Gauley Bridge is a good town for Negroes, they let us stand around, they let us stand around on the sidewalks if we’re black or brown. Vanetta’s over the trestle, and that’s our town.
The hill makes breathing slow, slow breathing after your row the river, and the graveyard’s on the hill, cold in the springtime blow, the graveyard’s up on high, and the town is down below.
Did you ever bury thirty-five men in a place in back of your house, thirty-five tunnel workers the doctors didn’t attend,
Halted against the shade of a last hill, They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease And, finding comfortable chests and knees Carelessly slept. But many there stood still To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge, Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world. Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, For though the summer oozed into their veins Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains, Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.
Under the French horns of a November afternoon a man in blue is raking leaves with a wide wooden rake (whose teeth are pegs or rather, dowels). Next door boys play soccer: “You got to start over!” sort of. A round attic window in a radiant gray house waits like a kettledrum. “You got to start . . .” The Brahmsian day
The drunk mechanic is happy to be in the ditch. From the tavern, five minutes through the dark field and you’re home. But first, there’s the cool grass to enjoy, and the mechanic will sleep here till dawn. A few feet away, the red and black sign that rises from the field: if you’re too close, you can’t read it, it’s that big. At this hour, it’s still wet dew. Later, the streets will cover it with dust, as it covers
A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888 The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day; The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
It was nearly daylight when she gave birth to the child, lying on a quilt he had doubled up for her. He put the child on his left arm and took it out of the room, and she could hear the splashing water. When he came back
My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room. I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window and his unshaven face is whitened like the face of the moon. He will sleep long after noon and waken to find me gone.
From "Metamorphoses," Book II, 846-875 Majesty is incompatible truly with love; they cohabit Nowhere together. The father and chief of the gods, whose right hand is
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