The Makers

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1. Makers And Creatures It is a curious experience And one you”re bound to know, though probably In other realms than that of literature, Though I speak of poems now, assuming That you are interested, otherwise, Of course, you wouldn”t be reading this. It is strange to come across a poem In an old magazine, perhaps, and fail At […]...
2. The Missal Makers To visit the Escurial We took a motor bus, And there a guide mercurial Took charge of us. He showed us through room after room, And talked hour after hour, Of place, crypt and royal tomb, Of pomp and power. But in bewilderment of grace What pleased me most of all Were ancient missals proud […]...
3. Lament for the Makers I THAT in heill was and gladness Am trublit now with great sickness And feblit with infirmitie: Timor Mortis conturbat me. Our plesance here is all vain glory, This fals world is but transitory, The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee: Timor Mortis conturbat me. The state of man does change and vary, Now […]...
4. Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind “The past is a bucket of ashes.” 1 THE WOMAN named To-morrow Sits with a hairpin in her teeth And takes her time And does her hair the way she wants it And fastens at last the last braid and coil And puts the hairpin where it belongs And turns and drawls: Well, what of […]...
5. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
6. Careers Father is quite the greatest poet That ever lived anywhere. You say you’re going to write great music – I chose that first: it’s unfair. Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and do Christ and angels, or lovely pears and apples and grapes on a green dish, or storms at sea, or anything […]...
7. Bee-attitudes in the shadow Of the flower Is the sting The bee driven by need Uses its painful gift To keep its sense of beauty In proportion It does its job with A thoughtless dedication Its honeyed world Excites no inner space Bees are not poets Who wade through words With too much brain Around their […]...
8. The Poet Words flow onto paper like rain, forming giant rivers Of unseen lands. The very force guides us along a journey That holds of great adventure. We are the explorers of the literary world. We must find the courage to write what Others are unable to, with the greatest Of passion. A poet dreams. and then […]...
9. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
10. I reckon when I count it all I reckon when I count it all First Poets Then the Sun Then Summer Then the Heaven of God And then the List is done But, looking back the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show So I write Poets All Their Summer lasts a Solid Year They can […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. I, or Someone Like Me In a wilderness, in some orchestral swing Through trees, with a wind playing all the high notes, And the prospect of a string bass inside the wood, I, or someone like me, had a kind of vision. As the person on the ground moved, bursting halos Topped first one tree, then another and another, Till […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. Walking the Dog Two universes mosey down the street Connected by love and a leash and nothing else. Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves While he mooches along with tail up and snout down, Getting a secret knowledge through the nose Almost entirely hidden from my sight. We stand while he’s enraptured by a bush Till […]...
16. An Exhortation Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame: If in this wide world of care Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a day? Poets are on this […]...
17. Dead man's clothes Growing up, I propose, Is like wearing a dead man’s clothes. Death has a way of levelling the ground. I have found the closer your relationship The closer the fit; The unsettling bit is the fear Of not fitting the role, or where Your forbear made a name or leashed A reputation, which by imputation […]...
18. WITHOUT THE WHEREWITHALL To Thushari Williams Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured In the care home, your care-worn comings home To sit with Brenda Williams, poиte maudit sang pur, Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive And turn them into a book, the living […]...
19. ON FIRST READING JOHN GOODBY'S 'IRISH POETRY SINCE 1950&#039 Barbarous insult to Yeats’ memory and Claudel’s Allen, thank God you are dead, you who breathed the air of Apollinaire, Ghost of Reverdy bear witness to the mendacity of his clamour, Hart Crane, rise from the estuary of the great river you drowned in, John Clare, rise from your country churchyard grave, Gray, from your […]...
20. THE SINGING SCHOOL The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You know its flim-flam on the ether, grants for Jack-the-lads Of both sexes, poets who’ve never been seen in a little magazine […]...
21. As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight As once the winged energy of delight Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses, Now beyond your own life build the great Arch of unimagined bridges. Wonders happen if we can succeed In passing through the harshest danger; But only in a bright and purely granted Achievement can we realize the wonder. To work with Things […]...
22. The Listeners “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grass Of the forest’s ferny floor; And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; “Is there anybody there?” he said. […]...
23. A Celebration of Charis: I. His Excuse for Loving Let it not your wonder move, Less your laughter, that I love. Though I now write fifty years, I have had, and have, my peers; Poets, though divine, are men, Some have lov’d as old again. And it is not always face, Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace; Or the feature, or the youth. But […]...
24. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
25. As the Team's Head – Brass As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed the angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon […]...
26. A Friend's Illness Sickness brought me this Thought, in that scale of his: Why should I be dismayed Though flame had burned the whole World, as it were a coal, Now I have seen it weighed Against a soul?...
27. Modern Love XVI: In Our Old Shipwrecked Days In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour, When in the firelight steadily aglow, Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower That eve was left to us: and hushed we sat As lovers to whom Time is whispering. From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing: The nodding […]...
28. Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet At this height, Kansas Is just a concept, A checkerboard design of wheat and corn No larger than the foldout section Of my neighbor’s travel magazine. At this stage of the journey I would estimate the distance Between myself and my own feelings Is roughly the same as the mileage From Seattle to New York, […]...
29. Why Do Birds Sing? Let poets piece prismatic words, Give me the jewelled joy of birds! What ecstasy moves them to sing? Is it the lyric glee of Spring, The dewy rapture of the rose? Is it the worship born in those Who are of Nature’s self a part, The adoration of the heart? Is it the mating mood […]...
30. LAO-TSE PREPARES A VERDICT Nothing of what I say May deviate the fall of a leaf. A word will not Detain the other one. It’s useless for me to dedicate A truth to these listeners: They will turn it into pieces. From its pieces Lao-Tsé will be born....
31. 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 […]...
32. Great are the Myths 1 GREAT are the myths-I too delight in them; Great are Adam and Eve-I too look back and accept them; Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests. Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower; Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, […]...
33. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
34. O Sun of Real Peace O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend! O so amazing and broad-up there resplendent, darting and burning! O vision prophetic, stagger’d with […]...
35. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
36. Noah's Flood (excerpts) Eternal and all-working God, which wast Before the world, whose frame by Thee was cast, And beautified with beamful lamps above, By thy great wisdom set how they should move To guide the seasons, equally to all, Which come and go as they do rise and fall. My mighty Maker, O do thou infuse Such […]...
37. Carl Hamblin The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, And I was tarred and feathered, For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: “I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes Standing on the steps of a marble temple. Great multitudes passed in front of her, Lifting their faces to her […]...
38. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
39. Modern Love XXXI: This Golden Head This golden head has wit in it. I live Again, and a far higher life, near her. Some women like a young philosopher; Perchance because he is diminutive. For woman’s manly god must not exceed Proportions of the natural nursing size. Great poets and great sages draw no prize With women: but the little lap-dog […]...
40. The Village Scarcely a street, too few houses To merit the title; just a way between The one tavern and the one shop That leads nowhere and fails at the top Of the short hill, eaten away By long erosion of the green tide Of grass creeping perpetually nearer This last outpost of time past. So little […]...