They tilt their heads, and stroll and talk.
In their well-fitted black and white.
They look like certain gentlemen
who seem most nonchalant and wise
until their meal is served – and then
what clashing beaks, what greedy eyes!
But not one man that I have heard
throws back his head in such a song
of grace and praise – no man nor bird.
Their greed is brief; their joy is long.
For each is born with such a throat
as thanks his God with every note.
Then all a world I made in me;all the world you hear and seehung upon my dreaming blood.There moved the multitudinous stars,and coloured birds and fishes moved.There swam the sliding continents.All time lay rolled in me, and sense,and love that knew not its beloved.O node and focus of the world;I hold you deep within that…
sit two sisters. Their slow voices runlike little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind,and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda.They remember the gay young men on their tall horseswho came courting; the dancing and the smells of leatherand wine, the girls whispering by the fire together;even their dolls and ponies, all they…
to be his home and bread. ‘O take from methe weight and waterfall ceaseless Timethat batters down my weakness; the knives of lightwhose thrust I cannot turn; the crueltyof human eyes that dare not touch nor pity.’Under the worn leaves of the winter citysafe in the house of Nothing now he lies.His white and burning…
I could go down there, they say, in the early morning,and I’d see them, I’d hear them.Ten years, and I have never gone.I’ll never go.I’ll never see the lyrebirds –the few, the shy, the fabulous,the dying poets.I should see them, if I lay there in the dew:first a single movementlike a waterdrop falling, then stillness,then…
they crushed out your throat the terrible songyou sang in the dark ranges. With what cryingyou mourned him! – the drinker of blood, the swift death-bringerwho ran with you so many a night; and the night was long.I heard you, desperate poet, Did you hearmy silent voice take up the cry? – replying:Achilles is overcome,…
of my great- great- grandmother,legendary devotee of the arts,who having eight childrenand little opportunity for painting pictures,sat one day on a high rockbeside a river in Switzerlandand from a difficult distance viewedher second son, balanced on a small ice flow,drift down the current toward a waterfallthat struck rock bottom eighty feet below,while her second daughter,…
