To My Wife

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1. His Wife, The Painter There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks, And outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like Insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev, Says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too. “I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are At work.” He […]...
2. The Refugees In the shabby train no seat is vacant. The child in the ripped mask Sprawls undisturbed in the waste Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant? They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed That they were willing to trade for this? The dried blood sparkles along the mask Of […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. The Masked Face I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face. I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and […]...
5. To My Wife – With A Copy Of My Poems I can write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It […]...
6. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
7. The Ivy-Wife I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech And be as high as he: I stretched an arm within his reach, And signalled unity. But with his drip he forced a breach, And tried to poison me. I gave the grasp of partnership To one of other race A plane: he barked him strip by strip […]...
8. Any Wife To Any Husband I My love, this is the bitterest, that thou Who art all truth and who dost love me now As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say – Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still A whole long life through, had but love its will, Would death that leads me from […]...
9. Letter To My Wife 11-11-1933 Bursa Prison My one and only! Your last letter says: “My head is throbbing, my heart is stunned!” You say: “If they hang you, if I lose you, I’ll die!” You’ll live, my dear My memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart: In […]...
10. On His Deceased Wife METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused Saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Joves great Son to her glad Husband gave, Rescu’d from death by force though pale and faint. Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint, Purification in the old Law did save, And such, as yet once more […]...
11. Meeting For Michael Hamburger Barn owl Daughter of snow, Subject to the night wind, Yet taking root With her talons In the rotten scab of walls, Beak face With round eyes, Heart-rigid mask Of feathers a white fire That touches neither time nor space. Coldly the wind blows Against the old homestead, In the yard pale […]...
12. Never The Time And The Place Never the time and the place And the loved one all together! This path how soft to pace! This May what magic weather! Where is the loved one’s face? In a dream that loved one’s face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a […]...
13. I would to heaven that I were so much clay I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling – Because at least the past were passed away – And for the future – (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say – […]...
14. 370. Song-Sic a Wife as Willie had WILLIE WASTLE dwalt on Tweed, The spot they ca’d it Linkumdoddie; Willie was a wabster gude, Could stown a clue wi’ ony body: He had a wife was dour and din, O Tinkler Maidgie was her mither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button for her! She has an e’e, […]...
15. Rose Leaves When they shall close my careless eyes And look their last upon my face, I fear that some will say: “her lies A man of deep disgrace; His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, He dreamed so much, he did so little. When they shall seal y coffin lid And this worn mask I […]...
16. For My Lover, Returning To His Wife She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you And cast up from your childhood, Cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February And as real as a cast-iron pot. Let’s face it, I […]...
17. A New Theme I FAIN would leave the tender songs I sang to you of old, Thinking the oft-sung beauty wrongs The magic never told. And touch no more the thoughts, the moods, That win the easy praise; But venture in the untrodden woods To carve the future ways. Though far or strange or cold appear The shadowy […]...
18. The Soldier's Wife Weary way-wanderer languid and sick at heart Travelling painfully over the rugged road, Wild-visag’d Wanderer! ah for thy heavy chance! Sorely thy little one drags by thee bare-footed, Cold is the baby that hangs at thy bending back Meagre and livid and screaming its wretchedness. Woe-begone mother, half anger, half agony, As over thy shoulder […]...
19. It seldom snowed – Part IV It seldom snowed they said, Perhaps they’re right Although seldom was never In that endless summer Which tightened a fiery grip by day, Baking the plateau, Relentlessly melting its snow. It began as a cliché On a slow day In a new January Of stupid heat That penetrated the heart, Enslaving energies replete With blinding […]...
20. Lord Walter's Wife I ‘But where do you go?’ said the lady, while both sat under the yew, And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue. II ‘Because I fear you,’ he answered; ‘because you are far too fair, And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.’ […]...
21. The Reverend Mullineux I’d reckon his weight as eight-stun-eight, And his height as five-foot-two, With a face as plain as an eight-day clock And a walk as brisk as a bantam-cock Game as a bantam, too, Hard and wiry and full of steam, That’s the boss of the English Team, Reverend Mullineux! Makes no row when the game […]...
22. We Wear the Mask We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while […]...
23. The Identification So you think its Stephen? Then I’d best make sure Be on the safe side as it were. Ah, theres been a mistake. The hair You see, its black, now Stephens fair… Whats that? The explosion? Of course, burnt black. Silly of me. I should have known. Then lets get on. The face, is that […]...
24. The Wife “Tell Annie I’ll be home in time To help her with her Christmas-tree.” That’s what he wrote, and hark! the chime Of Christmas bells, and where is he? And how the house is dark and sad, And Annie’s sobbing on my knee! The page beside the candle-flame With cruel type was overfilled; I read and […]...
25. The Wife of Bath's Tale THE PROLOGUE. 1 Experience, though none authority* *authoritative texts Were in this world, is right enough for me To speak of woe that is in marriage: For, lordings, since I twelve year was of age, (Thanked be God that *is etern on live),* *lives eternally* Husbands at the church door have I had five,2 For […]...
26. The Wife's Will SIT still­a word­a breath may break (As light airs stir a sleeping lake,) The glassy calm that soothes my woes, The sweet, the deep, the full repose. O leave me not! for ever be Thus, more than life itself to me! Yes, close beside thee, let me kneel­ Give me thy hand that I may […]...
27. Man And Wife Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother’s bed; The rising sun in war paint dyes us red; In broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine, Abandoned, almost Dionysian. At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street, Blossoms on our magnolia ignite The morning with their murderous five days’ white. All night I’ve held your hand, […]...
28. PEACEFUL GROUND Cool Morning spit on bladed grass. A Thousand silky fingers tickling toes. The strong scent of natures freshly cut hair. Mans spiritual stamping groung toward inner Peace....
29. Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God’s shining agent, Over a black mountain, in his giant track, While a restless voice kept harrying his woman: “It’s not too late, you can still look back At the red towers of your native Sodom, The square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, At the empty windows set in […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. The Sea-Wife There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate, And a wealthy wife is she; She breeds a breed o’ rovin’ men And casts them over sea. And some are drowned in deep water, And some in sight o’ shore, And word goes back to the weary wife And ever she sends more. For since that […]...
32. TO MY WIFE I You buy my freedom with your love. With every book you catalogue or stamp My imagination hacks a strand from the hawser That for three years has held it In the grubbing estuary of mud and time. Your early waking with tired eyes And late return at evening, all Contribute to the store of […]...
33. People at Night A night that cuts between you and you And you and you and you And me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing Through a crowd. We won’t Look for each other, either- Wander off, each alone, not looking In the slow crowd. Among sideshows Under movie signs, Pictures made of a million lights, Giants […]...
34. Poem for My Wife This morning when we woke up The meat cages still locked us up* We took a bath so they’d look nice Had our breakfast of eggs and rice Wore the the stuff that Pinurbo** From his father once borrowed Braved the traffic never cool Sending our daughter to school Day by day we replay the […]...
35. An Evangelist's Wife “Why am I not myself these many days, You ask? And have you nothing more to ask? I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise To God for giving you me to share your task? “Jealous-of Her? Because her cheeks are pink, And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven. If […]...
36. Poets to Come POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! Arouse-for you must justify me-you must answer. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance […]...
37. The Wife of Flanders Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered, Where I had seven sons until to-day, A little hill of hay your spur has scattered. . . . This is not Paris. You have lost your way. You, staring at your sword to find it brittle, Surprised at the surprise that was your plan, Who, […]...
38. Boxer's Wife She phoned them when the Round was Eight: ‘How is my Joe?’ they heard her say. They answered: ‘Gee! He’s going great, Your guy’s Okay.’ She phoned them when the Round was Nine: ‘How is my hero in the fray?’ They yelled: ‘He leads; he’s doing fine, Joe’s sure Okay.’ She phoned them when the […]...
39. On My Wife's Birth-Day ‘Tis Nancy’s birth-day raise your strains, Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains, And sing with more than usual glee To Nancy, who was born for me. Tell the blythe Graces as they bound, Luxuriant in the buxom round; They’re not more elegantly free, Than Nancy, who was born for me. Tell royal Venus, tho’ she […]...
40. Paul's Wife To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, “How is the wife, Paul?” and he’d disappear. Some said it was because be bad no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject; Others because he’d come within a day Or so of having one, and […]...