at what emerged behind that back,and saw a chair pushed slightly forward,merging now with the lighted wall.The lamp glared too bright to showthe shabby furniture to some advantage,and that is why sofa of brown leathershone a sort of yellow in a corner.The table looked bare, the parquet glossy,the stove quite dark, and in a dusty…
The Wise Men will unlearn your name.Above your head no star will flame.One weary sound will be the same—the hoarse roar of the gale.The shadows fall from your tired eyesas your lone bedside candle dies,for here the calendar breeds nightstill stores of candles fail.What prompts this melancholy key?A long familiar melody.It sounds again. So let…
And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the bestdrives a steamroller across his chest.And the words won’t rise either like that rodor like logs to rejoin their old grove’s sweet rot,and, like eggs in the frying pan, the facespills its eyes all over the pillowcase.Are you warm tonight under those six veilsin that basin of…
in the frozen straits of Epiphany. February has fewerdays than the other months; therefore, it’s more cruelthan the rest. Dearest, it’s more soundto wrap up our sailing roundthe globe with habitual naval grace,moving your cot to the fireplacewhere our dreadnought is going underin great smoke. Only fire can grasp a winter!Golder unharnessed stallions in the…
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthlywidth. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.Quit the country the bore and nursed me.Those who forgot me would make a city.I have waded the steppes that…
so as to cuckold the king. Then a labyrinth, the time forthe king himself, to hide from bewildered glancesan unbearable offspring. Or a flying contraption, whenthe king figured himself so busy with new commissions.The son of that journey perished falling into the sea,like Phaeton, who, they say, also spurned his father’sorders. Here, in Sicily, stiff…
brow would hunch to in evening’sraven-black hush.I was but what your gazein that dark could distinguish:a dim shape to begin with,later – features, a face.It was you, on my right,on my left, with your heatedsighs, who molded my helixwhispering at my side.It was you by that blackwindow’s trembling tulle patternwho laid in my raw caverna…
and a typist’s daughter. Lookedat you like someone studying a clockface.She tried to help her fellow mortals.One day when we were lying side by sideupon the beach, crumbling some chocolate,she said, looking straight ahead, outto where the yachts held to their course,that if I wanted to, I could.She loved to kiss. Her mouthreminded me of…
is over now; I don’t recall who won it.The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leaveso many dead so far from their own homeland.But still, my homeward way has proved too long.While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,it almost seems, stretched and extended space.I don’t know where I am or what this placecan…
God saves all that — especially the wordsOf love and pity, as His only way to utter.The harsh pulse pounds and the blood torrent whips,The spade knocks evenly in them, by gentle muse begotten,For life is so unique, they from the mortal lipsSound more clear than from the divine wad-cotton.Oh, the great soul, I’m bowing…
