Reticence Poems

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
...

This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by,
Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly.
Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame --
...

I1.
Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
.
And drag me at your chariot till I die, --
...

I shall be loved as quiet things
Are loved--white pigeons in the sun,
Curled yellow leaves that whisper down
One after one;
...

I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
...

A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge and old
It looked a tower of ivied masonwork,
...

Fear, like a living fire that only death
Might one day cool, had now in Avon’s eyes
Been witness for so long of an invasion
That made of a gay friend whom we had known
...

O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
...

I

I doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,
...

The quality of these trees, green height; of the sky, shining, of
water, a clear flow; of the rock, hardness
...

Sometimes I stick out from my friends a bit - I think. It's the French in me. Americans have this excité-ment about things - that's, well, exhausting.

Sometimes, when friends are jumping about, they practically plead for my engagement. I think I have a genetic, French reticence, an observer gene.
...

Unalloyed Beauty
Refreshed and reformatted
In the fleeting pilgrimage,
Unconsciously alert
...

A taste of blood less insipid
Dried wagging tongues to further bathe
As insoluble as lipid
Dissolving matters of the brain
...

From the day that I was born,
I recall I wasn't taught to be even.
Even when I was ailing to death
I didn't learn to be fair out of dying reticence.
...

The body does not wait. Neither for us
nor for love. This groping of hands,
researching with such reticence
the warm, silky aridness
that twitches from embarrassment
in movements quick and random;
this groping attended not by us
but by a thirst, a memory, whatever
we know about touching the bared
body that does not wait; this groping
that doesn't know, doesn't see, doesn't
dare to be afraid of feeling scared…

The body's so hasty! All is over and done
when one of us, or when love, has come.
...

Three Branches....Of Government
......We look on in bewilderment
"Checks and Balances" as the message recalls
....Yet....despite all the evidence
...

She dances to the wheeze of my lungs. Were she taller,
or had she both hind legs, she would lick my aching knees.
There's nothing like practice I firmly believe. Practice

makes the heart grow fond. When the graft heals,
you've apples on a cherry tree, delicious domestic freaks.

I had a splendid grandmother, I might have made her up.
She wore cotton dresses, usually blue, and glasses
with thin gold frames and plastic cushions for the nose.
The plastic was slightly pink, intended

to blend with the flesh. She never raised her voice.
Her knuckles enlarged, her goiter enlarged.
There are ways within ways. A man will go down
displaying himself in a nursing home. The mystery left,

and there's more than when we began,
has nothing to do with reticence, or safety.
...

Everything we do
Need not be common sense
Sometimes, it is best
To show some, reticence
...

The passion of
a flushed embrace

is paradise,
...