Blackberry-Picking

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1. Jerusalem and redcurrants my jerusalem My newfoundland Juicy as redcurrants With their sweet tang taste My desire My holy requirement Caught in a cleft of mountain Ever clambered towards My yearning My place of the blood-red fruit My want at the first sherd For the full-bosomed bowl My jerusalem My sinewy prayer Where dust and the dry rock […]...
2. After Apple-Picking My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I […]...
3. On The Night Train Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice calling – yet so warm, and yet so cold: “I’m the Mother-Bush […]...
4. The Bush Girl So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn – You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect That you were glad to be gone; You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her By the homestead receding from view, And you breathed […]...
5. Blackberry Eating I love to go out in late September Among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries To eat blackberries for breakfast, The stalks very prickly, a penalty They earn for knowing the black art Of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries Fall almost unbidden to my […]...
6. Poem Written At Morning A sunny day’s complete Poussiniana Divide it from itself. It is this or that And it is not. By metaphor you paint A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit, A fruit for pewter, thorned and palmed and blue, To be served by men of ice. The senses paint By metaphor. The juice was […]...
7. Old Man Old Man, or Lads-Love, – in the name there’s nothing To one that knows not Lads-Love, or Old Man, The hoar green feathery herb, almost a tree, Growing with rosemary and lavender. Even to one that knows it well, the names Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is: At least, what that is clings […]...
8. Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York,1957 Once, in summer In the blueberries, I fell asleep, and woke When a deer stumbled against me. I guess She was so busy with her own happiness She had grown careless And was just wandering along Listening To the wind as she leaned down To lip up the sweetness. So, there we were With nothing […]...
9. Spring Quiet Gone were but the Winter, Come were but the Spring, I would go to a covert Where the birds sing; Where in the whitethorn Singeth a thrush, And a robin sings In the holly-bush. Full of fresh scents Are the budding boughs Arching high over A cool green house: Full of sweet scents, And whispering […]...
10. Dolor of Autumn The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn And the snore of the night in my ear. For suddenly, flush-fallen, All my life, in a rush Of shedding away, has left me Naked, exposed on the bush. I, on the bush of the globe, Like a […]...
11. The Barberry Bush The bush that has most briers and bitter fruit, Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red, Its sweetened berries will thy palate suit, And thou may’st find e’en there a homely bread. Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide, Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in Spring; And straggling e’en upon the […]...
12. The Crossed Apple I’ve come to give you fruit from out my orchard, Of wide report. I have trees there that bear me many apples. Of every sort: Clear, streaked; red and russet; green and golden; Sour and sweet. This apple’s from a tree yet unbeholden, Where two kinds meet,- So that this side is red without a […]...
13. O Singer in Brown O, singer in brown! O, bird o’ th’ morn! O, heart of delight In th’ deep o’ th’ thorn! Glad is thy song Thou joy o’ th’ morn, Thou palpitant throat In the heart o’ th’ thorn! Thy song of the nest, O, sweet o’ th’ morn! A nest and an egg In the thick […]...
14. Sweet Love, Sweet Thorn, When Lightly To My Heart Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain, And lie disheveled in the grass apart, A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain, While rainy evening drips to misty night, And misty night to cloudy morning clears, And clouds disperse across the gathering light, And […]...
15. Pigs Us all on sore cement was we. Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush Under that pole the lightning’s tied to. No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy. Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp. We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush. Us all fuckers then. And Big, huh? Tusked […]...
16. Winter Promises Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby’s buttocks, Eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, Purple neon flawless glistening Peppers, pole beans fecund and fast Growing as Jack’s Viagra-sped stalk, Big as truck tire zinnias that mildew Will never wilt, roses weighing down A bush never touched by black spot, Brave little fruit trees shouldering up Their spotless ornaments […]...
17. Philomela The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making, And, mournfully bewailing, Her throat in tunes expresseth What grief her breast oppresseth, For Tereus’ force on her chaste will prevailing. O Philomela […]...
18. A Tree Song (A. D. 1200) Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn. Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs, (All of a Midsummer morn!) Surely we sing no little thing, In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn! Oak of the […]...
19. Pickle Belt The fruit rolled by all day. They prayed the cogs would creep; They thought about Saturday pay, And Sunday sleep. Whatever he smelled was good: The fruit and flesh smells mixed. There beside him she stood, And he, perplexed; He, in his shrunken britches, Eyes rimmed with pickle dust, Prickling with all the itches Of […]...
20. The Robbers Alas! I see that thrushes three Are ravishing my old fig tree, In whose green shade I smoked my pipe And waited for the fruit to ripe; From green to purple softly swell Then drop into my lap to tell That it is succulently sweet And excellent to eat. And now I see the crimson […]...
21. LOVE'S DISTRESSES WHO will hear me? Whom shall I lament to? Who would pity me that heard my sorrows? Ah, the lip that erst so many raptures Used to taste, and used to give responsive, Now is cloven, and it pains me sorely; And it is not thus severely wounded By my mistress having caught me fiercely, […]...
22. The Cornel Grove Bear fruit red and green Again as if flower further open Hill at if remain guest Place here cornel cup When bearing fruit it’s red and green, As if the flowers were budding again. If a guest remains on the hill, Set a cup of cornel here....
23. Sonnet FLESH, I have knocked at many a dusty door, Gone down full many a midnight lane, Probed in old walls and felt along the floor, Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane, But useless all, though sometimes when the moon Was full in heaven and the sea was full, Along my body’s alleys came a […]...
24. November There is wind where the rose was, Cold rain where sweet grass was, And clouds like sheep Stream o’er the steep Grey skies where the lark was. Nought warm where your hand was, Nought gold where your hair was, But phantom, forlorn, Beneath the thorn, Your ghost where your face was. Cold wind where your […]...
25. Wash All day the blanket snapped and swelled On the line, roused by a hot spring wind…. From there it witnessed the first sparrow, Early flies lifting their sticky feet, And a green haze on the south-sloping hills. Clouds rose over the mountain….At dusk I took the blanket in, and we slept, Restless, under its fragrant […]...
26. The Punisher I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells, Scooped them up with small, iron words, Dripping over the runnels. The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys Glitter and spill. Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came Hovering about […]...
27. A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight They mouth love’s language. Gnash The thirteen teeth Your lean jaws grin with. Lash Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh. Love’s breath in you is stale, worded or sung, As sour as cat’s breath, Harsh of tongue. This grey that stares Lies not, stark skin and bone. Leave greasy lips their kissing. […]...
28. The Lilly The modest Rose puts forth a thorn: The humble Sheep. a threatning horn: While the Lily white, shall in Love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright...
29. A Sight in Camp A SIGHT in camp in the day-break grey and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended lying, Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen […]...
30. Pastoral The Dove walks with sticky feet Upon the green crowns of the almond tree, Its feathers smeared over with warmth Like honey That dips lazily down into the shadow… Anyone standing in that orchard. So filled with peace and sleep, Would hardly have noticed the hill Nearby With its three strange wooden arms Lifted above […]...
31. Fruit of the Flower My father is a quiet man With sober, steady ways; For simile, a folded fan; His nights are like his days. My mother’s life is puritan, No hint of cavalier, A pool so calm you’re sure it can Have little depth to fear. And yet my father’s eyes can boast How full his life has […]...
32. Waxwings Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings Chat on a February berry bush In sun, and I am one. Such merriment and such sobriety The small wild fruit on the tall stalk Was this not always my true style? Above an elegance of snow, beneath A silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four Birds. Can you mistake […]...
33. Summer Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come, For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom, And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest, And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast; She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair, And […]...
34. Ballad of Another Ophelia Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, Lamps in a wash of rain! Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, Oh tears on the window pane! Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples, Full of disappointment and of rain, Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow […]...
35. So sweet love seemed that April morn So sweet love seemed that April morn, When first we kissed beside the thorn, So strangely sweet, it was not strange We thought that love could never change. But I can tell let truth be told That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is naught to see, So delicate his motions […]...
36. Sonnet 10 I have sought Happiness, but it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit, And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit More fair of outward hue than sweet within. Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment Of battling hosts that conquer or recoil, There only, chastened by fatigue and toil, I knew what came […]...
37. Lines With many a pause and oft reverted eye I climb the Coomb’s ascent: sweet songsters near Warble in shade their wild-wood melody: Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear. Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock That on green plots o’er precipices browze: From the deep fissures of the naked rock The Yew-tree […]...
38. Killers I AM singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs, Held where he cannot move: Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for shining teeth, Sharp eyes, hard legs, And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs […]...
39. The Nightingale's Nest Up this green woodland-ride let’s softly rove, And list the nightingale – she dwells just here. Hush! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear The noise might drive her from her home of love ; For here I’ve heard her many a merry year- At morn, at eve, nay, all the live-long day, As though […]...
40. 30. Song-Composed in August NOW westlin winds and slaught’ring guns Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather; The moorcock springs on whirring wings Amang the blooming heather: Now waving grain, wide o’er the plain, Delights the weary farmer; And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night, To muse upon my charmer. The partridge loves the fruitful fells, The plover loves […]...