The Father Of Toads

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1. Toads Revisited Walking around in the park Should feel better than work: The lake, the sunshine, The grass to lie on, Blurred playground noises Beyond black-stockinged nurses – Not a bad place to be. Yet it doesn’t suit me. Being one of the men You meet of an afternoon: Palsied old step-takers, Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters, […]...
2. Toads Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison – Just for paying a few bills! That’s out of proportion. Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, […]...
3. Sonnet XII: That Learned Father To the Soul That learned Father, who so firmly proves The Soul of man immortal and divine, And doth the several offices define: Anima – Gives her that name, as she the Body moves; Amor – Then is she Love, embracing charity; Animus – Moving a Will in us, it is the Mind Mens – […]...
4. My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in […]...
5. "Think as I think," said a man “Think as I think,” said a man, “Or you are abominably wicked; You are a toad.” And after I had thought of it, I said, “I will, then, be a toad.”...
6. The Child Is Father To The Man ‘The child is father to the man.’ How can he be? The words are wild. Suck any sense from that who can: ‘The child is father to the man.’ No; what the poet did write ran, ‘The man is father to the child.’ ‘The child is father to the man!’ How can he be? The […]...
7. Father My father knows the proper way The nation should be run; He tells us children every day Just what should now be done. He knows the way to fix the trusts, He has a simple plan; But if the furnace needs repairs, We have to hire a man. My father, in a day or two […]...
8. MY FATHER I had a father once, the records say. He has gone away down the long avenue Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist Of his breath, his firm signature no more. No more holding down his hat in the wind, Running to catch the last post, he has gone Beyond the wind-shaped stones on […]...
9. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
10. The Christening What shall I call My dear little dormouse? His eyes are small, But his tail is e-nor-mouse. I sometimes call him Terrible John, ‘Cos his tail goes on – And on – And on. And I sometimes call him Terrible Jack, ‘Cos his tail goes on to the end of his back. And I sometimes […]...
11. Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; Contrariwise, my blood runs cold When little boys go by. For little boys as little boys, No special hate I carry, But now and then they grow to men, And when they do, they marry. No matter how they tarry, Eventually they marry. […]...
12. My Father The memory of my father is wrapped up in White paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits Out of his hat, he drew love from his small body, And the rivers of his hands Overflowed with good deeds....
13. Come up from the Fields, Father 1 COME up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete; And come to the front door, mother-here’s a letter from thy dear son. 2 Lo, ’tis autumn; Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind; Where apples ripe in […]...
14. Far from Love the Heavenly Father Far from Love the Heavenly Father Leads the Chosen Child, Oftener through Realm of Briar Than the Meadow mild. Oftener by the Claw of Dragon Than the Hand of Friend Guides the Little One predestined To the Native Land....
15. Why Washington Retreated 1775 Said Congress to George Washington: “To set this country free, You’ll have to whip the Britishers And chase them o’er the sea.” “Oh, very well,” said Washington, “I’ll do the best I can. I’ll slam and bang those Britishers And whip them to a man.” 1777 Said Congress to George Washington: “The people all […]...
16. Memory Of My Father Every old man I see Reminds me of my father When he had fallen in love with death One time when sheaves were gathered. That man I saw in Gardner Street Stumbled on the kerb was one, He stared at me half-eyed, I might have been his son. And I remember the musician Faltering over […]...
17. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
18. A Hymn to God the Father Hear me, O God! A broken heart Is my best part. Use still thy rod, That I may prove Therein thy Love. If thou hadst not Been stern to me, But left me free, I had forgot Myself and thee. For sin’s so sweet, As minds ill-bent Rarely repent, Until they meet Their punishment. Who […]...
19. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
20. Father and Son Now in the suburbs and the falling light I followed him, and now down sandy road Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet Curdle of fields, where the plums Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by one. Mile after mile I followed, with skimming feet, After the secret master of my blood, Him, steeped in […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. Lobster For Lunch His face was like a lobster red, His legs were white as mayonnaise: “I’ve had a jolly lunch,” he said, That Englishman of pleasant ways. “Thy do us well at our hotel: In England food is dull these days.” “We had a big langouste for lunch. I almost ate the whole of it. And now […]...
23. Father He never made a fortune, or a noise In the world where men are seeking after fame; But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys Who loved the very ground on which he trod. They thought him just little short of God; Oh you should have heard the way they said his name […]...
24. Another Acrostic ( In the style of Father William ) “Are you deaf, Father William!” the young man said, “Did you hear what I told you just now? “Excuse me for shouting! Don’t waggle your head “Like a blundering, sleepy old cow! “A little maid dwelling in Wallington Town, “Is my friend, so I beg to remark: “Do you think she’d be pleased if a […]...
25. Holy Sonnet XVI: Father, Part Of His Double Interest Father, part of his double interest Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me, His jointure in the knotty Trinity He keeps, and gives to me his death’s conquest. This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest, Was from the world’s beginning slain, and he Hath made two Wills which with the Legacy […]...
26. Sonnet 37: As a decrepit father takes delight As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, or all, or more, Entitled in thy parts, do crownèd […]...
27. Two Strangers Breakfast THE LAW says you and I belong to each other, George. The law says you are mine and I am yours, George. And there are a million miles of white snowstorms, a million furnaces of hell, Between the chair where you sit and the chair where I sit. The law says two strangers shall eat […]...
28. The Wilderness Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes, And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water; There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. There […]...
29. On The Death of a Father I was schooled well before he died, able at least To feel what others felt when their fathers Were deceased. Able but not willing And not without despair to glimpse the man Who’d hide the truth of just how much he cared. My argent truth was fulsome gloom, Moribund and drear, my face a patent […]...
30. Sonnet XLI: Why Do I Speak of Joy Love’s Lunacy Why do I speak of joy, or write of love, When my heart is the very den of horror, And in my soul the pains of Hell I prove, With all his torments and infernal terror? What should I say? What yet remains to do? My brain is dry with weeping all too […]...
31. The Englishman St George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon He drank a pint of English ale Out of an English flagon. For though he fast right readily In hair-shirt or in mail, It isn’t safe to give him cakes Unless you give him ale. St George he was for England, And right […]...
32. On Being Born The Same Exact Day Of The Same Exact Year As Boy George We must have clamored for the same mother, hurried for the same womb. I know it now as I read that my birthday is his. Since the first time I saw his picture, I sensed something- And with a fierce bonding and animosity Began following his career. Look where I am and look where he […]...
33. Father The long lines of diesels Groan toward evening Carrying off the breath Of the living. The face of your house Is black, It is your face, black And fire bombed In the first street wars, A black tooth planted in the earth Of Michigan And bearing nothing, And the earth is black, Sick on used […]...
34. Boy and Father THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer. The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn. Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books. The rain beats […]...
35. O Cool Is the Valley Now O cool is the valley now And there, love, will we go For many a choir is singing now Where Love did sometime go. And hear you not the thrushes calling, Calling us away? O cool and pleasant is the valley And there, love, will we stay....
36. To God the Father To the little, pitiful God I make my prayer, The God with the long grey beard And flowing robe fastened with a hempen girdle Who sits nodding and muttering on the all-too-big throne Of Heaven. What a long, long time, dear God, since you set the Stars in their places, Girded the earth with the […]...
37. Father And Child She hears me strike the board and say That she is under ban Of all good men and women, Being mentioned with a man That has the worst of all bad names; And thereupon replies That his hair is beautiful, Cold as the March wind his eyes....
38. To Her Father with Some Verses Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, If worth in me or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same Than may your worthy self from whom it came? The principal might yield a greater sum, Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; My stock’s so small I know not […]...
39. An Ideal Father An ideal father: Doesn’t smoke Doesn’t scold Doesn’t fuss Doesn’t test Doesn’t punish Doesn’t upset Doesn’t bore Doesn’t forbid Doesn’t spoil Doesn’t mind Doesn’t compare Doesn’t label Doesn’t doubt Doesn’t neglect Doesn’t exist....
40. Sonnet IV Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town’s tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars […]...