If I were a bird,
I would also use my coarse throat to sing:
This land stricken by storms,
These rivers forever torrential with our indignation,
This wind ceaselessly blowing in rages,
And that incomparably mild dawn coming from the forest…
—Then I die,
Decomposed into the land even with my feathers.
How beautiful at eventide
To see the twilight shadows pale,
Steal o’er the landscape, far and wide,
O’er stream and meadow, mound and dale!
How soft is Nature’s calm repose
When ev’ning skies their cool dews weep:
The gentlest wind more gently blows,
As if to soothe her in her sleep!
The gay morn breaks,
Mists roll away,
All Nature awakes
To
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! — the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! — a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river: —
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? — weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come, let the burial rite be read — the
In the beginning
God made the earth,
After that he took two stones and made them into
Sun and Moon.
He further created Rain,
Whose desire was to fall down and cover the earth
with water,
And Darkness, over whom Moon scattered a
basketful of seeds,
Which were the Stars.
There were no people on the earth at first,
So God
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often ’tis in such gentle temper found
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov’d for days from whence it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with
The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms
The gentle buttocks of a young
Giant. In the nestle,
Old adobe bricks, washed of
Whiteness, paled to umber,
Await another century.
Star Jasmine and old vines
Lay claim upon the ghosted land,
Then quiet pools whisper
Private childhood secrets.
I
You say you love ; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth
The soft Vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth-
O love me truly!
II
You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,
As you were Saint Cupid ‘s nun,
And kept his weeks of Ember.
O love me truly!
Gentle I go
When her glimpse
Attracted my coming back.
Gentle I laid
Hand round her shoulder
And felt the surrounding with lust.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic
Slow
As a limping cow
Or a mighty bull
With it legs spilt in two
A great black spider comes out of the earth,
And climb up the wall,
Then painfully set his back against the trees,
Throws out his threads for the wind to carry,
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Give me a chair
and let me sit in in your midist
and praise poverty
and want.
The face of poor man
stays all crumpled up
by reason of the hunger and thirst
which are in is stomach.
A poor man knows not
how to eat with a rich man.
When he starts eating fish
he eat is head.
Kambili the hunter spoke out,
“My Father, Kanji, he said: “Yes?” the reply.
“Tell the people of the smiths,
To make some young boy’s arrows,
And, to strike a young boy’s bow.
The rifle will never be for me.
I’m going off on a lizard hunt.”
He and his comrades went off,
Saying they were off on a lizard hunt.<br
One early morning,
When the moon was up
Shining at the sun,
I went to Elmina Junction
And there, and there
I saw a wretched ghost
Going up and down
Singing to himself:
‘Shall I go
Never get up till the sun gets up,
Or the mists will give you a cold,
And a parrot whose lungs have once been touched
Will never live to be old
Never eat plums that are not quite ripe,
For perhaps they will give you a pain;
And never dispute what the hornbill say,
Or you`ll never dispute again.
Never despise the
They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’
The man replied, ‘Things as they are
are changed upon the blue guitar.’
– The Blue Guitar (Wallace Stevens)
I do my best to tell it true
a thing exceeding hard to do
or tell it slant as Emily
advises in her poetry,
and, colour blind,
Talk with prudence to a Beggar
Of “Potose,” and the mines!
Reverently, to the Hungry
Of your viands, and your wines!
Cautious, hint to any Captive
You have passed enfranchised feet!
Anecdotes of air in Dungeons
Once made a fairy rooster from
Mashed potatoes
Whose eyes I forget
But green onions were his tail
And his two legs were carrot sticks
A tomato slice his crown.
Who came home on vacation
When the sun was hot
and cooked
and cleaned
And minded least of all
The children’s questions
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the
