America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic?
"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.
who goes there? who is this young man born lonely?
who walks there? who goes toward death
whistling through the water
without his chorus? without his posse? without his song?
it is autumn now
in me autumn grieves
in this carved gold of shifting faces
my eyes confess to the fatigue of living.
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,
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene: It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth, Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek, And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu: Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest, Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth, Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi, From Xanthus, my wife's uncle, now at peace: Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name. I may not write it, but I make a cross To show I wait His coming, with the rest, And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]
I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine, "And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,
don’t ever get the idea I am a poet; you can see me at the racetrack any day half drunk betting quarters, sidewheelers and straight thoroughs, but let me tell you, there are some women there who go where the money goes, and sometimes when you look at these whores these onehundreddollar whores you wonder sometimes if nature isn’t playing a joke dealing out so much breast and ass and the way
We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come, were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two, the youngest assistant curator in the country. I had some good ideas in those days.
Well, what we did was this. We had boxes precisely built to every size of canvas. We put the boxes in the basement and waited.
The dead man thinks his resolve has stiffened when the ground dries. Feeling the upward flow of moisture, the dead man thinks his resolve has stiffened. The dead man’s will, will be done. The dead man’s backbone stretches from rung to rung, from here to tomorrow, from a fabricated twinge to virtual agony.
Could our first father, at his toilsome plow, Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow, Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin, Could he a vain fantastic nymph have seen, In all her airs, in all her antic graces, Her various fashions, and more various faces; How had it posed that skill, which late assigned Just appellations to each several kind!
1 As I ebb’d with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.
Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide, Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
Once I had 1000 roses. Literally 1000 roses. I was working for a florist back in the shambling ‘Thirties when iced skids of 250 roses sold for $2 at Faneuil Hall. So for $8 I bought
A 29-year-old stewardess fell ... to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that sud- denly sprang open ... The body ... was found ... three hours after the accident. —New York Times
Sullen, grimy, labouring person, As I passed you in my car, I could sense your muffled curse on It and me and my cigar; And though mute your malediction, I could feel it on my head, As in countless works of fiction I have read.
Envy of mine obvious leisure Seemed to green your glittering eye; Hate for mine apparent pleasure Filled you as I motored by. You who had to dig for three, four Hours in that unpleasant ditch,
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.
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