What's the Railroad to Me

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1. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
2. Blackberry Eating I love to go out in late September Among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries To eat blackberries for breakfast, The stalks very prickly, a penalty They earn for knowing the black art Of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries Fall almost unbidden to my […]...
3. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
4. My Boy Jack 1914-18 Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?: “ Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh, dear, […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. The Blue Swallows Across the millstream below the bridge Seven blue swallows divide the air In shapes invisible and evanescent, Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s Or memory’s power to keep them there. “History is where tensions were,” “Form is the diagram of forces.” Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge, While gazing down upon those birds – How strange, to […]...
7. The Future A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he […]...
8. Poem 92 VPon a day as loue lay sweetly slumbring, All in his mothers lap: A gentle Bee with his loud trumpet murm’ring, About him flew by hap. Whereof when he was wakened with the noyse, And saw the beast so small: Whats this (quoth he) that giues so great a voyce, That wakens men withall. In […]...
9. Bat At evening, sitting on this terrace, When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara Departs, and the world is taken by surprise… When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing Brown hills surrounding… When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio A green light enters against […]...
10. On the Field of Kulicovo The river stretched. It flows, idly grieves, And washes both banks. In steppe, above light clay of cliffs Rinks mourn in ranks. O Russia! Dear wife! With clearness and pain We see the lengthy way! It sent an arrow of ancient Tartar reign – In breast it lay. The way through steppes and an incessant […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. The Flower Boat The fisherman’s swapping a yarn for a yarn Under the hand of the village barber, And her in the angle of house and barn His deep-sea dory has found a harbor. At anchor she rides the sunny sod As full to the gunnel of flowers growing As ever she turned her home with cod From […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. The Palm And The Pine From the German of Heine. In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone, Upon a wintry height; It sleeps: around it snows have thrown A covering of white. It dreams forever of a Palm That, far i’ the Morning-land, Stands silent in a most sad calm Midst of the burning sand....
16. The Lost Dancer Spatial depths of being survive The birth to death recurrences Of feet dancing on earth of sand; Vibrations of the dance survive The sand; the sand, elect, survives The dancer. He can find no source Of magic adequate to bind The sand upon his feet, his feet Upon his dance, his dance upon The diamond […]...
17. Shiloh A Requiem Skimming lightly, wheeling still, The swallows fly low Over the fields in cloudy days, The forest-field of Shiloh – Over the field where April rain Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain Through the pause of night That followed the Sunday fight Around the church of Shiloh – The church, so lone, the […]...
18. Wild Orphan Blandly mother Takes him strolling by railroad and by river he’s the son of the absconded hot rod angel And he imagines cars and rides them in his dreams, So lonely growing up among the imaginary automobiles And dead souls of Tarrytown to create Out of his own imagination the beauty of his wild Forebears […]...
19. 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...
20. Sonnet 15: When I consider every thing that grows When I consider every thing that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment. That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment. When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheerèd and checked even by the self-same sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear […]...
21. Trade Winds IN the harbor, in the island, in the Spanish Seas, Are the tiny white houses and the orange trees, And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breeze Of the steady Trade Winds blowing. There is the red wine, the nutty Spanish ale, The shuffle of the dancers, the old salt’s tale, The squeaking fiddle, and […]...
22. 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...
23. Song Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run; Holding up A scent-brimmed cup, Full of summer’s fragrance to the summer sun. Oh! To be a butterfly Still, upon a flower, Winking with its painted wings, Happy in the hour. Blossoms hold Mines of gold Deep within the […]...
24. Summer In The Country One shows me how to lie down in a field of clover. Another how to slip my hand under her Sunday skirt. Another how to kiss with a mouth full of blackberries. Another how to catch fireflies in jar after dark. Here is a stable with a single black mare And the proof of God’s […]...
25. Swing Shift Blues What is better than leaving a bar In the middle of the afternoon Besides staying in it or not Having gone into it in the first place Because you had a decent woman to be with? The air smells particularly fresh After the stale beer and piss smells. You can stare up at the whole […]...
26. Sonnet XV When I consider every thing that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and cheque’d even by the self-same sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear […]...
27. Sonnet XV: When I consider everything that grows When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check’d even by the selfsame sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their […]...
28. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
29. 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 […]...
30. August When the blackberries hang Swollen in the woods, in the brambles Nobody owns, I spend All day among the high Branches, reaching My ripped arms, thinking Of nothing, cramming The black honey of summer Into my mouth; all day my body Accepts what it is. In the dark Creeks that run by there is This […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. 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!...
33. Lingering by the doorway of the woods I was picking blackberries when I thought of the strange girl at the mental hospital. Beautiful she was – quietly beautiful. Yes – and apparently nothing the matter with Her – except that she was scared to go outside, and scared to go indoors. And so she just sat there in a chair by the […]...
34. BOIREANN They are both old Boireann and her She wants to remain in the car Hunched Regarding the other Through the smear of a window The intrusion of a wing mirror mars A romance of meddled limestone A partial view Yet she is content Because she sees Even when these days Rooks overhead look crimson One […]...
35. Landing Under Water, I See Roots All the things we hide in water Hoping we won’t see them go- (forests growing under water Press against the ones we know)- And they might have gone on growing And they might now breathe above Everything I speak of sowing (everything I try to love)....
36. Growing Old Somehow the skies don’t seem so blue As they used to be; Blossoms have a fainter hue, Grass less green I see. There’s no twinkle in a star, Dawns don’t seem so gold. . . Yet, of course, I know they are: Guess I’m growing old. Somehow sunshine seems less bright, Birds less gladly sing; […]...
37. 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...
38. 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 […]...
39. Seeking Beauty Cold winds can never freeze, nor thunder sour The cup of cheer that Beauty draws for me Out of those Azure heavens and this green earth I drink and drink, and thirst the more I see. To see the dewdrops thrill the blades of grass, Makes my whole body shake; for here’s my choice Of […]...
40. Love And Death Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep, And shall my soul that lies within your hand Remember nothing, as the blowing sand Forgets the palm where long blue shadows creep When winds along the darkened desert sweep? Or would it still remember, tho’ it spanned A thousand heavens, while the planets fanned The vacant […]...