Rock-a-bye baby
Rock a-bye, baby,
On the tree top,
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bow breaks,
The baby will fall,
Down will come baby,
Cradle and all!
Rocket
Despite that you
wrote your name
and number
on its fuselage
in magic marker
neither your quiet
hours at the kitchen
table assembling
it with glue
nor your choice of
paint and lacquer
nor your seemingly
equally perfect
choice of a seemingly
breezeless day
for the launch of
your ambition
nor the thrill
of its swift ignition
nor the heights
it streaks
nor the dancing
way you chase
beneath its
dot
Roman Room
Someday our buried life will come to this:
a shaft of sunlight touching the Etruscan
surfaces, the basin still intact
as if awaiting hands. How many
centuries sequestered is an expert's guess,
you tell me. I admire the tiles
some craftsman spiraled in the ceiling's dome
detailing Neptune's beard. Or someone's.
What will they say of us, who have no home
(we like to say) but one another? When they pry
our hearts apart and excavate the sum,
is that the place we'll lie? Where the words lie?
Romance
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been- a most familiar bird-
Taught me my alphabet to say-
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child- with a most knowing eye.
Rondeau Redoublé (and Scarcely Worth the Trouble, at That)
The same to me are sombre days and gay.
Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright,
Because my dearest love is gone away
Within my heart is melancholy night.
My heart beats low in loneliness, despite
That riotous Summer holds the earth in sway.
In cerements my spirit is bedight;
The same to me are sombre days and gay.
Room
After it came in like a dark bird
Out of the snow, barely whistling
The notes father, mother, child,
It was hard to say what made us happiest.
Seeing the branches where it had learned
To stir the air? The air that opened
Without fear? Just the branches
And us in a room of wild things?
Like a shapeless flame, it flew
A dozen times around the room.
And, in a wink, a dozen more.
Into the wall, the window, the door.
Rosalie
“O POUR upon my soul again
That sad, unearthly strain,
That seems from other worlds to plain;
Thus falling, falling from afar,
As if some melancholy star
Had mingled with her light her sighs,
And dropped them from the skies!
“No,—never came from aught below
This melody of woe,
That makes my heart to overflow,
As from a thousand gushing springs
Unknown before; that with it brings
This nameless light,—if light it be,—
That veils the world I see.
Rose-cheeked laura
Rose-cheek'd Laura, come,
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.
Lovely forms do flow
From concent divinely framed;
Heav'n is music, and thy beauty's
Birth is heavenly.
These dull notes we sing
Discords need for helps to grace them;
Only beauty purely loving
Knows no discord,
But still moves delight,
Like clear springs renew'd by flowing,
Ever perfect, ever in them-
Selves eternal.
Roses
Because I do not know
what a hendecasyllable is
and words is all I have
to transubstantiate and give,
within me I hunger for a tongue
of my own, unpronounceable
flavors worth a thousand madeleines
(Monsieur P.) as hunting-horns spiral
through my belly and I say:
Schmorrn muis kneidl tirschtlan
guglhupf schluzza friggl prennsuppe
hoadana kneidl hoadanO plente
schaitohaufn kiochlan unt niggilan
faignkaffe kropfn unt Töpfnudl
so rich so good and tasty the speck
smoked wurscht and roast chestnuts
Roses
There is no escaping the storm of roses
crisscrossed on the split-cracked wall
of a dead fountain arch.
There is no escaping their uterine balls,
expanding as a reminder of the children I never had.
If you listen carefully you can hear the vibrations,
the heart drone of their petal jaw-harps.
And there’ s no going back,
no indiscovery of Mars
or these red planets brooding before me,
light predators, sun-hatched
and bloodening like the fists of women
who have gone to war.