Thinking of My Brothers in Shantung on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month

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1. Thinking Of A Friend At Night In this evil year, autumn comes early… I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters, The wind on my hat…And you? And you, my friend? You are standing maybe and seeing the sickle moon Move in a small arc over the forests And bivouac fire, red in the black valley. You are […]...
2. To Tu Fu from Shantung You ask how I spend my time I nestle against a treetrunk And listen to autumn winds In the pines all night and day. Shantung wine can’t get me drunk. The local poets bore me. My thoughts remain with you, Like the Wen River, endlessly flowing....
3. The Four Brothers MAKE war songs out of these; Make chants that repeat and weave. Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns; Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns. Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs, Going along, Going along, On the roads from San Antonio to […]...
4. XVII (Thinking, Tangling Shadows…) Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, Burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there! Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes, Taciturn miller, Night falls on you face downward, far from the city. Your presence is foreign, as strange to […]...
5. Ninth Inning He woke up in New York City on Valentine’s Day, Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm, Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate Said her life wasn’t working he looked stricken she said You’re all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he She […]...
6. Climbing High up in the apple tree climbing I go, With the sky above me, the earth below. Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair Which leads to the town I see shining up there. Climbing, climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the […]...
7. A Ninth Birthday Three times thrice hath winter’s rough white wing Crossed and curdled wells and streams with ice Since his birth whose praises love would sing Three times thrice. Earth nor sea bears flower nor pearl of price Fit to crown the forehead of my king, Honey meet to please him, balm, nor spice. Love can think […]...
8. The Double Ninth Festival To the tune of “Intoxicated Under the Shadow of Flowers” Light mists and heavy clouds, Melancholy the long dreary day. In the golden censer The burning incense is dying away. It is again time For the lovely Double-Ninth Festival; The coolness of midnight Penetrates my screen of sheer silk And chills my pillow of jade. […]...
9. At the sixty-ninth station (after hiroshige – stations of oi) Here at the sixty-ninth station Of the gregokaido road I have a sense of completion That is not completed yet The long journey to this moment Has many disparate paths Fragments of people within me Have stuttered their broken mantras What a bowl of uneasy pieces Litters the well […]...
10. Star Teachers EVEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires, The plumes of paradise, the dying light Rays through the fevered air in misty spires That vanish in the heights. These myriad eyes that look on me are mine; Wandering beneath them I have found again The ancient ample moment, the divine, The God-root within men. For this, […]...
11. THE FIRST MONTH OF THE YEAR A page of the ‘Kelmscott’ Chaucer Seen through out cottage window When the Pennines were blind with snow Flurrying round the stones. The fire was low when I began to blow That single flicker to a flame, Was I too late, I wondered, the ‘poet in name’ Whose mind runs endlessly As fingers through an […]...
12. April Is The Saddest Month There they were Stuck Dog and bitch Halving the compass Then when with his yip They parted Oh how frolicsome She grew before him Playful Dancing and How disconsolate He retreated Hang-dog She following Through the shrubbery...
13. March is the Month of Expectation March is the Month of Expectation. The things we do not know The Persons of prognostication Are coming now We try to show becoming firmness But pompous Joy Betrays us, as his first Betrothal Betrays a Boy....
14. 490. Song-The charming month of May IT was the charming month of May, When all the flow’rs were fresh and gay. One morning, by the break of day, The youthful, charming Chloe- From peaceful slumber she arose, Girt on her mantle and her hose, And o’er the flow’ry mead she goes- The youthful, charming Chloe. Chorus.-Lovely was she by the dawn, […]...
15. Brothers How lovely the elder brother’s Life all laced in the other’s, Lóve-laced!-what once I well Witnessed; so fortune fell. When Shrovetide, two years gone, Our boys’ plays brought on Part was picked for John, Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy Ran revel in the elder boy. Their night was come now; all Our company thronged […]...
16. Hold Hard, These Ancient Minutes In The Cuckoo's Month Hold hard, these ancient minutes in the cuckoo’s month, Under the lank, fourth folly on Glamorgan’s hill, As the green blooms ride upward, to the drive of time; Time, in a folly’s rider, like a county man Over the vault of ridings with his hound at heel, Drives forth my men, my children, from the […]...
17. Born Brothers Equality is absolute or no. Nothing between can stand. We are the sons Of the same sire, or madness breaks and runs Through the rude world. Ridiculous our woe If single pity does not love it. So Our separate fathers love us. No man shuns His poorest child’s embrace. We are the sons Of such, […]...
18. 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 […]...
19. My Brothers While I make rhymes my brother John Makes shiny shoes which dames try on, And finding to their fit and stance They buy and wear with elegance; But mine is quite another tale, For song there is no sale. My brother Tom a tailor shop Is owner of, and ladies stop To try the models […]...
20. To My Brothers Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals, And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls. And while for rhymes I search around the poles, Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep, Upon the lore so voluble and deep, That […]...
21. Just Thinking Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held For awhile. Some dove somewhere. Been on probation most of my life. And The rest of my life been condemned. So these moments Count for a lot peace, you know. Let the bucket of memory down into […]...
22. The Missing All prevented Me The Missing All prevented Me From missing minor Things. If nothing larger than a World’s Departure from a Hinge Or Sun’s extinction, be observed ‘Twas not so large that I Could lift my Forehead from my work For Curiosity....
23. Do you know who is thinking of you? If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way It’s little wonder what other people think of you, but The ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close In their hearts, who’re always thinking of you; Do you know, do you know, Do you know who is thinking of […]...
24. Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny Jenny, your mind commands Kingdoms of black and white: You shoulder the crow on your left, The snowbird on your right; For you the cinders part And let the lentils through, And noise falls into place As screech or sweet roo-coo, While in my own, real, world Gray foxes and gray wolves Bargain eye to […]...
25. Brothers, let us glorify freedom's twilight Brothers, let us glorify freedom’s twilight – The great, darkening year. Into the seething waters of the night Heavy forests of nets disappear. O Sun, judge, people, your light Is rising over sombre years Let us glorify the deadly weight The people’s leader lifts with tears. Let us glorify the dark burden of fate, Power’s […]...
26. Thinking For Berky In the late night listening from bed I have joined the ambulance or the patrol Screaming toward some drama, the kind of end That Berky must have some day, if she isn’t dead. The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel, Farming out there beyond the old stone quarry Where highschool lovers parked their […]...
27. On Thinking Faculty 1/ One sorriest thing in life is our capacity With which we think that we think. Some do it with brains, some with hearts, Some stomachs, and some genitals. 2/ Vocabulary is useless without thoughts....
28. Thinking of an Afterlife When was the beginning, In the fertilising, in the flower, Or was it deeper, In the earth beneath? No end of wonderment Shall cease such a quest, Or know how it is unknowable. We gaze on our cosmos in the cusp of a bloom, To glimpse the mysterious, grasp at reality, Surrender a dearth of […]...
29. February: Thinking of Flowers Now wind torments the field, Turning the white surface back On itself, back and back on itself, Like an animal licking a wound. Nothing but white the air, the light; Only one brown milkweed pod Bobbing in the gully, smallest Brown boat on the immense tide. A single green sprouting thing Would restore me. . […]...
30. In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams I. The poem is important, but Not more than the people Whose survival it serves, One of the necessities, so they may Speak what is true, and have The patience for beauty: the weighted Grainfield, the shady street, The well-laid stone and the changing tree Whose branches spread above. For want of songs and stories […]...
31. Thinking Ahead To Possible Options And A Worst-Case Scenario I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel In the center of the road and that’s when The deer came charging out of the forest And forced me to hit the brakes for all I Was worth and I careened back to the other Side of the road just as a skunk came toddling Out of […]...
32. Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks What is so utterly invisible As tomorrow? Not love, Not the wind, Not the inside of a stone. Not anything. And yet, how often I’m fooled I’m wading along In the sunlight And I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining Days ahead I can see the light spilling Like a shower […]...
33. The Lark From wrath-red dawn to wrath-red dawn, The guns have brayed without abate; And now the sick sun looks upon The bleared, blood-boltered fields of hate As if it loathed to rise again. How strange the hush! Yet sudden, hark! From yon down-trodden gold of grain, The leaping rapture of a lark. A fusillade of melody, […]...
34. Sonnet XXIII: The Curious Wits The curious wits seeing dull pensiveness Bewray itself in my long settled eyes, Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. Some that know how my spring I did address, Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies: Others, because the Prince my service tries, Think that […]...
35. You, Andrew Marvell And here face down beneath the sun And here upon earth’s noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night To feel creep up the curving east The earthy chill of dusk and slow Upon those under lands the vast And ever climbing shadow grow And strange at Ecbatan the […]...
36. Sir Philip Sidney – Astrophel and Stella: XXIII The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness Bewray itself in my long-settl’d eyes, Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, With idle pains and missing aim do guess. Some, that know how my spring I did address, Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies; Others, because the prince my service tries, Think that I […]...
37. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
38. Testimony Regarding a Ghost THE ROSES slanted crimson sobs On the night sky hair of the women, And the long light-fingered men Spoke to the dark-haired women, “Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier.” How could he sit there among us all Guzzling blood into his guts, Goblets, mugs, buckets- Leaning, toppling, laughing With a slobber on his mouth, A smear of […]...
39. A Birthday Song. To S. G For ever wave, for ever float and shine Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine, A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead, Up to the brilliant cloud of Death o’erhead. This vine bore […]...
40. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...