Jack Be Nimble
Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over
The candlestick.
Jack Sprat
Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean.
Jackanory
I'll tell you a story
About Jack a Nory;
And now my story's begun;
I'll tell you another
Of Jack and his brother,
And now my story is done.
Jackson Hotel
Sometimes after hours of wine I can almost see
the night gliding in low off the harbor
down the long avenues of shop windows
past mannequins, perfect in their gestures.
I leave some water steaming on the gas ring
and sometimes I can slip from my body,
Jacksonville, Vermont
Because I am not married, I have the skin of an orange
that has spent its life in the dark. Inside the orange I am blind.
I cannot tell when a hand reaches in and breaks
the atoms of the blood. Sometimes a blackbird will bring the wind
into my hair. Or the yellow clouds falling on the cold floor
are animals fighting each other
out of their drifting misery. All the women I have known
have been ruined by fog and the deer crossing the field at night.
James Schuyler
I went to his sixty-sixth birthday
dinner: sixteen years ago this past
November. I remember that it was at
Chelsea Central (his favorite restaurant:
great steaks) on 10th Avenue, and
that Ashbery was there, and a few
others, including Joe, impeccably
dressed and gracious, who picked up
what must have been (I thought
at the time) an exorbitant bill.
I remember him saying more than
once, “Joe always picks up the bill,”
then smiling a slightly wicked smile.
Jane
The startling pleasures all broke down,
It was her first arthritic spring.
Inside her furs, her bones, secure,
Suddenly became a source of pain
And froze on a Saturday afternoon
While she was listening to “La Boheme.”
Strength had been her weakness, and
Because it was, she got to like
The exhilaration of catastrophes
That prove our lives as stupid as we think,
But pain, more stupid than stupidity,
Is an accident of animals in which, once caught,
The distances are never again the same.
Janet Waking
Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke then
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
One kiss she gave her mother,
Only a small one gave she to her daddy
Who would have kissed each curl of his shining baby;
No kiss at all for her brother.
January 22nd, Missolonghi
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
January Drought
It needn’ t be tinder, this juncture of the year,
a cigarette second guessed from car to brush.
The woods’ parchment is given
to cracking asunder the first puff of wind.
Yesterday a big sycamore came across First
and Hawthorne and is there yet.