(January 7, 1919 – February 3, 1988)

poet Robert Duncan

Poems of Robert Duncan

1. A Little Language 4/17/2010
2. A Poem Beginning With A Line From Pindar 4/17/2010
3. An African Elegy 4/17/2010
4. Bending The Bow 4/17/2010
5. Childhood’s Retreat 4/17/2010
6. My Mother Would Be a Falconress 1/20/2003
7. Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow 1/20/2003
8. Passage Over Water 4/17/2010
9. Poetry, A Natural Thing 4/17/2010
10. Rites of Passage II 4/17/2010
11. Styx 4/17/2010
12. Such Is The Sickness Of Many A Good Thing 4/17/2010
13. The Song of the Borderguard 8/3/2003
14. What I Saw 4/17/2010

A Little Language

I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says
that animals have no need of speech and Nature
abhors the superfluous. My cat is fluent. He
converses when he wants with me. To speak

is natural. And whales and wolves I’ve heard
in choral soundings of the sea and air
know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs
my mind and heart—they touch the soul. Here

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