Growing Old

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1. On Growing Old Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying; My dog and I are old, too old for roving. Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying, Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving. I take the book and gather to the fire, Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute The clock […]...
2. Autumn Day Four Translations Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow on the sundials And let loose the wind in the fields. Bid the last fruits to be full; Give them another two more southerly days, Press them to ripeness, and chase The last sweetness into the heavy wine. Whoever has no house […]...
3. Growing Old What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Yes, but not for this alone. Is it to feel our strength – Not our bloom only, but our strength-decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow […]...
4. Mine Enemy is growing old Mine Enemy is growing old I have at last Revenge The Palate of the Hate departs If any would avenge Let him be quick the Viand flits It is a faded Meat Anger as soon as fed is dead ‘Tis starving makes it fat...
5. An Answer If all the year was summer-time, And all the aim of life Was just to lilt on like a rhyme – Then I would be your wife. If all the days were August days, And crowned with golden weather, How happy then through green-clad ways We two could stray together! If all the nights were […]...
6. For A Thirteenth Birthday You have read War and Peace. Now here is Sister Carrie, Not up to Tolstoy; still It will second the real world: Predictable planes and levels, Pavement that holds you, Stairs that lift you, Ice that trips you, Nights that begin after sunset, Four lunar phases, A finite house. I give you Dreiser Although (or […]...
7. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
8. The Apple Orchard Come let us watch the sun go down And walk in twilight through the orchard’s green. Does it not seem as if we had for long Collected, saved and harbored within us Old memories? To find releases and seek New hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys, Mingled with darkness coming from within, As we randomly voice our […]...
9. Leaves Compared With Flowers A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit. But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark […]...
10. Fed Up I ain’t a timid man at all, I’m just as brave as most, I’ll take my chance in open fight and die beside my post; But riding round the ‘ole day long as target for a Krupp, A-drawing fire from Koppies well, I’m fair fed up. It’s wonderful how few get hit, it’s luck that […]...
11. The Crossed Apple I’ve come to give you fruit from out my orchard, Of wide report. I have trees there that bear me many apples. Of every sort: Clear, streaked; red and russet; green and golden; Sour and sweet. This apple’s from a tree yet unbeholden, Where two kinds meet,- So that this side is red without a […]...
12. Evening Love Song Ornamental clouds Compose an evening love song; A road leaves evasively. The new moon begins A new chapter of our nights, Of those frail nights We stretch out and which mingle With these black horizontals....
13. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
16. Faure's Second Piano Quartet On a day like this the rain comes Down in fat and random drops among The ailanthus leaves -“the tree Of Heaven” – the leaves that on moon- Lit nights shimmer black and blade- Shaped at this third-floor window. And there are bunches of small green Knobs, buds, crowded together. The Rapid music fills in […]...
17. Sonnet 38 – First time he kissed me, he but only kissed First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. […]...
18. It Is Not Growing Like A Tree It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night – It was the plant and […]...
19. The Trees like Tassels hit and swung The Trees like Tassels hit and swung There seemed to rise a Tune From Miniature Creatures Accompanying the Sun Far Psalteries of Summer Enamoring the Ear They never yet did satisfy Remotest when most fair The Sun shone whole at intervals Then Half then utter hid As if Himself were optional And had Estates of […]...
20. Growing Apart We knew their names Or thought we did, we knew their faces From an album of places we’d played In a fabulous lifetime of childhood shared. Events of our beginnings declared us united By common ascent, whether they liked it or cared, But they were there to be watched and we knew, If we dared […]...
21. My Nose Is Growing Old Yup. A long lazy September look In the mirror Say it’s true. I’m 31 And my nose is growing Old. It starts about 1/2 An inch Below the bridge And strolls geriatrically Down For another inch or so: Stopping. Fortunately, the rest Of the nose is comparatively Young. I wonder if girls Will want me […]...
22. Growing Old Somehow the skies don’t seem so blue As they used to be; Blossoms have a fainter hue, Grass less green I see. There’s no twinkle in a star, Dawns don’t seem so gold. . . Yet, of course, I know they are: Guess I’m growing old. Somehow sunshine seems less bright, Birds less gladly sing; […]...
23. Autumn Whoever has no house now will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening And wander on the boulevards, up and down… – from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke Its stain is everywhere. The sharpening air Of late afternoon Is now the colour of tea. […]...
24. Ballad Of The Despairing Husband My wife and I lived all alone, Contention was our only bone. I fought with her, she fought with me, And things went on right merrily. But now I live here by myself With hardly a damn thing on the shelf, And pass my days with little cheer Since I have parted from my dear. […]...
25. Santa Decca The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves! Demeter’s child no more hath tithe of sheaves, And in the noon the careless shepherds sing, For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning By secret glade and devious haunt is o’er: Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more; Great […]...
26. Night (This night, agitated by the growing storm) This night, agitated by the growing storm, How it has suddenly expanded its dimensions, That ordinarily would have gone unnoticed, Like a cloth folded, and hidden in the folds of time. Where the stars give resistance it does not stop there, Neither does it begin within the forest’s depths, Nor show upon the surface of […]...
27. Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as […]...
28. Russell Kincaid In the last spring I ever knew, In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered The hills at Miller’s Ford; Just to muse on the apple tree With its ruined trunk and blasted branches, And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle, […]...
29. The Assault Heroic Down in the mud I lay, Tired out by my long day Of five damned days and nights, Five sleepless days and nights,… Dream-snatched, and set me where The dungeon of Despair Looms over Desolate Sea, Frowning and threatening me With aspect high and steep – A most malignant keep. My foes that lay within […]...
30. Sunset on the Spire All that I dream By day or night Lives in that stream Of lovely light. Here is the earth, And there is the spire; This is my hearth, And that is my fire. From the sun’s dome I am shouted proof That this is my home, And that is my roof. Here is my food, […]...
31. Bourne When the Cherry Rustles above her head She hardly realizes Why she leaves Her clothes on the rocks, Passes a hand absently Through water As if smoothing An infant’s forehead. Instead she takes the fruit Pressed into her hand And watches the bloody stone Wet her fingers. Wasn’t sweetness always A symbol for their falling. […]...
32. Happiness In the afternoon I watched The she-bear; she was looking For the secret bin of sweetness – Honey, that the bees store In the trees’ soft caves. Black block of gloom, she climbed down Tree after tree and shuffled on Through the woods. And then She found it! The honey-house deep As heartwood, and dipped […]...
33. Sardis (Revelations, iii. 1-6) “Write to Sardis,” saith the Lord, “And write what He declares, He whose Spirit, and whose word, Upholds the seven stars: All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay’d; Thou art call’d a living church, But thou art cold and dead. “Watch, remember, seek, and strive, Exert […]...
34. Water I was born in a drouth year. That summer My mother waited in the house, enclosed In the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, For the men to come back in the evenings, Bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank. And all my life I have dreaded the return […]...
35. Remorse For Any Death Free of memory and of hope, Limitless, abstract, almost future, The dead man is not a dead man: he is death. Like the God of the mystics, Of Whom anything that could be said must be denied, The dead one, alien everywhere, Is but the ruin and absence of the world. We rob him of […]...
36. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
37. The Village Garden To E. M. S. Here, where your garden fenced about and still is, Here, where the unmoved summer air is sweet With mixed delight of lavender and lilies, Dreaming I linger in the noontide heat. Of many summers are the trees recorders, The turf a carpet many summers wove; Old-fashioned blossoms cluster in the borders, […]...
38. New Year's Morning Only a night from old to new! Only a night, and so much wrought! The Old Year’s heart all weary grew, But said: The New Year rest has brought.” The Old Year’s hopes its heart laid down, As in a grave; but trusting, said: “The blossoms of the New Year’s crown Bloom from the ashes […]...
39. Good Friday O my chief good, How shall I measure out thy blood? How shall I count what thee befell, And each grief tell? Shall I thy woes Number according to thy foes? Or, since one star show’d thy first breath, Shall all thy death? Or shall each leaf, Which falls in Autumn, score a grief? Or […]...
40. Notes For The Legend Of Salad Woman Since my wife was born She must have eaten The equivalent of two-thirds Of the original garden of Eden. Not the dripping lush fruit Or the meat in the ribs of animals But the green salad gardens of that place. The whole arena of green Would have been eradicated As if the right filter had […]...