Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas

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1. On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till […]...
2. A Woman Homer Sung If any man drew near When I was young, I thought, ‘He holds her dear,’ And shook with hate and fear. But O! ’twas bitter wrong If he could pass her by With an indifferent eye. Whereon I wrote and wrought, And now, being grey, I dream that I have brought To such a pitch […]...
3. A Canvas For A Crust Aye, Montecelli, that’s the name. You may have heard of him perhaps. Yet though he never savoured fame, Of those impressionistic chaps, Monet and Manet and Renoir He was the avatar. He festered in a Marseilles slum, A starving genius, god-inspired. You’d take him for a lousy bum, Tho’ poetry of paint he lyred, In […]...
4. To Homer Standing aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind; but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, And Pan […]...
5. Insomnia Heigh ho! to sleep I vainly try; Since twelve I haven’t closed an eye, And now it’s three, and as I lie, From Notre Dame to St. Denis The bells of Paris chime to me; “You’re young,” they say, “and strong and free.” I do not turn with sighs and groans To ease my limbs, […]...
6. Vision (For Aline) Homer, they tell us, was blind and could not see the beautiful Faces Looking up into his own and reflecting the joy of his dream, Yet did he seem Gifted with eyes that could follow the gods to their holiest places. I have no vision of gods, not of Eros with love-arrows laden, […]...
7. Insomnia I Some nights it’s bound to be your best way out, When nightmare is the short end of the stick, When sleep is a part of town where it’s not safe To walk at night, when waking is the only way You have of distancing your wretched dead, A growing crowd, and escaping out of their […]...
8. Insomnia The moon in the bureau mirror Looks out a million miles (and perhaps with pride, at herself, But she never, never smiles) Far and away beyond sleep, or Perhaps she’s a daytime sleeper. By the Universe deserted, She’d tell it to go to hell, And she’d find a body of water, Or a mirror, on […]...
9. The Waradgery Tribe Harried we were, and spent, Broken and falling, Ere as the cranes we went, Crying and calling. Summer shall see the bird Backward returning; Never shall there be heard Those, who went yearning. Emptied of us the land; Ghostly our going; Fallen like spears the hand Dropped in the throwing. We are the lost who […]...
10. Hotel Insomnia I liked my little hole, Its window facing a brick wall. Next door there was a piano. A few evenings a month A crippled old man came to play “My Blue Heaven.” Mostly, though, it was quiet. Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat Catching his fly with a web Of cigarette smoke and […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Homer's Seeing-Eye Dog Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep With a purpose, so far as I could tell. How he got from the dark of sleep To the dark of waking up I’ll never know; The lax sprawl sleep allowed him Began to set from the edges in, Like a custard, and then he […]...
13. Homer Clapp Often Aner Clute at the gate Refused me the parting kiss, Saying we should be engaged before that; And just with a distant clasp of the hand She bade me good-night, as I brought her home From the skating rink or the revival. No sooner did my departing footsteps die away Than Lucius Atherton, (So […]...
14. On a Hill-top BEARDED with dewy grass the mountains thrust Their blackness high into the still grey light, Deepening to blue: far up the glimmering height In silver transience shines the starry dust. Silent the sheep about me; fleece by fleece They sleep and stir not: I with awe around Wander uncertain o’er the giant mound, A fire […]...
15. Willow And I grew up in patterned tranquillity, In the cool nursery of the young century. And the voice of man was not dear to me, But the voice of the wind I could understand. But best of all the silver willow. And obligingly, it lived With me all my life; it’s weeping branches Fanned my […]...
16. Overnight at the Riverside Tower Evening colors linger on mountain paths. Out beyond this study perched over River Gate, At the cliff’s edge, frail clouds stay All night. Among waves, a lone, shuddering Moon. As cranes trail off in flight, silent, Wolves snarl over their kill. I brood on Our wars, sleepless here and, to right A relentless Heaven and […]...
17. Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et Al Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna Of chance and choice to throw a shadow’s element Of disbelief in truth Love is not love Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness If it can be made […]...
18. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
19. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
20. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
21. Why Do Birds Sing? Let poets piece prismatic words, Give me the jewelled joy of birds! What ecstasy moves them to sing? Is it the lyric glee of Spring, The dewy rapture of the rose? Is it the worship born in those Who are of Nature’s self a part, The adoration of the heart? Is it the mating mood […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. The Rest The rest of us watch from beyond the fence As the woman moves with her jagged stride Into her pain as if into a slow race. We see her body in motion But hear no sounds, or we hear Sounds but no language; or we know It is not a language we know Yet. We […]...
24. 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: […]...
25. Love's Deity I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost, Who died before the God of Love was born: I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produced a destiny, And that vice-nature, Custom, lets it be, I must love her […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. Mad As The Mist And Snow Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow. Horace there by Homer stands, Plato stands below, And here is Tully’s open page. How many years ago Were you and […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
30. Town Owl On eves of cold, when slow coal fires, Rooted in basements, burn and branch, Brushing with smoke the city air; When quartered moons pale in the sky, And neons glow along the dark Like deadly nightshade on a briar; Above the muffled traffic then I hear the owl, and at his note I shudder in […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. Modern Love L: Thus Piteously Love Thus piteously Love closed what he begat: The union of this ever-diverse pair! These two were rapid falcons in a snare, Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers: But they fed not on the advancing hours: Their hearts […]...
33. Silent Steps Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes, ever comes. Every moment and every age, Every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes. Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind, But all their notes have always proclaimed, ‘He comes, comes, ever comes.’ In the fragrant days […]...
34. 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 […]...
35. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
36. Death Of The Kapowsin Tavern I can’t ridge it back again from char. Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores And shattered glass smoked black and strung About from the explosion I believe In the reports. The white school up for sale For years, most homes abandoned to the rocks Of passing boys the fire, helped by wind […]...
37. At Cheyenne Young Lochinvar came in from the West, With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, His No. Brogans were chuck full of feet, His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. The fair Mariana sate […]...
38. Atavism I was always afraid of Somes’s Pond: Not the little pond, by which the willow stands, Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond. There, where the frost makes all the birches burn Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shines Like a polished shell between black […]...
39. The Starry Night That does not keep me from having a terrible need of shall I say the word religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother The town does not exist Except where one black-haired tree slips Up like a drowned woman into the hot […]...
40. The Cranes of Ibicus Here was a man who watched the river flow Past the huge town, one gray November day. Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play The boys made merry as they saw him go, Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream, The immortal screed he held within his hand. For he was walking in an […]...