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,
My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those
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
A VISION.
Coming down a golden street
I beheld my vanished one,
And he moveth on a cloud,
And his forehead wears a star;
And his blue eyes, deep and holy,
Fixed as in a blessed dream,
See some mystery of joy,
I Without how small, within how strangely vast! What stars of terror had their path in thee! What music of the heavens and the sea Lived in a sigh or thundered on the blast! Here swept the gleam and pageant of the Past, As Beauty trembled to her fate’s decree; Here swords were forged for armies yet to be,
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.— Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
The darkness draws me, kindly angels weep Forlorn beyond receding rings of light, The torrents of the earth’s desires sweep My soul through twilight downward into night.
Once more the light grows dim, the vision fades, Myself seems to myself a distant goal, I grope among the bodies’ drowsy shades, Once more the Old Illusion rocks my soul.
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage, Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells — That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells, Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest — Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest, But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best, But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me.
(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap, like furry mittens, like childhood crouching under tables) The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black outside our window: clattering cans, the whir of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on ... I see them in my warm imagination the way I’ll see them later in the cold,
Far from the tender Tribe of Boys remove, For they’ve a thousand ways to kindle Love. This, pleases as he strides the manag’d Horse, And holds the taughten’d Rein with early Force; This, as he swims, delights thy Fancy best, Raising the smiling Wave with snowy Breast: This, with a comely Look and manly Airs; And that with Virgin Modesty ensnares.
These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing Into something forgetful, although angry with history. They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance, Though this is only one example.
They emerged until a tower Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back Into the past for swans and tapering branches, Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love.
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho’ she guide his highest flight heav’nward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell. Not without alliance of the animal senses hath she any miracle: Lov’st thou in the blithe hour
Once I loved a spider When I was born a fly, A velvet-footed spider With a gown of rainbow-dye. She ate my wings and gloated. She bound me with a hair. She drove me to her parlor Above her winding stair.
Oh! dost thou flatter falsely, Hope? The day hath scarcely passed that saw thy birth, Yet thy white wings are plumed to all their scope, And hour by hour thine eyes have gathered light, And grown so large and bright, That my whole future life unfolds what seems, Beneath their gentle beams, A path that leads athwart some guiltless earth,
It’s a spring morning; sun pours in the window As I sit here drinking coffee, reading Augustine. And finding him, as always, newly minted From when I first encountered him in school. Today I’m overcome with astonishment At the way we girls denied all that was mean In those revered philosophers we studied; Who found us loathsome, loathsomely seductive;
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