Ugliest little boy that everyone ever saw. That is what everyone said.
Even to his mother it was apparent— when the blue-aproned nurse came into the northeast end of the maternity ward bearing his squeals and plump bottom looped up in a scant receiving blanket,
I have always aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose and would let us understand each other without exposing the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us, so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care; Supporting each man on the top of the tide By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew.
MEanwhile the hainous and despightfull act
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how
Hee in the Serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her Husband shee, to taste the fatall fruit,
Was known in Heav'n; for what can scape the Eye
Of God All-seeing, or deceave his Heart
Omniscient, who in all things wise and just,
Hinder'd not Satan to attempt the minde
I am forced to sleepwalk much of the time. We hold on to these old ways, are troubled sometimes and then the geyser goes away, time gutted. In and of itself there is no great roar, force pitted against force that makes up in time what it loses in speed. The waterfalls, the canyon, a royal I-told-you-so comes back to greet us at the beginning.
Illimitable happiness, But grief for our white heads. We love the long watches of the night, the red candle. It would be difficult to have too much of meeting, Let us not be in hurry to talk of separation. But because the Heaven River will sink, We had better empty the wine-cups. To-morrow, at bright dawn, the world’s business will entangle us. We brush away our tears, We go—East and West.
Thus far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much Unvisited, endeavour'd to retrace My life through its first years, and measured back The way I travell'd when I first began To love the woods and fields; the passion yet Was in its birth, sustain'd, as might befal, By nourishment that came unsought, for still, From week to week, from month to month, we liv'd A round of tumult: duly were our games Prolong'd in summer till the day-light fail'd; No chair remain'd before the doors, the bench And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep The Labourer, and the old Man who had sate, A later lingerer, yet the revelry Continued, and the loud uproar: at last,
I remember a square of New York’s Hudson River glinting between warehouses. Difficult to approach the water below the pier Swirling, covered with oil the ship at the pier A steel wall: tons in the water,
Width. The hand for holding, Legs for walking, The eye sees! It floods in on us from here to Jersey tangled in the grey bright air!
He was eight when they gave him the felt overcoat— his birthday.
He knew it was special. He was still reading Walter Scott not Gogol. The coat was light grey and he was a knight in armor. It was adamant. Iced snowballs and other missiles no longer hurt. Or barely.
He grew as do all boys who are not dwarves or midgets. The coat grew, too. It kept pain out, and in.
The angel — three years we waited for him, attention riveted, closely scanning the pines the shore the stars. One with the blade of the plough or the ship’s keel we were searching to find once more the first seed so that the age-old drama could begin again.
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple As false dawn. Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses, Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
The students, lost in raucousness, caught as by the elder Breughel’s eye, we sit in the college store over sandwiches and coffee, wondering. She answers eagerly: the place was fine; sometimes the winds grew very cold, the snows so deep and wide she lost
I Under the makeshift arbor of leaves a hot wind blowing smoke and laughter. Music out of the renegade west, too harsh and loud, many dark faces moved among the sweating whites.
Whenever my father was left with nothing to do — waiting for someone to 'get ready', or facing the gap between graduate seminars and dull after-suppers in his study grading papers or writing a review — he played the piano.
I think of him packing his lifespan carefully, like a good leather briefcase,
Absorbed in planting bulbs, that work of hope, I was startled by a loud human voice, “Do go on working while I talk. Don’t stop!” And I was caught upon the difficult choice— To yield the last half hour of precious light, Or to stay on my knees, absurd and rude; I willed her to be gone with all my might, This kindly neighbor who destroyed a mood;
Good morning, electorate. We are on good speaking terms but do not speak, which means we must be self-reliant, there are many matters at hand. We’re not close enough to know each other’s good news, bad news, private matters.
On a wall shadowed by lights from the distance is the screen. Icons come to it dressed in capes and their eyes reflect the journeys their nomadic eyes reach from level earth. Narratives are in the room where the screen waits suspended like the frame of a girder the worker will place upon an axis and thus make a frame which he fills with
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