Similar Posts
The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,
‘Soldiers.’‘What are soldiers?’‘They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can.’The girl held still and studied.‘Do you know . . . I know something?’‘Yes, what is it you know?’‘Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.’
THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.A white pigeon reels and somersaults.Frogs plutter and squdge-and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits…
There’s Chamfort. He’s a sample.
Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye.And this Chamfort knew how to writeAnd thousands read his books on how to live,But he himself didn’t knowHow to die by force of his own hand—see?They found him a red pool on the carpetCool as an April forenoon,Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams.Well,…
All the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency experts in Toledo
Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flitfrom zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters,scavengers.The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for usand a gang from over the river sang ragtime to a ukelele.The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we huntedthe fog-swept Lincoln…
(We can succeed only by concert. . . . The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves. . . . December 1, 1862. The President’s Message to Congress.)
remembering those now dreamdusthallowed in the ruts and gullies,solemn bones under the smooth blue sea,faces warblown in a falling rain.Be a brother, if so can be,to those beyond battle fatigueeach in his own corner of earthor forty fathoms underseabeyond all boom of guns,beyond any bong of a great bell,each with a bosom and number,each with…
(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.And the stonecutters earn a living-with lies-on the tombs of liars.Aliar looks ’em in the eyeAnd lies to a woman,Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.And…