Men Say They Know Many Things
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
Merely a Poet
THAT ONE, is a poet for all poets
AH, then I would suppose
to be an edwin for all edwins
OH, then there is only one of you
you are being one for
AH, I am one of me
but one is too many for all
OH, then how can this one be for all
when that one is truly for truly’ s sake
Which one?
It isn’ t a which or a what but a be
HMMPF, an ending for all endings
UMMPF, to be a poet for poets
is a mere suppose
BLECHH, you covered suppose in an earlier poem
YUCHH, but no one heard it
Merry-No-Round
The wooden horses
are tired of their courses
and plead from head to hoof
to be fed to a stove
In leaping lunging flames
they’ d rise again, flared manes
snapping like chains behind them.
The smoke would not blind them
as do these children’ s hands:
beyond our cruel commands
the fire will free them then
as once the artisan when
out of the tree they
were nagged to this neigh.
Messenger
It was not kindness, but I was only buckle-high in the door.
I let him in because the knock had come, the rain
clawed each window and wall. I was afraid.
Climbing down the stairs I did not know
how my country, cunningly, had rotted,
but hear, now, my steps creak in memory
and the rocks let go in the blind nightglass
where you get up, frightened, to reenact
the irrational logic of flesh.
Metropolitan
West a business breast, North a morose jig, East a false
escape, South steam in milk.
North the great cat, East the great water, South the great
fire, West the great arrow.
East the uneager fingers, South the damp cave, West the
chained ankle, North the rehearsed cry.
Mexico Seen from the Moving Car
THERE ARE HILLS LIKE SHARKFINS
and clods of mud.
The mind drifts through
in the shape of a museum,
in the guise of a museum
dreaming dead friends:
Jim, Tom, Emmet, Bill.
— Like billboards their huge faces droop
and stretch on the walls,
on the walls of the cliffs out there,
where trees with white trunks
makes plumes on rock ridges.
My mind is fingers holding a pen.
Mezzo Cammin
Half of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
Mid-Term Break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying —
He had always taken funerals in his stride —
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
MiG-21 Raids at Shegontola
Only this boy moves
between the runes of trees
on his tricycle
when an eagle swoops,
releases two arrows
from its silver wings, and melts
away faster than lightning.
Then a loud whistle
and a bang like dry thunder.
In a blink the boy sees
his house roof sink.
Feels his ears ripped off.
The blast puffs up a fawn smoke
bigger than a mountain cloud.
The slow begonias rattle
their scarlet like confetti.
Metal slashes
the trees and ricochets.
Wires and pipes snap