Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As if—forgive now—should you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills! In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same; The village street its haunted mansion lacks, And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name, And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks— Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27 We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joy and call it art. We were piloted by Auden who became Unbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into the steamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and ants
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Last night I dreamed I ran through the streets of New York Looking for help for you, Nicanor. But my few friends who are rich or influential were temporarily absent from their penthouses or hotel suites. They had gone to the opera, or flown for the weekend to Bermuda. At last I found one or two of them at home, preparing for social engagements, absently smiling, as they tried on gown after gown
To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies
(To F. W. Harvey) Out of the smoke and dust of the little room With tea-talk loud and laughter of happy boys, I passed into the dusk. Suddenly the noise Ceased with a shock, left me alone in the gloom,
Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see; Let the dew-fall drench either side of me; Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree; And God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
The grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie. Kissed upon either cheek and either eye, I turn to thee as some green afternoon Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die; Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
Lie closer, lean your face upon my side, Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried, Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon;
We are both strong, dark, bright men, though perhaps you might not notice, finding two figures flat against the landscape like the shadowed backs of mountains.
Which would not be far from wrong, for though we both have on Western clothes and he is seated on a yellow spool of emptied and forgotten telephone cable
Here, in the darkness, where this plaster saint Stands nearer than God stands to our distress, And one small candle shines, but not so faint As the far lights of everlastingness, I’d rather kneel than over there, in open day Where Christ is hanging, rather pray To something more like my own clay, Not too divine;
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China,
I. Until Jove let it be, no colonist Mastered the wild earth; no land was marked, None parceled out or shared; but everyone Looked for his living in the common world.
And Jove gave poison to the blacksnakes, and Made the wolves ravage, made the ocean roll, Knocked honey from the leaves, took fire away— So man might beat out various inventions
Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk— Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground —Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store, past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped on brick Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style
Running off with the boy at the gas station, yellow-haired, clear-eyed, with a pair of hands nothing, you understand, would prove too much for, is, it seems, a simple enough solution.
Consequences never enter your thinking at the start. Whatever the implications of the act, of the speed with which you act, all one knows, and all one chooses to know,
Somewhere in Chelsea, early summer; And, walking in the twilight toward the docks, I thought I made out Robinson ahead of me.
From an uncurtained second-story room, a radio Was playing There’s a Small Hotel; a kite Twisted above dark rooftops and slow drifting birds. We were alone there, he and I, Inhabiting the empty street.
Light at each point was beating then to flight, The sapling bark flushed upward, and the welling Tips of the wood touched, touched at the bound, And boughs were slight and burdened beyond telling Toward that caress of the boughs a summer’s night, Illimitable in fragrance and in sound.
Here were the blue buds, earlier than hope, Unnumbered, beneath the leaves, a breath apart,
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