The City Is A Garment

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1. The City Revisited The grey gulls drift across the bay Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog. All day I sat and watched them come and go; And now at last the sun was set, Filling the waves with colored fire Till each seemed like a jewelled spire Thrust up from some drowned city. […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. 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, […]...
4. South Winds jostle them South Winds jostle them Bumblebees come Hover hesitate Drink, and are gone Butterflies pause On their passage Cashmere I softly plucking, Present them here!...
5. 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 […]...
6. 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, […]...
7. Wet City Night Light drunkenly reels into shadow; Blurs, slurs uneasily; Slides off the eyeballs: The segments shatter. Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged Fluttering wet strips. The cup of the sky-sign is filled too full; It slushes wine over. The street-lamps dance a tarentella And zigzag down the street: They lift and fly away In a wind of […]...
8. Saturday Morning Everyone who made love the night before Was walking around with flashing red lights On top of their heads-a white-haired old gentlemen, A red-faced schoolboy, a pregnant woman Who smiled at me from across the street And gave a little secret shrug, As if the flashing red light on her head Was a small price […]...
9. 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, […]...
10. Hymn of the City Not in the solitude Alone may man commune with heaven, or see Only in savage wood And sunny vale, the present Deity; Or only hear his voice Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice. Even here do I behold Thy steps, Almighty! here, amidst the crowd, Through the great city rolled, With everlasting murmur […]...
11. City Gent On my desk, a set of labels Or a synopsis of leeks, Blanched by the sun And trailing their roots Like a watering can. Beyond and below, Diminished by distance, A taxi shivers at the lights: A shining moorhen With an orange nodule Set over the beak, Taking a passenger Under its wing. I turn […]...
12. 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. […]...
13. A City's Death By Fire After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky, I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire; Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire. All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales, […]...
14. Horses and Men in Rain LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window, And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys. Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches-and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks. […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. Death sets a Thing significant Death sets a Thing significant The Eye had hurried by Except a perished Creature Entreat us tenderly To ponder little Workmanships In Crayon, or in Wool, With “This was last Her fingers did” Industrious until The Thimble weighed too heavy The stitches stopped by themselves And then ’twas put among the Dust Upon the Closet […]...
17. 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) […]...
18. The City of the Dead XX Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe. I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops. I commenced analyzing man’s […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. Sex Goddess I am THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE So don’t mess with me I’ve got a big bag full of SEX TOYS And you can’t have any ’cause they’re all mine ’cause I’m The SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE. “Hey,” you may say to yourself, “who the hell’s she tryin’ to kid, She’s […]...
21. Sunrise on the Coast Grey dawn on the sand-hills the night wind has drifted All night from the rollers a scent of the sea; With the dawn the grey fog his battalions has lifted, At the call of the morning they scatter and flee. Like mariners calling the roll of their number The sea-fowl put out to the infinite […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
24. A Tongue to tell Him I am true! A Tongue to tell Him I am true! Its fee to be of Gold Had Nature in Her monstrous House A single Ragged Child To earn a Mine would run That Interdicted Way, And tell Him Charge thee speak it plain That so far Truth is True? And answer What I do Beginning with the […]...
25. Night In The City The sluggish clouds hang low upon the town, And from yon lamp in chilled and sodden rays The feeble light gropes through the heavy mist And dies, extinguished in the stagnant maze. From moisty eaves the drops fall slowly down To strike with leaden sound the walk below, And in dark, murky pools upon the […]...
26. Come, Here Is Adieu To The City COME, here is adieu to the city And hurrah for the country again. The broad road lies before me Watered with last night’s rain. The timbered country woos me With many a high and bough; And again in the shining fallows The ploughman follows the plough. The whole year’s sweat and study, And the whole […]...
27. Suzanne Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she’s half crazy But that’s why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just […]...
28. Poems Done on a Late Night Car I. CHICKENS I am The Great White Way of the city: When you ask what is my desire, I answer: “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, With young faces tired of the cows and barns, Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, Slender supple girls with shapely legs, Lure in the […]...
29. Nightfall In The City Of Hyderabad SEE how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon’s throat, Jewelled with embers of opal and peridote. See the white river that flashes and scintillates, Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates. Hark, from the minaret, how the muezzin’s call Floats like a battle-flag over the city wall. From trellised balconies, languid […]...
30. The Floods The rain it rains without a stay In the hills above us, in the hills; And presently the floods break way Whose strength is in the hills. The trees they suck from every cloud, The valley brooks they roar aloud Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills! The first wood down is sere […]...
31. The unquiet city we are succulents Our cool jade arms open Over clean tables our fine bone China minds pull the strings Of our tongues together we plait Our thoughts with the television Back through the aerials and Transmission towers prodding Through the literal fog The mechanics of which distance Does not startle us or the ears Pretend […]...
32. I am ashamed I hide I am ashamed I hide What right have I to be a Bride So late a Dowerless Girl Nowhere to hide my dazzled Face No one to teach me that new Grace Nor introduce my Soul Me to adorn How tell Trinket to make Me beautiful Fabrics of Cashmere Never a Gown of Dun more […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. The City of Sleep “The Brushwood Boy” The Day’s Work Over the edge of the purple down, Where the single lamplight gleams, Know ye the road to the Merciful Town That is hard by the Sea of Dreams Where the poor may lay their wrongs away, And the sick may forget to weep? But we pity us! Oh, pity […]...
35. The Beleaguered City I have read, in some old, marvellous tale, Some legend strange and vague, That a midnight host of spectres pale Beleaguered the walls of Prague. Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream, With the wan moon overhead, There stood, as in an awful dream, The army of the dead. White as a sea-fog, landward bound, The spectral […]...
36. 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, […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. The Fly Little Fly Thy summers play, My thoughtless hand Has brush’d away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink & sing; Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength & breath; And the want Of thought is […]...
39. Infelice Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess, He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand, He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming, Leaving my alone with a private meaning, He loves me so much, my heart is singing. Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening They said: […]...
40. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...