My Library

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1. My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
2. A Library Of Skulls Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead. Here’s a skull Who, before he lost his fleshy parts And lower bones, once Walked beside a river (we’re in the poetry section Now) his head full of love And loneliness; and this smaller skull, In the sociology stacks, […]...
3. The End Of The Library When the coal Gave out, we began Burning the books, one by one; First the set Of Bulwer-Lytton And then the Walter Scott. They gave a lot of warmth. Toward the end, in February, flames Consumed the Greek Tragedians and Baudelaire, Proust, Robert Burton And the Po-Chu-i. Ice Thickened on the sills. More for the […]...
4. Children Selecting Books In A Library With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright. The child’s head, bent to the book-colored shelves, Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering, Moving in blind grace… yet from the mural, Care The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist, Seizes the baby hero by the hair And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children, […]...
5. For Siggy & Bill I awoke with two poets in my bed, Books I chose from the library, possibly Intent on a swift read while schmoosing For poetic leads. My motives are appallingly Plain, a head bereft of fine ideas although Biographies are not an easy reading. I picked Siegfried Sassoon instinctively (not For any cogent reasons, I liked […]...
6. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
7. View Of The Capitol From The Library Of Congress Moving from left to left, the light Is heavy on the Dome, and coarse. One small lunette turns it aside And blankly stares off to the side Like a big white old wall-eyed horse. On the east steps the Air Force Band In uniforms of Air Force blue Is playing hard and loud, but queer […]...
8. Room Ghost Though elegance I ill afford, My living-room is green and gold; The former tenant was a lord Who died of drinking, I am told. I fancy he was rather bored; I don’t think he was over old. And where on books I dully browse, And gaze in rapture at the sea, My predecessor world carouse […]...
9. The Land of Story-Books At evening when the lamp is lit, Around the fire my parents sit; They sit at home and talk and sing, And do not play at anything. Now, with my little gun, I crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back. There, in the […]...
10. Futility Dusting my books I spent a busy day: Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread, But modern volumes, classics in their way, Whose makers now are numbered with the dead; Men of a generation more than mine, With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine. I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success, Grudging them not the […]...
11. Unto my Books so good to turn Unto my Books so good to turn Far ends of tired Days It half endears the Abstinence And Pain is missed in Praise As Flavors cheer Retarded Guests With Banquettings to be So Spices stimulate the time Till my small Library It may be Wilderness without Far feet of failing Men But Holiday excludes the […]...
12. Book Borrower I am a mild man, you’ll agree, But red my rage is, When folks who borrow books from me Turn down their pages. Or when a chap a book I lend, And find he’s loaned it Without permission to a friend – As if he owned it. But worst of all I hate those crooks […]...
13. The Last Supper Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, And the mouth so mocking gay, A wanton you to the finger-tips, Who break men’s hearts in play; A thing of dust I have striven for, Honour and manhood given for, Headlong to ruin driven for, And this is the last, you say. . . . Drinking your wine […]...
14. Chamfort THERE’S Chamfort. He’s a sample. Locked himself in his library with a gun, Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye. And this Chamfort knew how to write And thousands read his books on how to live, But he himself didn’t know How to die by force of his own hand see? They […]...
15. Four-Foot Shelf ‘Come, see,’ said he, ‘my four-foot shelf, A forty volume row; And every one I wrote myself, But that, of course, you know.’ I stared, I searched a memory dim, For though an author too, Somehow I’d never heard of him, None of his books I knew. Said I: ‘I’d like to borrow one, Fond […]...
16. Optimistic Man as a child he never plucked the wings off flies He didn’t tie tin cans to cats’ tails Or lock beetles in matchboxes Or stomp anthills He grew up And all those things were done to him I was at his bedside when he died He said read me a poem About the sun and […]...
17. R. T. S. L. (1917-1977) As for that other thing Which comes when the eyelid is glazed And the wax gleam From the unwrinkled forehead Asks no more questions Of the dry mouth, Whether they open the heart like a shirt To release a rage of swallows, Whether the brain Is a library for worms, On the instant of that […]...
18. Book Lover I keep collecting books I know I’ll never, never read; My wife and daughter tell me so, And yet I never head. “Please make me,” says some wistful tome, “A wee bit of yourself.” And so I take my treasure home, And tuck it in a shelf. And now my very shelves complain; They jam […]...
19. The Headliner And The Breadliner Moko, the Educated Ape is here, The pet of vaudeville, so the posters say, And every night the gaping people pay To see him in his panoply appear; To see him pad his paunch with dainty cheer, Puff his perfecto, swill champagne, and sway Just like a gentleman, yet all in play, Then bow himself […]...
20. My Madonna I haled me a woman from the street, Shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model’s seat And I painted her sitting there. I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been […]...
21. He Came To Read He came to read. Two or three books Are open; historians and poets. But he only read for ten minutes, And gave them up. He is dozing On the sofa. He is fully devoted to books But he is twenty-three years old, and he’s very handsome; And this afternoon love passed Through his ideal flesh, […]...
22. The Way I read a Letter's this The Way I read a Letter’s this ‘Tis first I lock the Door And push it with my fingers next For transport it be sure And then I go the furthest off To counteract a knock Then draw my little Letter forth And slowly pick the lock Then glancing narrow, at the Wall And narrow […]...
23. On Salathiel Pavy A child of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel Epitaphs: ii WEEP with me, all you that read This little story; And know, for whom a tear you shed Death’s self is sorry. ‘Twas a child that so did thrive In grace and feature, As Heaven and Nature seem’d to strive Which own’d the creature. Years he number’d […]...
24. Grumpy Grandpa Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails, As if they had been dipped in gore, I’d like to set you lugging pails And make you scrub the kitchen floor. I’m old and crotchety of course, And on this point my patience fails; I’d sue my old girl for divorce If she showed up with painted nails. Grand-daughter […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Schoolroom On A Wet Afternoon The unrelated paragraphs of morning Are forgotten now; the severed heads of kings Rot by the misty Thames; the roses of York And Lancaster are pressed between the leaves Of history; Negroes sleep in Africa. The complexities of simple interest lurk In inkwells and the brittle sticks of chalk: Afternoon is come and English Grammar. […]...
27. Tomes There is a section in my library for death And another for Irish history, A few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, And in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, The ones you can turn to anytime, When the night is going wrong Or when the day is full of empty […]...
28. Robinson The dog stops barking after Robinson has gone. His act is over. The world is a gray world, Not without violence, and he kicks under the grand piano, The nightmare chase well under way. The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall, Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black. Robinson alone provides the image […]...
29. The Glass On The Bar Three bushmen one morning rode up to an inn, And one of them called for the drinks with a grin; They’d only returned from a trip to the North, And, eager to greet them, the landlord came forth. He absently poured out a glass of Three Star. And set down that drink with the rest […]...
30. At The Door All actors look for them-the defining moments When what a character does is what he is. The script may say, He goes to the door And exits or She goes out the door stage left. But you see your fingers touching the doorknob, Closing around it, turning it As if by themselves. The latch slides […]...
31. The Great Recall I’ve wearied of so many things Adored in youthful days; Music no more my spirit wings, E’en when Master play. For stage and screen I have no heart, Great paintings leave me cold; Alas! I’ve lost the love of Art That raptured me of old. Only my love of books is left, Yet that begins […]...
32. Mischief Let those who’re fond of idle tricks, Of throwing stones, and hurling bricks, And all that sort of fun, Now hear a tale of idle Jim, That warning they may take by him, Nor do as he has done. In harmless sport or healthful play He did not pass his time away, Nor took his […]...
33. A Plain Life No idle gold since this fine sun, my friend, Is no mean miser, but doth freely spend. No prescious stones since these green mornings show, Without a charge, their pearls where’er I go. No lifeless books since birds with their sweet tongues Will read aloud to me their happier songs. No painted scenes since clouds […]...
34. Soap Suds This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a child. […]...
35. Old Trouper I was Mojeska’s leading man And famous parts I used to play, But now I do the best I can To earn my bread from day to day; Here in this Burg of Breaking Hears, Where one wins as a thousand fail, I play a score of scurvy parts Till Time writes Finis to my […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. FOR JAMES SIMMONS Sitting in outpatients With my own minor ills Dawn’s depression lifts To the lilt of amitryptilene, A double dose for a day’s journey To a distant ward. The word was out that Simmons Had died eighteen months after An aneurism at sixty seven. The meeting he proposed in his second letter Could never happen: a […]...
38. De Amicitiis Though care and strife Elsewhere be rife, Upon my word I do not heed ’em; In bed I lie With books hard by, And with increasing zest I read ’em. Propped up in bed, So much I’ve read Of musty tomes that I’ve a headful Of tales and rhymes Of ancient times, Which, wife declares, […]...
39. "Mike Teavee…&quot The most important thing we’ve learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set Or better still, just don’t install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare […]...
40. Television The most important thing we’ve learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set Or better still, just don’t install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare […]...