You are a friend then, as I make it out, Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us Will put an ass's head in Fairyland As he would add a shilling to more shillings, All most harmonious, — and out of his Miraculous inviolable increase Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like Of olden time with timeless Englishmen; And I must wonder what you think of him — All you down there where your small Avon flows By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman. Some, for a guess, would have him riding back To be a farrier there, or say a dyer; Or maybe one of your adept surveyors; Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
I need more time, a simple day in Paris hotels and window shopping. The croissants will not bake themselves and the Tower of London would Like to spend a night in the tropics with gray sassy paint. It has many Wounds and historic serial dreams under contract to Hollywood. Who will play the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, and who will braid her
Hair? Was it she who left her lips on the block for the executioner, Whose hands would never find ablution, who would never touch a woman Again or eat the flesh of a red animal? Blood pudding would repulse him Until joining Anne. That is the way of history written for Marlow and Shakespear. They are with us now that we are sober and wiser,
Not taking the horrors of poetry too seriously. Why am I telling you this Nonsense, when I have never seen you sip your coffee or tea, In the morning? Not to mention,
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
(excerpt) Thou know’st my praise of nature most sincere, And that my raptures are not conjur’d up To serve occasions of poetic pomp, But genuine, and art partner of them all.
Far from the sea far from the sea of Breton fishermen the white clouds scudding over Lowell and the white birches the bare white birches along the blear night roads
‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σίβυλλα τίθέλεις; respondebat illa:άποθανεîνθέλω.’ For Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro. I. The Burial of the Dead
Men of the Twenty-first Up by the Chalk Pit Wood, Weak with our wounds and our thirst, Wanting our sleep and our food, After a day and a night. God, shall we ever forget? Beaten and broke in the fight, But sticking it, sticking it yet, Trying to hold the line, Fainting and spent and done; Always the thud and the whine, Always the yell of the Hun. Northumberland, Lancaster, York, Durham and Somerset, Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee: Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things, Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Great minds have sought you — lacking someone else. You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, One average mind —with one thought less, each year. Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit Hours, where something might have floated up. And now you pay one.Yes, you richly pay. You are a person of some interest, one comes to you And takes strange gain away:
The light foot hears you and the brightness begins god-step at the margins of thought, quick adulterous tread at the heart. Who is it that goes there? Where I see your quick face notes of an old music pace the air, torso-reverberations of a Grecian lyre.
In Goya’s canvas Cupid and Psyche have a hurt voluptuous grace bruised by redemption. The copper light falling upon the brown boy’s slight body is carnal fate that sends the soul wailing
The mind is a city like London, Smoky and populous: it is a capital Like Rome, ruined and eternal, Marked by the monuments which no one Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces, Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
Four-fifty. The palings of Trinity Church Burying Ground, a few inches above the earth, are sunk in green light. The low stones like pale books knocked sideways. The bus so close to the curb that brush-drops of ebony paint stand out wetly, the sunlight seethes with vibrations, the sidewalks on Whitehall shudder with subterranean tremors. Overhead, faint flickers
crackle down the window-paths: limpid telegraphy of the
It was biting cold, and the falling snow, Which filled a poor little match girl’s heart with woe, Who was bareheaded and barefooted, as she went along the street, Crying, “Who’ll buy my matches? for I want pennies to buy some meat!”
When she left home she had slippers on; But, alas! poor child, now they were gone. For she lost both of them while hurrying across the street, Out of the way of two carriages which were near by her feet.
So the little girl went on, while the snow fell thick and fast; And the child’s heart felt cold and downcast, For nobody had bought any matches that day, Which filled her little mind with grief and dismay.
He tells me in Bangkok he’s robbed Because he’s white; in London because he’s black; In Barcelona, Jew; in Paris, Arab: Everywhere and at all times, and he fights back.
He holds up seven thick little fingers To show me he’s rated seventh in the world, And there’s no passion in his voice, no anger In the flat brown eyes flecked with blood.
Comment form: