As I was going to St Ives
As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?
As If
How do you explain why elephants
appear to move their unwieldy hulks
with greater dignity than most humans do
in their finest moments,
as if they had evolved beyond wanting
anything but what they have?
Why does the field begin to ripple
before the wind arrives in whispers,
as if there were a communication,
as if the landscape were poorly dubbed,
and we weren’ t expected to notice?
What butterfly does not dart away from us
as if it could sense our latent cruelties,
and yet return to check and double-check?
As Is
Just north of town, a quaint Sargasso Sea
for bric-a-brac: the barn, itself antique,
spills over with a grab-bag panoply
of outworn stock revalued as “unique.”
Typewriters tall as headstones fill the loft
where they’ ve been ricked away like sacks of grain;
a coffer yawns the must of oak — gone soft —
when one man, squinting, lifts the lid to feign
intrigue. Nearby, his wife surveys the smalls:
art deco bangles bright as harpsichords,
a glut of iron trivets, Christmas balls,
Depression glass and warping Ouija boards.
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
Aside
Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets
The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches,
And all that is dear to the personal conscious reaches
Around us again like filings around iron magnets,
And war stands aside for an hour and looks at our faces
Of total absorption that seem to have lost their places.
Asperges Me
Cleanse me of my iniquity
and wash away my sins.
Laugh, Lord, at my obliquity.
In you laughter begins.
Regard this little steeple.
You gave to the High Plains
a flock of sheep, the people
who drink deep when it rains.
I shall number all the stones
Assyria has laid low.
I shall number all my bones
as David did long ago.
Oh, what a troubled route man took,
descending from the trees:
cave paintings and the printed book
made on his bended knees.
Assault to Abjury
Rain commenced, and wind did.
A crippled ship slid ashore.
Our swimmer’ s limbs went heavy.
The sand had been flattened.
The primary dune, the secondary dune, both leveled.
The maritime forest, extracted.
Every yard of the shore was shocked with jellyfish.
The blue pillow of the man o’ war empty in the afterlight.
The threads of the jellyfish, spent.
Disaster weirdly neatened the beach.
We cultivated the debris field.
Castaway trash, our treasure.
Jewel box, spoon ring, sack of rock candy.
Associations with a View from the House
What can be compared to
the living eye?
Its East
is flowering
honeysuckle
and its North
dogwood bushes.
Astrophil and Stella 101: Stella is sick, and in that sick-bed lies
Stella is sick, and in that sick-bed lies
Sweetness, that breathes and pants as oft as she;
And grace, sick too, such fine conclusions tries
That sickness brags itself best graced to be.
Beauty is sick, but sick in so fair guise
That in that paleness beauty’ s white we see;
And joy, which is inseparate from these eyes,
Stella now learns (strange case!) to weep in thee.
Love moves thy pain, and like a faithful page,
As thy looks stir, runs up and down, to make
Astrophil and Stella 107: Stella, since thou so right a princess art
Stella, since thou so right a princess art
Of all the powers which life bestows on me,
There ere by them aught undertaken be
They first resort unto that sovereign part;
Sweet, for a while give respite to my heart,
Which pants as though it still should leap to thee,
And on my thoughts give thy lieutenancy
To this great cause, which needs both use and art,
And as a queen, who from her presence sends
Whom she employs, dismiss from thee my wit,
Till it have wrought what thy own will attends.