Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,
Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy,
Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down,
Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning,
And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands.
Would that the bulldozerDozed all the timeWould that the bulldozerWould rust in peace.His watchwordLet not a witch liveHis battle cryBetter dead than red.Give me if you mustThe bull himselfBut not the bulldozerNo, not the bulldozer.
Are vegetable hearts) were worn on sleeves,The squash’s are. In green the squash vine gushes.The flowers are cornucopias of summer,Briefly exuberant and cheaply golden.And if they make a show of being hidden,Are open promiscuously to every comer.Let the squash be what it was doomed to beBy the old Gardener with the shrewd green thumb.Let it…
When others run to windows or out of doorsTo catch the sunset whole, he is contentWith any segment anywhere he sits.From segment, fragment, he can reconstructThe whole, prefers to reconstruct the whole,As if to say, I see more seeing less.A window to the east will serve as wellAs window to the west, for eastern skyEchoes…
The stones are grayAnd so are they.And both are weatherworn and round,Leading the eye back to the ground.Two mingled flocks –The sheep, the rocks.And still no sheep stirs from its placeOr lifts its Babylonian face.
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.A glass spun for itself is empty,Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence.Words should be looked through, should be windows.The best word were invisible.The poem is the thing the poet thinks.If the impossible were not,And if the glass, only the glass,Could be…
But once upon a timeThere were three old women.One wore a small beardAnd carried a big umbrella.One stood in the middleOf the road hailing cars.One drove an old cartAll over the town collecting junk.They were not weird sisters,No relation to one another.A duly accredited witch INever heard Amherst ever hadBut as I say thereWere these…
