APPROACH LIFE AS IF IT WERE A BANQUET
Your rightful portion averts your ireful potion:
Caress what can’ t be blessed, cup shadows under breasts.
Let pass what’ s out of ken: lover, job, riches,
a ripe peach
until it reaches you.
Bring salt for your honey, lime for your grenadine.
Money’ s not your fault.
You’ re a feathered peahen
preening for marzipan men.
Looking at the lion behind the plate glass
I wasn’ t sure what I was looking at: a lion, OK,
but he seemed to come apart, not literally
I mean, but I couldn’ t see him whole:
Mane. Teeth. The slung belly pumping
as he panted and began to roar. His balls
sheathed in fur swaying a little. His tail’ s tuft
jerking in an arc like an old-time pump handle
rusted in midair. Somebody or something
We have had our lives.
The reservoir visible
In the window beside our elbows, and the willow
Branches trailing at our stop
Are the nature we leave
Behind us gladly, since it has no place
For all we have recently learned: that sex
Is temporary, help
Ours to hand down now, and materials science
Not the only kind. We thank
Calm, careful Minerva, goddess
Of adults, who for so many years took us
Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And winter robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;
If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.
Heigho! the lark and the owl!
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.
The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.
I.
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: —
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.
