The Lesson

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1. Lesson 1 At least I’ve learned this much: Life doesn’t have to be All poetry and roses. Life Can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks, Electric bills, dishwashing, Chapped lips, dull stubby pencils With the erasers chewed off, Cheap radios played too loud, The rank smell of stale coffee Yet still glow With the inner fire of an […]...
2. Lesson In Grammar THE SENTENCE Perhaps I can make it plain by analogy. Imagine a machine, not yet assembled, Each part being quite necessary To the functioning of the whole: if the job is fumbled And a vital piece mislaid The machine is quite valueless, The workers will not be paid. It is just the same when constructing […]...
3. The Lesson Chaos ruled OK in the classroom As bravely the teacher walked in The nooligans ignored him Hid voice was lost in the din “The theme for today is violence And homework will be set I’m going to teach you a lesson One that you’ll never forget” He picked on a boy who was shouting And […]...
4. Petropolis From a fearful height, a wandering light, But does a star glitter like this, crying? Transparent star, wandering light Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. From a fearful height, earthly dreams are alight, And a green star is crying. Oh star, if you are the brother of water and light, Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. A […]...
5. Salome's Dancing-Lesson She that begs a little boon (Heel and toe! Heel and toe!) Little gets – and nothing, soon. (No, no, no! No, no, no!) She that calls for costly things Priceless finds her offerings- What’s impossible to kings? (Heel and toe! Heel and toe!) Kings are shaped as other men. (Step and turn! Step and […]...
6. A Life-Lesson There! little girl; don’t cry! They have broken your doll, I know; And your tea-set blue, And your play-house, too, Are things of the long ago; But childish troubles will soon pass by. There! little girl; don’t cry! There! little girl; don’t cry! They have broken your slate, I know; And the glad, wild ways […]...
7. Who Learns My Lesson Complete? WHO learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice-churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker-parents and offspring-merchant, clerk, porter and customer, Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy-Draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson-it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another, and every one to another still. The great laws […]...
8. Lesson It was 1963 or 4, summer, And my father was driving our family From Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick. We’d been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual. Dark lay hanging from the trees the way moss did, And when it moaned light against […]...
9. The Lesson Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should, We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good. Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain, But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again, Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilde- […]...
10. A Song Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace Sends up my soul to seek thy face. Thy blessed eyes breed such desire, I dy in love’s delicious Fire. O love, I am thy Sacrifice. Be still triumphant, blessed eyes. Still shine on me, fair suns! that I Still may behold, though still I dy. Though […]...
11. The Grammar Lesson A noun’s a thing. A verb’s the thing it does. An adjective is what describes the noun. In “The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz” Of and with are prepositions. The’s An article, a can’s a noun, A noun’s a thing. A verb’s the thing it does. A can can roll – or […]...
12. A Singing Lesson Far-fetched and dear-bought, as the proverb rehearses, Is good, or was held so, for ladies: but nought In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is Far-fetched and dear-bought. As the turn of a wave should it sound, and the thought Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses […]...
13. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the […]...
14. Beauty Clear and Fair BEAUTY clear and fair, Where the air Rather like a perfume dwells; Where the violet and the rose Their blue veins and blush disclose, And come to honour nothing else: Where to live near And planted there Is to live, and still live new; Where to gain a favour is More than light, perpetual bliss […]...
15. A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner VERSE I In a famed town of Caledonia’s land, A prosperous port contiguous to the strand, A monarch feasted in right royal state; But care still dogs the pleasures of the Great, And well his faithful servants could surmise From his distracted looks and broken sighs That though the purple bowl was circling free, His […]...
16. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
17. Sonnet 63: Against my love shall be, as I am now Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erworn; When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travelled on to age’s steepy night, And all those beauties whereof now he’s king Are vanishing, or vanished out of […]...
18. Sonnet LXIII Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’er-worn; When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night, And all those beauties whereof now he’s king Are vanishing or vanish’d out of […]...
19. Sonnet XLIX: Thou Leaden Brain Thou leaden brain, which censur’st what I write, And say’st my lines be dull and do not move, I marvel not thou feel’st not my delight, Which never felt’st my fiery touch of love. But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse serv’d, Whose stomach unto gall hath turn’d thy food, Whose senses, like poor […]...
20. Tцrnfallet There is a meadow in Sweden Where I lie smitten, Eyes stained with clouds’ White ins and outs. And about that meadow Roams my widow Plaiting a clover Wreath for her lover. I took her in marriage In a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, A pine was a witness. She’d swim in the […]...
21. Sonnet I HAppy ye leaues when as those lilly hands, Which hold my life in their dead doing might Shall handle you and hold in loues soft bands, Lyke captiues trembling at the victors sight. And happy lines, on which with starry light, Those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look And reade the sorrowes of my […]...
22. Sonnet XXXII If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripp’d by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...
23. Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day If thou survive my well-contented day When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover, Compare them with the bett’ring of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their […]...
24. 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, […]...
25. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
26. 'Twas comfort in her Dying Room ‘Twas comfort in her Dying Room To hear the living Clock A short relief to have the wind Walk boldly up and knock Diversion from the Dying Theme To hear the children play But wrong the more That these could live And this of ours must die....
27. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. On Shakespear What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d Bones, The labour of an age in piled Stones, Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, What need’st thou such weak witnes of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thy self […]...
30. Song Who hath his fancy pleased With fruits of happy sight, Let here his eyes be raised On Nature’s sweetest light; A light which doth dissever And yet unite the eyes, A light which, dying never, Is cause the looker dies. She never dies, but lasteth In life of lover’s heart; He ever dies that wasteth […]...
31. Losses It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had died before In the routine crashes and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us. We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. Sonnet 16: But wherefore do not you a mightier way But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time, And fortify your self in your decay With means more blessèd than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset, With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, Much liker […]...
34. Sonnet XVI But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time? And fortify yourself in your decay With means more blessed than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers, Much liker than […]...
35. Blow, Bugle, Blow THE splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O […]...
36. SPLEEN I’M like some king in whose corrupted veins Flows agиd blood; who rules a land of rains; Who, young in years, is old in all distress; Who flees good counsel to find weariness Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; Whose weary face emotion moves no more E’en when […]...
37. Wild Dark Love Song Her man, A wild dark love song Borne deep within her gypsy soul He’s gone to live in jagged mountains Where salmon jump and sing In tarns High above The cloud lines Beyond the silver moon In the shadow of the Cader Idris In misty mountains Where meadowlarks are known to wing And wild geese […]...
38. Praise for the Fountain Opened (Zecheriah, xiii.1) There is a fountain fill’d with blood, Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day; And there have I, as vile as he, Wash’d all my sins away. Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood Shall […]...
39. Etesia Absent Love, the world’s life! What a sad death Thy absence is to lose our breath At once and die, is but to live Enlarged, without the scant reprieve Of pulse and air: whose dull returns And narrow circles the soul mourns. But to be dead alive, and still To wish, but never have our will: […]...
40. Desolation I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain Of love unrequited, or cold death’s woe, Is sweet, compared to that hour when we know That some grand passion is on the wane. When we see that the glory, and glow, and grace Which lent a splendour to night and day, Are surely fading, and showing […]...