My Calendar

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1. The Old Man's Calendar OFT have I seen in wedlock with surprise, That most forgot from which true bliss would rise When marriage for a daughter is designed, The parents solely riches seem to mind; All other boons are left to heav’n above, And sweet SIXTEEN must SIXTY learn to love! Yet still in other things they nicer seem, […]...
2. A Calendar of Sonnets: February Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still; No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, And willow stems grow daily red and bright. These are days when ancients held a rite Of expiation for the old year’s ill, And prayer to purify the new year’s will: […]...
3. Work When twenty-one I loved to dream, And was to loafing well inclined; Somehow I couldn’t get up steam To welcome work of any kind. While students burned the midnight lamp, With dour ambition as their goad, I longed to be a gayful tramp And greet adventure on the road. But now that sixty years have […]...
4. A Calendar of Sonnets: April No days such honored days as these! While yet Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide For some fair thing which should forever bide On earth, her beauteous memory to set In fitting frame that no age could forget, Her name in lovely April’s name did hide, And leave it there, eternally allied To all the […]...
5. A Calendar of Sonnets: June O month whose promise and fulfilment blend, And burst in one! it seems the earth can store In all her roomy house no treasure more; Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend On fruit, when once this stintless flowering end. And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before It hath made ready at […]...
6. A Calendar of Sonnets: March Month which the warring ancients strangely styled The month of war, as if in their fierce ways Were any month of peace! in thy rough days I find no war in Nature, though the wild Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled As feet of writhing trees. The violets raise Their heads without […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty Unwillingly Miranda wakes, Feels the sun with terror, One unwilling step she takes, Shuddering to the mirror. Miranda in Miranda’s sight Is old and gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty. Shining like the morning star, Like the twilight shining, Haunted by a calendar, Miranda is a-pining. Silly girl, […]...
9. A Calendar of Sonnets: November This is the treacherous month when autumn days With summer’s voice come bearing summer’s gifts. Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways, And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts, The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts Ere […]...
10. The Missal Makers To visit the Escurial We took a motor bus, And there a guide mercurial Took charge of us. He showed us through room after room, And talked hour after hour, Of place, crypt and royal tomb, Of pomp and power. But in bewilderment of grace What pleased me most of all Were ancient missals proud […]...
11. The Poet's Calendar January Janus am I; oldest of potentates; Forward I look, and backward, and below I count, as god of avenues and gates, The years that through my portals come and go. I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; My frosts congeal the rivers in […]...
12. Argument Days that cannot bring you near Or will not, Distance trying to appear Something more obstinate, Argue argue argue with me Endlessly Neither proving you less wanted nor less dear. Distance: Remember all that land Beneath the plane; That coastline Of dim beaches deep in sand Stretching indistinguishably All the way, All the way to […]...
13. Invention Tonight the moon is a cracker, With a bite out of it Floating in the night, And in a week or so According to the calendar It will probably look Like a silver football, And nine, maybe ten days ago It reminded me of a thin bright claw. But eventually By the end of the […]...
14. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
15. One Third Of The Calendar In January everything freezes. We have two children. Both are she’ses. This is our January rule: One girl in bed, and one in school. In February the blizzard whirls. We own a pair of little girls. Blessings upon of each the head The one in school and the one in bed. March is the month […]...
16. A Calendar of Sonnets: August Silence again. The glorious symphony Hath need of pause and interval of peace. Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease, Save hum of insects’ aimless industry. Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-aged […]...
17. A Calendar of Sonnets: May O Month when they who love must love and wed! Were one to go to worlds where May is naught, And seek to tell the memories he had brought From earth of thee, what were most fitly said? I know not if the rosy showers shed From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought In […]...
18. A Calendar of Sonnets: September O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped! The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung On wands; the chestnut’s yellow pennons tongue To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped; And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among The yellow gourds, which from the earth […]...
19. A Calendar of Sonnets: December The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes Of water ‘neath the summer sunshine gleamed: Far fairer than when placidly it streamed, The brook its frozen architecture makes, And under bridges white its swift way takes. Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed Might linger on the road; or one who deemed His […]...
20. A Calendar of Sonnets: January O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire, What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire The streams than under ice. June could not hire Her roses to forego the strength they learn In sleeping on thy breast. No […]...
21. A Calendar of Sonnets: October The month of carnival of all the year, When Nature lets the wild earth go its way, And spend whole seasons on a single day. The spring-time holds her white and purple dear; October, lavish, flaunts them far and near; The summer charily her reds doth lay Like jewels on her costliest array; October, scornful, […]...
22. A Calendar of Sonnets: July Some flowers are withered and some joys have died; The garden reeks with an East Indian scent From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent; The white heat pales the skies from side to side; But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content, Like starry blooms on a new firmament, White lilies float and regally […]...
23. No Lilies For Lisette Said the Door: “She came in With no shadow of sin; Turned the key in the lock, Slipped out of her frock, The robe she liked best When for supper she dressed. Then a letter she tore. . . What a wan look she wore!” Said the Door. Said the Chair: “She sat down With […]...
24. Cinema Calendar Of The Abstract Heart – 09 the fibres give in to your starry warmth A lamp is called green and sees Carefully stepping into a season of fever The wind has swept the rivers’ magic And i’ve perforated the nerve By the clear frozen lake Has snapped the sabre But the dance round terrace tables Shuts in the shock of the […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
27. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
28. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
29. Bank Robber I much admire, I must admit, The man who robs a Bank; It takes a lot of guts and grit, For lack of which I thank The gods: a chap ‘twould make of me You wouldn’t ask to tea. I do not mean a burglar cove Who climbs into a house, From room to room […]...
30. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
31. Poet And Peer They asked the Bard of Ayr to dine; The banquet hall was fit and fine, With gracing it a Lord; The poet came; his face was grim To find the place reserved for him Was at the butler’s board. So when the gentry called him in, He entered with a knavish grin And sipped a […]...
32. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
33. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
34. Death Of A Cockroach I opened wide the bath-room door, And all at once switched on the light, When moving swift across the floor I saw a streak of ebon bright: Then quick, with slipper in my hand, Before it could escape, I slammed. I missed it once, I missed it twice, But got it ere it gained its […]...
35. The Old General Little Annabelle to please, (Lacking grace, I grant), Grandpa down on hands and knees Plays the elephant. Annabelle shrieks with delight, Bouncing up and down, On his back and holding tight To his dressing gown. As they roll and bowl along, Round and round the room, There is sunshine and a song ‘Spite December gloom. […]...
36. The Married Lover Why, having won her, do I woo? Because her spirit’s vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen’s hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness; Nay, rather marks more fair the height Which can with safety […]...
37. Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded Has sorrow thy young days shaded, As clouds o’er the morning fleet? Too fast have those young days faded That, even in sorrow, were sweet? Does Time with his cold wing wither Each feeling that once was dear? Then, child of misfortune, come hither, I’ll weep with thee, tear for tear. Has love to that […]...
38. Veteran Sirens The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now To laugh at them, were she to see them here, So brave and so alert for learning how To fence with reason for another year. Age offers a far comelier diadem Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace, When time’s malicious mercy cautions them To […]...
39. Room 4: The Painter Chap He gives me such a bold and curious look, That young American across the way, As if he’d like to put me in a book (Fancies himself a poet, so they say.) Ah well! He’ll make no “document” of me. I lock my door. Ha! ha! Now none shall see. . . . Pictures, just […]...
40. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...