At this hour the soul floats weightlessly
through the city streets, speechless and invisible,
astonished by the smoky blend of grays and golds
seeping out of the air, the dark half-tones
of dusk suddenly filling the urban sky
while the body sits listlessly by the window
sullen and heavy, too exhausted to move,
too weary to stand up or to lie down.
Give me something to eat,
Good people, I pray;
I have really not had
One mouthful today!
I am hungry and cold,
And last night I dreamed
A scarecrow had caught me—
Good land, how I screamed!
Of one little children
And six ailing wives
(No, one wife and six children),
Not one of them thrives.
Poor Jenny is a-weeping,
A-weeping, a-weeping,
Poor Jenny is a-weeping
On a bright summer’s day.
Why are you weeping,
Weeping, weeping,
Why are you weeping,
On a bright summer's day?
I'm weeping for a loved one,
A loved one, a loved one,
I'm weeping for a loved one,
On a bright summer's day.
Stand up and choose your loved one,
Your loved one, your loved one,
Stand up and choose your loved one,
One a bright summer's day.
Half a pound of tupenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Every night when I get home
The monkey's on the table,
Take a stick and knock it off,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Up and down the city road,
In and out the Eagle.
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
This is a year of poppies: our land
was brimming with them as May burned
into June and I returned —
a sweet dark wine that made me drunk.
From clouds of mulberry to grains to grasses
ripeness was all, in the fitting
heat, in the slow drowsiness spreading
through the universe of green.
My life half over I saw grown sons
setting off alone and vanishing from sight
beyond the prison the flight
of the swallow makes in the spent
There is no widening distance at the shore —
The sea revolving slowly from the piers —
But the one border of our take-off roar
And we are mounted on the hemispheres.
Above the waning moon whose almanac
We wait to finish continents away,
The Northern stars already call us back,
And silence folds like maps on all we say.
Ignoring the local reliquiae —
neoclassical arches in ruin,
courtyards, their fountains toppled,
prados flourishing in prickle-weed, esplanades
no longer level enough to collect rainwater,
much less respect for the Imperio de España
tarnished by an islander’ s mock-British accent —
two fisherman returned at sundown.
Antiquaries themselves, these fishermen
schooled in the currents, the tide,
the tunneled limestone of the coral reefs,
preferred the graceful curves of the £.
inside the car
françois and i
could see the light
coming from the
cigarette michele
duvalier was smoking
her husband
declared president
for life looked like
a fat chauffeur
sitting beind the
wheel
françois
and i smiled
the small
procession of cars
slipping past us
in the dark
I
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do —
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Oh down at the tavern
the children are singing
around their round table
and around me still.
Did you hear what it said?
