As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter, I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor

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1. The First Step The young poet Evmenis Complained one day to Theocritus: “I’ve been writing for two years now And I’ve composed only one idyll. It’s my single completed work. I see, sadly, that the ladder Of Poetry is tall, extremely tall; And from this first step I’m standing on now I’ll never climb any higher.” Theocritus retorted: […]...
2. The Chinese Nightingale A Song in Chinese Tapestries “How, how,” he said. “Friend Chang,” I said, “San Francisco sleeps as the dead- Ended license, lust and play: Why do you iron the night away? Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound, With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round. While the monster shadows glower and […]...
3. Before The Flood Why did he promise me That we would build ourselves An ark all by ourselves Out in back of the house On New York Avenue In Union City New Jersey To the singing of the streetcars After the story Of Noah whom nobody Believed about the waters That would rise over everything When I told […]...
4. After the Winter Some day, when trees have shed their leaves And against the morning’s white The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night, We’ll turn our faces southward, love, Toward the summer isle Where bamboos spire to shafted grove And wide-mouthed orchids smile. And we will seek the quiet hill Where towers the cotton […]...
5. Go, Little Book – The Ancient Phrase GO, little book – the ancient phrase And still the daintiest – go your ways, My Otto, over sea and land, Till you shall come to Nelly’s hand. How shall I your Nelly know? By her blue eyes and her black brow, By her fierce and slender look, And by her goodness, little book! What […]...
6. City of Ships CITY of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful, sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here; All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling […]...
7. The Voice Of The Ancient Bard Youth of delight come hither. And see the opening morn, Image of truth new born. Doubt is fled & clouds of reason. Dark disputes & artful teazing, Folly is an endless maze, Tangled roots perplex her ways, How many have fallen there! They stumble all night over bones of the dead: And feel they know […]...
8. Sea 1 (Windless Summer) Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes. 2 (Winter) Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks, Noosing, slipping and noosing again for ever. 3 (Windy Summer) Over-sea going, under returning, meet And make a wheel, a shell, to hold the sun....
9. To His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor All-Conquering Death! by thy resistless pow’r, Hope’s tow’ring plumage falls to rise no more! Of scenes terrestrial how the glories fly, Forget their splendors, and submit to die! Who ere escap’d thee, but the saint of old Beyond the flood in sacred annals told, And the great sage, whom fiery coursers drew To heav’n’s bright […]...
10. A Nervous Governor-General We read in the press that Lord Northcote is here To take up Lord Tennyson’s mission. ‘Tis pleasant to find they have sent us a Peer, And a man of exalted position. It’s his business to see that the Radical horde From loyalty’s path does not swerve us; But his tastes, and the task, don’t […]...
11. Starlings in Winter Chunky and noisy, But with stars in their black feathers, They spring from the telephone wire And instantly They are acrobats In the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, They swing over buildings, Dipping and rising; They float like one stippled star That opens, Becomes for a moment fragmented, Then closes again; […]...
12. Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!” And yet within these ruins’ […]...
13. The Ancient World Today the Masons are auctioning Their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, Gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes Labeled inside the collar “Potentate” And “Vizier.” Here their chairs, blazoned With the Masons’ sign, huddled Like convalescents, lean against one another On the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles The hierophants carried in parades; Here’s […]...
14. According To The Formulas Of Ancient Grecosyrian Magi “What distillate can be discovered from herbs Of a witching brew,” said an aesthete, “what distillate prepared according To the formulas of ancient Grecosyrian magi Which for a day (if no longer Its potency can last), or even for a short time Can bring my twenty three years to me Again; can bring my friend […]...
15. The Ancient Speech A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives Named the one indivisible soul of his glen; For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities, Immeasurable complexities of soul? What are these isles but a song sung by island voices? The herdsman sings ancestral memories And the song makes the singer wise, […]...
16. Santa Fe In Winter The city is closing for the night. Stores draw their blinds one by one, And it’s dark again, save for the dim Infrequent streetlight bending at the neck Like a weighted stem. Years have built The city in layers: balustrades filled in With brick, adobe reinforced with steel, And the rounded arches smoothed With white […]...
17. Winter Landscape The three men coming down the winter hill In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds At heel, through the arrangement of the trees, Past the five figures at the burning straw, Returning cold and silent to their town, Returning to the drifted snow, the rink Lively with children, to the older men, […]...
18. The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner Part I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din.’ He holds him with […]...
19. One Step Backward Taken Not only sands and gravels Were once more on their travels, But gulping muddy gallons Great boulders off their balance Bumped heads together dully And started down the gully. Whole capes caked off in slices. I felt my standpoint shaken In the universal crisis. But with one step backward taken I saved myself from going. […]...
20. Lines Written In The Belief That The Ancient Roman Festival Of The Dead Was Called Ambarvalia Swings the way still by hollow and hill, And all the world’s a song; “She’s far,” it sings me, “but fair,” it rings me, “Quiet,” it laughs, “and strong!” Oh! spite of the miles and years between us, Spite of your chosen part, I do remember; and I go With laughter in my heart. So […]...
21. A Winter Daybreak Above Vence The night’s drifts Pile up below me and behind my back, Slide down the hill, rise again, and build Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house. In the valley below me, Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet, The road lamps glow. They are so cold, they might as well be dark. […]...
22. Ready to step into life This morning, coffee in hand, standing at the kitchen Window thinking of things that need to be done I contemplated the post with a lean at the front gate Which I should right one day – and wondered why; I like it that way, trying to take a first step, Embark on a journey perhaps, […]...
23. The Winter Scene I The rutted roads are all like iron; skies Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet; Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on; And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick, Or in the twilight cracks with […]...
24. An Ancient To Ancients Where once we danced, where once we sang, Gentlemen, The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang, And cracks creep; worms have fed upon The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then Than now, with harps and tabrets gone, Gentlemen! Where once we rowed, where once we sailed, Gentlemen, And damsels took the tiller, veiled Against too strong […]...
25. Winter A DIAMOND glow of winter o’er the world: Amid the chilly halo nigh the west Flickers a phantom violet bloom unfurled Dim on the twilight’s breast. Only phantasmal blooms but for an hour, A transient beauty; then the white stars shine Chilling the heart: I long for thee to flower, O bud of light divine. […]...
26. Step lightly on this narrow spot Step lightly on this narrow spot The broadest Land that grows Is not so ample as the Breast These Emerald Seams enclose. Step lofty, for this name be told As far as Cannon dwell Or Flag subsist or Fame export Her deathless Syllable....
27. Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles It seems these poets have nothing Up their ample sleeves They turn over so many cards so early, Telling us before the first line Whether it is wet or dry, Night or day, the season the man is standing in, Even how much he has had to drink. Maybe it is autumn and he is […]...
28. Listening to a Flute in Yellow Crane Pavillion I came here a wanderer Thinking of home, Remembering my far away Ch’ang-an. And then, from deep in Yellow Crane Pavillion, I heard a beautiful bamboo flute Play “Falling Plum Blossoms.” It was late spring in a city by the river....
29. Axe Handles One afternoon the last week in April Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet One-half turn and it sticks in a stump. He recalls the hatchet-head Without a handle, in the shop And go gets it, and wants it for his own. A broken-off axe handle behind the door Is long enough for a hatchet, […]...
30. 220. Song-The Winter it is Past THE WINTER it is past, and the summer comes at last And the small birds, they sing on ev’ry tree; Now ev’ry thing is glad, while I am very sad, Since my true love is parted from me. The rose upon the breer, by the waters running clear, May have charms for the linnet or […]...
31. Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind Blow, blow, thou winter wind Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly: Then heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze […]...
32. To a Locomotive in Winter THEE for my recitative! Thee in the driving storm, even as now-the snow-the winter-day declining; Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive; Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel; Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides; Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar-now […]...
33. Sonnet (Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now) Women have loved before as I love now; At least, in lively chronicles of the past- Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast Much to their cost invaded-here and there, Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest, I find some woman bearing as I bear Love like a […]...
34. Winter Nightfall The day begins to droop, Its course is done: But nothing tells the place Of the setting sun. The hazy darkness deepens, And up the lane You may hear, but cannot see, The homing wain. An engine pants and hums In the farm hard by: Its lowering smoke is lost In the lowering sky. The […]...
35. Autumn And Winter Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon Between two dates of death, while men were fain Yet of the living light that all too soon Three months bade wane. Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he […]...
36. To Winter O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.’ He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathиd In ribbиd steel; I dare not lift mine eyes, […]...
37. Mannahatta I WAS asking for something specific and perfect for my city, Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name! Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient; I see that the word of my city is that word up there, Because I see that word nested in nests of […]...
38. The Defective Record Cut the bank for the fill. Dump sand Pumped out of the river Into the old swale Killing whatever was There before-including Even the muskrats. Who did it? There’s the guy. Him in the blue shirt and Turquoise skullcap. Level it down For him to build a house On to build a House on to […]...
39. A Winter Dawn Above the marge of night a star still shines, And on the frosty hills the sombre pines Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow. Through the pale arch of orient the morn Comes in a milk-white splendor newly-born, A sword of crimson cuts in twain the gray Banners […]...
40. Winter Milk THE MILK drops on your chin, Helga, Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes. Let your mammy keep hands off the chin. This is a high holy spatter of white on the reds and blues. Before the bottle was taken away, Before you so […]...