Poems

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

To a Mouse

On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne

Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky

Washing the ridge; a clamour…

Break of Day

’Tis true, ’tis day, what though it be?

O wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise because ’tis light?

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   

Scab Maids on Speed

My first job was when I was about 15. I had met a girl named Hope who became my best

friend. Hope and I were flunking math class so we became speed freaks. This honed our

The Last Laugh

‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.

Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,

The Bullets chirped — In vain! vain! vain!

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling…

Porphyria’s Lover

The rain set early in to-night,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

To Althea, from Prison

When Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my Gates,

And my divine Althea brings

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,

This land stares at the sun in a huge silence

Endlessly repeating something we cannot…

my mother found herself

my mother found herself one late summer

afternoon lying in grass under the wild

yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight

she was forgotten there in spring picking 

rhubarb for pie & the children home from

Bike-Twister

Place a foot upon a pedal,

Put your pedal-pushers on;

To the pedal pin a paddle,

Paddle-pedal push upon.

Place the paddle-pedal-cycle

On a puddle in the park;

The Young Sun’s Greeting

The young sun’s greeting

On my bed, your letter’s glow

All the sounds that burst from morning

Blackbirds’ brassy calls, jingle of gonoleks

Your smile on the grass, on the radiant dew.

Salmon Courage

Here at Woodlands, Moriah, 

these thirty-five years later, 

still I could smell her fear. 

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

Other

Men prefer an island

With its beginning ended:

Undertones of waves

Trees overbended.

Men prefer a road

Circling, shell-like

Convex and fossiled

My Last Duchess

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, —

This debt we pay to human guile;

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Helen

All Greece hates

the still eyes in the white face,

the lustre as of olives

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

Constantly risking absurdity

                        …

When I was Fair and Young

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:

The Fish

wade

through black jade.

   Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

If Stone Dreams

We cannot know this statue, this satyr 

with his head propped on a wineskin; 

we cannot know if he dreams. In fact, 

Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Conceptión Before Entering Sears

Conchita debemos to speak totalmente in English

cuando we go into Sears okay     Por qué

Porque didn’t you hear lo que pasó     It say

on the eleven o’clock news anoche que two robbers

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,

Amor Mundi

“Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing

On the west wind blowing along this valley track?”

“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

Poem For Duncan Campbell Scott

Who is this black coat and tie?

Christian severity etched in the lines

he draws from his mouth. Clearly a noble man

who believes in work and mission. See

how he rises from the red velvet chair,

These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man 

The Man He Killed

“Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet