So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
In harmony with the rule of irony —
which requires that we harbor the enemy
on this side of the barricade — the shell
of the unborn eagle or pelican, which is made
to give protection till the great beaks can harden,
is the first thing to take up poison.
The mineral case is soft and gibbous
as the moon in a lake — an elastic,
They’ re worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths’ fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain
of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we’ re fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.
But I’ ve a soft spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure —
the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy.
1
When the thought came to him it was so simple he shook his head.
People are always looking for kidneys when their kidneys go bad.
But why wait? Why not look when you’ re healthy?
If two good kidneys do the trick, wouldn’ t three do the job even better?
Three kidneys. Maybe two livers. You know. Two hearts, of course.
Instead of repairing damage, why not think ahead?
Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinkings of ice from the oak,
a boot-beat that comes and goes, the line of prayer
you can follow from the dusking wind to the snowy owl
it carries. Some feel sunlight
well up in blood-vessels below the skin
and wish there had been less to lose.
To be free of situations,
To live from day to day without events
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’ m going, all along.
Did you know I’ m in this hospital bed?
I’ m not. I’ m in the same light you stand in,
much the same way I’ m in the waist of your Carolina
watching from the screen across the bed
whose pulse is worn down with an IV to the head.
We are all snow birds atop
the cherry blossoms of August.
Springtime in Washington D. C.
passed too fast, nearly in the flash of Rose
brushing her teeth over the bedpan.
