The End Of The Library

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1. Ohio I have questioned The loyalty Of rivers in winter, Their yearnings for oceans obstructed, Indecisive meandering Clogged by ice floes And winter drought. No Amazon or Nile Would endure this thickening Of their blood, lethargic existence Of shivering in the season, Or the final degradation Of coal barges, indifferently Scraping congealing skin. (2005)...
2. Questionnaire HAVE I told any man to be a liar for my sake? Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets? Have I given any man […]...
3. My Library Like prim Professor of a College I primed my shelves with books of knowledge; And now I stand before them dumb, Just like a child that sucks its thumb, And stares forlorn and turns away, With dolls or painted bricks to play. They glour at me, my tomes of learning. “You dolt!” they jibe; “you […]...
4. A Library Of Skulls Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead. Here’s a skull Who, before he lost his fleshy parts And lower bones, once Walked beside a river (we’re in the poetry section Now) his head full of love And loneliness; and this smaller skull, In the sociology stacks, […]...
5. Children Selecting Books In A Library With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright. The child’s head, bent to the book-colored shelves, Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering, Moving in blind grace… yet from the mural, Care The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist, Seizes the baby hero by the hair And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children, […]...
6. View Of The Capitol From The Library Of Congress Moving from left to left, the light Is heavy on the Dome, and coarse. One small lunette turns it aside And blankly stares off to the side Like a big white old wall-eyed horse. On the east steps the Air Force Band In uniforms of Air Force blue Is playing hard and loud, but queer […]...
7. Wind and Window Flower LOVERS, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. When the frosty window veil Was melted down at noon, And the cagèd yellow bird Hung over her in tune, He marked her through the pane, He could not help but mark, And only passed […]...
8. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
9. 498. Song-For the sake o' Somebody MY heart is sair-I dare na tell, My heart is sair for Somebody; I could wake a winter night For the sake o’ Somebody. O-hon! for Somebody! O-hey! for Somebody! I could range the world around, For the sake o’ Somebody. Ye Powers that smile on virtuous love, O, sweetly smile on Somebody! Frae ilka […]...
10. Conjecturing a Climate Conjecturing a Climate Of unsuspended Suns Adds poignancy to Winter The Shivering Fancy turns To a fictitious Country To palliate a Cold Not obviated of Degree Nor erased of Latitude...
11. The Daughter Of The Year Nature, when she made thee, dear, Begged the treasures of the year. For thy cheeks, all pink and white, Spring gave apple blossoms light; Summer, for thy matchless eyes, Gave the azure of her skies; Autumn spun her gold and red In a mass of silken thread- Gold and red and sunlight rare For the […]...
12. The Gift “He gave her class. She gave him sex.” Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers He gave her money. She gave him head. He gave her tips on “aggressive growth” mutual funds. She gave him a red rose and a little statue of eros. He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis […]...
13. The Wreck of the Thomas Dryden As I stood upon the sandy beach One morn near Pentland Ferry, I saw a beautiful brigantine, And all her crew seem’d merry. When lo! the wind began to howl, And the clouds began to frown, And in the twinkling of an eye The rain came pouring down. Then the sea began to swell, And […]...
14. A Glimpse A GLIMPSE, through an interstice caught, Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room, around the stove, late of a winter night-And I unremark’d seated in a corner; Of a youth who loves me, and whom I love, silently approaching, and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand; A […]...
15. A Ballad of Burial (“Saint Proxed’s ever was the Church for peace”) If down here I chance to die, Solemnly I beg you take All that is left of “I” To the Hills for old sake’s sake, Pack me very thoroughly In the ice that used to slake Pegs I drank when I was dry This observe for old […]...
16. The Harbor PASSING through huddled and ugly walls By doorways where women Looked from their hunger-deep eyes, Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands, Out from the huddled and ugly walls, I came sudden, at the city’s edge, On a blue burst of lake, Long lake waves breaking under the sun On a spray-flung curve of shore; And a […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. 221. Song-The Bonie Lad that's Far Awa O HOW can I be blythe and glad, Or how can I gang brisk and braw, When the bonie lad that I lo’e best Is o’er the hills and far awa! It’s no the frosty winter wind, It’s no the driving drift and snaw; But aye the tear comes in my e’e, To think on […]...
19. Horses and Men in Rain LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window, And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys. Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches-and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks. […]...
20. On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod Stove-warmed flatiron slid under The covers, mornings a damascene- Sealed bizarrerie of fernwork decades ago now Waking in northwest London, tea Brought up steaming, a Peak Frean Biscuit alongside to be nibbled As blue gas leaps up singing decades ago now Damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung Habitat of […]...
21. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
22. On The Grasshopper And Cricket The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper’s-he takes the lead In summer luxury,-he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with […]...
23. LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES This winter air is keen and cold, And keen and cold this winter sun, But round my chair the children run Like little things of dancing gold. Sometimes about the painted kiosk The mimic soldiers strut and stride, Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide In the bleak tangles of the bosk. And sometimes, while the old […]...
24. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
25. The Coal Picker He perches in the slime, inert, Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. The oil upon the puddles dries To colours like a peacock’s eyes, And half-submerged tomato-cans Shine scaly, as leviathans Oozily crawling through the mud. The ground is here and there bestud With lumps of only part-burned coal. His duty is to glean the whole, To […]...
26. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
27. These Little Songs These little Songs, Found here and there, Floating in air By forest and lea, Or hill-side heather, In houses and throngs, Or down by the sea – Have come together, How, I can’t tell: But I know full well No witty goose-wing On an inkstand begot ’em; Remember each place And moment of grace, In […]...
28. Rosemary For the sake of some things That be now no more I will strew rushes On my chamber-floor, I will plant bergamot At my kitchen-door. For the sake of dim things That were once so plain I will set a barrel Out to catch the rain, I will hang an iron pot On an iron […]...
29. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
30. Every day I bear a burden Every day I bear a burden, and I bear this calamity for a purpose: I bear the discomfort of cold and December’s snow in hope of spring. Before the fattener-up of all who are lean, I drag this so emaciated body; Though they expel me from two hundred cities, I bear it for the sake […]...
31. At Cheyenne Young Lochinvar came in from the West, With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, His No. Brogans were chuck full of feet, His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. The fair Mariana sate […]...
32. It seldom snowed – Part III It seldom snowed they said, and they were nearly right. In all of nine eventful Seasons crystal white on average graced the place just twice a year. A smaller Fall, an over-night preceded heavy snow. And heavy snow remained a week, Blocked drains and closed the Desert Road; but no complaints, our children Played in […]...
33. The Sleepers As I walked down the waterside This silent morning, wet and dark; Before the cocks in farmyards crowed, Before the dogs began to bark; Before the hour of five was struck By old Westminster’s mighty clock: As I walked down the waterside This morning, in the cold damp air, I was a hundred women and […]...
34. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
35. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
36. Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember […]...
37. Lament When I was a windy boy and a bit And the black spit of the chapel fold, (Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women), I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood, The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit, I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled Nine-pin down on donkey’s common, […]...
38. It Is A Spring Afternoon Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, The bone dry voices of the peepers As they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods Are carrying their deathmasks Into a narrow winter cave. The scarecrow has plucked out His two eyes like diamonds And walked into the village. The […]...
39. Ezra on the Strike Wal, Thanksgivin’ do be comin’ round. With the price of turkeys on the bound, And coal, by gum! Thet were just found, Is surely gettin’ cheaper. The winds will soon begin to howl, And winter, in its yearly growl, Across the medders begin to prowl, And Jack Frost gettin’ deeper. By shucks! It seems to […]...
40. Mirage The hope I dreamed of was a dream, Was but a dream; and now I wake, Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old, For a dream’s sake. I hang my harp upon a tree, A weeping willow in a lake; I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped For a dream’s sake. Lie still, lie […]...