Raked in piles, the wicker swingCreaking. Across the lotsA phonograph is playing Ja-Da.An orange moon. I see the livesOf neighbors, mapped and marredLike all the wars ahead, and R.Insane, B. with his throat cut,Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.I did not know them then.My airedale scratches at the door.And I am back from seeing Milton…
Undoubted, in that damaged land.Two schools exist; one says there isNo region lacking hazard, pain,And fear; the other mentions plainsEnclosedFor thoseWanting more than the perfumed rose.On one hand, birds and trained baboonsPolish the atmosphere with wordsLike slate, rasping and grey. Their moonsAre sterile as their eyes, dull marbles,Damp and cavern-caught. And eveningsSpread through days of…
‘A equals nothing under the sunBut A,’ says Mister Three. A fewApplaud; some wipe their eyes;Some linger in the shade to seeOne and Two in neat disguiseDecapitating Mister Three.‘This age is not entirely bad.’It’s bad enough, God knows, but youShould know Elizabethans hadSweeneys and Mrs. Porters too.The past goes down and disappears,The present stumbles home…
about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying untome, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, andwrite them not.’ –REVELATIONS, x, 4.That raft we rigged up, under the water,Was just the item: when he walked,With his robes blowing, dark against the sky,It was as though the unsubstantial waves held upHis…
It is on the whole an exciting moment;Mrs. Lefevre stares with her one good eye;A friendly abdomen rubs against one’s back;“Interesting,” a portly man is heard to sigh.A somewhat unconvincing oriental leersRedundantly; into the globe he peers,Mutters a word or two and stands aside.The glass grows cloudy with sulphorous fumes;Beads rattle, latecomers giggle near the…
The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clock strikes, is hollowand old:The pilot’s relief on landing is no release.These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect andpublic endings–Water and wind and flight, remembered words and the act of loveAre but interruptions. And the world, like a beast, impatient andquick,Waits only for those…
Not without violence, and he kicks under the grand piano,The nightmare chase well under way.The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall,Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black.Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian.Which is all of the room–walls, curtains,Shelves, bed, the tinted photograph of Robinson’s first wife,Rugs, vases panatelas in a humidor.They would fill…
Said the spider to the fly.I think not, said the fly.I think not, sang the chorus.I think not, said a strangerWho mysteriously happened by.Will they beat me and treat me the way they did here,In the place where we’re going?Asked the spider of the fly.It is likely, said the fly.Very likely, sang the chorus.Extremely likely,…
At warped pine boards my father’s father nailed,At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations’ shoesStumble and scrape and fallTo the floor my father stained,The new blood streaming from his head. The driftOf autumn fires and a century’s cigars, that gun’sMagnanimous and brutal smoke, endure.In March the rug…
On the old upright BaldwinDonated by a former patientWho is said to be quite stable now.And all day long you played Chopin,Badly and hauntingly, when you weren’tScreaming on the porch that lookedLike an enormous birdcage. Or satIn your room and stared out at the sky.You never looked at me at all.I used to walk down…
