O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music -- full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments -- full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals -- O for the swiftness
and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

O the joy of my spirit -- it is uncaged -- it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat — nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

the thief has made me a gift of his night’ s booty

somewhere, a daughter discovers her mother’ s coral
brooch missing, somewhere, a man recoils at the absence
of his gambling stash. somewhere, a miser rifles
over a vanished ransom in newly minted silver

all this to buy a hotbed of memories
to feed the children fresh-killed lies
to open all the locks on love

forever is a moment we hold in our stomachs

1
Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother
sitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph.
The sun was shining. The dogs
were sleeping at her feet where time was also sleeping,
calm and unmoving as in all photographs.

I wiped the dust from my mother’ s face.
Indeed, dust covered everything; it seemed to me the persistent
haze of nostalgia that protects all relics of childhood.
In the background, an assortment of park furniture, trees and shrubbery.