New England. Alas, dear Mother, fairest Queen and best, With honour, wealth, and peace happy and blest, What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms, And sit i’ the dust to sigh these sad alarms? What deluge of new woes thus over-whelm The glories of thy ever famous Realm? What means this wailing tone, this mournful guise? Ah, tell thy Daughter; she may sympathize.
Old England. Art ignorant indeed of these my woes, Or must my forced tongue these griefs disclose, And must my self dissect my tatter’d state, Which Amazed Christendom stands wondering at?
I remember when I wrote The Circus I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else? Fernand Léger lived in our building Well it wasn’t really our building it was the building we lived in Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall
At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say “You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent! Haven’t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse, Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders crawling on your visages? Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop, Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning? I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation
I set forth one misted white day of June Beneath the great Atlantic rainway, and heard: “Honestly you smite worlds of truth, but Lose your own trains of thought, like a pigeon. Did you once ride in Kenneth’s machine?” “Yes, I rode there, an old man in shorts, blind, Who had lost his way in the filling station; Kenneth was kind.” “Did he fill your motionless ears with resonance and stain?”
Now spring appears, with beauty crowned And all is light and life around, Why comes not Jane? When friendship calls, Why leaves she not Augusta’s walls? Where cooling zephyrs faintly blow, Nor spread the cheering, healthful glow That glides through each awakened vein, As skimming o’er the spacious plain, We look around with joyous eye, And view no boundaries but the sky.
Already April’s reign is o’er, Her evening tints delight no more; No more the violet scents the gale, No more the mist o’erspreads the vale;
If you had a lot of money (by some coincidence you’re at the Nassau Inn in Princeton getting a whiff of class) and you just noticed two days ago that your face has fallen, but you don’t believe it, so every time you look in the glass
Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.
Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon! Soon they returned, and, after strange adventures, Settled at Balham by the end of June. Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures, And in Antofagastas. Still he went
W'en daih's chillun in de house, Dey keep on a-gittin' tall; But de folks don' seem to see Dat dey's growin' up at all, 'Twell dey fin' out some fine day Dat de gals has 'menced to grow, W'en dey notice as dey pass Dat de front gate's saggin' low.
ONE From Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women. How unwomanly to discuss it! Like a noose or an albatross necktie The clinical sobriquet hangs us: codpiece coveters. Never mind these epithets; I myself have collected some honeys. Juvenal set us apart in denouncing our vices Which had grown, in part, from having been set apart: Women abused their spouses, cuckolded them, even plotted
Seven dog-days we let pass Naming Queens in Glenmacnass, All the rare and royal names Wormy sheepskin yet retains, Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand, Golden Deirdre's tender hand, Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon, Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon. Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught, Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet, Queens whose finger once did stir men, Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin, Queens men drew like Monna Lisa, Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa, We named Lucrezia Crivelli,
Some years ago you heard me sing My doubts on Alexander Byng. His sister Sarah now inspires My jaded Muse, my failing fires. Of Sarah Byng the tale is told How when the child was twelve years old She could not read or write a line. Her sister Jane, though barely nine, Could spout the Catechism through And parts of Matthew Arnold too, While little Bill who came between Was quite unnaturally keen On 'Athalie', by Jean Racine. But not so Sarah! Not so Sal! She was a most uncultured girl
Out of heaven, to bless the high places, it falls on the penthouses, drizzling at first, then a pelting allegro, and Dick and Jane skip to the terrace and go boogieing through the azaleas, while mommy and daddy come running with pots and pans, glasses, and basins and try to hold all of it up there,
I know something about godforsaken places. Walking on the beach alone, far from the Dead Sea, I thought I saw a horseshoe crab crawling slowly— it was a Gideon Society, black Bible cover. Another time, washed up on a Montauk dune, I found a Chianti wine bottle with a letter in it. I read to myself a child’s handwriting: “Hello,
I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else’s civilization.
Let us take a rest, M’Lissy Jane.
I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike’s barrels.
You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people’s clothes turn to dust, and the Calvary Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit.
You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon.
Throw the children into the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored.
Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars marked my destiny.
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