Miss Molly had a dolly
Who was sick, sick, sick
So she called for the doctor
To come quick, quick, quick
The doctor came
With his bag and his hat
And he knocked on the door
With a rat-a-tat-tat.
He looked at the dolly
And he shook his head,
And he said ‘Miss Molly,
Put her straight to bed.’
He wrote on the paper
For a pill, pill, pill
‘I’ll be back in the morning
For the bill, bill, bill.’
My notebook has remained blank for months
thanks to the light you shower
around me. I have no use
for my pen, which lies
languorously without grief.
Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning —
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.
death surrounds itself with the living
i watch them take the body from the house
i’ m a young kid maybe five years old
the whole thing makes no sense to me
i hear my father say
lord jesus what she go and do this for
i watch him walk out the backdoor of the house
i watch him walk around the garden
kick the dirt
stare at the flowers
& shake his head shake his head
he shakes his head all night long
Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan;
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake—
Catch it if you can.
The stars grow lemon
in the field, spread
like tea leaves in
a cup; red-wing
blackbirds fold themselves
into the fence,
corn dreamers.
The sky undulating
with clouds returns
gold-throated arpeggios
to the one walking
at sunrise, sunfall.
Light as the air
I sit on my
cottage steps;
a tom cat come
home to die for
the day.
The cruelty of ages past affects us now
Whoever it was who lived here lived a mean life
Each door has locks designed for keys unknown
Our living room was once somebody’ s home
Our bedroom, someone’ s only room
Our kitchen had a hasp upon its door.
Door to a kitchen?
And our lives are hasped and boundaried
Because of ancient locks and madnesses
Of slumlord greed and desperate privacies
Perhaps her cook, come under the influence
Of a few discreet piastres, had spoken
Too indiscreetly. Or just perhaps,
On a hot day along the azure of the Mediterranean,
Rue Fouad bearing a stream of traffic
To Muhammed Ali Square in a riot
Of klaxons and shouts, and the whole city
Gleaming white as it must have from a distance,
It’ s autumn in the country I remember.
How warm a wind blew here about the ways!
And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber
During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.
It’ s cold abroad the country I remember.
The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain
At midday with a wing aslant and limber;
And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.
It’ s empty down the country I remember.
I had a sister lovely in my sight:
Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre;
We sang together in the woods at night.
As if sliding down the green, scuffed face
of the wave, a seaplane falls
and turns together, keeping the waters of
the ear flat: a dead calm. But when the window’ s
frowning strip of shoreline,
the battalions of tropical-drinks umbrellas
guarding the sandcastles and saltboxes
of the rich,
when these flip upside down, and the pale
And what is love? It is a doll dress’ d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss’ s comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm’ d the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play’ d deep for hearts,
