What shall I do with this absurdity — O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye
Aunt Mildred tied up her petticoats with binder’s twine, and my great-uncle Ezekiel waxed and waxed his moustaches into flexibility. It was the whole family off then into the dangerous continent of air
and while the salesman with the one gold eyetooth told us the cords at our ankles were guaranteed to stretch to their utmost and then bring us safely back to the fried chicken and scalloped potatoes of Sunday dinner
Slip-pilings on the Brooklyn littoral —the poles still tarry, flimsy; the ferry terminus with its walledup doors wan doorshapes on eroded sills. Downstream, the strutwork of the Williamsburg cable tower threw its cool shadow half a mile inland
for DreamChad on the death of her sun Mark - mark this word mark this place + tyme - at Papine Kingston Jamaica - age 29 midnight 28/29 April 2001-1002-0210-0120-0020-0000 rev 29 feb 04
I saw the garden where my aunt had died And her two children and a woman from next door; It was like a burst pod filled with clay.
A mile away in the night I had heard the bombs Sing and then burst themselves between cramped houses With bright soft flashes and sounds like banging doors;
The last of them crushed the four bodies into the ground, Scattered the shelter, and blasted my uncle’s corpse
: Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing. When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair : a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.
: Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open:
If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra To honor the memory of someone who never met her, A man who may have come to the town she lived in Looking for work and never found it. Picture him taking a stroll one morning, After a month of grief with the want ads, To refresh himself in the park before moving on. Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother, Then still a girl, will be destined to step on When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic If he doesn't stoop down and scoop the mess up With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.
When thou must home to shades of underground, And there arriv'd, a new admired guest, The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round, White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest, To hear the stories of thy finish'd love From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand!
What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you; On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set, And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Seven dog-days we let pass Naming Queens in Glenmacnass, All the rare and royal names Wormy sheepskin yet retains, Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand, Golden Deirdre's tender hand, Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon, Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon. Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught, Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet, Queens whose finger once did stir men, Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin, Queens men drew like Monna Lisa, Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa, We named Lucrezia Crivelli,
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind, Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour, And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, And under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come
Set where the upper streams of Simois flow Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood; And Hector was in Ilium, far below, And fought, and saw it not—but there it stood!
It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight Round Troy—but while this stood, Troy could not fall.
So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air; Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll; We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!
Nothing so true as what you once let fall, "Most Women have no Characters at all." Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
How many pictures of one nymph we view, All how unlike each other, all how true! Arcadia's Countess, here, in ermin'd pride,
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