His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.
He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
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One feather is a bird,
In her low voice I heardMore than a mortal should;And so I stood apart,Hidden in my own heart.And yet I roamed out whereThose notes went, like the bird,Whose thin song hung in air,Diminished, yet still heard:I lived with open sound,Aloft, and on the ground.That ghost was my own choice,The shy cerulean bird;It sang with her…
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
What saint strained so much,Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,In my veins, in my bones I feel it —The small waters seeping upward,The tight grains parting at last.When sprouts break out,Slippery as fish,I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:The shapes a bright container can contain!Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,Or English poets who grew up on Greek(I’d have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek).How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;She taught…
My secrets cry aloud.
My heart keeps open house,My doors are widely swung.An epic of the eyesMy love, with no disguise.My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I’m naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield.Myself is what I wear:I keep the spirit spare.The anger will endure,The deed will speak the truthIn language strict and pure.I stop the lying mouth:Rage warps…
In purest song one plays the constant fool
I stare and stare into a deepening poolAnd tell myself my image cannot die.I love myself: that’s my one constancy.Oh, to be something else, yet still to be!Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity;There’s little left I care to call my own.Today they drained the fluid from a kneeAnd pumped a shoulder full of cortisone;Thus I…
Let others probe the mystery if they can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;The hill becomes the valley, and is still;Let others delve that mystery if they can.God bless the roots!-Body and soul are one!The small become the great, the great the small;The right thing happens to the happy man.Child of the dark,…