Pensive and Faltering

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1. Because My Faltering Feet Because my faltering feet may fail to dare The first descendant of the steps of Hell Give me the Word in time that triumphs there. I too must pass into the misty hollow Where all our living laughter stops: and hark! The tiny stuffless voices of the dark Have called me, called me, till I […]...
2. Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, I Heard the Mother of All PENSIVE, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of All, Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battle-fields gazing; (As the last gun ceased-but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d;) As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk’d: Absorb them well, O my earth, she cried-I charge […]...
3. The Fortune-Teller Down in the valley come meet me to-night, And I’ll tell you your fortune truly As ever ’twas told, by the new-moon’s light, To a young maiden, shining as newly. But, for the world, let no one be nigh, Lest haply the stars should deceive me, Such secrets between you and me and the sky […]...
4. An Autograph I write my name as one, On sands by waves o’errun Or winter’s frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion’s blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence […]...
5. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
6. When I read the Book WHEN I read the book, the biography famous, And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life; Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or […]...
7. The Soul's Superior instants The Soul’s Superior instants Occur to Her alone When friend and Earth’s occasion Have infinite withdrawn Or She Herself ascended To too remote a Height For lower Recognition Than Her Omnipotent This Mortal Abolition Is seldom but as fair As Apparition subject To Autocratic Air Eternity’s disclosure To favorites a few Of the Colossal substance […]...
8. A Riddle Song THAT which eludes this verse and any verse, Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind, Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly, Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss, Open but still a secret, […]...
9. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
10. Facts by our side are never sudden Facts by our side are never sudden Until they look around And then they scare us like a spectre Protruding from the Ground The height of our portentous Neighbor We never know Till summoned to his recognition By an Adieu Adieu for whence The sage cannot conjecture The bravest die As ignorant of their resumption […]...
11. Civilian and Soldier My apparition rose from the fall of lead, Declared, ‘I am a civilian.’ It only served To aggravate your fright. For how could I Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is Your quarrel of this world. You stood still For both eternities, and […]...
12. The only Ghost I ever saw The only Ghost I ever saw Was dressed in Mechlin so He wore no sandal on his foot And stepped like flakes of snow His Gait was soundless, like the Bird But rapid like the Roe His fashions, quaint, Mosaic Or haply, Mistletoe His conversation seldom His laughter, like the Breeze That dies away in […]...
13. Said The Poet To The Analyst My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget who one words is able […]...
14. WITHOUT THE WHEREWITHALL To Thushari Williams Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured In the care home, your care-worn comings home To sit with Brenda Williams, poиte maudit sang pur, Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive And turn them into a book, the living […]...
15. "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 […]...
16. Longevity Said Brown: ‘I can’t afford to die For I have bought annuity, And every day of living I Have money coming in to me: While others toil to make their bread I make mine by not being dead.’ Said Jones: ‘I can’t afford to die, For I have books and books to write. I do […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. O Living Always-Always Dying O LIVING always-always dying! O the burials of me, past and present! O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever! O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not-I am content;) O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at, where I cast […]...
19. The Line-Gang Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread. They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought […]...
20. The Living Beauty I bade, because the wick and oil are spent And frozen are the channels of the blood, My discontented heart to draw content From beauty that is cast out of a mould In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears, Appears, but when wc have gone is gone again, Being more indifferent to our solitude […]...
21. When I am dead, my dearest When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the […]...
22. An Old Man's Thought of School AN old man’s thought of School; An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot. Now only do I know you! O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass! And these I see-these sparkling eyes, These stores of mystic meaning-these young lives, Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships-immortal ships! […]...
23. Talisman it is written The act of writing is Holy words are Sacred and your breath Brings out the God in them I write these words Quickly repeat them Softly to myself This talisman for you Fold this prayer Around your neck fortify Your back with these Whispers May you walk ever Loved and in love […]...
24. In a Disused Graveyard The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: “The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay.” So sure of death the […]...
25. On Living I Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to such a degree that, for […]...
26. Joy to have merited the Pain Joy to have merited the Pain To merit the Release Joy to have perished every step To Compass Paradise Pardon to look upon thy face With these old fashioned Eyes Better than new could be for that Though bought in Paradise Because they looked on thee before And thou hast looked on them Prove Me […]...
27. Small Frogs Killed On The Highway Still, I would leap too Into the light, If I had the chance. It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field On the other side of the road. They crouch there, too, faltering in terror And take strange wing. Many Of the dead never moved, but many Of the dead are alive forever […]...
28. The Daylight is Dying The daylight is dying Away in the west, The wild birds are flying In silence to rest; In leafage and frondage Where shadows are deep, They pass to its bondage – The kingdom of sleep. And watched in their sleeping By stars in the height, They rest in your keeping, Oh, wonderful night. When night […]...
29. GAUGUIN IN THE SOUTH SEAS They have my own fear of the dark, Tupapau – spirits of the dead they call it; Returning late with oil I found fear of it Had spread my vabine naked on the bed. Manao-Taipapau means ‘she thinks of the spectre’ Or ‘the spectre is thinking of her’, either way She is afraid; I marvel […]...
30. Sardis (Revelations, iii. 1-6) “Write to Sardis,” saith the Lord, “And write what He declares, He whose Spirit, and whose word, Upholds the seven stars: All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay’d; Thou art call’d a living church, But thou art cold and dead. “Watch, remember, seek, and strive, Exert […]...
31. Daylight is Dying The daylight is dying Away in the west, The wild birds are flying In silence to rest; In leafage and frondage Where shadows are deep, They pass to its bondage The kingdom of sleep And watched in their sleeping By stars in the height, They rest in your keeping, O wonderful night. When night doth […]...
32. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
33. The Poets O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns […]...
34. Lucifer in Starlight On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands […]...
35. Are You the New person, drawn toward Me? ARE you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning-I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction? Do […]...
36. Of Him I Love Day and Night OF him I love day and night, I dream’d I heard he was dead; And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in that place; And I dream’d I wander’d, searching among burial-places, to find him; And I found that every place was a burial-place; The houses full […]...
37. In Memoriam Paul Celan Lay these words into the dead man’s grave Next to the almonds and black cherries – Tiny skulls and flowering blood-drops, eyes, And Thou, O bitterness that pillows his head. Lay these words on the dead man’s eyelids Like eyebrights, like medieval trumpet flowers That will flourish, this time, in the shade. Let the beheaded […]...
38. 1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because ’tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not […]...
39. O Sun of Real Peace O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend! O so amazing and broad-up there resplendent, darting and burning! O vision prophetic, stagger’d with […]...
40. Prayer of Columbus A BATTER’D, wreck’d old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, Pent by the sea, and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d, and nigh to death, I take my way along the island’s edge, Venting a heavy heart. I am too full of woe! Haply, I […]...