The Scissors-Grinder

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1. Cain and Abel Cain and Abel were brothers born. (Koop-la! Come along, cows!) One raised cattle and one raised corn. (Koop-la! Come along! Co-hoe!) And Cain he farmed by the river-side, So he did not care how much it dried. For he banked, and he sluiced, and he ditched and he led (And the Corn don’t care for […]...
2. The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky. The greatest wonder of the day, And a great beautification to the River Tay, Most beautiful to be seen, Near by Dundee […]...
3. Vegetable Swallow two smiles meet towards The child-wheel of my zeal The bloody baggage of creatures Made flesh in physical legends-lives The nimble stags storms cloud over Rain falls under the scissors of The dark hairdresser-furiously Swimming under the clashing arpeggios In the machine’s sap grass Grows around with sharp eyes Here the share of our caresses […]...
4. Blizzard Notes I DON’T blame the kettle drums-they are hungry. And the snare drums-I know what they want-they are empty too. And the harring booming bass drums-they are hungriest of all.. . . The howling spears of the Northwest die down. The lullabies of the Southwest get a chance, a mother song. A cradle moon rides out […]...
5. I see the Four-fold Man I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow. I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings, That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose; For Bacon and […]...
6. History History has to live with what was here, Clutching and close to fumbling all we had It is so dull and gruesome how we die, Unlike writing, life never finishes. Abel was finished; death is not remote, A flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic, His cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire, His baby crying all night […]...
7. Dillard Sissman The buzzards wheel slowly In wide circles, in a sky Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie Beating the grass into long waves. My kite is above the wind, Though now and then it wobbles, Like a man shaking his shoulders; And the tail […]...
8. The Other Under my bowels, yellow with smoke, It waits. Under my eyes, those milk bunnies, It waits. It is waiting. It is waiting. Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse. Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover. When truth comes spilling out like peas It hangs up the phone. When the child is soothed and resting on the […]...
9. A Truthful Song THE BRICKLAYER: I tell this tale, which is strictly true, Just by way of convincing you How very little, since things were made, Things have altered in building trade. A year ago, come the middle of March, We was building flats near the Marble Arch, When a thin young man with coal-black hair Came up […]...
10. Happiness A man and a woman lie on a white bed. It is morning. I think Soon they will waken. On the bedside table is a vase Of lilies; sunlight Pools in their throats. I watch him turn to her As though to speak her name But silently, deep in her mouth At the window ledge, […]...
11. Snarleyow This ‘appened in a battle to a batt’ry of the corps Which is first among the women an’ amazin’ first in war; An’ what the bloomin’ battle was I don’t remember now, But Two’s off-lead ‘e answered to the name o’ Snarleyow. Down in the Infantry, nobody cares; Down in the Cavalry, Colonel ‘e swears; […]...
12. Supposing that I should have the courage Supposing that I should have the courage To let a red sword of virtue Plunge into my heart, Letting to the weeds of the ground My sinful blood, What can you offer me? A gardened castle? A flowery kingdom? What? A hope? Then hence with your red sword of virtue....
13. Idylls Of The King: Song From The Marriage Of Geraint Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel thro’ sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. […]...
14. I Am There I come from there and remember, I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother And a house with many windows, I have brothers, friends and a prison. I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away. I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass. I have a moon […]...
15. Old David Smail He dreamed away his hours in school; He sat with such an absent air, The master reckoned him a fool, And gave him up in dull despair. When other lads were making hay You’d find him loafing by the stream; He’d take a book and slip away, And just pretend to fish. . . and […]...
16. Symbols A storm-beaten old watch-tower, A blind hermit rings the hour. All-destroying sword-blade still Carried by the wandering fool. Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade, Beauty and fool together laid....
17. Dirge for Two Veterans 1 THE last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath, On the pavement here-and there beyond, it is looking, Down a new-made double grave. 2 Lo! the moon ascending! Up from the east, the silvery round moon; Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon; Immense and silent moon. 3 I see a sad procession, […]...
18. On Prayer You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the color of ripe gold Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal Where […]...
19. The Fear A lantern light from deeper in the barn Shone on a man and woman in the door And threw their lurching shadows on a house Near by, all dark in every glossy window. A horse’s hoof pawed once the hollow floor, And the back of the gig they stood beside Moved in a little. The […]...
20. The Prayer of Miriam Cohen From the wheel and the drift of Things Deliver us, Good Lord, And we will face the wrath of Kings, The faggot and the sword! Lay not thy Works before our eyes Nor vex us with thy Wars, Lest we should feel the straining skies O’ertrod by trampling stars. Hold us secure behind the gates […]...
21. The Red Dance There was a girl Who danced in the city that night, That April 22nd, All along the Charles River. It was as if one hundred men were watching Or do I mean the one hundred eyes of God? The yellow patches in the sycamores Glowed like miniature flashlights. The shadows, the skin of them Were […]...
22. June The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead If the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half With dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square On the calendar. Perhaps the scissors were really Lawn mowers or hoes. Perhaps God’s calendar is Chinese. As first I didn’t […]...
23. Mirabeau Bridge Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine And our loves Must I remember them Joy came always after pain Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain Arm in arm let us stay face to face While below The bridge at our hands passes With eternal regards the wave so slow Let arriving night explain Days […]...
24. Hymn 136 Sincerity and hypocrisy; or, formality in worship. John 4:24; Ps. 139:23,24. God is a Spirit, just and wise, He sees our inmost mind; In vain to heav’n we raise our cries, And leave our souls behind. Nothing but truth before his throne With honor can appear; The painted hypocrites are known Through the disguise they […]...
25. The Poem It’s all in The sound. A song. Seldom a song. It should Be a song-made of Particulars, wasps, A gentian-something Immediate, open Scissors, a lady’s Eyes-waking Centrifugal, centripetal....
26. Jabberers I RISE out of my depths with my language. You rise out of your depths with your language. Two tongues from the depths, Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike, Fling their staccato tantalizations Into a wildcat jabber Over a gossamer web of unanswerables. The second and the third silence, […]...
27. Disarmament “Put up the sword!” The voice of Christ once more Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon’s roar, O’er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped With nameless dead; o’er cities starving slow Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe Down which a groaning diapason runs […]...
28. Ida Frickey Nothing in life is alien to you: I was a penniless girl from Summum Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. All the houses stood before me with closed doors And drawn shades I was barred out; I had no place or part in any of them. And I walked past the old […]...
29. The Wise Brothers FIRST VOICE So long adrift, so fast aground, What foam and ruin have we found – We, the Wise Brothers? Could heaven and earth be framed amiss, That we should land in fine like this- We, and no others? SECOND VOICE Convoyed by what accursèd thing Made we this evil reckoning – We, the Wise […]...
30. Metaphors Of A Magnifico Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village. This is old song That will not declare itself. . . Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a village. […]...
31. Beat! Beat! Drums! 1 BEAT! beat! drums!-Blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation; Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet-no happiness must he have now with his bride; Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his […]...
32. The Violent Space (Or When Your Sister Sleeps Around For Money) Exchange in greed the ungraceful signs. Thrust The thick notes between green apple breasts. Then the shadow of the devil descends, The violent space cries and angel eyes, Large and dark, retreat in innocence and in ice. (Run sister run-the Bugga man comes!) The violent space cries silently, Like you cried wide years ago In […]...
33. Three Ghosts THREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People. The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat Cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each Other thimbles. Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other As misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor, They sat […]...
34. The Bridge In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, Guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while Eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I Shall be crossing it shortly. […]...
35. To My Antenor My dear Antenor now give o’re, For my sake talk of Graves no more; Death is not in our power to gain, And is both wish’d and fear’d in vain Let’s be as angry as wee will, Grief sooner may distract then kill, And the unhappy often prove Death is as coy a thing as […]...
36. The World Some are the brothers of all humankind, And own them, whatsoever their estate; And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind With enmity for man’s unguarded fate. For some there is a music all day long Like flutes in Paradise, they are so glad; And there is hell’s eternal under-song Of curses and the cries […]...
37. Fixed Is The Doom FIXED is the doom; and to the last of years Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child, Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars. We also, love, forever dwell apart; With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph, The Unvaulted; as two great eagles that […]...
38. The Ballad of the Anti-Puritan They spoke of Progress spiring round, Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward It is not true to say I frowned, Or ran about the room and roared; I might have simply sat and snored I rose politely in the club And said, ‘I feel a little bored; Will someone take me to a pub?’ The […]...
39. The Minstrel Boy The Minstrel-Boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you’ll find him; His father’s sword he has girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him. “Land of song!” said the warrior-bard, “Though all the world betrays thee, One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard, One faithful harp shall praise thee!” […]...
40. Keepsake Mill Over the borders, a sin without pardon, Breaking the branches and crawling below, Out through the breach in the wall of the garden, Down by the banks of the river we go. Here is a mill with the humming of thunder, Here is the weir with the wonder of foam, Here is the sluice with […]...