Mediterranean Girl's War Phobia
Indoors by technology, outdoors by speedy transport
I travel the world
Today in Japan, tomorrow in Rome,
Next day by an ancient civilization or in Hawaii or Coast Ivory,
I see, I observe human, nature, society, civilization, earth's form
Develop feelings with the people from country to country
Know their features, culture
I am not self; they, you and me together; friend and brother
I have nothing alone
We share what we have and to what we belong;
Out Of Feelings
desert sucks upper water to store in the deep
trees, plants, herbs and grasses are about to die
sunshine reflects on mirages there
mirages elude and mislead the travelers,
travelers fall in danger
laughters and howlings heard of monsters;
trees distribute all the productions, yet stand still
to shadow the tired travelers in mid summer
and for creepers or parasites do not fall
Song Of Nature
Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.
I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.
Thanatopsis
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Speak Gently
Speak gently! -- It is better far
To rule by love, than fear --
Speak gently -- let not harsh words mar
The good we might do here!
Speak gently! -- Love doth whisper low
The vows that true hearts bind;
And gently Friendship's accents flow;
Affection's voice is kind.
Poem On His Birthday
In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
Herons spire and spear.
A Winter's Tale
It is a winter's tale
That the snow blind twilight ferries over the lakes
And floating fields from the farm in the cup of the vales,
Gliding windless through the hand folded flakes,
The pale breath of cattle at the stealthy sail,
And the stars falling cold,
And the smell of hay in the snow, and the far owl
Warning among the folds, and the frozen hold
Flocked with the sheep white smoke of the farm house cowl
Hyperion
BOOK I
DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
The Life Of Love Xvi
Spring
Come, my beloved; let us walk amidst the knolls,
For the snow is water, and Life is alive from its
Slumber and is roaming the hills and valleys.
Let us follow the footprints of Spring into the
Distant fields, and mount the hilltops to draw
Inspiration high above the cool green plains.
Lines Written In The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
[Given to Frank Bidart]
You won't become a gourmet* cook
By studying our Fannie's book--
Her thoughts on Food & Keeping House
Are scarcely those of Lévi-Strauss.
Nevertheless, you'll find, Frank dear,
The basic elements** are here.
And if a problem should arise:
Man Of Earth In Color And Art (Prose Poem)
Direct clay was turned into required elements
parts, sections, groups, classes in proportion
to set in every function in as pottery style,
osteoblasts turned into bones to form the cage,
limes were to join each point of the body
veins surrounded in and out of 206 bones
hard, soft, wide, length, fat, thin
setting by inner limbs, thick flesh and skin
strong, elastic for the whole earthly life spent.
Wind Song
The wind whistles eerily, as the storm approaches,
it gradually encroaches, taking over
like some unscrupulous military machine,
giving way to no one,
just charging along at a fierce pace,
buffeting anything that gets in the way.
It cannot turn back, not once it's committed.
The oncoming storm whips it into swirls of forceful energy,
it is uncontrollable.
Song Of The Flower Xxiii
I am a kind word uttered and repeated
By the voice of Nature;
I am a star fallen from the
Blue tent upon the green carpet.
I am the daughter of the elements
With whom Winter conceived;
To whom Spring gave birth; I was
Reared in the lap of Summer and I
Slept in the bed of Autumn.
After-Thought
I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. -Vain sympathies!
For backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall not cease to glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish; -be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
A Busy Street
Shameless, nude always invites
To outrage her modesty,
Smooth and grey
who would not be
The victim of her
charm,
Pleased with being invaded
Yet wishes them to lessen
their intensity,
In search of peace most blameless Yet always ready for retribution,
Bomb
Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine Pushkin Dillinger Bogart
And hath not St. Michael a burning sword St. George a lance David a sling
Essay On Man
The First Epistle
Awake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate(2) free o'er all this scene of Man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot,
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Five Senses
Now my five senses
gather into a meaning
all acts, all presences;
and as a lily gathers
the elements together,
in me this dark and shining,
that stillness and that moving,
these shapes that spring from nothing,
become a rhythm that dances,
a pure design.
Bishop Blougram's Apology
NO more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!
We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.
It's different, preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;
It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?
These hot long ceremonies of our church
Introspection In Anaphora
The Owner of the entire known and unknown universe
The Owner of each point and cell of all creations, creatures
The Owner of all the beings seen, unseen, small and large
The Owner of all the unseen souls here and there;
The Owner of all the things everywhere small and large
The Owner of all the molecules in the compound elements
The Owner of all the atoms in the fundamental elements
With electrons, protons, neutrons and all other particles;