Time was away and somewhere else, There were two glasses and two chairs And two people with the one pulse (Somebody stopped the moving stairs): Time was away and somewhere else.
And they were neither up nor down; The stream’s music did not stop Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
‘Mamma! mamma!’ two eaglets cried, ‘To let us fly you’ve never tried. We want to go outside and play; We’ll promise not to go away.’ The mother wisely shook her head: ‘No, no, my dears. Not yet,’ she said.
‘But, mother dear,’ they called again, ‘We want to see those things called men, And all the world so grand and gay, Papa described the other day. And – don’t you know? – he told you then About a little tiny wren, That flew about so brave and bold, When it was scarcely four weeks old?’
You may think it strange, Sam, that I'm writing a letter in these circumstances. I thought it strange too—the first time. But there's a misconception I was laboring under, and you are too, viz. that the imagination in your vicinity is free and powerful. After all, you say, you've been creating yourself all along imaginatively. You imagine yourself playing golf or hiking in the Olympics or writing a poem and then it becomes true. But you still have to do it, you have to exert yourself, will, courage, whatever you've got, you're mired in the unimaginative. Here I imagine a letter and it's written. Takes about two-fifths of a second, your time. Hell, this is heaven, man.
Man-dirt and stomachs that the sea unloads; rockets of quick lice crawling inland, planting their damn flags, putting their malethings in any hole that will stand still, yapping bloody murder while they slice off each other’s heads, spewing themselves around, priesting, whoring, lording it over little guys, messing their pants, writing gush-notes to their grandmas, wanting somebody to do something pronto, wanting the good thing right now and the bad stuff for the other boy.
As a friend to the children commend me the Yak. You will find it exactly the thing: It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back, Or lead it about with a string.
The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Thibet (A desolate region of snow) Has for centuries made it a nursery pet, And surely the Tartar should know!
New life! Will he toe out like Dolly, like John? Will her eyes be fires? Blue and green, like Papa's, the ocean at the shore? Will she sing in the bath? Play piano in her diapers? Will her heart leap at large machinery? Will he say, "Dribe dribe," to his daddy, entering the tunnel? Will his hair be red? Will her hair curl? Will her little face have the circumflex eyebrows of her mother? The pointed chin? Her hair be fair, bright blonde? Will she frown at the light by the river?
Well it's six o'clock in Oakland and the sun is full of wine I say, it's six o'clock in Oakland and the sun is red with wine We buried you this morning, baby in the shadow of a vine
Well, they told you of the sickness almost eighteen months ago
You should have heard the soldiers’ feet wounding the swirls that the accordion waltz left on the pavement like a mower’s swath once the parade had passed you should have kissed the soldiers’ feet
You can shuffle and scuffle and scold, You can rattle the knockers and knobs, Or batter the doorsteps with buckets of gold Till the Deputy-Governor sobs. You can sneak up a suitable plank In a frantic endeavor to see— But what do they do in the Commonwealth Bank When the Big Door bangs at Three?
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
after this, the cold more intense, and the night comes rapidly up . angels in the fall . around a tongue of land, free from trees . awakened by feeling a heavy weight on your feet, something that seems inert and motionless . awestruck manner, as though you expected to find some strange presence behind you . coming through the diamond-paned bay window of your sanctum . a crimson-flowered silk dressing gown, the folds of which I could now describe . deathly pallor overspreading
My father paces the upstairs hall a large confined animal neither wild nor yet domesticated. About him hangs the smell of righteous wrath. My mother is meekly seated at the escritoire. Rosy from my bath age eight-nine-ten by now I understand his right to roar, hers to defy
I When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter," And proved it—'twas no matter what he said: They say his system 'tis in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head; And yet who can believe it! I would shatter Gladly all matters down to stone or lead, Or adamant, to find the World a spirit, And wear my head, denying that I wear it.
II What a sublime discovery 'twas to make the Universe universal egotism, That all's ideal—all ourselves: I'll stake the World (be it what you will) that that's no schism.
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