The School In August

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1. The Bliss Of Ignorance When Jack took Nell into his arms He knew he acted ill, And thought as he enjoyed her charms Of his fiancée Jill. “Poor dear,” he sighed, “she dreams of me, I shouldn’t act like this; But after all, she cannot see, And ignorance is bliss.” Yet Jill at that same moment was In Fred’s […]...
2. The School Boy I love to rise in a summer morn, When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the sky-lark sings with me. O! what sweet company. But to go to school in a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn. The little ones spend […]...
3. A Calendar of Sonnets: August Silence again. The glorious symphony Hath need of pause and interval of peace. Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease, Save hum of insects’ aimless industry. Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-aged […]...
4. An August Midnight I A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter winged, horned, and spined – A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While ‘mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands. . . II Thus meet we five, […]...
5. 30. Song-Composed in August NOW westlin winds and slaught’ring guns Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather; The moorcock springs on whirring wings Amang the blooming heather: Now waving grain, wide o’er the plain, Delights the weary farmer; And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night, To muse upon my charmer. The partridge loves the fruitful fells, The plover loves […]...
6. August When the blackberries hang Swollen in the woods, in the brambles Nobody owns, I spend All day among the high Branches, reaching My ripped arms, thinking Of nothing, cramming The black honey of summer Into my mouth; all day my body Accepts what it is. In the dark Creeks that run by there is This […]...
7. August When my eyes are weeds, And my lips are petals, spinning Down the wind that has beginning Where the crumpled beeches start In a fringe of salty reeds; When my arms are elder-bushes, And the rangy lilac pushes Upward, upward through my heart; Summer, do your worst! Light your tinsel moon, and call on Your […]...
8. First Day at School A millionbillionwillion miles from home Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?) Why are they all so big, other children? So noisy? So much at home they Must have been born in uniform Lived all their lives in playgrounds Spent the years inventing games That don’t let me in. Games That are rough, […]...
9. The Marionettes Of Distant Masters A pianist dreams that he’s hired by a wrecking company to Ruin a piano with his fingers. . . On the day of the piano wrecking concert, as he’s Dressing, he notices a butterfly annoying a flower in his window Box. He wonders if the police should be called. Then he thinks Maybe the butterfly […]...
10. Orphan School Full fifty merry maids I heard One summer morn a-singing; And each was like a joyous bird With spring-clear not a-ringing. It was an old-time soldier song That held their happy voices: Oh how it’s good to swing along When youth rejoices! Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone, They passed again ungladly. Their […]...
11. Going Back to School The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past And all the grey waves flamed to red again At the dead sun’s last glimmer. Far and vast The Sausalito lights burned suddenly In little dots and clumps, as if a pen Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills; The sky was like a cup […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. Village Virtue Jenny was my first sweetheart; Poor lass! she was none too smart. Though I swore she’d never rue it, She would never let me do it. When I tried she mad a fuss, So damn pure and virtuous. Girls should cozen all they can, Use their wiles to get their man. June, my second, was […]...
14. Goldwing Moth A GOLDWING moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle on the desk. Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb and a flame wire. The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks....
15. Early In The Morning I Hear On Your Piano EARLY in the morning I hear on your piano You (at least, I guess it’s you) proceed to learn to play. Mostly little minds should take and tackle their piano While the birds are singing in the morning of the day....
16. Turns I thought it made me look more ‘working class’ (as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!) I did a turn in it before the glass. My mother said: It suits you, your dad’s cap. (She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair: You’re every bit as good as that […]...
17. August 8th And do not be indiscreet or unconventional. Play it safe. Listen here. I’ve never played it safe In spite of what the critics say. Ask my imaginary brother, that waif, That childhood best friend who comes to play Dress-up and stick-up and jacks and Pick-Up-Sticks, Bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics. Or form […]...
18. August 15 My new Web site is dropdead. com It’s interactive you get to choose how You’ll die, where, and at what age And it’ll still come as a complete Surprise to you I guarantee But let’s not get morbid it’s a game It’s more fun than bullshit. com and a lot less Narcissistic than kissmyass. com […]...
19. The Old Bark School It was built of bark and poles, and the floor was full of holes Where each leak in rainy weather made a pool; And the walls were mostly cracks lined with calico and sacks – There was little need for windows in the school. Then we rode to school and back by the rugged gully-track, […]...
20. August Why should this Negro insolently stride Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, Lie heaps of smouldering daisies, sombre-eyed, Their copper petals shriveled up with pride, Hot with a superfluity of heat, Like a great brazier borne along the street By captive leopards, black and burning pied. […]...
21. The Investment Over back where they speak of life as staying (‘You couldn’t call it living, for it ain’t’), There was an old, old house renewed with paint, And in it a piano loudly playing. Out in the plowed ground in the cold a digger, Among unearthed potatoes standing still, Was counting winter dinners, one a hill, […]...
22. Examples (August 27) The last Campbell’s tomato soup can Of the twentieth century is going to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh That is an example of a sentence Another is this from a CEO in Fortune “You die in either case, but this way you get To do it proactively,” where the adverb Makes the sentence I’m […]...
23. Dark August So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky Of this black August. My sister, the sun, Broods in her yellow room and won’t come out. Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume Like a kettle, rivers overrun; still, She will not rise and turn off the rain. She is in her room, fondling […]...
24. August 17th Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health. Surely I will be disquieted By the hospital, that body zone Bodies wrapped in elastic bands, Bodies cased in wood or used like telephones, Bodies crucified up onto their crutches, Bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs, Bodies vomiting up […]...
25. The Source There in the fringe of trees between The upper field and the edge of the one Below it that runs above the valley One time I heard in the early Days of summer the clear ringing Six notes that I knew were the opening Of the Fingal’s Cave Overture I heard them again and again […]...
26. PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the sixties Who had all the coldness of Himmler So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti. I want a history responsive To […]...
27. The Weary Blues Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway. . . He did a lazy sway. . . To the tune o’ those Weary […]...
28. Piano Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery […]...
29. I know a place where Summer strives I know a place where Summer strives With such a practised Frost She each year leads her Daisies back Recording briefly “Lost” But when the South Wind stirs the Pools And struggles in the lanes Her Heart misgives Her, for Her Vow And she pours soft Refrains Into the lap of Adamant And spices and […]...
30. Sorley's Weather When outside the icy rain Comes leaping helter-skelter, Shall I tie my restive brain Snugly under shelter? Shall I make a gentle song Here in my firelit study, When outside the winds blow strong And the lanes are muddy? With old wine and drowsy meats Am I to fill my belly? Shall I glutton here […]...
31. A School Song “Let us now praise famous men” Men of little showing For their work continueth, And their work continueth, Broad and deep continues, Greater then their knowing! Western wind and open surge Took us from our mothers Flung us on a naked shore (Twelve bleak houses by the shore. Seven summers by the shore! ) ‘Mid […]...
32. SCHOOL SMELL Composed of chalk dust, Pencil shavings and The sharp odour Of stale urine; It meets me now and then Creeping down a creosoted corridor Or waiting to be banged With the dust from piles of books On top of a cupboard. The double desks heeled with iron Having long been replaced; The steel-nibbed pens and […]...
33. The Flower-School When storm-clouds rumble in the sky and June showers come down. The moist east wind comes marching over the heath to blow its Bagpipes among the bamboos. Then crowds of flowers come out of a sudden, from nobody knows Where, and dance upon the grass in wild glee. Mother, I really think the flowers go […]...
34. The New School (For My Mother) The halls that were loud with the merry tread of Young and careless feet Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday, And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten the doves away. […]...
35. The Latest School See the flying French depart Like the bees of Bonaparte, Swarming up with a most venomous vitality. Over Baden and Bavaria, And Brighton and Bulgaria, Thus violating Belgian neutrality. And the injured Prussian may Not unreasonably say “Why, it cannot be so small a nationality Since Brixton and Batavia, Bolivia and Belgravia, Are bursting with […]...
36. Mammy I often wonder how Life clicks because They don’t make women now Like Mammy was. When broods of two or three Content most men, How wonderful was she With children ten! Though sixty years have gone, As I look back, I see her rise at dawn, Our boots to black; Pull us from drowsy bed, […]...
37. The School Of Metaphysics Executioner happy to explain How his wristwatch works As he shadows me on the street. I call him that because he is grim and officious And wears black. The clock on the church tower Had stopped at five to eleven. The morning newspapers had no date. The gray building on the corner Could’ve been a […]...
38. After School tell me one good thing You did to yourself today And tell me another That you did to others Let us check our lives With these questions, daugther For as many tomorrows We borrow (02 December, 2005)...
39. September, The First Day Of School I My child and I hold hands on the way to school, And when I leave him at the first-grade door He cries a little but is brave; he does Let go. My selfish tears remind me how I cried before that door a life ago. I may have had a hard time letting go. […]...
40. Among School Children I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way – the children’s eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling […]...