A Purse-String

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1. A Watch-String Tyme’s picture here invites your eyes, See with how running wheeles it flyes! These strings can do what no man could The tyme they fast in prison hold....
2. The Purse-Seine Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark of the moon; daylight or moonlight They could not tell where to spread the net, unable to see the phosphorescence of the shoals of fish. They work northward from Monterey, coasting Santa Cruz; off New Year’s Point or off Pigeon Point The look-out man will see […]...
3. String Bass Some like to dominate, Others caress A voluptuous rhythm On pliant strings. This pulse drives life Through wanton counterpoint, The heart and harmony Of things....
4. Pull A String, A Puppet Moves each man must realize That it can all disappear very Quickly: The cat, the woman, the job, The front tire, The bed, the walls, the Room; all our necessities Including love, Rest on foundations of sand – And any given cause, No matter how unrelated: The death of a boy in Hong Kong Or a […]...
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6. TO HIS CONSCIENCE Can I not sin, but thou wilt be My private protonotary? Can I not woo thee, to pass by A short and sweet iniquity? I’ll cast a mist and cloud upon My delicate transgression, So utter dark, as that no eye Shall see the hugg’d impiety. Gifts blind the wise, and bribes do please And […]...
7. A Necklace These veines are nature’s nett, These cords by art are sett. If love himselfe flye here, Love is intangled here. Loe! on my neck this twist I bind, For to hang him that steales my mynde: Unless hee hang alive in chaynes I hang and dye in lingring paynes. Theis threads enjoy a double grace, […]...
8. 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 […]...
9. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
10. 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...
11. 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...
12. 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 […]...
13. Letter To My Wife 11-11-1933 Bursa Prison My one and only! Your last letter says: “My head is throbbing, my heart is stunned!” You say: “If they hang you, if I lose you, I’ll die!” You’ll live, my dear My memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart: In […]...
14. A House upon the Height A House upon the Height That Wagon never reached No Dead, were ever carried down No Peddler’s Cart approached Whose Chimney never smoked Whose Windows Night and Morn Caught Sunrise first and Sunset last Then held an Empty Pane Whose fate Conjecture knew No other neighbor did And what it was we never lisped Because […]...
15. 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!...
16. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
17. 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 […]...
18. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
19. 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...
20. 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 […]...
21. Prelude – Tristan And Isolde Fate, out of the deep sea’s gloom, When a man’s heart’s pride grows great, And nought seems now to foredoom Fate, Fate, laden with fears in wait, Draws close through the clouds that loom, Till the soul see, all too late, More dark than a dead world’s tomb, More high than the sheer dawn’s gate, […]...
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24. A Ballad Of Suicide The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall; I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbours-on the wall – Are drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!” The strangest whim has seized me. […]...
25. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
26. On Westwell Downes When Westwell Downes I gan to tread, Where cleanely wynds the greene did sweepe, Methought a landskipp there was spread, Here a bush and there a sheepe: The pleated wrinkles of the face Of wave-swolne earth did lend such grace, As shadowings in Imag’ry Which both deceive and please the eye. The sheepe sometymes did […]...
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28. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far; Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen The silver strings of heavenly harp atween: And let there glide by many a pearly car Pink robes, and wavy hair, and […]...
29. Hostel Beach, Oneroa The cliff sprang from the sea at end of Hostel Beach, If the tide was out you’d reach a tiny bay beyond The cape without wet feet, an easy stroll but too effete For blood as hot as ours. We watched it at full flood; A risky place to contemplate the games we planned, We […]...
30. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
31. Sonnet LVIII That god forbid that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! O, let me suffer, being at your beck, The imprison’d absence of your liberty; And patience, tame to sufferance, […]...
32. Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end; Reason, […]...
33. The brook I looked in the brook and saw a face – Heigh-ho, but a child was I! There were rushes and willows in that place, And they clutched at the brook as the brook ran by; And the brook it ran its own sweet way, As a child doth run in heedless play, And as it […]...
34. The Carpenter's Son “Here the hangman stops his cart: Now the best of friends must part. Fare you well, for ill fare I: Live, lads, and I will die. “Oh, at home had I but stayed ‘Prenticed to my father’s trade, Had I stuck to plane and adze, I had not been lost, my lads. “Then I might […]...
35. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
36. To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
37. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
38. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
39. Sonnet XXXIII: Whilst Yet Mine Eyes To Imagination Whilst yet mine Eyes do surfeit with delight, My woeful Heart, imprison’d in my breast, Wisheth to be transformed to my sight, That it, like these, by looking might be blest. But whilst my Eyes thus greedily do gaze, Finding their objects over-soon depart, These now the other’s happiness do praise, Wishing themselves […]...
40. Carbonara eyes Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has the most expressive eyes. So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard My lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws On […]...