ON HIMSELF

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1. Imitated From The Japanese A most astonishing thing Seventy years have I lived; (Hurrah for the flowers of Spring, For Spring is here again.) Seventy years have I lived No ragged beggar-man, Seventy years have I lived, Seventy years man and boy, And never have I danced for joy....
2. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
3. Retreating Wind When I made you, I loved you. Now I pity you. I gave you all you needed: Bed of earth, blanket of blue air As I get further away from you I see you more clearly. Your souls should have been immense by now, Not what they are, Small talking things I gave you every […]...
4. On Elizabeth L. H Epitaphs i WOULDST thou hear what Man can say In a little? Reader, stay. Underneath this stone doth lie As much Beauty as could die: Which in life did harbour give To more Virtue than doth live. If at all she had a fault, Leave it buried in this vault. One name was Elizabeth, The […]...
5. A Man Young And Old: XI. From Oedipus At Colonus Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. Even from that delight memory treasures so, Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow, As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children […]...
6. The Maid's Lament I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone, I feel I am alone. I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak, Alas! I would not check. For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought To vex myself and him: I now would give My love […]...
7. Come On In, The Senility Is Fine People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa, But you don’t have to live forever to become a grampa. The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild, You only have to live until your child has a child. From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder, Because sometimes you […]...
8. The Months have ends the Years a knot The Months have ends the Years a knot No Power can untie To stretch a little further A Skein of Misery The Earth lays back these tired lives In her mysterious Drawers Too tenderly, that any doubt An ultimate Repose The manner of the Children Who weary of the Day Themself the noisy Plaything They […]...
9. Refrain Of all the songs which poets sing The ones which are most sweet Are those which at close intervals A low refrain repeat; Some tender word, some syllable, Over and over, ever and ever, While the song lasts, Altering never, Music if sung, music if said, Subtle like some golden thread A shuttle casts, In […]...
10. Joy and Pleasure Now, joy is born of parents poor, And pleasure of our richer kind; Though pleasure’s free, she cannot sing As sweet a song as joy confined. Pleasure’s a Moth, that sleeps by day And dances by false glare at night; But Joy’s a Butterfly, that loves To spread its wings in Nature’s light. Joy’s like […]...
11. Exeat I remember the Roman Emperor, one of the cruellest of them, Who used to visit for pleasure his poor prisoners cramped in dungeons, So then they would beg him for death, and then he would say: Oh no, oh no, we are not yet friends enough. He meant they were not yet friends enough for […]...
12. Lights Out I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose. Many a road and track That, since the dawn’s first crack, Up to the forest brink, Deceived the travellers, Suddenly now blurs, And in they sink. Here […]...
13. Year's End for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright Twice in my quickly disappearing forties Someone called while someone I loved and I were Making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer. Seven years apart, and two different lovers: Underneath the numbers, how lives are braided, How those women’s death and lives, lived and died, […]...
14. The Beginning Some day I shall rise and leave my friends And seek you again through the world’s far ends, You whom I found so fair (Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!), My only god in the days that were. My eager feet shall find you again, Though the sullen years and the mark […]...
15. Since Nine O'Clock Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp And sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading, Without speaking. Completely alone in the house, Whom could I talk to? Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp The shade of my young body Has come to haunt […]...
16. Rumors from an Aeolian Harp There is a vale which none hath seen, Where foot of man has never been, Such as here lives with toil and strife, An anxious and a sinful life. There every virtue has its birth, Ere it descends upon the earth, And thither every deed returns, Which in the generous bosom burns. There love is […]...
17. To Captain H – d, of the 65th Regiment Say, muse divine, can hostile scenes delight The warrior’s bosom in the fields of fight? Lo! here the christian and the hero join With mutual grace to form the man divine. In H – D see with pleasure and surprise, Where valour kindles, and where virtue lies: Go, hero brave, still grace the post of […]...
18. Rebirth If any God should say, “I will restore The world her yesterday Whole as before My Judgment blasted it” who would not lift Heart, eye, and hand in passion o’er the gift? If any God should will To wipe from mind The memory of this ill Which is Mankind In soul and substance now who […]...
19. December At Yase You said, that October, In the tall dry grass by the orchard When you chose to be free, “Again someday, maybe ten years.” After college I saw you One time. You were strange, And I was obsessed with a plan. Now ten years and more have Gone by: I’ve always known where you were- I […]...
20. Germs FORMS, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, The ones known, and the ones unknown-the ones on the stars, The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, Wonders as of those countries-the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects; Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible […]...
21. Enemies He stood alone in some queer sunless place Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he longed For days he might have lived; but his young face Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged Round him the hulking Germans that I shot When for his death my brooding rage was hot. He stared at them, half-wondering; and then […]...
22. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
23. On Virtue O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach. I cease to wonder, and no more attempt Thine height t’ explore, or fathom thy profound. But, O my soul, sink not into despair, Virtue is near thee, and with gentle […]...
24. A PARANAETICALL, OR ADVISIVE VERSETO HIS FRIEND, MR JOHN WICKS Is this a life, to break thy sleep, To rise as soon as day doth peep? To tire thy patient ox or ass By noon, and let thy good days pass, Not knowing this, that Jove decrees Some mirth, t’ adulce man’s miseries? No; ’tis a life to have thine oil Without extortion from thy […]...
25. Discord Unreconciled by life’s fleet years, that fled With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild, Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped Unreconciled; Though time and change, harsh time’s imperious child, That wed strange hands together, might not wed High hearts by hope’s misprision once beguiled; Faith, by the light from either’s […]...
26. Cut While Shaving It’s never quite right, he said, the way people look, The way the music sounds, the way the words are Written. It’s never quite right, he said, all the things we are Taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we Die, all the lives we live, They are never quite right, They are […]...
27. Circle and Square ‘I give you half of me; No more, lest I should make A ground for perjury. For your sake, for my sake, Half will you take?’ ‘Half I’ll not take nor give, For he who gives gives all. By halves you cannot live; Then let the barrier fall, In one circle have all.’ “A wise […]...
28. Mutation They talk of short-lived pleasure be it so Pain dies as quickly; stern, hard-featured pain Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace. Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain, Makes the strong secret pangs of […]...
29. Last Words If the shoe fell from the other foot Who would hear? If the door Opened onto a pure darkness And it was no dream? If your life Ended the way a book ends With half a blank page and the survivors Gone off to Africa or madness? If my life ended in late spring Of […]...
30. A Lady You are beautiful and faded Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord; Or like the sun-flooded silks Of an eighteenth-century boudoir. In your eyes Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes, And the perfume of your soul Is vague and suffusing, With the pungence of sealed spice-jars. Your half-tones delight me, And I […]...
31. Think Not, Not For A Moment Let Your Mind Think not, not for a moment let your mind, Wearied with thinking, doze upon the thought That the work’s done and the long day behind, And beauty, since ’tis paid for, can be bought. If in the moonlight from the silent bough Suddenly with precision speak your name The nightingale, be not assured that now […]...
32. His Meditation Upon Death BE those few hours, which I have yet to spend, Blest with the meditation of my end; Though they be few in number, I’m content; If otherwise, I stand indifferent, Nor makes it matter, Nestor’s years to tell, If man lives long, and if he live not well. A multitude of days still heaped on […]...
33. MEZZO CAMMIN Half of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me and have not fulfilled The aspiration of my youth, to build Some tower of song with lofty parapet. Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret Of restless passions chat would not be stilled, But sorrow, and a care that almost […]...
34. Flying Fish I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself… and so I know you. I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel. I leaned so… and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now… and then under the […]...
35. Damжtas In law an infant, and in years a boy, In mind a slave to every vicious joy; From every sense of shame and virtue wean’d; In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend; Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child; Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild; Women his dupe, his heedless friend a tool; Old […]...
36. Come down, O Maid COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. Genius A hundred generations have gone into its making, With all their love and tenderness, with all their dreams and tears; Their vanished joy and pleasure, their pain and their heart-breaking, Have colored this rare blossom of the long-unfruitful years. Their victory and their laughter for this have strong men given, For this have sweet, dead […]...
39. The River Of Bees In a dream I returned to the river of bees Five orange trees by the bridge and Beside two mills my house Into whose courtyard a blind man followed The goats and stood singing Of what was older Soon it will be fifteen years He was old he will have fallen into his eyes I […]...
40. Song V: Through the Trouble and Tangle Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle From yesterday’s dawning to yesterday’s night I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle, Till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. O great was my joy, though no rest was around me, […]...