English Poems

Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?

I saw a pettish wasp
Fall foule therein:
Whom yet thy Whorle pins did not clasp
Lest he should fling
His sting.

A Curious Knot God made in Paradise,
And drew it out inamled neatly Fresh.
It was the True-Love Knot, more sweet than spice
And set with all the flowres of Graces dress.
Its Weddens Knot, that ne're can be unti'de.
No Alexanders Sword can it divide.

O Hesper-Phosphor, far away
Shining, the first, the last white star,
Hear’ st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,
That moan of an ancient agony
From purple forest to golden sky
Shivering over the breathless bay?
It is not the wind that wakes with the day;
For see, the gulls that wheel and call,
Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar,

How like the sky she bends above her child,
One with the great horizon of her pain!
No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild,
No weeping cloud, no momentary rain,
Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief,
That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.
She stoops in pity above the labouring earth,
Knowing how fond, how brief

Its quiet graves were made for peace till Gabriel blows his horn.
Those wise old elms could hear no cry
Of all that distant agony —
Only the red-winged blackbird, and the rustle of thick ripe corn.

The blue jay, perched upon that bronze, with bright unweeting eye
Could never read the names that signed
The noblest charter of mankind;
But all of them were names we knew beneath our English skies.

God save America,
My home, sweet home!

We are not hostages, America,
and your soldiers are not God's soldiers...
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods,
the gods of bulls,
the gods of fires,
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song...
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor,
who emerges out of farmers' ribs,
hungry
and bright,
and raises heads up high...

Half  awake, I was imagining
a friend’ s young lover, her ash blonde hair, the smooth
taut skin of  twenty. I imagined her
short legs and dimpled knees.
The door scraped open,
but eyes closed, I saw nothing. The mattress sagged.
She laid her head on my chest, and murmured love
against my throat, almost humming, approaching song,
so palpable I could hold her only chastely,
if  this was chaste. I couldn’ t move my hand

Ancients threw the masks down the cenote —
the faces smashed first in little ways before
the long drop, an eye or an ear broken, a mouth snapped
in half. Then, lifted from the well, two thousand years
later, still grinning and golden. The loose spooling of two
people fast unravels — how we let go of time spent,
how heat fades, how a body forgets fully what it knew.
I have learned your face as you will never.
The third day we met you gave me all your secrets
until I held an ocean in a cradle. Now all I ask for is more.

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

I know I’ ll lose her.
One of us will decide. Linda will say she can’ t
do this anymore or I’ ll say I can’ t. Confused
only about how long to stay, we’ ll meet and close it up.
She won’ t let me hold her. I won’ t care that my
eyes still work, that I can lift myself past staring.
Nothing from her will reach me after that.
I’ ll drive back to them, their low white T-shaped house