Little cullud boys with beards re-bop be-bop mop and stop.
Little cullud boys with fears, frantic, kick their CC years into flatted fifths and flatter beers that at a sudden change become sparkling Oriental wines rich and strange
1. i'm crazy bout that chile but she gotta go. she don't pay me no mind no mo. guess her mama was right to put her out cuz she couldn't do nothin wid her. but she been mine so long. she been my heart so long now she breakin it wid her bad habits. always runnin like a machine out of control;
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been, Where I the rarest things have seen; Oh, things without compare! Such sights again cannot be found In any place on English ground, Be it at wake, or fair.
I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah.
I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise.
Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea.
We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth.
A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah.II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone.
I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes.
It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread.
I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem.
I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity.
Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved.
V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest.
Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford.
Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it.
There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul.
People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying.
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal.
Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread.
PART I 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu—whit! Tu—whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
My sister in her well-tailored silk blouse hands me the photo of my father in naval uniform and white hat. I say, “Oh, this is the one which Mama used to have on her dresser.”
My sister controls her face and furtively looks at my mother, a sad rag bag of a woman, lumpy and sagging everywhere, like a mattress at the Salvation Army, though with no holes or tears, and says, “No.”
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.
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!
Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion, Scarce can endure delay of execution, Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my Soul in a moment.
Damned below Judas: more abhorred than he was, Who for a few pence sold his holy master. Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent, Deems the profanest.
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me: Hell might afford my miseries a shelter; Therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all Bolted against me.
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love. And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said: When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant. Lean back, and get some minutes' peace; Let your head lean Back to the shoulder with its fleece Of locks, Faustine.
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs; Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs, Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres, Son vent mélancolique àl'entour de leurs marbres, Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.
Les Fleurs du Mal. I Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
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
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand. They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks, And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed Gaily digging and scattering.
And in answer to their treble interjections The sun beats lightning on the waves,
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