Night was and they swayed into it:
a pair of scissors, of sails
turning only into themselves
more other than become.
It is often five o’ clock.
Her husband has contracted not
to speak of her and she has forgotten
where to go. Where does everyone go?
The heart dies without space for love, without a moral horizon:
think of it then as a bird trapped in a box.
My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence;
only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress.
Without them I feel I’ m half a person.
Romeo was born a Montague, and Juliet came from the Capulet line,
and I’ m a disciple of Shakespeare, not Ben Gurion —
therefore I’ ll be delighted if my daughter marries the grandson of Haidar Abdel Shafi.
I’ ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’ d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.
We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate
who required tribute of hot July flowers —
for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering
remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones
not yet braced for conquering.
The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows,
and little girls continue graceful and wondering.
Flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young
heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth,
their strength not tested, their praise unsung.
from the waist – so that, turned the bulb that's oneself (thorax)
– only – then – doesn't have any existence – turned (wherever one
turns)
as conception – at waist of magnolia buds that exist in the day
really
sewing the black silk irises – not when one turned at waist
sewing them, they have no shape literally except being that –
from one's hand (being, in the air)
Just one more vintage movie,
Batwings tonight at the Bal Masqué —
Another creature stuffed
By distinguished pedigree.
I get a lot of madcap ideas about sentience,
How knowing has you put down in the book
Forbidden speech recognition —
Else why make such a face?
And now it’ s luck no longer mouth that moves
When fastidious rummage whispers
To divulge a surplus
A clue if not the key.
Prospect my question laps up for good —
I lean to it. Knowing you,
First-person dwindle.
Tweet-tweet. Prick.
D: The Dreadful Dinotherium he
Will have to do his best for D.
The early world observed with awe
His back, indented like a saw.
His look was gay, his voice was strong;
His tail was neither short nor long;
His trunk, or elongated nose,
Was not so large as some suppose;
His teeth, as all the world allows,
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men —
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Child! do not throw this book about!
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
Child, have you never heard it said
That you are heir to all the ages?
Why, then, your hands were never made
To tear these beautiful thick pages!
Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’
Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’
Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong,’
Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
