English Poems

The ugly duckling remained ugly
its whole life but found others
as ugly as itself, I guess that’ s the message.
Smoke rises from the heads in the backyard.
Do you think if I hang around here long enough
someone will proffer a muffin,
one skulking shadow to another?
Soon, my shoes will be part of the populous dirt.
Have I learned all the wrong lessons,
the ones you shouldn’ t know until
the last dew-clogged lawn is mowed
and the sun goes down on the ruined battlements?
Why was I given a toy train if not

Then there's the Yemeni legend
of Eve in the Garden knitting
a pattern on the serpent's back,
the snake unfinished like the rest
of creation, the first woman
thinking to add design, a sheath
of interlocking diamonds and stripes
along that sensuous S,

The women bow and flutter in the field.
The grain lies white with wind in the wide shadow.
Summer is dark, as in the ancient time.

This fair cloud that blooms in the northwest
Has darkened now, as in the ancient time,
And clouds are still at dawn on the soft mountains.

Husks after harvest we shall leave for rain
And our heels’ trace in the loam:
The stir of boughs has warned us,
Fruit in the grass reminds us...

The rake is like a wand or fan,
With bamboo springing in a span
To catch the leaves that I amass
In bushels on the evening grass.

I reckon how the wind behaves
And rake them lightly into waves
And rake the waves upon a pile,
Then stop my raking for a while.

Ravished lute, sing to her virgin ears,
Soft notes thy strings repeating;
Plucked harp, whose amorous song she hears,
Tell her the time is fleeting;
Night-tide and my distress of love
O speak, sweet numbers,
That pity her heart may move
Before she slumbers.

No but come closer. Come a little
Closer. Let the wall-eyed hornyhanded
Panhandler hit you for a dime
Sir and shiver. Snow like this
Drives its pelting shadows over Bremen,
Over sad Louvain and the eastern
Marshes, the black wold. It sighs
Into the cold sea of the north,
That vast contemptuous revery between
Antiquity and you. Turn up your collar,

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.

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

Tell me not in mormonful numbers
“Life is but an empty dream!”
To a student of the slumbers
Things are never what they seem.

Life is yearning and suppression;
Life is that to be enjoyed;
Puritanical discretion
Was not spoke by Dr. Freud.

These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double —
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”