The moon came late to a lonesome bog, And there sat Goggleky Gluck, the frog. ‘My stars!’ she cried, and veiled her face, ‘What very grand people they have in this place!’
Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God and loved one another.
Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only possession.
One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit and he came to the younger and said, “It is long that we have lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us divide our possessions.”
Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, “It grieves me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me. But if thou must needs go, so be it,” and he brought the earthen bowl and gave it to him saying, “We cannot divide it, Brother, let it be thine.”
Then the older hermit said, “Charity I will not accept. I will take nothing but mine own. It must be divided.”
And the younger one said, “If the bowl be broken, of what use would it be to thee or to me? If it be thy pleasure let us rather cast a lot.”
But the older hermit said again, “I will have but justice and mine own, and I will not trust justice and mine own to vain chance. The bowl must be divided.”
Then the younger hermit could reason no further and he said, “If it be indeed thy will, and if even so thou wouldst have it let us now break the bowl.”
But the face of the older hermit grew exceedingly dark, and he cried, “O thou cursed coward, thou wouldst not fight.”
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.
And the weaver said, Speak to us of Clothes. And he answered: Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Dear Charles XII, the Poltava battle
Has been fortunately lost. To quote Lenin’s burring rattle,
“Time will show you Kuzka’s mother”, ruins along the waste,
Bones of post-mortem bliss with a Ukrainian aftertaste.
It’s not the green flag , eaten by the isotope ,
It’s the yellow-and-blue flying over Konotop ,
Made out of canvas – must be a gift from Toronto –
Alas, it bears no cross, but the Khokhly don’t want to.
Oh, rushnyks and roubles, sunflowers in summer season!
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honor, or his grace, Or the king's real, or his stampèd face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.
Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill
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,
By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore;
I’ll tell thee now (dear Love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us, How I shall stay, though she esloygne me thus And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sybil’s glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.
Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me, Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love’s subliming fire invades, Rule and example found;
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none,
God washes clean the souls and hearts of you, His favored ones, whose backs bend o’er the soil, Which grudging gives to them requite for toil In sober graces and in vision true. God places in your hands the pow’r to do A service sweet. Your gift supreme to foil The bare-fanged wolves of hunger in the moil Of Life’s activities. Yet all too few
Beholde, o man! lyft up thyn eye and see What mortall peyne I suffre for thi trespace. With pietous voys I crye and sey to the: Beholde my woundes, behold my blody face, Beholde the rebukes that do me so manace, Beholde my enemyes that do me so despice, And how that I, to reforme the to grace, Was like a lambe offred in sacryfice.
...
And geyn thi pryde behold my gret mekenesse; Geyn thyn envie behold my charité; Geyn thi leccherye behold my chast clennesse; Geyn thi covetyse behold my poverté.
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body.
Wheel of sorrow, centerless. Voices, sad without cause, slope upward, expiring on grave summits. Mournfulness of muddy playgrounds, raw smell of rubbers and wrapped lunches when little girls stand in a circle singing of windows and of lovers.
I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love! Merciful love that tantalizes not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine, That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
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