An axe rang sharply ’mid those forest shades Which from creation toward the skies had tower’d In unshorn beauty. There, with vigorous arm Wrought a bold emigrant, and by his side His little son, with question and response, Beguiled the toil. ‘Boy, thou hast never seen Such glorious trees. Hark, when their giant trunks Fall, how the firm earth groans. Rememberest thou The mighty river, on whose breast we sail’d, So many days, on toward the setting sun? Our own Connecticut, compar’d to that, Was but a creeping stream.’ ‘Father, the brook That by our door went singing, where I launch’d
A mouthful of language to swallow: stretches of beach, sweet clinches, breaches in walls, pleached branches; britches hauled over haunches; bunched leeches, wrenched teachers. What English can do: ransack the warmth that chuckles beneath fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet
'There it is!– You play beside a death-bed like a child, Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place To teach the living. None of all these things, Can women understand. You generalise, Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts, So sympathetic to the personal pang,
In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori baskets of olives and lemons, cobbles spattered with wine and the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles with rose-pink fish; armfuls of dark grapes heaped on peach-down.
How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown’d from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow’rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose.
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told, Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile, And, these grudged at, art reverenced the while. Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air, Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana
The houses I had they took away from me. The times happened to be unpropitious: war, destruction, exile; sometimes the hunter hits the migratory birds, sometimes he doesn’t hit them. Hunting was good in my time, many felt the pellet; the rest circle aimlessly or go mad in the shelters.
I sit where I always sit, in back of the Buddha, Red leather wing chair, pony skin trunk under my feet, Sky light above me, Chinese and Indian rugs on the floor. 1 March, 1998, where to begin again?
Over there's the ur-photograph, Giorgio Morandi, glasses pushed up on his forehead, Looking hard at four objects— Two olive oil tins, one wine bottle, one flower vase, A universe of form and structure,
The universe constricting in front of his eyes, angelic orders And applications scraped down
Now comes the evening of the mind. Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood; Here is the shadow moving down the page Where you sit reading by the garden wall. Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises, Shudder and droop. You know their voices now, Faintly the martyred peaches crying out Your name, the name nobody knows but you.
The house in Broad Street, red brick, with nine rooms the weedgrown graveyard with its rows of tombs the jail from which imprisoned faces grinned at stiff palmettos flashing in the wind
the engine-house, with engines, and a tank in which young alligators swam and stank, the bell-tower, of red iron, where the bell gonged of the fires in a tone from hell
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
The mountain north of Pasadena has severe and angular back canyons where the light is always unexpected, out of place, too simple for the clutter of the granite blocks along the creeks. The slopes have low rough shrubs, some firebreaks. It rains sometimes, and then the soils wash easily through Rubio and Eaton canyons to the small catch-basins and the storage tanks. The bedrocks
Dove-twirl in the tall grass. End-of-summer glaze next door On the gloves and split ends of the conked magnolia tree. Work sounds: truck back-up beep, wood tin-hammer, cicada, fire horn.
History handles our past like spoiled fruit. Mid-morning, late-century light calicoed under the peach trees. Fingers us here. Fingers us here and here.
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