Exile

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1. The Exile We told her that her far off shore was bleak and dour to view, And that her sky was dull and mirk while ours was smiling blue. She only sighed in answer, “It is even as ye say, But oh, the ragged splendor when the sun bursts through the gray!” We brought her dew-wet roses […]...
2. Beauty Say not of beauty she is good, Or aught but beautiful, Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood Her wild wings of a gull. Call her not wicked; that word’s touch Consumes her like a curse; But love her not too much, too much, For that is even worse. O, she is neither good […]...
3. The Land of the Exile Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what The time is. There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is Saturday, our holiday. Leave off your work, mother; sit here by the window and tell Me where the desert of Tepantar in the […]...
4. Damayante To Nala In The Hour Of Exile SHALT thou be conquered of a human fate My liege, my lover, whose imperial head Hath never bent in sorrow of defeat? Shalt thou be vanquished, whose imperial feet Have shattered armies and stamped empires dead? Who shall unking thee, husband of a queen? Wear thou thy majesty inviolate. Earth’s glories flee of human eyes […]...
5. To Beachey, 1912 RIDING against the east, A veering, steady shadow Purrs the motor-call Of the man-bird Ready with the death-laughter In his throat And in his heart always The love of the big blue beyond. Only a man, A far fleck of shadow on the east Sitting at ease With his hands on a wheel And around […]...
6. Searching For Pittsburgh The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night, Between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart And hesitates. Considers and then goes around it. Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world. Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh In me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically Along three rivers. The […]...
7. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
8. Million Man March Poem The night has been long, The wound has been deep, The pit has been dark, And the walls have been steep. Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach, I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach. Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound, You couldn’t even call out my name. […]...
9. Tz'u No. 10 (Exile) To the tune of “Bodhisattva Aliens” Soft breezes, mild sunshine, Spring is still young. The sudden change of the light Brightened my spirit. But upon awakening from slumber, I felt the chill air; The plum flower withered in my hair. Where can I call my native land? Forget – I cannot, except in wine When […]...
10. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
11. An Exile's Farewell The ocean heaves around us still With long and measured swell, The autumn gales our canvas fill, Our ship rides smooth and well. The broad Atlantic’s bed of foam Still breaks against our prow; I shed no tears at quitting home, Nor will I shed them now! Against the bulwarks on the poop I lean, […]...
12. Belated Bard The songs I made from joy of earth In wanton wandering, Are rapturous with Maytime mirth And ectasy of Spring. But all the songs I sing today Take tediously the ear: Novemberishly dark are they With mortuary fear. For half a century has gone Since first I rang a rhyme; And that is long to […]...
13. Moon-Lover I The Moon is like a ping-pong ball; I lean against the orchard wall, And see it soar into the void, A silky sphere of celluloid. Then fairy fire enkindles it, Like gossamer by taper lit, Until it glows above the trees As mellow as a Cheddar cheese. And up and up I watch it […]...
14. Discipline It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane, The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves; The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves. It is no good, dear, gentleness and […]...
15. Sonnet XLIII: The Unhappy Exile The unhappy exile, whom his fates confine To the bleak coast of some unfriendly isle, Cold, barren, desart, where no harvests smile, But thirst and hunger on the rocks repine; When, from some promontory’s fearful brow, Sun after sun he hopeless sees decline In the broad shipless sea-perhaps may know Such heartless pain, such blank […]...
16. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
17. Solidarity Song Peoples of the world, together Join to serve the common cause! So it feeds us all for ever See to it that it’s now yours. Forward, without forgetting Where our strength can be seen now to be! When starving or when eating Forward, not forgetting Our solidarity! Black or white or brown or yellow Leave […]...
18. Irony Always, sweetheart, Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of cherry, Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that very Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance of spring Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days waiting In a little throng at your door, and admit the one who is plaiting Her […]...
19. The Spice-Tree This is the song The spice-tree sings: “Hunger and fire, Hunger and fire, Sky-born Beauty- Spice of desire,” Under the spice-tree Watch and wait, Burning maidens And lads that mate. The spice-tree spreads And its boughs come down Shadowing village and farm and town. And none can see But the pure of heart The great […]...
20. At Burgos Miraculous silver-work in stone Against the blue miraculous skies, The belfry towers and turrets rise Out of the arches that enthrone That airy wonder of the skies. Softly against the burning sun The great cathedral spreads its wings; High up, the lyric belfry sings. Behold Ascension Day begun Under the shadow of those wings!...
21. Our Guardian Angels and Their Children Where a river roars in rapids And doves in maples fret, Where peace has decked the pastures Our guardian angels met. Long they had sought each other In God’s mysterious name, Had climbed the solemn chaos tides Alone, with hope aflame: Amid the demon deeps had wound By many a fearful way. As they beheld […]...
22. The Gardener IX: When I Go Alone at Night When I go alone at night to my Love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind Does not stir, the houses on both sides Of the street stand silent. It is my own anklets that grow loud At every step and I am ashamed. When I sit on my balcony and listen For his footsteps, leaves […]...
23. The Human Face I. Soon Of all the springtimes of the world This one is the ugliest Of all of my ways of being To be trusting is the best Grass pushes up snow Like the stone of a tomb But I sleep within the storm And awaken eyes bright Slowness, brief time ends Where all streets must […]...
24. Tryst Somewhere thou awaitest, And I, with lips unkissed, Weep that thus to latest Thou puttest off our tryst! The golden bowls are broken, The silver cords untwine; Almond flowers in token Have bloomed, – that I am thine! Others who would fly thee In cowardly alarms, Who hate thee and deny thee, Thou foldest in […]...
25. Recollections I. Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers, Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken Years upon years. Surely the thought in a man’s heart hopes or fears Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up […]...
26. Introspection If you go deep Into the heart What do you find there? Fear, fear, Fear of the jaws of the rock, Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear Flesh from the bone, and the moist Blood, running unfelt From the wound, and the hand Suddenly moist and red. If you go deep […]...
27. Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. Lie near me in dim forests where the croon Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, Or musing late till the midsummer moon Breaks through some ruined […]...
28. A Summer Night HER mist of primroses within her breast Twilight hath folded up, and o’er the west, Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone, Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn. Silence and coolness now the earth enfold, Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold, Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height, And shake in […]...
29. The Window She looks out in the blue morning And sees a whole wonderful world She looks out in the morning And sees a whole world She leans out of the window And this is what she sees A wet rose singing to the sun With a chorus of red bees She leans out of the window […]...
30. New Love, New Life I. She, who so long has lain Stone-stiff with folded wings, Within my heart again The brown bird wakes and sings. Brown nightingale, whose strain Is heard by day, by night, She sings of joy and pain, Of sorrow and delight. II. ‘Tis true, in other days Have I unbarred the door; He knows the […]...
31. Poem 15 RIng ye the bels, ye yong men of the towne, And leaue your wonted labors for this day: This day is holy; doe ye write it dovvne, That ye for euer it remember may. This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight, With Barnaby the bright, >From whence declining daily by degrees, He somewhat […]...
32. Psalm 119 part 11 Breathing after holiness. Ver. 5,33 O that the Lord would guide my ways To keep his statutes still! O that my God would grant me grace To know and do his will! Ver. 29 O send thy Spirit down to write Thy law upon my heart! Nor let my tongue indulge deceit, Nor act the […]...
33. Cold Morning Through an accidental crack in the curtain I can see the eight o’clock light change from Charcoal to a faint gassy blue, inventing things In the morning that has a thick skin of ice on it As the water tank has, so nothing flows, all is bone, Telling its tale of how hard the night […]...
34. The Masked Face I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and […]...
35. The Fury Of Abandonment Someone lives in a cave Eating his toes, I know that much. Someone little lives under a bush Pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against His starving bloated stomac, I know that much. A monkey had his hands cut off For a medical experiment And his claws wept. I know tht much. I know that it […]...
36. Sonnet – to Genevra Thy cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe, And yet so lovely, that if Mirth could flush Its rose of whiteness with the brightest blush, My heart would wish away that ruder glow: And dazzle not thy deep-blue eyes – but, oh! While gazing on them sterner eyes will gush, And into mine […]...
37. 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, […]...
38. The Klondike Never mind the day we left, or the day the women clung to us; All we need now is the last way they looked at us. Never mind the twelve men there amid the cheering – Twelve men or one man, ‘t will soon be all the same; For this is what we know: we […]...
39. A Birthday My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise […]...
40. Conversion When this world’s pleasures for my soul sufficed, Ere my heart’s plummet sounded depths of pain, I call on Reason to control my brain, And scoffed at that old story of Christ. But when o’er burning wastes my feet had trod, And all my life was desolate with loss, With bleeding hands I clung about […]...