Puissant Morons

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1. Missing Has anybody seen my mouse? I opened his box for half a minute, Just to make sure he was really in it, And while I was looking, he jumped outside! I tried to catch him, I tried, I tried…. I think he’s somewhere about the house. Has anyone seen my mouse? Uncle John, have you […]...
2. On The Eating Of Mice A woman prepared a mouse for her husband’s dinner, Roasting it with a blueberry in its mouth. At table he uses a dentist’s pick and a surgeon’s scalpel, Bending over the tiny roastling with a jeweler’s loupe. . . Twenty years of this: curried mouse, garlic and butter Mouse, mouse sauteed in its own fur, […]...
3. My White Mouse At dusk I saw a craintive mouse That sneaked and stole around the house; At first I took it for a ghost, For it was snowy white – almost. I’ve seen them in captivity, But this white mouse was wild and free, And every eye with stealth it stole And foraged in the garbage hole. […]...
4. The Long Small Room THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build. Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped In from the ivy round the casement thick. Of all they […]...
5. This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life I mention it to you, When Sunrise through a fissure drop The Day must follow too. If we demur, its gaping sides Disclose as ’twere a Tomb Ourself am lying straight wherein The Favorite of Doom. When it has just contained a Life Then, Darling, it will close And […]...
6. Should You Ask At Midnight What would I do without your voice to wake me? Cor ad cor loquitur, I’m loath to know. Kitsch operas sound, unhesitant to shake me, The sheers undrawn, the heavens hardly showing, My camisole askew, of lace-trimmed black – Not red, not white; not passionate or pure. I raise the volume, and the voices crack- […]...
7. King And No King ‘Would it were anything but merely voice!’ The No King cried who after that was King, Because he had not heard of anything That balanced with a word is more than noise; Yet Old Romance being kind, let him prevail Somewhere or somehow that I have forgot, Though he’d but cannon – Whereas we that […]...
8. Men with trivial scars We wear scars from our youth, trifling things Reflecting those earnings from growing days, Of battles raised and wounds worn in simple Praise of a Spring of early learning’s. I was there when you broke your arm, We were sliding a plank in mad array, Shouting hurrah, daring the day when you fell. A clean […]...
9. The Trees The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the […]...
10. I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice&quot And I start wondering how they came to be blind. If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, And I think of the poor mother Brooding over her sightless young triplets. Or was it a common accident, all three caught In a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? If not, If each came to […]...
11. Our Lady MOTHER of God! no lady thou: Common woman of common earth Our Lady ladies call thee now, But Christ was never of gentle birth; A common man of the common earth. For God’s ways are not as our ways: The noblest lady in the land Would have given up half her days, Would have cut […]...
12. Mary Ellen It’s mighty quiet in the house Since Mary Ellen quit me cold; I’ve swept the hearth and fed the mouse That’s getting fat and overbold. I’ve bought a pig’s foot for the pot And soon I’ll set the fire alight; Then I may eat or I may not, Depends upon my appetite. Since Mary Ellen […]...
13. Much Madness is divinest Sense Much MADNESS is divinest sense (Author) To a discerning eye Much sense the starkest madness. ‘T’ is the MAJORITY In this, as all, prevail Assent and you are sane Demur, you’re straightway dangerous And handled with a Chain....
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. In Mind There’s in my mind a woman Of innocence, unadorned but Fair-featured and smelling of Apples or grass. She wears A utopian smock or shift, her hair Is light brown and smooth, and she Is kind and very clean without Ostentation- But she has No imagination And there’s a Turbulent moon-ridden girl Or old woman, or […]...
16. Discontents In Devon More discontents I never had Since I was born, than here; Where I have been, and still am, sad, In this dull Devonshire. Yet justly too I must confess, I ne’er invented such Ennobled numbers for the press, Than where I loath’d so much....
17. To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold; And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea, Sing in […]...
18. The Tale of Custard the Dragon Belinda lived in a little white house, With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse, And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon, And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon. Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink, And the little gray mouse, she called hum Blink, And the […]...
19. White Christmas My folks think I’m a serving maid Each time I visit home; They do not dream I ply a trade As old as Greece or Rome; For if they found I’d fouled their name And was not white as snow, I’m sure that they would die of shame. . . Please, God, they’ll never know. […]...
20. A Chaucerian Paraphrase of Horace Syn that you, Chloe, to your moder sticken, Maketh all ye yonge bacheloures full sicken; Like as a lyttel deere you ben y-hiding Whenas come lovers with theyre pityse chiding; Sothly it ben faire to give up your moder For to beare swete company with some oder; Your moder ben well enow so farre shee […]...
21. Song What I took in my hand Grew in weight. You must Understand it Was not obscene. Night comes. We sleep. Then if you know what Say it. Don’t pretend. Guises are What enemies wear. You And I live In a prayer. Helpless. Helpless, Should I speak. Would you. What do you think of me. No […]...
22. A Performance At Hog Theater There was once a hog theater where hogs performed As men, had men been hogs. One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has Found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog Which is in the field and which has found the mouse, Which I am performing as […]...
23. Ye Carpette Knyghte I have a horse – a ryghte good horse – Ne doe Y envye those Who scoure ye playne yn headye course Tyll soddayne on theyre nose They lyghte wyth unexpected force Yt ys – a horse of clothes. I have a saddel – “Say’st thou soe? Wyth styrruppes, Knyghte, to boote?” I sayde not […]...
24. The Bench-Legged Fyce Speakin’ of dorgs, my bench-legged fyce Hed most o’ the virtues, an’ nary a vice. Some folks called him Sooner, a name that arose From his predisposition to chronic repose; But, rouse his ambition, he couldn’t be beat – Yer bet yer he got thar on all his four feet! Mos’ dorgs hez some forte […]...
25. Clean Hands IT is something to face the sun and know you are free. To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean: It is something. To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands, Clean for […]...
26. The Time Around Scars A girl whom I’ve not spoken to Or shared coffee with for several years Writes of an old scar. On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white, The size of a leech. I gave it to her Brandishing a new Italian penknife. Look, I said turning, And blood spat onto her shirt. My wife has […]...
27. Decorations My only medals are the scars I’ve won in weary, peacetime wars, A-fighting for my little brood, To win them shelter, shoon and food; But most of all to give them faith In God’s good mercy unto death. My sons have medals gleaming bright, Proud trophies won in foreign fight; But though their crosses bravely […]...
28. Pigeon THE FLUTTER of blue pigeon’s wings Under a river bridge Hunting a clean dry arch, A corner for a sleep- This flutters here in a woman’s hand. A singing sleep cry, A drunken poignant two lines of song, Somebody looking clean into yesterday And remembering, or looking clean into To-morrow, and reading,- This sings here […]...
29. A Mountain Revelry To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows, We drained a hundred jugs of wine. A splendid night it was. . . . In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed, But at last drunkenness overtook us; And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain, The earth for pillow, […]...
30. Dan, The Wreck Tall, and stout, and solid-looking, Yet a wreck; None would think Death’s finger’s hooking Him from deck. Cause of half the fun that’s started ‘Hard-case’ Dan Isn’t like a broken-hearted, Ruined man. Walking-coat from tail to throat is Frayed and greened Like a man whose other coat is Being cleaned; Gone for ever round the […]...
31. Statuary Bees may be trusted, always, to discover the best, nay, the only Human, solution. Let me cite an instance; an event, that, Though occurring in nature, is still in itself wholly abnormal. I refer To the manner in which the bees will dispose of a mouse or a slug that may happen to have found […]...
32. The Two Old Bachelors Two old Bachelors were living in one house; One caught a Muffin, the other caught a Mouse. Said he who caught the Muffin to him who caught the Mouse, – “This happens just in time! For we’ve nothing in the house, “Save a tiny slice of lemon and a teaspoonful of honey, “And what to […]...
33. To Be of Use The people I love the best Jump into work head first Without dallying in the shallows And swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, The black sleek heads of seals Bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy […]...
34. Why He Was There Much as he left it when he went from us Here was the room again where he had been So long that something oh him should be seen, Or felt-and so it was. Incredulous, I turned about, loath to be greeted thus, And there he was in his old chair, serene As ever, and as […]...
35. The straw parlor Way up at the top of a big stack of straw Was the cunningest parlor that ever you saw! And there could you lie when aweary of play And gossip or laze in the coziest way; No matter how careworn or sorry one’s mood No worldly distraction presumed to intrude. As a refuge from onerous […]...
36. Key economy Words today are How’d you say, In sad retreat, Or obsolete? They slide around Conducting sound, Deferent To moving ground Where once they were As referent To common sense As having common meaning; Misuses of The proper case In user space Are typically So commonplace They now create A new taxonomy, I even heard A […]...
37. The Fury Of God's Goodbye One day He Tipped His top hat And walked Out of the room, Ending the argument. He stomped off Saying: I don’t give guarantees. I was left Quite alone Using up the darkness I rolled up My sweater, Up in a ball, And took it To bed with me, A kind of stand-in For God, […]...
38. The Flower of Mending (To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.) When Dragon-fly would fix his wings, When Snail would patch his house, When moths have marred the overcoat Of tender Mister Mouse, The pretty creatures go with haste To the sunlit blue-grass hills Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax And webs to help their […]...
39. Being old in the game It was a half-life that seemed like a genuine world Wielding hard symbolism over those who ruled it; we Lived vaguely in teen-easy ambivalence whilst our peers Took their chances in ordered existence, wearing Their office with pride and esteem. The guises we Wore were a mask, a dream in denial of their system, Its […]...
40. To Jessica, Gone Back To The City Sence fair Jessica hez left us Seems ez ef she hed bereft us, When she went, o’ half o’ livin’; Fer we never knowed she’d driven Into us so much content, Till fair Jessica hed went. (Knowed a feller once thet cried When his yaller dog hed died.) We hain’t near ez bright an’ chirky, […]...