A Familiar Letter
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems and plays and romances
Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!
What Were They Like?
Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?
Epic
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
The Congo: A Study Of The Negro Race
I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
After The Poet's Death
His poems refuse
to mourn his passing, they
detach themselves from
books, magazines, wall hangings
and float freely
in the fair summer air.
Their refusal to mourn is
steadfast. 'He's just changed
his address, ' one of his
Beauty
Was never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone,
But hovered gleaming and was gone.
Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave;
He flung in pebbles well to hear
The moment's music which they gave.
**** Roses For Rosanne
Dust in the winds
Shadows walking leaving trails
Eyes cocking navigate scents meddle the streets
Nightingale scans the sounds of thousands voices
Breaking the night camaraderie
Little birds of Hudson Bay
Whistling the songs of Hoboken array
Holland tunnel a lifeline… splendid to many
Manhattan Upper embraces Manhattan Lower
Epic proportion in sync with memories
Baseball Canto
Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders.
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up for the National Anthem,
with some Irish tenor's voice piped over the loudspeakers,
with all the players struck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little
Brahmā, VişņU, ŚIva
I THE DARK
In a worldless timeless lightless great emptiness
Four-faced Brahma broods.
nasad asin, no sad asit tadanim;
nasid raja no vioma paro yat.
kim avarivah? kuha? kasya sarmann?
Ambhah kim asid, gahanam gabhiram?
**** Arc Of Soul Mates ***
The arc of my brain reshaped for
The room to fill senses and madness
Acronyms and seduction amalgamated
Boundaries of essence essentials
Drawing the lines of segregation
The day would come when the sun
Touches the earth and everything turns
To dust but it’s you and me
Remnants of love’s great
Bolstering history of ancient trade
The Sacrificing Of The Poor Heroes For The Independence (Epic)
The Sacrificing Of The Poor Heroes For The Independence (Epic)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Either they would be independent or martyred they told
And without weapons, enough food, necessary products
They are fully bold
To fight against those armed forces and occupationists,
To snatch complete freedom,
To ensure the glory of flying in the blue sky, ever open
The Epic Stars
The heroic stars spending themselves,
Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle,
They must burn out at length like used candles;
And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes.
There is the stuff for an epic poem-
This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle-
We don't know enough, we'll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted.
A Song Of The Pen
Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft,
Not for the people's praise;
Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed,
Claiming us all our days,
Claiming our best endeavour -- body and heart and brain
Given with no reserve --
Niggard is she towards us, granting us little gain:
Still, we are proud to serve.
Not unto us is given choice of the tasks we try,
Plutonian Ode
I
What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
The Epic Of Sadness
Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been in need, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal
Your love has taught me, my lady, the worst habits
it has taught me to read my coffee cups
Don Juan: Canto The First
I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan,
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the Devil somewhat ere his time.II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
A Real Patriot (Epic)
The patriots are generally seen
In loving country
Loving nation
Thinking bigger of both
Laboring harder for both
Materializing the dreams
More than
They love own home
Own things, own region
Own family, own man
*human Shield
HUMAN SHIELD
the order of the day with every cadre
BATTLE FIELD
brought into the habitant world
the fighter and the fought
the winner and the loser
claim to be safeguarding habitants interest
how did he then become the shield and was killed
Woman And War
We women teach our little sons how wrong
And how ignoble blows are; school and church
Support our precepts and inoculate
The growing minds with thoughts of love and peace.
‘Let dogs delight to bark and bite, ’ we say;
But human beings with immortal souls
Must rise above the methods of the brute
And walk with reason and with self-control.
And then – dear God! you men, you wise, strong men,
A Woman(International Woman's Day Special)
A Woman
(International woman's day)
Woman is a strange world,
The world of love and dream,
Woman is a beautiful world,
The world of wait and meet,
Man is a guest and woman a host.
Being a woman is being a riddle,