On The Grasshopper And Cricket

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1. To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that’s heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire, and with your […]...
2. Wise Men In Their Bad Hours Wise men in their bad hours have envied The little people making merry like grasshoppers In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking Backward but never forward, and if they somehow Take hold upon the future they do it Half asleep, with the tools of generation Foolishly reduplicating Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, […]...
3. TO THE GRASSHOPPER AFTER ANACREON. [The strong resemblance of this fine poem to Cowley’s Ode bearing the same name, and beginning “Happy insect! What can be,” will be at once seen.] HAPPY art thou, darling insect, Who, upon the trees’ tall branches, By a modest draught inspired, Singing, like a monarch livest! Thou possessest as thy portion All […]...
4. The Grasshopper O thou that swing’st upon the waving ear Of some well-filled oaten beard, Drunk ev’ry night with a delicious tear Dropped thee from heav’n, where now th’ art reared, The joys of earth and air are thine entire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly; And, when the poppy works, thou dost […]...
5. The Lake The yard half a yard, Half a lake blue as a corpse. The lake will tell things you long to hear: Get away from here. Three o’clock. Dry leaves rat-tat like maracas. Whisky-colored grass Breaks at every step and trees Are slowly realizing they are nude. How long will you stay? For the lake asks […]...
6. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
7. The End Of The Library When the coal Gave out, we began Burning the books, one by one; First the set Of Bulwer-Lytton And then the Walter Scott. They gave a lot of warmth. Toward the end, in February, flames Consumed the Greek Tragedians and Baudelaire, Proust, Robert Burton And the Po-Chu-i. Ice Thickened on the sills. More for the […]...
8. The Harvest Of The Sea The earth grows white with harvest; all day long The sickles gleam, until the darkness weaves Her web of silence o’er the thankful song Of reapers bringing home the golden sheaves. The wave tops whiten on the sea fields drear, And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap; But ever ‘mid the gleaners’ song […]...
9. Recollections Of Love I How warm this woodland wild Recess! Love surely hath been breathing here ; And this sweet bed of heath, my dear! Swells up, then sinks with faint caress, As if to have you yet more near. II Eight springs have flown, since last I lay On sea-ward Quantock’s heathy hills, Where quiet sounds from […]...
10. Pentecost Better a jungle in the head Than rootless concrete. Better to stand bewildered By the fireflies’ crooked street; Winter lamps do not show Where the sidewalk is lost, Nor can these tongues of snow Speak for the Holy Ghost; The self-increasing silence Of words dropped from a roof Points along iron railings, Direction, in not […]...
11. Upon Watts' Picture Sic Transit “What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.” But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life, The waving of the banners, and the rattle of the spears, The clash of sword and harness, and the madness of the strife; To-night begin the silence and the peace […]...
12. Silent Noon Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, – The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms ‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. […]...
13. Summer Evening The frog half fearful jumps across the path, And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath; My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive, Till past, and then the cricket sings more strong, And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear The short night weary with their fretting song. […]...
14. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
15. Sea Song I will think no more of the sea! Of the big green waves And the hollowed Shore, Of the brown rock caves No more, no more Of the swell and the weed And the bubbling foam. Memory dwells in my far away home, She has nothing To do with me. She is old and bent […]...
16. The Poet’s Corner Here where the end of bone is no end of song And the earth is bedecked with immortality In what was poetry And now is pride beside And nationality, Here is a battle with no bravery But if the coward’s tongue has gone Swording his own lusty lung. Listen if there is victory Written into […]...
17. WANTS POEMS AND HAS NEVER REJECTED ANYONE Eamer o’ Keefe with your tinge of brogue And Irish warmth, Daisy and Debjani With your karma and cool verse, I salute you. ( III ) “Ecoutez la voix du vent” – listen to the wind’s voice As Milosz commands “All your griefs, My sad ones, are in vain” but offering In recompense soaring sonatas […]...
18. Dedication You whom I could not save Listen to me. Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another. I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words. I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree. What strengthened me, for you was lethal. You mixed up farewell […]...
19. The Roundel A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought, That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear A roundel is wrought. Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught Love, laughter, or mourning remembrance of […]...
20. Lost Star When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first Splendor, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang ‘Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!’ But one cried of a sudden -‘It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light And one of the […]...
21. Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel, Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, And into the shadow again, without a whisper!- Firefly’s my name, I am evanescent. Firefly’s your name. You are evanescent. But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, […]...
22. The Daylight is Dying The daylight is dying Away in the west, The wild birds are flying In silence to rest; In leafage and frondage Where shadows are deep, They pass to its bondage – The kingdom of sleep. And watched in their sleeping By stars in the height, They rest in your keeping, Oh, wonderful night. When night […]...
23. NEW YEAR POEM For Jeremy Reed Rejection doesn’t lead me to dejection But to inspiration via irritation Or at least to a bit of naughty new year wit- Oh isn’t it a shame my poetry’s not tame Like Rupert’s or Jay’s – I never could Get into their STRIDE just to much pride To lick the arses of […]...
24. The Apparitions Because there is safety in derision I talked about an apparition, I took no trouble to convince, Or seem plausible to a man of sense. Distrustful of thar popular eye Whether it be bold or sly. Fifteen apparitions have I seen; The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger. I have found nothing half so good […]...
25. The Little Mute Boy The litle boy was looking for his voice. (The King of the crickets had it.) In a drop of water The little boy was looking for his voice. I do not want it for speaking with; I will make a ring of it So that he may wear my silence On his little finger. In […]...
26. Tokens Green mwold on zummer bars do show That they’ve a-dripped in winter wet; The hoof-worn ring o’ groun’ below The tree do tell o’ storms or het; The trees in rank along a ledge Do show where woonce did bloom a hedge; An’ where the vurrow-marks do stripe The down the wheat woonce rustled ripe. […]...
27. A Coat I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But he fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked....
28. Ode To Autumn Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With […]...
29. To Autumn I Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells […]...
30. Fragment What is poetry? Is it a mosaic Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought Into a pattern? Rather glass that’s taught By patient labor any hue to take And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught, Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught With storied meaning for religion’s […]...
31. Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication 1. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard Heated its iron, Water honeyed In the slung bucket And the sun stood Like a griddle cooling Against the wall Of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled Over the bakeboard, The reddening stove Sent its plaque of heat Against her where […]...
32. At a Poetry Party I Am Given the Rhyme Chih Although I’ve studied poetry for thirty years I try to keep my mouth shut and avoid reputation. Now who is this nosy gentleman talking about my poetry Like Yang Ching-chih Who spoke of Hsiang Ssu everywhere he went....
33. The Proud Poet (For Shaemas O Sheel) One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed, His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime. “Why don’t you take up fancy work, or embroidery?” he said, “For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!” “You […]...
34. A Ballad of Ducks The railway rattled and roared and swung With jolting and bumping trucks. The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told This terrible tale of the days of old, And the party that ought to have kept the ducks. “Well, […]...
35. Poetry And Religion Religions are poems. They concert Our daylight and dreaming mind, our Emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture Into the only whole thinking: poetry. Nothing’s said till it’s dreamed out in words And nothing’s true that figures in words only. A poem, compared with an arrayed religion, May be like a soldier’s one short marriage night […]...
36. The Night I Was Going To Die the night I was going to die I was sweating on the bed And I could hear the crickets And there was a cat fight outside And I could feel my soul dropping down through the Mattress And just before it hit the floor I jumped up I was almost too weak to walk But […]...
37. A Prayer in Darkness This much, O heaven-if I should brood or rave, Pity me not; but let the world be fed, Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead, Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave. If I dare snarl between this sun and sod, Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own, In sun […]...
38. On why it is necessary to talk kindly to frogs i met a frog in my garden today Lurking under a stone – it said There used to be a pond here I know i said i had to dig it up Pity said the frog and looked at me As if i was the thickest mortal A garden without water it croaked Is worse […]...
39. There is a Languor of the Life There is a Languor of the Life More imminent than Pain ‘Tis Pain’s Successor When the Soul Has suffered all it can A Drowsiness diffuses A Dimness like a Fog Envelops Consciousness As Mists obliterate a Crag. The Surgeon does not blanch at pain His Habit is severe But tell him that it ceased to […]...
40. Poetry I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because […]...