At Bessemer

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1. Last Week Oh, the new-chum went to the backblock run, But he should have gone there last week. He tramped ten miles with a loaded gun, But of turkey of duck saw never a one, For he should have been there last week, They said, There were flocks of ’em there last week. He wended his way […]...
2. Dream Song 66: 'All virtues enter into this world:') ‘All virtues enter into this world:’) A Buddhist, doused in the street, serenely burned. The Secretary of State for War, Winking it over, screwed a redhaired whore. Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week. A journalism doggy took a leak Against absconding coon (‘but take one virtue, Without which a man can hardly hold his own’) […]...
3. You Looked So Tempting In The Pew YOU looked so tempting in the pew, You looked so sly and calm – My trembling fingers played with yours As both looked out the Psalm. Your heart beat hard against my arm, My foot to yours was set, Your loosened ringlet burned my cheek Whenever they two met. O little, little we hearkened, dear, […]...
4. Pan with Us Pan came out of the woods one day, His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray, The gray of the moss of walls were they, And stood in the sun and looked his fill At wooded valley and wooded hill. He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand, On a height of naked […]...
5. Winter Night It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. As during summer midges swarm To beat their wings against a flame Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed To beat against the window pane The blizzard sculptured on the […]...
6. If You Had A Friend If you had a friend strong, simple, true, Who knew your faults and who understood; Who believed in the very best of you, And who cared for you as a father would; Who would stick by you to the very end, Who would smile however the world might frown: I’m sure you would try to […]...
7. A Dream I dreamed that I ws dead and crossed the heavens, Heavens after heavens with burning feet and swift, And cried: “O God, where art Thou?” I left one On earth, whose burden I would pray Thee lift.” I was so dead I wondered at no thing, Not even that the angels slowly turned Their faces, […]...
8. A Strange Wild Song He thought he saw an Elephant That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. “At length I realize,” he said, “The bitterness of life!” He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister’s Husband’s Niece. “Unless you […]...
9. Told The air lay soffly on the green fur Of the almond, it was April And I said, I begin again But my hands burned in the damp earth The light ran between my fingers A black light like no other This was not home, the linnet Settling on the oleander The green pod swelling The […]...
10. Dream Song 95: The surly cop looked out at me in sleep The surly cop looked out at me in sleep Insect-like. Guess, who was the insect. I’d asked him in my robe & hospital gown in the elevator politely Why someone saw so many police around, And without speaking he looked. A meathead, and of course he was armed, to creep Across my nervous system some […]...
11. Fixed Is The Doom FIXED is the doom; and to the last of years Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child, Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars. We also, love, forever dwell apart; With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph, The Unvaulted; as two great eagles that […]...
12. Spring And All By the road to the contagious hospital Under the surge of the blue Mottled clouds driven from the Northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the Waste of broad, muddy fields Brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen Patches of standing water The scattering of tall trees All along the road the reddish Purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy Stuff […]...
13. Before The Flood Why did he promise me That we would build ourselves An ark all by ourselves Out in back of the house On New York Avenue In Union City New Jersey To the singing of the streetcars After the story Of Noah whom nobody Believed about the waters That would rise over everything When I told […]...
14. The Mad Gardener's Song He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. ‘At length I realise,’ he said, The bitterness of Life!’ He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister’s Husband’s Niece. ‘Unless you […]...
15. A Dream Pang I had withdrawn in forest, and my song Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway; And to the forest edge you came one day (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long, But did not enter, though the wish was strong: You shook your pensive head as who should say, ‘I dare not […]...
16. Waking In March Last night, again, I dreamed My children were back at home, Small boys huddled in their separate beds, And I went from one to the other Listening to their breathing regular, Almost soundless until a white light Hardened against the bedroom wall, The light of Los Angeles burning south Of here, going at last as […]...
17. The Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies My son My son Let us always shuffle through the colour of the world Which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy We are too thin We have […]...
18. Covering Two Years This nothingness that feeds upon itself: Pencils that turn to water in the hand, Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air, Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass, Blank sheets of paper that reflect the world Whitened the world that I was silenced by. There were two years of that. Slowly, Whatever splits, dissevers, […]...
19. Poem In the early evening, a now, as man is bending Over his writing table. Slowly he lifts his head; a woman Appears, carrying roses. Her face floats to the surface of the mirror, Marked with the green spokes of rose stems. It is a form Of suffering: then always the transparent page Raised to the […]...
20. A Noon Song There are songs for the morning and songs for the night, For sunrise and sunset, the stars and the moon; But who will give praise to the fulness of light, And sing us a song of the glory of noon? Oh, the high noon, the clear noon, The noon with golden crest; When the blue […]...
21. The Show My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques. Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin […]...
22. The Borders To say that she came into me, From another world, is not true. Nothing comes into the universe And nothing leaves it. My mother-I mean my daughter did not Enter me. She began to exist Inside me-she appeared within me. And my mother did not enter me. When she lay down, to pray, on me, […]...
23. The Last Rose ‘O WHICH is the last rose?’ A blossom of no name. At midnight the snow came; At daybreak a vast rose, In darkness unfurl’d, O’er-petall’d the world. Its odourless pallor Blossom’d forlorn, Till radiant valour Establish’d the morn Till the night Was undone In her fight With the sun. The brave orb in state rose, […]...
24. Young Bullfrogs JIMMY WIMBLETON listened a first week in June. Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs. Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke, Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles. They made his head ache with riddles of music. They rested his head with beaten […]...
25. The Turning Unknown faces in the street And winter coming on. I Stand in the last moments of The city, no more a child, Only a man, one who has Looked upon his own nakedness Without shame, and in defeat Has seen nothing to bless. Touched once, like a plum, I turned Rotten in the meat, or […]...
26. The Yukoner He burned a hole in frozen muck, He pierced the icy mould, And there in six-foot dirt he struck A sack or so of gold. He burned holes in the Decalogue, And then it cam about, For Fortune’s just a lousy rogue, His “pocket” petered out. And lo! ’twas but a year all told, When […]...
27. Late, Late, So Late Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for that we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light: so late! […]...
28. Snow & Ice ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place Space as keys that turn in tight, trigger Pain of situations Where we move ever so slowly So gently into time – traced agony The bright turning of imagination So slowly Grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter Mountains where spirits walk voices, ever so slowly […]...
29. Lottery Ticket ‘A ticket for the lottery I’ve purchased every week,’ said she ‘For years a score Though desperately poor am I, Oh how I’ve scrimped and scraped to buy One chance more. Each week I think I’ll gain the prize, And end my sorrows and my sighs, For I’ll be rich; Then nevermore I’ll eat bread […]...
30. The New World A man roams the streets with a basket Of freestone peaches hollering, “Peaches, Peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale.” My grandfather in his prime could outshout The Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles Along the river. Hamtramck hungered For yellow freestone peaches, downriver Wakened from a dream of work, Zug Island danced Into the […]...
31. The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos The wide Pacific waters And the Atlantic meet. With cries of joy they mingle, In tides of love they greet. Above the drowned ages A wind of wooing blows: – The red rose woos the lotos, The lotos woos the rose. . . The lotos conquered Egypt. The rose was loved in Rome. Great India […]...
32. Mount Zhongnan Its massive height near the City of Heaven Joins a thousand mountains to the corner of the sea. Clouds, when I look back, close behind me, Mists, when I enter them, are gone. A central peak divides the wilds And weather into many valleys. …Needing a place to spend the night, I call to a […]...
33. Slugging Saint ‘Twas in a pub in Battersea They call the “Rose and Crown,” Quite suddenly, it seemed to me, The Lord was looking down; The Lord was looking from above, And shiny was His face, And I was filled with gush of love For all the human race. Anon I saw three ancient men Who reckoned […]...
34. The Bush Girl So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn – You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect That you were glad to be gone; You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her By the homestead receding from view, And you breathed […]...
35. I rose because He sank I rose because He sank I thought it would be opposite But when his power dropped My Soul grew straight. I cheered my fainting Prince I sang firm even Chants I helped his Film with Hymn And when the Dews drew off That held his Forehead stiff I met him Balm to Balm I told […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. The Red Shirt “…his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing, Like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die in.” -Vargas Llosa If I gave 5 birds Each 4 eyes I would be blind Unto the 3rd Generation, if I Gave no one a word For a day And let the day Grow into […]...
38. At The Smithville Methodist Church It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week, But when she came home With the “Jesus Saves” button, we knew what art Was up, what ancient craft. She liked her little friends. She liked the songs They sang when they weren’t Twisting and folding paper into dolls. What could be so bad? […]...
39. The Song of the Garden-Toad Down, down beneath the daisy beds, O hear the cries of pain! And moaning on the cinder-path They’re blind amid the rain. Can murmurs of the worms arise To higher hearts than mine? I wonder if that gardener hears Who made the mold all fine And packed each gentle seedling down So carefully in line? […]...
40. The Return All afternoon my father drove the country roads Between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself, Though he would grab any unfamiliar side road And follow where it led past fields of tall sweet corn In August or in winter those of frozen sheaves. […]...