Or of something seen that he liked.
Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.
His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.
It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,
Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.
The pears are not viols,Nudes or bottles.They resemble nothing else.IIThey are yellow formsComposed of curvesBulging toward the base.They are touched red.IIIThey are not flat surfacesHaving curved outlines.They are roundTapering toward the top.IVIn the way they are modelledThere are bits of blue.A hard dry leaf hangsFrom the stem.VThe yellow glistens.It glistens with various yellows,Citrons, oranges and…
It made the slovenly wildernessSurround that hill.The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild.The jar was round upon the groundAnd tall and of a port in air.It took dominion everywhere.The jar was gray and bare.It did not give of bird or bush,Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,Into twenty villages,Or one manCrossing a single bridge into a village.This is old songThat will not declare itself . . .Twenty men crossing a bridge,Into a village,AreTwenty men crossing a bridgeInto a village.That will not declare itselfYet is certain as meaning . . .The boots of the men clumpOn the…
Whose garden is wind and moon,Of the two dreams, night and day,What lover, what dreamer, would chooseThe one obscured by sleep?Here is the plantain by your doorAnd the best cock of red featherThat crew before the clocks.A feme may come, leaf-green,Whose coming may give revelBeyond revelries of sleep,Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail,So that…
Already the new-born children interpret loveIn the voices of mothers.Timeless mothers,How is it that your aspic nipplesFor once vent honey?The pine-tree sweetens my bodyThe white iris beautifies me.
The only moving thingWas the eye of the black bird.III was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime.IVA man and a womanAre one.A man and a woman and a blackbirdAre one.VI do not know which to prefer,The beauty of…
