The Real Work

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1. 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 […]...
2. Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World Whether what we sense of this world Is the what of this world only, or the what Of which of several possible worlds which what? something of what we sense May be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense. For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance Of travelers, eating […]...
3. The Lion For Real “Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative…” I came home and found a lion in my living room Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion! Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days Called up old Reichian analyst Who’d kicked me out […]...
4. A Real Motorcycle Unspeakable. The word that fills up the Poem, that the head Tries to excise. At 6 a. m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face On the porch rail in the rain. Heavy rains later, & maybe a thunderstorm. 12 or 13 degrees. Inside: an iris, candle, poster of the Many-breasted Artemis in a stone […]...
5. 100. Inscribed on a Work of Hannah More's THOU flatt’ring mark of friendship kind, Still may thy pages call to mind The dear, the beauteous donor; Tho’ sweetly female ev’ry part, Yet such a head, and more the heart Does both the sexes honour: She show’d her taste refin’d and just, When she selected thee; Yet deviating, own I must, For sae approving […]...
6. Work When twenty-one I loved to dream, And was to loafing well inclined; Somehow I couldn’t get up steam To welcome work of any kind. While students burned the midnight lamp, With dour ambition as their goad, I longed to be a gayful tramp And greet adventure on the road. But now that sixty years have […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. Work And Joy Each day I live I thank the Lord I do the work I love; And in it find a rich reward, All price and praise above. For few may do the work they love, The fond unique employ, That fits them as a hand a glove, And gives them joy. Oh gentlefolk, do you and […]...
9. Work I caught rumours of some internal hearing Then you appeared with tears squeezing your eyes, Hands scrunched up like a child’s, rice paper skin. That work mates complained was a big surprise As you were office sunshine, shafted no-one, And turned your quick mind to the broadest cause. But there you were, a whisper finished…gone, […]...
10. Where Is the Real Non-Resistant (Matthew V, 38-48.) Who can surrender to Christ, dividing his best with the stranger, Giving to each what he asks, braving the uttermost danger All for the enemy, MAN? Who can surrender till death His words and his works, his house and his lands, His eyes and his heart and his breath? Who can surrender […]...
11. In Back Of The Real railroad yard in San Jose I wandered desolate In front of a tank factory and sat on a bench Near the switchman’s shack. A flower lay on the hay on the asphalt highway the dread hay flower I thought It had a Brittle black stem and corolla of yellowish dirty Spikes like Jesus’ inchlong crown, […]...
12. Time, Real And Imaginary On the wide level of a mountain’s head, (I knew not where, but ’twas some faery place) Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out-spread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother! This far outstripp’d the other ; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy […]...
13. Real Estate News ARMOUR AVENUE was the name of this street and door signs on empty houses read “The Silver Dollar,” “Swede Annie” and the Christian names of madams such as “Myrtle” and “Jenny.” Scrap iron, rags and bottles fill the front rooms hither and yon and signs in Yiddish say Abe Kaplan & Co. are running junk […]...
14. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
15. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
16. Half An Hour I never had you, nor will I ever have you I suppose. A few words, an approach As in the bar yesterday, and nothing more. It is, undeniably, a pity. But we who serve Art Sometimes with intensity of mind, and of course only For a short while, we create pleasure Which almost seems real. […]...
17. The Future A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he […]...
18. The Day's Work We now, held in captivity, Spring to our bondage nor grieve See now, how it is blesseder, Brothers, to give than receive! Keep trust, wherefore we were made, Paying the debt that we owe; For a clean thrust, and the shear of the blade, Will carry us where would go. The Ship that Found Herself. […]...
19. Work Let me but do my work from day to day, In field or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room; Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, “This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; “Of all who live, I […]...
20. What Work Is We stand in the rain in a long line Waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is if you’re Old enough to read this you know what Work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, Shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain […]...
21. Work for Immortality Some Work for Immortality The Chiefer part, for Time He Compensates immediately The former Checks on Fame Slow Gold but Everlasting The Bullion of Today Contrasted with the Currency Of Immortality A Beggar Here and There Is gifted to discern Beyond the Broker’s insight One’s Money One’s the Mine –...
22. Woman Work I’ve got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry The baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I’ve got shirts to press The tots to dress The can to be cut I gotta clean up this […]...
23. To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbours’ eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing […]...
24. Work Without Hope All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair- The bees are stirring-birds are on the wing- And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. A Work Of Artifice The bonsai tree In the attractive pot Could have grown eighty feet tall On the side of a mountain Till split by lightning. But a gardener Carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he Whittles back the branches The gardener croons, It is your nature To be small and cozy, Domestic […]...
27. On No Work Of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to […]...
28. Work And Contemplation The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole; She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines too subtly twisted to unroll Out to a perfect thread. I […]...
29. The Way Things Work is by admitting Or opening away. This is the simplest form Of current: Blue Moving through blue; Blue through purple; The objects of desire Opening upon themselves Without us; the objects of faith. The way things work Is by solution, Resistance lessened or Increased and taken Advantage of. The way things work Is that we […]...
30. Work Gangs BOX cars run by a mile long. And I wonder what they say to each other When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack. Maybe their chatter goes: I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line. I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered […]...
31. Spirit whose Work is Done SPIRIT whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours! Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing;) Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit! That with muttering voice, through the war now closed, like a tireless […]...
32. Quiet Work One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity Of toil unsever’d from tranquility! Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in repose, Too great for haste, too high […]...
33. No Beer, No Work The shades of night was fallin’ slow As through New York a guy did go And nail on ev’ry barroom door A card that this here motter bore: “No beer, no work.” His brow was sad, his mouth was dry; It was the first day of July, And where, all parched and scorched it hung, […]...
34. Making It Work 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro Along a conveyor belt, slow fish Speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator Patching the asbestos gas lines As big around as the thick waist Of an oak tree. “These here are The veins of the place, stuff Inside’s the blood.” We work in rain, […]...
35. Work chapter VII Then a ploughman said, “Speak to us of Work.” And he answered, saying: You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission […]...
36. Elizabeth Elizabeth, it surely is most fit [Logic and common usage so commanding] In thy own book that first thy name be writ, Zeno and other sages notwithstanding; And I have other reasons for so doing Besides my innate love of contradiction; Each poet – if a poet – in pursuing The muses thro’ their bowers […]...
37. The Blue Swallows Across the millstream below the bridge Seven blue swallows divide the air In shapes invisible and evanescent, Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s Or memory’s power to keep them there. “History is where tensions were,” “Form is the diagram of forces.” Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge, While gazing down upon those birds – How strange, to […]...
38. Domestic Work, 1937 All week she’s cleaned Someone else’s house, Stared down her own face In the shine of copper Bottomed pots, polished Wood, toilets she’d pull The lid to that look saying Let’s make a change, girl. But Sunday mornings are hers Church clothes starched And hanging, a record spinning On the console, the whole house Dancing. […]...
39. To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on, Testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, And think of that first flawless moment over the lawn Of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made! There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; And here are the shocked starlings pumping past And think of […]...
40. The Gardener X: Let Your Work Be, Bride Let your work be, bride. Listen, the Guest has come. Do you hear, he is gently shaking The chain which fastens the door? See that your anklets make no loud Noise, and that your step is not over- Hurried at meeting him. Let your work be, bride, the guest Had come in the evening. No, […]...