The Snakes of September

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1. Lizards And Snakes On the summer road that ran by our front porch Lizards and snakes came out to sun. It was hot as a stove out there, enough to scorch A buzzard’s foot. Still, it was fun To lie in the dust and spy on them. Near but remote, They snoozed in the carriage ruts, a smile […]...
2. On Quitting How much grit do you think you’ve got? Can you quit a thing that you like a lot? You may talk of pluck; it’s an easy word, And where’er you go it is often heard; But can you tell to a jot or guess Just how much courage you now possess? You may stand to […]...
3. September Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days Gleaned by the year in autumn’s harvest ways, With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, Some crimson poppy of a late delight Atoning in its splendor for the flight Of summer blooms and joys­ This is September....
4. September We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold: No clock counts this. When kisses are repeated and the arms hold There is no telling where time is. It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still: Behind the eye a star, Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell Time is nowhere. We stand; […]...
5. The Andante of Snakes They weave a slow andante as in sleep, Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white; With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keep A treachery of silence; infinite Ancestral angers brood in these dull eyes Where the long-lineaged venom of the snake Meditates evil; woven intricacies Of Oriental arabesque awake, Unfold, expand, contract, and raise […]...
6. The Castle All through that summer at ease we lay, And daily from the turret wall We watched the mowers in the hay And the enemy half a mile away They seemed no threat to us at all. For what, we thought, had we to fear With our arms and provender, load on load, Our towering battlements, […]...
7. September 1 The golden-rod is yellow; 2 The corn is turning brown; 3 The trees in apple orchards 4 With fruit are bending down. 5 The gentian’s bluest fringes 6 Are curling in the sun; 7 In dusty pods the milkweed 8 Its hidden silk has spun. 9 The sedges flaunt their harvest, 10 In every […]...
8. September 22 It’s the day of the ram And the head of the year Rosh Ha’Shanah at Services I sat next to Mel Torme who outshone All comers with his bar Mitzvah heroics while on My left is Barnett Newman Big talker whose favorite Subjects include the horses And the stock market he Knows the odds the […]...
9. September On Jessore Road Millions of babies watching the skies Bellies swollen, with big round eyes On Jessore Road long bamboo huts Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts Millions of fathers in rain Millions of mothers in pain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of sisters nowhere to go One Million aunts are dying for bread One Million […]...
10. Little-oh dear See, what a wonderful garden is here, Planted and trimmed for my Little-Oh-Dear! Posies so gaudy and grass of such brown – Search ye the country and hunt ye the town And never ye’ll meet with a garden so queer As this one I’ve made for my Little-Oh-Dear! Marigolds white and buttercups blue, Lilies all […]...
11. Work and Play The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer, A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage, A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air. But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust In shimmering exhaust Searching to slake Its fever in ocean Will play and be idle or else it will bust. The swallow […]...
12. Blighters The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din; ‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’ I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home’, And there’d be […]...
13. September I, from a window where the Meuse is wide, Looked eastward out to the September night; The men that in the hopeless battle died Rose, and deployed, and stationed for the fight; A brumal army, vague and ordered large For mile on mile by some pale general,- I saw them lean by companies to the […]...
14. The Halt Before Rome September 1867 Is it so, that the sword is broken, Our sword, that was halfway drawn? Is it so, that the light was a spark, That the bird we hailed as the lark Sang in her sleep in the dark, And the song we took for a token Bore false witness of dawn? Spread in the sight […]...
15. She is Far From the Land She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers are round her, sighing; But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, For her heart in his grave is lying. She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Every note which he loved awaking; Ah! little they think, who […]...
16. On A Cape May Warbler Who Flew Against My Window She’s stopped in her southern tracks Brought haply to this hard knock When she shoots from the tall spruce And snaps her neck on the glass. From the fall grass I gather her And give her to my silent children Who give her a decent burial Under the dogwood in the garden. They lay their […]...
17. Ourselves were wed one summer dear Ourselves were wed one summer dear Your Vision was in June And when Your little Lifetime failed, I wearied too of mine And overtaken in the Dark Where You had put me down By Some one carrying a Light I too received the Sign. ‘Tis true Our Futures different lay Your Cottage faced the sun […]...
18. North Haven I can make out the rigging of a schooner A mile off; I can count The new cones on the spruce. It is so still The pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky No clouds except for one long, carded horse№s tail. The islands haven’t shifted since last summer, Even if I like to […]...
19. 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 In the hour of credulity. How your misfortune came out clearly To us at twenty. At the gingerbread casino, How innocent […]...
20. Beautiful Rothesay Beautiful Rothesay, your scenery is most grand, You cannot be surpassed in fair Scotland. Tis healthy for holiday makers, to go there, For the benefit of their health, by inhaling the pure air And to hear the innocent birds, on a fine Summer day, Carolling their sweet songs, so lively and gay, Therefore, holiday makers, […]...
21. Female Fashions for 1799 A form, as any taper, fine ; A head like half-pint bason ; Where golden cords, and bands entwine, As rich as fleece of JASON. A pair of shoulders strong and wide, Like country clown enlisting ; Bare arms long dangling by the side, And shoes of ragged listing! Cravats like towels, thick and broad, […]...
22. September 1961 This is the year the old ones, The old great ones Leave us alone on the road. The road leads to the sea. We have the words in our pockets, Obscure directions. The old ones Have taken away the light of their presence, We see it moving away over a hill Off to one side. […]...
23. Late September Tang of fruitage in the air; Red boughs bursting everywhere; Shimmering of seeded grass; Hooded gentians all a’mass. Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind Tearing off the husky rind, Blowing feathered seeds to fall By the sun-baked, sheltering wall. Beech trees in a golden haze; Hardy sumachs all ablaze, Glowing through the silver birches. How […]...
24. September 1913 What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they […]...
25. September's Baccalaureate September’s Baccalaureate A combination is Of Crickets Crows and Retrospects And a dissembling Breeze That hints without assuming An Innuendo sear That makes the Heart put up its Fun And turn Philosopher....
26. September Song born 19.6.32 – deported 24.9.42 Undesirable you may have been, untouchable You were not. Not forgotten Or passed over at the proper time. As estimated, you died. Things marched, Sufficient, to that end. Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented Terror, so many routine cries. (I have made An elegy for myself it Is true) […]...
27. September, The First Day Of School I My child and I hold hands on the way to school, And when I leave him at the first-grade door He cries a little but is brave; he does Let go. My selfish tears remind me how I cried before that door a life ago. I may have had a hard time letting go. […]...
28. The September Gale I’M not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing! It came as quarrels sometimes do, When […]...
29. Nimrod in September When half the drowsy world’s a-bed And misty morning rises red, With jollity of horn and lusty cheer, Young Nimrod urges on his dwindling rout; Along the yellowing coverts we can hear His horse’s hoofs thud hither and about: In mulberry coat he rides and makes Huge clamour in the sultry brakes....
30. The Day Is A Poem (September 19, 1939) This morning Hitler spoke in Danzig, we hear his voice. A man of genius: that is, of amazing Ability, courage, devotion, cored on a sick child’s soul, Heard clearly through the dog wrath, a sick child Wailing in Danzig; invoking destruction and wailing at it. Here, the day was extremely hot; about noon A south […]...
31. Two Look at Two Love and forgetting might have carried them A little further up the mountain side With night so near, but not much further up. They must have halted soon in any case With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness; When they were halted by a […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. The Gardener The gardener does not love to talk, He makes me keep the gravel walk; And when he puts his tools away, He locks the door and takes the key. Away behind the currant row Where no one else but cook may go, Far in the plots, I see him dig Old and serious, brown and […]...
34. The wind (THE TALE) Cometh the Wind from the garden, fragrant and full of sweet singing Under my tree where I sit cometh the Wind to confession. “Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing; Told I my love in those songs, and […]...
35. The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland He stood among a crowd at Dromahair; His heart hung all upon a silken dress, And he had known at last some tenderness, Before earth took him to her stony care; But when a man poured fish into a pile, It Seemed they raised their little silver heads, And sang what gold morning or evening […]...
36. The Rose A ROSE, as fair as ever saw the North, Grew in a little garden all alone; A sweeter flower did Nature ne’er put forth, Nor fairer garden yet was never known: The maidens danced about it morn and noon, And learned bards of it their ditties made; The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon Water’d […]...
37. In a Garden When the gardener has gone this garden Looks wistful and seems waiting an event. It is so spruce, a metaphor of Eden And even more so since the gardener went, Quietly godlike, but of course, he had Not made me promise anything and I Had no one tempting me to make the bad Choice. Yet […]...
38. The Ever-Patient Woman In the flowing sap In her growing fever Parting her veils Cracking out of her shells Sliding out of her skins The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Life In her volcanoes In her orchards Seeking solidity and measure Clasping her most tender flesh Straining every fine-honed fiber The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Light....
39. Freedom And Love How delicious is the winning Of a kiss at love’s beginning, When two mutual hearts are sighing For the knot there’s no untying! Yet remember, ‘Midst our wooing, Love has bliss, but Love has ruing; Other smiles may make you fickle, Tears for other charms may trickle. Love he comes, and Love he tarries, Just […]...
40. Love Among The Ruins I Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop As they crop – Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country’s very capital, its prince Ages since Held his […]...