Robert Lowell
Identification In Belfast
(I. R. A. Bombing) The British Army now carries two rifles, One with rubber rabbit-pellets for children, The other’s of course for the Provisionals…. ‘When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh
Dolphin
My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, A captive as Racine, the man of craft, Drawn through his maze of iron composition By the incomparable wandering voice of Phиdre. When I was troubled
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
“It is the future generation that presses into being by means of these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours.” Schopenhauer “The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open. Our magnolia
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
Epilogue
Those blessиd structures, plot and rhyme Why are they no help to me now I want to make Something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter’s vision is
The Drunken Fisherman
Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye (Truly Jehovah’s bow suspends No pots of gold to weight its ends); Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout Rose to my bait.
For the Union Dead
“Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.” The old South Boston Aquarium stands In a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded. The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks
Homecoming
What was is. . . since 1930; The boys in my old gang Are senior partners. They start up Bald like baby birds To embrace retirement. At the altar of surrender, I met you
Skunk Hour
For Elizabeth Bishop Nautilus Island’s hermit Heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage; Her sheep still graze above the sea. Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer Is first selectman in our village,
Waking in the Blue
The night attendant, a B. U. sophomore, Rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head Propped on The Meaning of Meaning. He catwalks down our corridor. Azure day Makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
(For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea) Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that
The Ruins Of Time
(Quevedo, Mire los muros de la partia mia and Buscas en Roma a Roma, (!)O peregrino!) I I saw the musty shingles of my house, Raw wood and fixed once, now a wash of
The Withdrawal
1 Only today and just for this minute, When the sunslant finds its true angle, You can see yellow and pinkish leaves spangle Our gentle, fluffy tree- Suddenly the green summer is momentary… Autumn
Home After Three Months Away
Gone now the baby’s nurse, A lioness who ruled the roost And made the Mother cry. She used to tie Gobbets of porkrind to bowknots of gauze- Three months they hung like soggy toast
Memories of West Street and Lepke
Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming In pajamas fresh from the washer each morning, I hog a whole house on Boston’s “hardly passionate Marlborough Street,” Where even the man Scavenging filth in the back alley