I dreamed that I was old: in stale declension Fallen from my prime, when company Was mine, cat-nimbleness, and green invention, Before time took my leafy hours away.
My wisdom, ripe with body’s ruin, found Itself tart recompense for what was lost In false exchange: since wisdom in the ground Has no apocalypse or pentecost.
Late in the cold night wakened, and heard wind, And lay with eyes closed and silent, knowing These words how bodiless they are, this darkness Empty under my roof and the panes rattling Roughed by wind. And so lay and imagined Somewhere far off black seas heavy-shouldered Plunging on sand and the ebb off-streaming and Thunder forever. So lying bethought me, friend,
And when my Joy was born, I held it in my arms and stood on the house-top shouting, “Come ye, my neighbours, come and see, for Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold this gladsome thing that laugheth in the sun.”
But none of my neighbours came to look upon my Joy, and great was my astonishment.
And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the house-top—and yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and unvisited.
Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips.
Then my Joy died of isolation.
And now I only remember my dead Joy in remembering my dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.
What shall I do with this absurdity — O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye
Today I planted the sand cherry with red leaves— and hope that I can go on digging in this yard, pruning the grape vine, twisting the silver lace on its trellis, the one that bloomed just before the frost flowered over all the garden. Next spring I will plant more zinnias, marigolds, straw flowers, pearly everlasting, and bleeding heart. I plant that for you, old love, old friend,
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,
When last we parted, thou wert young and fair, How beautiful let fond remembrance say! Alas! since then old time has stolen away Full thirty years, leaving my temples bare.— So has it perished like a thing of air, The dream of love and youth!— now both are grey Yet still remembering that delightful day, Though time with his cold touch has blanched my hair,
There we go in cars, did you guess we wore sandals? Carrying the till, memorizing its numbers, apt at the essential such as rearranging languages. They occur from route to route like savages who wear shells.
“I cannot place him.” Yet I do. He must ascend indefinitely as airs he must regard his image as plastic,
Any fool can get into an ocean But it takes a Goddess To get out of one. What’s true of oceans is true, of course, Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess To get back out of them Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly Out in the middle of the poem They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves You might get out through all the waves and rocks Into the middle of the poem to touch them But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
All my life I was face to face with her, at meal-times, by the fire, even in the ultimate intimacies of the bed. You could have asked, then, for information about her? There was a room
I However the image enters its force remains within my eyes rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve wild for life, relentless and acquisitive learning to survive
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
See how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn Into the blowing roses, Yet careless of its mansion new, For the clear region where ’twas born Round in itself incloses: And in its little globe’s extent, Frames as it can its native element. How it the purple flow’r does slight, Scarce touching where it lies, But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light, Like its own tear, Because so long divided from the sphere. Restless it rolls and unsecure,
From the beginning, the egg cradled in pebbles, The drive thick with fledglings, to the known last Riot of the senses, is only a short pass. Earth to be forked over is more patient, Bird hungers more, flower dies sooner.
But if not grasped grows quickly, silently. We are restless, not remembering much. The pain is slow, original as laughter,
Bedfordshire A blue bird showing off its undercarriage En route between our oldest universities Was observed slightly off-course above Woburn In the leafy heart of our sleepiest county: Two cyclists in tandem looked up at the same moment, Like a busy footnote to its asterisk.
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