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A four-line stanza.
for Roger Caillois
Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone,
it’s rank it cranks you up
crash you’re fracked you suck
shucks you’re wack you be
all you cracked up to be
dead on arrival
overdosed on whatever
excess of hate and love
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which…
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
I can manage being alone,
can pace out convivial hope
across my managing ground.
Someone might call, later.
What do the dead make of us
that we’d flay ourselves trying
Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;
O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
My father bequeathed me no wide estates;
No keys and ledgers were my heritage;
Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates…
Wild Nights — Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Sent to the ice after white coats,
rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,
they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,
Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;
Titled gluttons dainties carving,
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
Ay, gaze upon her rose-wreathed hair,
And gaze upon her smile;
Seem as you drank the very air
There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,
And should you thousand ages try
The life you’ve taken to supply,
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Lord of my heart’s elation,
Spirit of things unseen,
Be thou my aspiration
Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
Though thou be black as night
And she made all of light,
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
Shall earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored my earth to joy
Have you departed, every one,
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!
“Where are thy father and mother? say?”
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
