A Letter To My Aunt Discussing The Correct Approach To Modern Poetry
To you, my aunt, who would explore
...
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
...
All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
...
A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds
...
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
...
When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
...
In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
...
Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
...
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
...
Ears in the turrets hear
Hands grumble on the door,
Eyes in the gables see
The fingers at the locks.
...