May and the Poets

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1. October Books litter the bed, Leaves the lawn. It Lightly rains. Fall has Come: unpatterned, in The shedding leaves. The maples ripen. Apples Come home crisp in bags. This pear tastes good. It rains lightly on the Random leaf patterns. The nimbus is spread Above our island. Rain Lightly patters on un- Shed leaves. The books […]...
2. Old Poets (For Robert Cortez Holliday) If I should live in a forest And sleep underneath a tree, No grove of impudent saplings Would make a home for me. I’d go where the old oaks gather, Serene and good and strong, And they would not sigh and tremble And vex me with a song. The pleasantest sort […]...
3. Sudden Fine Weather Reader! what soul that laoves a verse can see The spring return, nor glow like you and me? Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill, Nor long to utter his melodious will? This more than ever leaps into the veins, When spring has been delay’d by winds and rains, And coming with a […]...
4. Riding Together For many, many days together The wind blew steady from the East; For many days hot grew the weather, About the time of our Lady’s Feast. For many days we rode together, Yet met we neither friend nor foe; Hotter and clearer grew the weather, Steadily did the East wind blow. We saw the trees […]...
5. Myself can read the Telegrams Myself can read the Telegrams A Letter chief to me The Stock’s advance and Retrograde And what the Markets say The Weather how the Rains In Counties have begun. ‘Tis News as null as nothing, But sweeter so than none....
6. Poets Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells That the wind sways above a ruined shrine. Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine. Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod. They shall not live who have […]...
7. To Certain Poets Now is the rhymer’s honest trade A thing for scornful laughter made. The merchant’s sneer, the clerk’s disdain, These are the burden of our pain. Because of you did this befall, You brought this shame upon us all. You little poets mincing there With women’s hearts and women’s hair! How sick Dan Chaucer’s ghost must […]...
8. Lately our poets Lately our poets loiter’d in green lanes, Content to catch the ballads of the plains; I fancied I had strength enough to climb A loftier station at no distant time, And might securely from intrusion doze Upon the flowers thro’ which Ilissus flows. In those pale olive grounds all voices cease, And from afar dust […]...
9. Poets to Come POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse-for you must justify me-you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance […]...
10. The Poets O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns […]...
11. The Poets Of The Tomb The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, ‘Tis time the people passed a law to knock ’em on the head, For ‘twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave Those bards of ‘tears’ and ‘vanished hopes’, those poets of the grave. They say that life’s […]...
12. To the Etruscan Poets Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young Took with your mother’s milk the mother tongue, In which pure matrix, joining world and mind, You strove to leave some line of verse behind Like still fresh tracks across a field of snow, Not reckoning that all could melt and go....
13. In Memoriam: Four Poets 1 Searock his tower above the sea, Searock he built, not ivory. Searock as well his haunted art Who gave to plunging hawks his hearts. 2 He loved to stand upon his head To demonstrate he was not dead. Ah, if his poems misbehave ‘Tis only to defy the grave. 3 This exquisite patrician bird […]...
14. The Martyr Poets did not tell The Martyr Poets did not tell But wrought their Pang in syllable That when their mortal name be numb Their mortal fate encourage Some The Martyr Painters never spoke Bequeathing rather to their Work That when their conscious fingers cease Some seek in Art the Art of Peace...
15. London Poets (In Memoriam.) They trod the streets and squares where now I tread, With weary hearts, a little while ago; When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow Clung to the leafless branches overhead; Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red In autumn; with a re-arisen woe Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow; And paced […]...
16. The Poets light but Lamps The Poets light but Lamps Themselves go out The Wicks they stimulate If vital Light Inhere as do the Suns Each Age a Lens Disseminating their Circumference...
17. Lines On Reading Too Many Poets Roses, rooted warm in earth, Bud in rhyme, another age; Lilies know a ghostly birth Strewn along a patterned page; Golden lad and chimbley sweep Die; and so their song shall keep. Wind that in Arcadia starts In and out a couplet plays; And the drums of bitter hearts Beat the measure of a phrase. […]...
18. Besides the Autumn poets sing Besides the Autumn poets sing A few prosaic days A little this side of the snow And that side of the Haze A few incisive Mornings A few Ascetic Eves Gone Mr. Bryant’s “Golden Rod” And Mr. Thomson’s “sheaves.” Still, is the bustle in the Brook Sealed are the spicy valves Mesmeric fingers softly touch […]...
19. The Rainy Day The day is cold, and dark, and dreary It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; […]...
20. Four-Foot Shelf ‘Come, see,’ said he, ‘my four-foot shelf, A forty volume row; And every one I wrote myself, But that, of course, you know.’ I stared, I searched a memory dim, For though an author too, Somehow I’d never heard of him, None of his books I knew. Said I: ‘I’d like to borrow one, Fond […]...
21. To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine You say, as I have often given tongue In praise of what another’s said or sung, ‘Twere politic to do the like by these; But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?...
22. A Calendar of Sonnets: May O Month when they who love must love and wed! Were one to go to worlds where May is naught, And seek to tell the memories he had brought From earth of thee, what were most fitly said? I know not if the rosy showers shed From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought In […]...
23. Death Of A Naturalist All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the […]...
24. The Land of Story-Books At evening when the lamp is lit, Around the fire my parents sit; They sit at home and talk and sing, And do not play at anything. Now, with my little gun, I crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back. There, in the […]...
25. February 23 Light rain is falling in Central Park But not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West Where sun and sky are yellow and blue Winds are gusting on Washington Square Through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place But calm is the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue Which reminds me of something […]...
26. The Further Bank I long to go over there to the further bank of the river. Where those boats are tied to the bamboo poles in a line; Where men cross over in their boats in the morning with Ploughs on their shoulders to till their far-away fields; Where the cowherds make their lowing cattle swim across to […]...
27. The Little Big Man I am small because I am a little child. I shall be big when I am As old as my father is. My teacher will come and say, “It is late, bring your slate And your books.” I shall tell him, ” Do you not know I am as big as father? And I must […]...
28. Sweet Stay-at-Home Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content, Thou knowest of no strange continent; Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep A gentle motion with the deep; Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas, Where scent comes forth in every breeze. Thou hast not seen the rich grape grow For miles, as far as eyes can go: Thou hast […]...
29. My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
30. Making It Work 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro Along a conveyor belt, slow fish Speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator Patching the asbestos gas lines As big around as the thick waist Of an oak tree. “These here are The veins of the place, stuff Inside’s the blood.” We work in rain, […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. Picture-Books in Winter Summer fading, winter comes Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs, Window robins, winter rooks, And the picture story-books. Water now is turned to stone Nurse and I can walk upon; Still we find the flowing brooks In the picture story-books. All the pretty things put by, Wait upon the children’s eye, Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks, […]...
36. Mother, Summer, I My mother, who hates thunder storms, Holds up each summer day and shakes It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there; But when the August weather breaks And rains begin, and brittle frost Sharpens the bird-abandoned air, Her worried summer look is lost, And I her son, though summer-born And summer-loving, none […]...
37. Sonnet 39 – Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace To look through and behind this mask of me (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains), and behold my soul’s true face, The dim and weary witness of life’s race,- Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul’s […]...
38. Book Borrower I am a mild man, you’ll agree, But red my rage is, When folks who borrow books from me Turn down their pages. Or when a chap a book I lend, And find he’s loaned it Without permission to a friend – As if he owned it. But worst of all I hate those crooks […]...
39. These Fought in Any Case These fought in any case, And some believing Pro domo, in any case….. Died some, pro patria, Walked eye-deep in hell Believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving Came home, home to a lie, Home to many deceits, Home to old lies and new infamy; Usury age-old and age-thick And liars in public places. Daring […]...
40. 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...