Poems

When You Are Old

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

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Wow! You’ve Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

But I’m No One

for M. Maylor

Dear Anne Carson:

My friend read me the poem where your mom

said that the dead walk backwards.

You thought this myth arose from poor translation.

you aren’t going to like what i have to say

before i start i want to say you shouldn’t blame yourself

there’s no point in beating around the bush

there’s something we need to talk about

this is the most difficult thing i’ve ever had to tell anyone

Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens,…

Scattered Snows, to the North

Does it matter that the Roman

Empire was still early in its slow

unwinding into never again? Then,

as now, didn't people burst into tears

in front of other people, or in private,

Song: To Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever;

The Clouds are Buffalo Limping Towards Jesus

"weeping                 blooms

My Meadow, My Twilight

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering, 

and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still, 

like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more 

Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,

And should you thousand ages try

The life you’ve taken to supply,

On Shakespeare. 1630

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!

How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!

For me wilt thou renew the withered rose,

Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

…

Boy Remembers in the Field

What if the sun comes out

And the new furrows do not look smeared?

This is April, and the sumach candles

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

Childhood

In the apartment with the orange

shag carpet, is one long table

surrounded by chairs,

only four of them matching,

and cups and pitchers and food, and large,

silver plates for sharing, a pot,

The Rights of Woman

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,                        

Adam Posed

Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,

Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,

Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,

You knock on the door

You knock on the door but nobody answers. Cupping your hands around your face you peer through the side-panel of frosted glass. A kettle is whistling, a woman singing as she sets the table. This is a familiar house. You knock again.

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,

The road runs by me white and bare;

Up the steep hill it seems to swim

A Hundred and Fifty Pounds

In some, the luggage lies open

like a mouth mid-sentence.

In others, closed zippers grimace:

What would you have brought?

Slippers, a stuffed platypus, a gold watch

in this house

in this house

the body of a poem, still warm,

hangs on the nail of the mundane

touched to its core

like a reproach, like proof,

that i was here

and you were here

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

Kitchen Story

My mothers says she has something to tell me,

turns to me from the stove where potatoes

boil and bump in the pot

I stand still to hear, a bundle of forks

in my hand for the table

They are hostile nations

1

In view of the fading animals

the proliferation of sewers and fears   

Bad Brown Girl

i can barely speak in my mother tongues stutter

my accent is bad

i hate jalebi

but i like aloo samosa

i'm a bad brown

girl i didn't join the

SAA or the ISA

I Lost My Talk

I lost my talk

The talk you took away.

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Parable of the Eagle

An eagle egg fell into a farmer’s chicken shed

and when it hatched the farmer gave it chicken feed

even though he was the king of birds. The farmer

clipped the eaglet’s princely beak and raised him

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody