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By such an all-embalming summer day
As sweetens now among the mountain pines
Down to the cornland yonder and the vines,
To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray,
How do all things together take their way
Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines
And bread and light and whatsoe’ er combines
In the large wreath to make it round and gay.
To me my troubled life doth now appear
Like scarce distinguishable summits hung
Around the blue horizon: places where
Not even a traveller purposeth to steer, —

The passions that we fought with and subdued
Never quite die. In some maimed serpent’ s coil
They lurk, ready to spring and vindicate
That power was once our torture and our lord.

Tho’ lack of laurels and of wreaths not one
Prove you our lives abortive, shall we yet
Vaunt us our single aim, our hearts full set
To win the guerdon which is never won.
Witness, a purpose never is undone.
And tho’ fate drain our seas of violet
To gather round our lives her wide-hung net,
Memories of hopes that are not shall atone.
Not wholly starless is the ill-starred life,
Not all is night in failure, and the shield
Sometimes well grasped, tho’ shattered in the strife.

Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.

Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.

Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.

Thy hand from Sunday work be held —
Work not at all unless compelled.

Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.

Kill not — death liberates thy foe
From persecution’ s constant woe.

Kiss not thy neighbor’ s wife. Of course
There’ s no objection to divorce.

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage — see them jump,
And come down hard!

They’ re worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths’ fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain

of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we’ re fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.

But I’ ve a soft spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure —

the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.

slicing this frozen sky know
where they are going —
and want to get there.

Their call, both strange
and familiar, calls
to the strange and familiar

heart, and the landscape
becomes the landscape
of being, which becomes

the bright silos and snowy
fields over which the nuanced
and muscular geese

are calling — while time
and the heart take measure.

In my car, driving through Black Mountain,
North Carolina, I listen to what
sounds like Doris Day shooting
heroin inside Sly Stone’ s throat.

One would think that she fights
to get out, but she wants to stay
free in this skin. Fresh,
The Family Stone’ s album,

came out in ’73, but I didn’ t make sense
of it till ’76, sixth grade for me,
the Bicentennial, I got my first kiss that year,
I beat up the class bully; I was the man.

When I’ m running across the city
on the crowded streets
to home, when, in a blur,
the grass turns brown
beneath my feet, the asphalt
steams under every step
and the maple leaves sway
on the branches in my wake,
and the people look,
look in that bewildered way,
in my direction, I imagine
walking slowly into my past
among them at a pace
at which we can look one another in the eye
and begin to make changes in the future
from our memories of the past —
the bottom of a bottomless well,

there was a remember when the mama was my girl
the mama was in my girl biding to turn
my girl turn mama when what I got turn to girl in her
my girl in my girl make my girl mama
they both mine
all three

I remember a when when I only dreamed dreams
but my dreams are remembers now
they a when