Forbidden Fruit

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1. Ripe Fruit Through eyelet holes I watched the crowd Rain of confetti fling; Their joy is lush, their laughter loud, For Carnival is King. Behind his chariot I pace To ean my petty pay; They laugh to see my monster face: “Ripe Fruit,” I hear them say. I do not laugh: my shoulders sag; No heart have […]...
2. Fruit of the Flower My father is a quiet man With sober, steady ways; For simile, a folded fan; His nights are like his days. My mother’s life is puritan, No hint of cavalier, A pool so calm you’re sure it can Have little depth to fear. And yet my father’s eyes can boast How full his life has […]...
3. The Fruit Garden Path The path runs straight between the flowering rows, A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose. ‘T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume. Over […]...
4. Françoise And The Fruit Farmer In town to sell his fruit, he saw her- Françoise in her summer slacks- Turning to him, coming back To feel the swelling plums, One held in each soft hand, breast-high, Above them her eyes enclosing him In quietness brushed up to colors, Urgings green, thrustings yellow. A vine-like touch, her promise seemed all profit, […]...
5. You taught me Waiting with Myself You taught me Waiting with Myself Appointment strictly kept You taught me fortitude of Fate This also I have learnt An Altitude of Death, that could No bitterer debar Than Life had done before it Yet there is a Science more The Heaven you know to understand That you be not ashamed Of Me in […]...
6. The Fruit Shop Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown, High-waisted, girdled with bright blue; A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown She pluckered her little brows into As she picked her dainty passage through The dusty street. “Ah, Mademoiselle, A dirty pathway, we need rain, My poor fruits suffer, and the shell Of this nut’s too big for […]...
7. At the Window I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was A time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I Have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had […]...
8. The Gardener XXVII: Trust Love “Trust love even if it brings sorrow. Do not close up your heart.” “Ah no, my friend, your words are Dark, I cannot understand them.” “Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop, While it laughs it dies. But sorrow is Strong and abiding. Let sorrowful Love wake in your eyes.” “Ah no, my friend, your words […]...
9. Strange Fruit Here is the girl’s head like an exhumed gourd. Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth. They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair And made an exhibition of its coil, Let the air at her leathery beauty. Pash of tallow, perishable treasure: Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod, Her eyeholes blank as pools […]...
10. Roy Butler If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois Got at the secret of every case As well as it does a case of rape It would be the greatest court in the world. A jury, of neighbors mostly, with “Butch” Weldy As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes And two ballots on a case like […]...
11. It's Good To Have a Friend Like You! It’s good to have a friend like you, Whose friendship is sincere and true! Someone to lend a helping hand, To care for me and understand. When I am feeling sad and blue, It’s good to have a friend like you, To help me sort my troubles out, And clear my mind of fear and […]...
12. There is a Gentle Thought There is a gentle thought that often springs To life in me, because it speaks of you. Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true, The heart is conquered, and accepts these things. ‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart, ‘who comes here to seduce our intellect? Is his power so great we […]...
13. Understanding The years of my youth, my sensual life How clearly I see their meaning now. What needless repentances, how futile…. But I did not understand the meaning then. In the dissolute life of my youth The desires of my poetry were being formed, The scope of my art was being plotted. This is why my […]...
14. A Task In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life Only if I brought myself to make a public confession Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch: We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons But pure and generous words were forbidden Under so stiff a penalty that […]...
15. In Praise Of Writing Letters Blest be the Man! his Memory at least, Who found the Art, thus to unfold his Breast, And taught succeeding Times an easy way Their secret Thoughts by Letters to convey; To baffle Absence, and secure Delight, Which, till that Time, was limited to Sight. The parting Farewel spoke, the last Adieu, The less’ning Distance […]...
16. Saint, Revolutionist Saint, revolutionist, God and sage know well, That there is a place Where that much-rung bell, The well-beloved body, And its sensitive face Must be sacrificed. There is, it seems, in this A something meaningless, Hanging without support And yet too dear to touch, That life should seek its end Where no will can descend, […]...
17. My Delight and Thy Delight My delight and thy delight Walking, like two angels white, In the gardens of the night: My desire and thy desire Twining to a tongue of fire, Leaping live, and laughing higher: Thro’ the everlasting strife In the mystery of life. Love, from whom the world begun, Hath the secret of the sun. Love can […]...
18. At a Dinner Party With fruit and flowers the board is deckt, The wine and laughter flow; I’ll not complain could one expect So dull a world to know? You look across the fruit and flowers, My glance your glances find. It is our secret, only ours, Since all the world is blind....
19. My Reward for Being, was This My Reward for Being, was This. My premium My Bliss An Admiralty, less A Sceptre penniless And Realms just Dross When Thrones accost my Hands With “Me, Miss, Me” I’ll unroll Thee Dominions dowerless beside this Grace Election Vote The Ballots of Eternity, will show just that....
20. For An Unknown Lady Lady, if you’d slumber sound, Keep your eyes upon the ground. If you’d toss and turn at night, Slip your glances left and right. Would the mornings find you gay, Never give your heart away. Would they find you pale and sad, Fling it to a whistling lad. Ah, but when his pleadings burn, Will […]...
21. Elegy VII Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love, And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand The mystic language of the eye nor hand: Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air Of sighs, and say, This lies, this sounds despair: Nor by th’ eyes water call […]...
22. Progress The Master stood upon the mount, and taught. He saw a fire in his disciples’ eyes; ВЂ˜The old law’, they said, ‘is wholly come to naught! Behold the new world rise! ’ ВЂ˜Was it’, the Lord then said, ‘with scorn ye saw The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees? I say unto you, see […]...
23. Lost You left me with the autumn time; When the winter stripped the forest bare, Then dressed it in his spotless rime; When frosts were lurking in the air You left me here and went away. The winds were cold; you could not stay. You sought a warmer clime, until The south wind, artful maid, should […]...
24. Mrs. Sibley The secret of the stars, gravitation. The secret of the earth, layers of rock. The secret of the soil, to receive seed. The secret of the seed, the germ. The secret of man, the sower. The secret of woman, the soil. My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find....
25. Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Time's Fell Hand Defac'd When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main, […]...
26. My Inner Life ‘Tis true my garments threadbare are, And sorry poor I seem; But inly I am richer far Than any poet’s dream. For I’ve a hidden life no one Can ever hope to see; A sacred sanctuary none May share with me. Aloof I stand from out the strife, Within my heart a song; By virtue […]...
27. The Town Marshal The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal When the saloons were voted out, Because when I was a drinking man, Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. And they wanted a terrible man, Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, And a hater of saloons and drinkers, To keep law and […]...
28. As a World Would Have It Shall I never make him look at me again? I look at him, I look my life at him, I tell him all I know the way to tell, But there he stays the same. Shall I never make him speak one word to me? Shall I never make him say enough to show My […]...
29. Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing […]...
30. The Silent Lover ii WRONG not, sweet empress of my heart, The merit of true passion, With thinking that he feels no smart, That sues for no compassion. Silence in love bewrays more woe Than words, though ne’er so witty: A beggar that is dumb, you know, May challenge double pity. Then wrong not, dearest to my heart, My […]...
31. Overhead The Tree-Tops Meet Overhead the tree-tops meet, Flowers and grass spring ‘neath one’s feet; There was nought above me, and nought below, My childhood had not learned to know: For what are the voices of birds -Ay, and of beasts,-but words-our words, Only so much more sweet? The knowledge of that with my life begun! But I had […]...
32. Lines Written In The Fannie Farmer Cookbook You won’t become a gourmet* cook By studying our Fannie’s book Her thoughts on Food & Keeping House Are scarcely those of Lévi-Strauss. Nevertheless, you’ll find, Frank dear, The basic elements** are here. And if a problem should arise: The Soufflé fall before your eyes, Or strange things happen to the Rice You know I […]...
33. A Ballad of Dreamland I hid my heart in a nest of roses, Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart; In a softer bed then the soft white snow’s is, Under the roses I hid my heart. Why would it sleep not? why should it start, When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred? What made sleep flutter his […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. Early Darkness How can you say Earth should give me joy? Each thing Born is my burden; I cannot succeed With all of you. And you would like to dictate to me, You would like to tell me Who among you is most valuable, Who most resembles me. And you hold up as an example The pure […]...
36. The Secret Two girls discover The secret of life In a sudden line of Poetry. I who don’t know the Secret wrote The line. They Told me (through a third person) They had found it But not what it was Not even What line it was. No doubt By now, more than a week Later, they have […]...
37. Frankincense and Myrrh My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance, and hoards Of torn desires, broken joys; records Of all a […]...
38. The To-Be-Forgotten I I heard a small sad sound, And stood awhile among the tombs around: “Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are you distrest, Now, screened from life’s unrest?” II “O not at being here; But that our future second death is near; When, with the living, memory of us numbs, And blank oblivion comes! III “These, […]...
39. Words I had this thought a while ago, ‘My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land.’ And I grew weary of the sun Until my thoughts cleared up again, Remembering that the best I have done Was done to make it plain; That every year I have […]...
40. Faith HERE where the loves of others close The vision of my heart begins. The wisdom that within us grows Is absolution for our sins. We took forbidden fruit and ate Far in the garden of His mind. The ancient prophecies of hate We proved untrue, for He was kind. He does not love the bended […]...