Poetry

There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – opon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.


.To know just how He suffered – would be dear  –
To know if any Human eyes were near
To whom He could entrust His wavering gaze –

I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there—
I held my spirit to the Glass,
To prove it possibler—

...birds build -- but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes its self; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

We, too, can divide ourselves, it's true.
But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.

Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

There are things to be said. No doubt.
And in one way or another
they will be said. But to whom tell

the silences? With whom share them
now? For a moment the sky is
empty and then there was a bird.

There is no life that does not rise
melodic from scales of the marvelous.—

Nervy, glowering, your daughter
wipes the teaspoons, grows another way.

There
Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,
The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother’s call.
Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE

OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS
REVOLT AGAINST IT

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE

Back out of all this now too much for us

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Earth's the right place for love.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
   madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
   dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
   heavenly connection to the starry dynamo
   in the machinery of night

I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

"As far as was needed," I said,
and as I talked, I swam.

We are poor passing facts…

I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and
     self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition...

Not my hands but green across you now.

Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

What he has not to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

And then went down to the ship.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

Implicitly Thy freedom staying Thee.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!