So Does Everybody Else, Only Not So Much

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1. I Rose Up at the Dawn of Day I rose up at the dawn of day ‘Get thee away! get thee away! Pray’st thou for riches? Away! away! This is the Throne of Mammon grey.’ Said I: This, sure, is very odd; I took it to be the Throne of God. For everything besides I have: It is only for riches that I […]...
2. Hymn 157 Satan’s devices. Now Satan comes with dreadful roar And threatens to destroy; He worries whom he can’t devour With a malicious joy. Ye sons of God, oppose his rage, Resist, and he’ll begone; Thus did our dearest Lord engage And vanquish him alone. Now he appears almost divine, Like innocence and love; But the old […]...
3. The Little Boy Lost Nought loves another as itself Nor venerates another so. Nor is it possible to Thought A greater than itself to know: And Father, how can I love you, Or any of my brothers more? I love you like the little bird That picks up crumbs around the door. The Priest sat by and heard the […]...
4. Triple Time This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured, This air, a little indistinct with autumn Like a reflection, constitute the present A time traditionally soured, A time unrecommended by event. But equally they make up something else: This is the furthest future childhood saw Between long houses, under travelling skies, Heard in contending bells An […]...
5. December 25 Christmas defeated Chanukah Once again last night By a margin of three billion dollars Or so, but every time I hear A Yiddish word like bupkes In a movie (L. A. Confidential) Or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie Calls a garment a shmatta, it’s “good For the Jews,” as our parents used […]...
6. Mermaid, Dragon, Fiend In my childhood rumors ran Of a world beyond our door- Terrors to the life of man That the highroad held in store. Of mermaids’ doleful game In deep water I heard tell, Of lofty dragons belching flame, Of the hornèd fiend of Hell. Tales like these were too absurd For my laughter-loving ear: Soon […]...
7. The Judge is like the Owl The Judge is like the Owl I’ve heard my Father tell And Owls do build in Oaks So here’s an Amber Sill That slanted in my Path When going to the Barn And if it serve You for a House Itself is not in vain About the price ’tis small I only ask a Tune […]...
8. Refrain Of all the songs which poets sing The ones which are most sweet Are those which at close intervals A low refrain repeat; Some tender word, some syllable, Over and over, ever and ever, While the song lasts, Altering never, Music if sung, music if said, Subtle like some golden thread A shuttle casts, In […]...
9. The Locket From out her shabby rain-coat pocket The little Jew girl in the train Produced a dinted silver locket With pasted in it portraits twain. “These are my parents, sir” she said; “Or were, for now I fear they’re dead. “I know to Belsen they were sent; I never heard of them again. So many were […]...
10. Wise Men In Their Bad Hours Wise men in their bad hours have envied The little people making merry like grasshoppers In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking Backward but never forward, and if they somehow Take hold upon the future they do it Half asleep, with the tools of generation Foolishly reduplicating Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, […]...
11. Curriculum Vitae 1992 1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea. 2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into Confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of Course I do not remember this. 3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The World I lived in had a soft […]...
12. In Umbria Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe Watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came Out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted. She did not know what to do. Already bewildered By being thirteen and just that summer a woman, She now had to walk past the American. But […]...
13. The Fall There was a man who found two leaves and came Indoors holding them out saying to his parents That he was a tree. To which they said then go into the yard and do Not grow in the living room as your roots may Ruin the carpet. He said I was fooling I am not […]...
14. The Poet Only on me, the lonely one, The unending stars of the night shine, The stone fountain whispers its magic song, To me alone, to me the lonely one The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds Move like dreams over the open countryside. Neither house nor farmland, Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me, […]...
15. My Childhood God When I was small the Lord appeared Unto my mental eye A gentle giant with a beard Who homed up in the sky. But soon that vasty vision blurred, And faded in the end, Till God is just another word I cannot comprehend. I envy those of simple faith Who bend the votive knee; Who […]...
16. Lot's Wife How simple the pleasures of those childhood days, Simple but filled with exquisite satisfactions. The iridescent labyrinth of the spider, Its tethered tensor nest of polygons Puffed by the breeze to a little bellying sail Merely observing this gave infinite pleasure. The sound of rain. The gentle graphite veil Of rain that makes of the […]...
17. Softened by Time's consummate plush Softened by Time’s consummate plush, How sleek the woe appears That threatened childhood’s citadel And undermined the years. Bisected now, by bleaker griefs, We envy the despair That devastated childhood’s realm, So easy to repair....
18. The Hermit AN ATTACK ON BARBERCRAFT [Dedicated to George Cecil Jones] At last an end of all I hoped and feared! Muttered the hermit through his elfin beard. Then what art thou? the evil whisper whirred. I doubt me soerly if the hermit heard. To all God’s questions never a word he said, But simply shook his […]...
19. On The Death Of J. C. An Infant NO more the flow’ry scenes of pleasure rife, Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes, No more with joy we view that lovely face Smiling, disportive, flush’d with ev’ry grace. The tear of sorrow flows from ev’ry eye, Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply; What sudden pangs shot thro’ each aching heart, When, […]...
20. The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus In Baltimore there lived a boy. He wasn’t anybody’s joy. Although his name was Jabez Dawes, His character was full of flaws. In school he never led his classes, He hid old ladies’ reading glasses, His mouth was open when he chewed, And elbows to the table glued. He stole the milk of hungry kittens, […]...
21. In Harbor A young man, twenty eight years old, on a vessel from Tenos, Emes arrived at this Syrian harbor With the intention of learning the perfume trade. But during the voyage he was taken ill. And as soon As he disembarked, he died. His burial, the poorest, Took place here. A few hours before he died, […]...
22. A Wife at daybreak I shall be A Wife at daybreak I shall be Sunrise Hast thou a Flag for me? At Midnight, I am but a Maid, How short it takes to make a Bride Then Midnight, I have passed from thee Unto the East, and Victory Midnight Good Night! I hear them call, The Angels bustle in the Hall Softly […]...
23. Long Plighted Is it worth while, dear, now, To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed For marriage-rites discussed, decried, delayed So many years? Is it worth while, dear, now, To stir desire for old fond purposings, By feints that Time still serves for dallyings, Though quittance nears? Is it worth while, dear, when The day being […]...
24. You Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which Is simply a path leading through an archway called Adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life Lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future […]...
25. No, You Be A Lone Eagle I find it very hard to be fair-minded About people who go around being air-minded. I just can’t see any fun In soaring up up up into the sun When the chances are still a fresh cool orchid to a paper geranium That you’ll unsoar down down down onto your (to you) invaluable Cranium. I […]...
26. A Summary History of Lord Clive About a hundred and fifty years ago, History relates it happened so, A big ship sailed from the shores of Britain Bound for India across the raging main. And many of the passengers did cry and moan As they took the last look of their old home, Which they were fast leaving far behind, And […]...
27. 1954 Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt He had put on her face. And her training bra Scared me-the newspapers, morning and evening, Kept saying it, training bra, As if the cups of it had been calling The breasts up-he buried her in it, Perhaps he had never bothered to take it Off. They […]...
28. You Can Be A Republican, I'm A Genocrat Oh, “rorty” was a mid-Victorian word Which meant “fine, splendid, jolly,” And often to me it has reoccurred In moments melancholy. For instance, children, I think it rorty To be with people over forty. I can’t say which, come eventide, More tedious I find; Competing with the juvenile stride, Or meeting the juvenile mind. So […]...
29. Refuted ‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’ It may be, yet I have not found it so. In those first golden dreams of future fame I did not find such happiness as came When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know My words have recognition, and will go Straight to some listening heart, my early aim, […]...
30. The house where I was born (08) I open my eyes, yes, it’s the house where I was born, Exactly as it was and nothing more. The same small dining room whose window Gives onto a peach tree that never grows. A man and a woman are seated At this window, facing one another, They are talking, for once. And the child […]...
31. XI. Written at Ostend HOW sweet the tuneful bells’ responsive peal! As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze Breathes on the trembling sense of wan disease, So piercing to my heart their force I feel! And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall, And now, along the white and level tide, They fling their melancholy music wide, Bidding […]...
32. Sonnet: At Ostend, July 22nd 1787 How sweet the tuneful bells’ responsive peal! As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze Breathes on the trembling sense of wan disease, So piercing to my heart their force I feel! And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall, And now, along the white and level tide, They fling their melancholy music wide, Bidding […]...
33. Old Men People expect old men to die, They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look At them with eyes that wonder when… People watch with unshocked eyes; But the old men know when an old man dies....
34. The same embrace We talked with family last night, not mine or yours Specifically but ours, the ones we love familiarly. When Little Jake (though not so little now) was heard to say, “Goodbye, I gotta go,” it was like our hearts were breaking; He’ll always be our baby too – as each of you are perfect Children […]...
35. My Dearest Frank, I Wish You Joy My dearest Frank, I wish you joy Of Mary’s safety with a Boy, Whose birth has given little pain Compared with that of Mary Jane. May he a growing Blessing prove, And well deserve his Parents’ Love! Endow’d with Art’s and Nature’s Good, Thy Name possessing with thy Blood, In him, in all his ways, […]...
36. The Future The future: time’s excuse To frighten us; too vast A project, too large a morsel For the heart’s mouth. Future, who won’t wait for you? Everyone is going there. It suffices you to deepen The absence that we are....
37. 556. Inscription to Jessie Lewars THINE be the volumes, Jessy fair, And with them take the Poet’s prayer, That Fate may, in her fairest page, With ev’ry kindliest, best presage Of future bliss, enroll thy name: With native worth and spotless fame, And wakeful caution, still aware Of ill-but chief, Man’s felon snare; All blameless joys on earth we find, […]...
38. Alone From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved […]...
39. A Rat surrendered here A Rat surrendered here A brief career of Cheer And Fraud and Fear. Of Ignominy’s due Let all addicted to Beware. The most obliging Trap Its tendency to snap Cannot resist Temptation is the Friend Repugnantly resigned At last....
40. A Weight with Needles on the pounds A Weight with Needles on the pounds To push, and pierce, besides That if the Flesh resist the Heft The puncture coolly tries That not a pore be overlooked Of all this Compound Frame As manifold for Anguish As Species be for name...