent in you, Man’s fundamental life: if to despise The barren optimistic sophistries Of comfortable moles, whom what they do Teaches the limit of the just and true And for such doing […]...
9. To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on, Testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, And think of that first flawless moment over the lawn Of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made! There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; And here are the shocked starlings pumping past And think of […]...
10. Inscriptions for a Friend's House THE HOUSE The cornerstone in Truth is laid, The guardian walls of Honour made, The roof of Faith is built above, The fire upon the hearth is Love: Though rains descend and loud winds call, This happy house shall never fall. THE DOORSTEAD The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride: The threshold […]...
11. Taking Leave of a Friend Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them; Here we must make separation And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass. Mind like a floating wide cloud, Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each […]...
12. Jacob Godbey How did you feel, you libertarians, Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons Around the saloon, as if Liberty Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar Or at a table, guzzling? How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, Who almost stoned me for a tyrant, Garbed as a […]...
13. I Now, O Friend, Whom Noiselessly The Snows I NOW, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows Settle around, and whose small chamber grows Dusk as the sloping window takes its load: * * * * * The kindly hill, as to complete our hap, Has ta’en us in the shelter of her lap; Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees And ring […]...
14. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 01: The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea. The walls and towers are warmed and gleam. Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves. The city stirs like one that is half in dream. And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows, Where one by one we wake and rise. We […]...
15. "What says the sea, little shell?&quot “What says the sea, little shell? What says the sea? Long has our brother been silent to us, Kept his message for the ships, Awkward ships, stupid ships.” “The sea bids you mourn, O Pines, Sing low in the moonlight. He sends tale of the land of doom, Of place where endless falls A rain […]...
16. A Prison gets to be a friend A Prison gets to be a friend Between its Ponderous face And Ours a Kinsmanship express And in its narrow Eyes We come to look with gratitude For the appointed Beam It deal us stated as our food And hungered for the same We learn to know the Planks That answer to Our feet So […]...
17. Snap-Dragon She bade me follow to her garden where The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup Between the old grey walls; I did not dare To raise my face, I did not dare look up Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in My windows of discovery and shrill ‘Sin!’ So with a downcast […]...
18. Ashurnatsirpal III THREE walls around the town of Tela when I came. They expected everything of those walls; Nobody in the town came out to kiss my feet. I knocked the walls down, killed three thousand soldiers, Took away cattle and sheep, took all the loot in sight, And burned special captives. Some of the soldiers-I cut […]...
19. THE COLOSSUS (Goya, an old man in exile, looks at his self-portrait) A bull’s neck, still much needed, Deserving exile or the guillotine, ‘Because you are an artist we forgave you’, Thus his royal highness gave thanks, My fingers itching for brush and canvas, Floury cheeks and rouge, legs a donkey would be ashamed of, A wife […]...
20. Stable society the horses have bolted The one door’s been locked The flood can’t get out The greasy bilge swills Up the walls to the roof Hercules is hopeless The manger is mangy Fresh myths and sayings Are urgently wanted Mythmakers get busy...
21. To a Friend Go, then, and join the murmuring city’s throng! Me thou dost leave to solitude and tears; To busy phantasies, and boding fears, Lest ill betide thee; but ‘t will not be long Ere the hard season shall be past; till then Live happy; sometimes the forsaken shade Remembering, and these trees now left to fade; […]...
22. To His Noble Friend, Mr. Richard Lovelace, Upon His Poems Sir, Our times are much degenerate from those Which your sweet muse with your fair fortune chose, And as complexions alter with the climes, Our wits have drawn the infection of our times. That candid age no other way could tell To be ingenious, but by speaking well. Who best could praise had then the […]...
23. In the Street Where the needle-woman toils Through the night with hand and brain, Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain – Till her eyes seem to crawl, And her brain seems to creep – And her limbs are all a-tremble for the want of rest and sleep! It is there the fire-brand blazes […]...
24. Only A Boche We brought him in from between the lines: we’d better have let him lie; For what’s the use of risking one’s skin for a tyke that’s going to die? What’s the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire, When he’s shot in the head, and worse than dead, and all messed up on […]...
25. I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown I live, I die, I burn, I drown I endure at once chill and cold Life is at once too soft and too hard I have sore troubles mingled with joys Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry And in pleasure many a grief endure My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged […]...
26. If anybody's friend be dead If anybody’s friend be dead It’s sharpest of the theme The thinking how they walked alive At such and such a time Their costume, of a Sunday, Some manner of the Hair A prank nobody knew but them Lost, in the Sepulchre How warm, they were, on such a day, You almost feel the date […]...
27. Still Falls the Rain Still falls the Rain – Dark as the world of man, black as our loss – Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross. Still falls the Rain With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the […]...
28. To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies You know there is not much That I desire, a few chrysanthemums Half lying on the grass, yellow And brown and white, the Talk of a few people, the trees, An expanse of dried leaves perhaps With ditches among them. But there comes Between me and these things A letter Or even a look-well placed, […]...
29. The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends Though you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time’s bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes....
30. Near But Far Away She wavered, stopped and turned, methought her eyes, The deep grey windows of her heart, were wet, Methought they softened with a new regret To note in mine unspoken miseries, And as a prayer from out my heart did rise And struggled on my lips in shame’s strong net, She stayed me, and cried “Brother!” […]...
31. To an Online Friend May be the whole thing was a dream, Pinched myself awake this morn, To check if you are there, virtually, And felt your sudden absence online! Be sure you will always exist, In a special place in my heart, Your smile in pixels is so sweet, But, no, you are too good to be true! […]...
32. Malade The sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone; at the window The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane, As a little wind comes in. The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd Scooped out and dry, where a spider, Folded in its legs as in a […]...
33. Columns (Mobile Columns of the Boer War) Out o’ the wilderness, dusty an’ dry (Time, an’ ‘igh time to be trekkin’ again!) Oo is it ‘eads to the Detail Supply? A sectioin, a pompom, an’ six ‘undred men. ‘Ere comes the clerk with ‘is lantern an’ keys (Time, an ‘igh time to be trekkin ‘again!) ” […]...
34. Restlessness At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night, Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight, Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room. I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light, And be out in the bewildering […]...
35. J K. Huysmans A flickering glimmer through a window-pane, A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass, Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet Across uneven pavements sunk in slime To scatter and then quench itself in mist. And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled Against the jutting angle of a wall, And cursed, and reeled against, and […]...
36. September 1913 What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they […]...
37. My friend attacks my friend! My friend attacks my friend! Oh Battle picturesque! Then I turn Soldier too, And he turns Satirist! How martial is this place! Had I a mighty gun I think I’d shoot the human race And then to glory run!...
38. Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground. Why do you stand, expectant? Do you hope to see it In one of your withered days? With your old eyes Do you hope to see The triumphal march of justice? Do not wait, friend! Take your white beard And your old eyes To more tender lands....
39. The Prisoners Steel doors – guillotine gates – Of the doorless house closed massively. We were locked in with loss. Guards frisked us, marked our wrists, Then let us into the drab Rec Hall – Splotched green walls, high windows barred – Where the dispossessed awaited us. Hands intimate with knife and pistol, Hands that had cruelly […]...
40. A Rusty Nail I ran a nail into my hand, The wound was hard to heal; So bitter was the pain to stand I thought how it would feel, To have spikes thrust through hands and feet, Impaled by hammer beat. Then hoisted on a cross of oak Against the sullen sky, With all about the jeering follk […]...