Unmet at Euston in a dream
Of London under Turner’ s steam
Misting the iron gantries, I
Found myself running away
From Scotland into the golden city.
I ran down Gray’ s Inn Road and ran
Till I was under a black bridge.
This was me at nineteen
Late at night arriving between
The buildings of the City of London.
And the I (O I have fallen down)
Fell in my dream beside the Bank
Of England’ s wall to be, me
With my money belt of Northern ice.
I found Eliot and he said yes
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
Man, the egregious egoist,
(In mystery the twig is bent,)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient
Of the intolerable load
Which on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of its eyes.
He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a night-mare doom.
For this she starred her eyes with salt
And scooped her temples thin,
Until her face shone pure of fault
From the forehead to the chin.
In coldest crucibles of pain
Her shrinking flesh was fired
And smoothed into a finer grain
To make it more desired.
Pain left her lips more clear than glass;
It colored and cooled her hand.
She lay a field of scented grass
Yielded as pasture land.
I shall not sprinkle with dust
A creature so clearly lunar;
You must die — but of course you must —
And better later than sooner.
But if it should be in a year
That year itself must perish;
How dingy a thing is fear,
And sorrow, how dull to cherish!
And if it should be in a day
That day would be dark by evening,
But the morning might still be gay
And the moon have golden leavening.
And beauty’ s a moonlight grist
That comes to the mills of dying;
The silver grain may be missed
Too high, too high to pluck
My heart shall swing.
A fruit no bee shall suck,
No wasp shall sting.
If on some night of cold
It falls to ground
In apple-leaves of gold
I’ ll wrap it round.
And I shall seal it up
With spice and salt,
In a carven silver cup,
In a deep vault.
Before my eyes are blind
And my lips mute,
I must eat core and rind
Of that same fruit.
Before my heart is dust
At the end of all,
Eat it I must, I must
Were it bitter gall.
I
Once I had 1000 roses.
Literally 1000 roses.
I was working for a florist
back in the shambling ‘Thirties
when iced skids of 250 roses
sold for $2 at Faneuil Hall.
So for $8 I bought
1000 roses, 500
white and 500 red,
for Connie’ s wedding to steadiness.
Morning glories, pale as a mist drying,
fade from the heat of the day, but already
hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg
hooks have found and are boarding them.
This could do for the sack of the imaginary
fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they
one by one vanish and leave still real
only what has been snatched out of the spell.
There is no widening distance at the shore —
The sea revolving slowly from the piers —
But the one border of our take-off roar
And we are mounted on the hemispheres.
Above the waning moon whose almanac
We wait to finish continents away,
The Northern stars already call us back,
And silence folds like maps on all we say.
Pat Dugan…….. my grandfather…….. throat cancer……..1947.
Ed Berrigan…….. my dad…….. heart attack……..1958.
Dickie Budlong…….. my best friend Brucie’ s big brother, when we were
five to eight…….. killed in Korea, 1953.
