I threw my arms about those shoulders

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1. Arms and the Man Young Croesus went to pay his call On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall: And, though his wound was healed and mended, He hoped he’d get his leave extended. The waiting-room was dark and bare. He eyed a neat-framed notice there Above the fireplace hung to show Disabled heroes where to go For arms and legs; with […]...
2. Japan Today I pass the time reading A favorite haiku, Saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating The same small, perfect grape Again and again. I walk through the house reciting it And leave its letters falling Through the air of every room. I stand by the big silence of the piano […]...
3. Arms And The Boy Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads. Or give him cartridges of fine […]...
4. The Angle of a Landscape The Angle of a Landscape That every time I wake Between my Curtain and the Wall Upon an ample Crack Like a Venetian waiting Accosts my open eye Is just a Bough of Apples Held slanting, in the Sky The Pattern of a Chimney The Forehead of a Hill Sometimes a Vane’s Forefinger But that’s […]...
5. White Shoulders YOUR white shoulders I remember And your shrug of laughter. Low laughter Shaken slow From your white shoulders. Where the moon slants and wavers....
6. A CALL TO ARMS It was like chucking-out time In a rough Victorian pub Cherubic Dylan was first to go Lachrymose but with a show Of strength, yelling “Buggerall, Buggerall, this is my boat-house In Laugherne, these are my books, My prizes, I ride every wave-crest, My loves are legion. What’s this You’re saying about fashion? Others follow where […]...
7. The Wedding Ring Dance I dance in circles holding The moth of the marriage, Thin, sticky, fluttering Its skirts, its webs. The moth oozing a tear, Or is it a drop of urine? The moth, grinning like a pear, Or is it teeth Clamping the iron maiden shut? The moth, Who is my mother, Who is my father, Who […]...
8. The spry Arms of the Wind The spry Arms of the Wind If I could crawl between I have an errand imminent To an adjoining Zone I should not care to stop My Process is not long The Wind could wait without the Gate Or stroll the Town among. To ascertain the House And is the soul at Home And hold […]...
9. The Man-Moth Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, Cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, And he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He […]...
10. What Then? His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read, After certain years he won Sufficient money for his need, Friends that have been friends indeed; ‘What […]...
11. Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone, For love is but a skein unwound Between the dark and dawn. A lonely ghost the ghost is That to God shall come; I – love’s skein upon the ground, My body […]...
12. The Oldest Child The night still frightens you. You know it is interminable And of vast, unimaginable dimensions. “That’s because His insomnia is permanent,” You’ve read some mystic say. Is it the point of His schoolboy’s compass That pricks your heart? Somewhere perhaps the lovers lie Under the dark cypress trees, Trembling with happiness, But here there’s only […]...
13. Fire-Caught The gold moth did not love him So, gorgeous, she flew away. But the gray moth circled the flame Until the break of day. And then, with wings like a dead desire, She fell, fire-caught, into the flame....
14. The Flying Dutchman Unyielding in the pride of his defiance, Afloat with none to serve or to command, Lord of himself at last, and all by Science, He seeks the Vanished Land. Alone, by the one light of his one thought, He steers to find the shore from which he came, Fearless of in what coil he may […]...
15. A Bushman's Song I’M travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand, I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand, And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day, But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh. + So it’s shift, boys, shift, for there isn’t the slightest […]...
16. Ami Green Not “a youth with hoary head and haggard eye,” But an old man with a smooth skin And black hair! I had the face of a boy as long as I lived, And for years a soul that was stiff and bent, In a world which saw me just as a jest, To be hailed […]...
17. The house where I was born (01) I woke up, it was the house where I was born, Sea foam splashed against the rock, Not a single bird, only the wind to open and close the wave, Everywhere on the horizon the smell of ashes, As if the hills were hiding a fire That somewhere else was burning up a universe. I […]...
18. Motel Seedy The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base (a huge red slug with a hole Where its heart should be) or chose this print Of a butterscotch sunset, Must have been abused in art class As children, forced to fingerpaint With a nose, or a tongue. To put this color Green exhausted grave […]...
19. The Butter Factory It was built of things that must not mix: Paint, cream, and water, fire and dusty oil. You heard the water dreaming in its large Kneed pipes, up from the weir. And the cordwood Our fathers cut for the furnace stood in walls Like the sleeper-stacks of a continental railway. The cream arrived in lorried […]...
20. Paradise Motel Millions were dead; everybody was innocent. I stayed in my room. The President Spoke of war as of a magic love potion. My eyes were opened in astonishment. In a mirror my face appeared to me Like a twice-canceled postage stamp. I lived well, but life was awful. There were so many soldiers that day, […]...
21. The Apparition When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead, And that thou think’st thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feigned vestal, in worse arms shall see; Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, […]...
22. Night Is On The Downland Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland, On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland And the pine-woods roar like the surf. Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely, Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl; None comes here now […]...
23. Sailor Son When you come home I’ll not be round To welcome you. They’ll take you to a grassy mound So neat and new; Where I’ll be sleeping O so sound! The ages through. I’ll not be round to broom the hearth, To feed the chicks; And in the wee room of your birth Your bed to […]...
24. The Ghost Of Roger Casement O what has made that sudden noise? What on the threshold stands? It never crossed the sea because John Bull and the sea are friends; But this is not the old sea Nor this the old seashore. What gave that roar of mockery, That roar in the sea’s roar? The ghost of Roger Casement Is […]...
25. Zeroing In “I am a landscape,” he said, “a landscape and a person walking in that landscape. There are daunting cliffs there, And plains glad in their way Of brown monotony. But especially There are sinkholes, places Of sudden terror, of small circumference And malevolent depths.” “I know,” she said. “When I set forth To walk in […]...
26. The Exorcists And I solemnly swear On the chill of secrecy That I know you not, this room never, The swollen dress I wear, Nor the anonymous spoons that free me, Nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover. For all these present, Before that wandering ghost, That yellow moth of my summer bed, I […]...
27. The Pilot Up in a dirty window in a dark room is a star Which an old man can see. He looks at it. He can See it. It is the star of the room; an electrical Freckle that has fallen out of his head and gotten Stuck in the dirt on the window. He thinks he […]...
28. Praise it 'tis dead Praise it ’tis dead It cannot glow Warm this inclement Ear With the encomium it earned Since it was gathered here Invest this alabaster Zest In the Delights of Dust Remitted since it flitted it In recusance august....
29. Dream Song 110: It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that. My own clouds darkening hung. Besides, it wasn’t serious. They took them in different rooms & fed them lies. ‘She admitted you wanted to get rid of it.’ ‘He told us he told you to.’ The Force, with its rapists con-men murderers, Has been […]...
30. Night Piece Climb, claim your shelf-room, far Packed from inquisitive moon And cold contagious stars. Lean out, but look no longer, No further, than to stir Night with extended finger. Now fill the box with light, Flood full the shining block, Masonry against night. Let window, curtain, blind Soft-sieve and sift and shred The impertinence of sound. […]...
31. Childhood I The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood Put me out of love with God. I can’t believe in God’s goodness; I can believe In many avenging gods. Most of all I believe In gods of bitter dullness, Cruel local gods Who scared my childhood. II I’ve seen people put A chrysalis in a […]...
32. At Daybreak I listen for him through the rain, And in the dusk of starless hours I know that he will come again; Loth was he ever to forsake me: He comes with glimmering of flowers And stir of music to awake me. Spirit of purity, he stands As once he lived in charm and grace: I […]...
33. The Ghost of Miltiades The Ghost of Miltiades came at night, And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite, And he said, in a voice, that thrill’d the frame, “If ever the sound of Marathon’s name Hath fir’d they blood or flush’d thy brow, Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!” The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed Away to […]...
34. His Wish To God I would to God, that mine old age might have Before my last, but here a living grave; Some one poor almshouse, there to lie, or stir, Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre; A little piggin, and a pipkin by, To hold things fitting my necessity, Which, rightly us’d, both in their time and place, […]...
35. The Tyger Tyger Tyger. burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye. Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews […]...
36. Ippolit Konovaloff I was a gun-smith in Odessa. One night the police broke in the room Where a group of us were reading Spencer. And seized our books and arrested us. But I escaped and came to New York And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, Where I could study my Kant in peace And […]...
37. Than Heaven more remote Than Heaven more remote, For Heaven is the root, But these the flitted seed. More flown indeed Than ones that never were, Or those that hide, and are. What madness, by their side, A vision to provide Of future days They cannot praise. My soul, to find them, come, They cannot call, they’re dumb, Nor […]...
38. The Haunted House Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe, Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling, With all the dark solemnities that show That Death is in the dwelling! Oh, very, very dreary is the room Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles, But smitten by the common stroke of doom, The corpse lies […]...
39. All Souls' Night Epilogue to “A Vision’ MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell And may a lesser bell sound through the room; And it is All Souls’ Night, And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come; For it is a ghost’s right, His element is so fine Being […]...
40. The Gardener XIX: You Walked You walked by the riverside path With the full pitcher upon your hip. Why did you swiftly turn your face And peep at me through your fluttering Veil? That gleaming look from the dark Came upon me like a breeze that sends A shiver through the rippling water And sweeps away to the shadowy Shore. […]...