The City Planners

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1. The Future Give me back my broken night My mirrored room, my secret life It’s lonely here, There’s no one left to torture Give me absolute control Over every living soul And lie beside me, baby, That’s an order! Give me crack and anal sex Take the only tree that’s left And stuff it up the hole […]...
2. I would to heaven that I were so much clay I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling – Because at least the past were passed away – And for the future – (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say – […]...
3. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
4. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
5. The House Of Dust: Part 01: 06: Over the darkened city, the city of towers Over the darkened city, the city of towers, The city of a thousand gates, Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers, Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates, The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls, With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls. On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea, […]...
6. City of Orgies CITY of orgies, walks and joys! City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious, Not the pageants of you-not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles, repay me; Not the interminable rows of your houses-nor the ships at the wharves, Nor the processions in the streets, nor the […]...
7. The City You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, Find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong And my heart lies buried like something dead. How long can I let my mind moulder in this place? Wherever I turn, wherever I look, I […]...
8. Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City ONCE I pass’d through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and traditions; Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain’d me for love of me; Day by day and night by night we were together, All else has […]...
9. When the Assault Was Intended to the City Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If deed of honour did thee ever please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee, for he knows the charms That call fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spread thy name […]...
10. A City Remembered Unlovely city, to which few tourists come With squinting cameras and alien hats; Left under a cloud by those who love the sun And can afford to marry – a cloud of bits Of soot more myriad than gnats, a cloud Of smoke and rain, an insubstantial threat Whose colour is the pigment of long […]...
11. Fire-Fly City Like a long arrow through the dark the train is darting, Bearing me far away, after a perfect day of love’s delight: Wakeful with all the sad-sweet memories of parting, I lift the narrow window-shade and look out on the night. Lonely the land unknown, and like a river flowing, Forest and field and hill […]...
12. H. Baptism As he that sees a dark and shady grove, Stays not, but looks beyond it on the sky; So when I view my sins, mine eyes remove More backward still, and to that water fly, Which is above the heav’ns, whose spring and rest Is in my dear Redeemer’s pierced side. O blessed streams! either […]...
13. City That Does Not Sleep In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins. The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream, And the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner The unbelievable alligator […]...
14. The City of Perth Beautiful Ancient City of Perth, One of the fairest on the earth, With your stately mansions and scenery most fine, Which seems very beautiful in the summer time; And the beautiful silvery Tay, Rolling smoothly on its way, And glittering like silver in the sunshine – And the Railway Bridge across it is really sublime. […]...
15. My Book Before I drink myself to death, God, let me finish up my Book! At night, I fear, I fight for breath, And wake up whiter than a spook; And crawl off to a bistro near, And drink until my brain is clear. Rare Absinthe! Oh, it gives me strength To write and write; and so […]...
16. Cartoon Physics, Part 1 Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know That the universe is ever-expanding, Inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies Swallowed by galaxies, whole Solar systems collapsing, all of it Acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning The rules of cartoon animation, That if a man draws a door on a rock Only he can […]...
17. Sonnet: O City, City To live between terms, to live where death Has his loud picture in the subway ride, Being amid six million souls, their breath An empty song suppressed on every side, Where the sliding auto’s catastrophe Is a gust past the curb, where numb and high The office building rises to its tyranny, Is our anguished […]...
18. Up At A Villa – Down In The City (As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality) I Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square; Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! II Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, […]...
19. Now Finale to the Shore NOW finale to the shore! Now, land and life, finale, and farewell! Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;) Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas, Cautiously cruising, studying the charts, Duly again to port, and hawser’s tie, returning: -But now obey, thy cherish’d, secret wish, Embrace thy friends-leave all […]...
20. Henry James in the Heart of the City We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City. Nothing would surprise him. The beast in the jungle was what he saw Edith Wharton’s obfuscating older brother. . . He fled the demons Of Manhattan For fear they would devour His inner ones (the ones who wrote the books) […]...
21. The City In The Sea Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by […]...
22. The City WHAT domination of what darkness dies this hour, And through what new, rejoicing, winged, ethereal power O’erthrown, the cells opened, the heart released from fear? Gay twilight and grave twilight pass. The stars appear O’er the prodigious, smouldering, dusky, city flare. The hanging gardens of Babylon were not more fair Than these blue flickering glades, […]...
23. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas- Space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been Inside me. There are winds that seem like My […]...
24. City Visions I As the blind Milton’s memory of light, The deaf Beethoven’s phantasy of tone, Wroght joys for them surpassing all things known In our restricted sphere of sound and sight, So while the glaring streets of brick and stone Vix with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night, I will give rein to Fancy, […]...
25. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
26. For A Coming Extinction Gray whale Now that we are sinding you to The End That great god Tell him That we who follow you invented forgiveness And forgive nothing I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When you have left the seas nodding on their […]...
27. The Harbour This harbour was made by art and force. And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire. And holds the sea behind its barrier Less than five miles from my house. Lord be with us say the makers of a nation. Lord look down say the builders of a harbour. They came and cut a shape out […]...
28. Flowers Well if anybody Flowers Well if anybody Can the ecstasy define Half a transport half a trouble With which flowers humble men: Anybody find the fountain From which floods so contra flow I will give him all the Daisies Which upon the hillside blow. Too much pathos in their faces For a simple breast like mine Butterflies from […]...
29. Mama never forgets her birds Mama never forgets her birds, Though in another tree She looks down just as often And just as tenderly As when her little mortal nest With cunning care she wove If either of her “sparrows fall,” She “notices,” above....
30. The City Bushman It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, Though you know the squalid city needn’t keep you from the bush; But we lately heard you singing of […]...
31. Symbolically concerned dodona oak (the tree of life) sheds leaves Nutritious-which feeds blood and mind today There’s not a jot (from which the present cleaves) Can be dispensed with – all life’s array From first to last has leaf-mould in its clay Eve is that apple she took her bite from The best and worst can’t thwart […]...
32. Miracles I dreamt I saw a huge grey boat in silence steaming Down a canal; it drew the dizzy landscape after; The solemn world was sucked along with it-a streaming Land-slide of loveliness. O, but I rocked with laughter, Staring, and clinging to my tree-top. For a lake Of gleaming peace swept on behind. (I mustn’t […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. The Zeroes taught us Phosphorous The Zeroes taught us Phosphorous We learned to like the Fire By playing Glaciers when a Boy And Tinder guessed by power Of Opposite to balance Odd If White a Red must be! Paralysis our Primer dumb Unto Vitality!...
35. Anna Who Was Mad Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say […]...
36. Matt's Manifesto The Renaissance men are aging now, Having survived Industrialization’s Original Sin And the Information Age flood; The need for specialization Drives wrinkles of obsolescence Through their shriveling faces That have seen too much popular culture, Folk wisdom, colloquialisms, and fads born of boredom To have much patience left For the exaltation of yet another Generation […]...
37. A Sunset of the City Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night. It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I […]...
38. Sonnet 42 – 'My future will not copy fair my past&#039 ‘My future will not copy fair my past’- I wrote that once; and thinking at my side My ministering life-angel justified The word by his appealing look upcast To the white throne of God, I turned at last, And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried By […]...
39. City Trees The trees along this city street, Save for the traffic and the trains, Would make a sound as thin and sweet As trees in country lanes. And people standing in their shade Out of a shower, undoubtedly Would hear such music as is made Upon a country tree. Oh, little leaves that are so dumb […]...
40. The Alchemist in the City My window shews the travelling clouds, Leaves spent, new seasons, alter’d sky, The making and the melting crowds: The whole world passes; I stand by. They do not waste their meted hours, But men and masters plan and build: I see the crowning of their towers, And happy promises fulfill’d. And I – perhaps if […]...