25 Lines or Fewer

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings...

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

...

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne

Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky

Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly

In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn

To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;

A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by

Insomnia

If I were to sleep, it would be on an iron bed,

bolted to the floor in a bomb-proof concrete room

with twelve locks on the door.

I wouldn’t ask for a mattress

or decorate. I wouldn’t ask for beautiful.

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

1

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur

and at the back of the room

women wrapped their arms around

nights of ink and dawn

2

calendar of murmurs

vague caresses about the planet and its water

we could have...

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save...

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the...

Unspeakable Acts in Cars

It’s the first day of summer and we’re so happy

To see the sun and the satchel of colours it schleps

All those dark kilometres. The sky is so blue

And the sea is blue and the small islands in the sea

Are blue also. How our sun must love blue.

We have beachgrass and bull kelp and lion’s mane

And we love them all because we love the sea...

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

...

The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now...

Boy Remembers in the Field

What if the sun comes out

And the new furrows do not look smeared?

This is April, and the sumach candles

Have guttered long ago.

The crows in the twisted apple limbs

Are as moveless and dark.

Drops on the wires, cold cheeks,

The mist, the long snorts, silence…

The horses will steam when...

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

...

Life in a Love

Escape me?

Never —

Beloved!

While I am I, and you are you,

So long as the world contains us both,

Me the loving and you the loth,

While the one eludes, must the other pursue.

My life is a fault at last, I fear:

It seems too much like a fate, indeed!

Though I do my best I...

4 Marked by Claws and Cloudburst...

The calendar marred with birds and you are kik-kik-kik-kicking all the way into June. 

180 days scratched with black X’s and crow’s feet: bird-of-two minds (goodandevil 

       goodandevil);

single-minded bird (plotting the sky).

                                                                  __

 ...

Spring

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,

...

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head...

Song

Go, lovely rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,

And shuns to have her graces spied,

That hadst thou sprung...

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; —

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for...

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear...

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

Under the Answering Sky

I can manage being alone,

can pace out convivial hope

across my managing ground.

Someone might call, later.

What do the dead make of us

that we’d flay ourselves trying

to hear them though they may

sigh at such close loneliness.

I would catch, not my echo,

but their guarantee that this

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I...

At Melville’s Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge

The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath

An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,

Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,

The calyx of death’s bounty giving back

A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,

A Thousand Martyrs

A thousand martyrs I have made,

All sacrific’d to my desire;

A thousand beauties have betray’d,

That languish in resistless fire.

The untam’d heart to hand I brought,

And fixed the wild and wandering thought.

I never vow’d nor sigh’d in vain

But both, tho’ false...

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

We can never be with loss too long.

Behind the warped door that sticks,

the wood thrush calls to the monks,

pausing atop the stone crucifix,

singing: “I am marvelous alone!”

Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:

rows of marrow and bone undone.

The horizon’s flashing fastens tight,

sealing the blue hills with vermillion....

Sonnet VII from ‘Sonnets Written in the Orillia Woods’

Our life is like a forest, where the sun

Glints down upon us through the throbbing leaves;

The full light rarely find us. One by one,

Deep rooted in our souls, there springeth up

Dark groves of human passion, rich in gloom,

At first no bigger than an acorn-cup.

Hope threads the tangled labyrinth, but grieves

Till all our sins...

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d any thing.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Lord of My Heart’s Elation

Lord of my heart’s elation,

Spirit of things unseen,

Be thou my aspiration

Consuming and serene!

Bear up, bear out, bear onward

This mortal soul alone,

To selfhood or oblivion,

Incredibly thine own, —

As the foamheads are loosened

And blown along the sea,

Or sink and...

Dog Boy

ONE

Late at night in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’t bother him. He continues to paint portraits of astonishing trees each day and take long...

The Young Sun's Greeting

The young sun’s greeting

On my bed, your letter’s glow

All the sounds that burst from morning

Blackbirds’ brassy calls, jingle of gonoleks

Your smile on the grass, on the radiant dew.

In the innocent light, thousands of dragonflies

Quivering, like large black-winged golden bees

And like helicopters turning with gentle...

From Whereas

Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America

opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. That bitter hiding. My daughter picks up

new habits from friends. She’d been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto...

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!

How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!

For me wilt thou renew the withered rose,

And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?

Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,

Like the young hours that lead the tender year

...

Song: To Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever;

He at length our good will sever.

Spend not then his gifts in vain.

Suns that set may rise again;

But if once we lose this light,

’Tis with us perpetual night.

Why should we defer our joys?

Fame and rumor are but toys...

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending...

I Am

I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes —

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live — like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea...

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new...

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid...

Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof

            It is 2005, just before landfall.

Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.

I am located at the corner of Waterway

and Bluff. I need your help. You will find me

to the left of the graveyard, where the...

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought

The old delight is with us but to find

That all recurring joy is pain refined,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught....

When Winter Comes

Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke,

And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena,

And the skid-roads blind, and never a look

Of the Coast Range blue over Malaspina,

And west winds keener

Than jack-knife blades,

And rocks grown greener

With the long drip-drip from the cedar shades

On the drenched deep soil where the footsteps...

Fear of Snakes

The snake can separate itself

from its shadow, move on ribbons of light,

taste the air, the morning and the evening,

the darkness at the heart of things. I remember

when my fear of snakes left for good,

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of...

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring...

The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said,

“Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your...

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

although in this world I’ve never known

either flames or dragons or the fury of war

in these lands where the sky was always calm...

“Alone”

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were — I have not seen

As others saw — I could not bring

My passions from a common spring —

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow — I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone —

And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —

Then — in my childhood —...

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks...

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and...

The Wife

Living, I had no might

To make you hear,

Now, in the inmost night,

I am so near

No whisper, falling light,

Divides us, dear.

Living, I had no claim

On your great hours.

Now the thin candle-flame,

The closing flowers,

Wed summer with my name, —

And these are...

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile — the Winds —

To a Heart in port —

Done with the Compass —

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden —

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor — Tonight —

In Thee!

from Citizen

The rain this morning pours from the gutters and

everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your

glasses to single out what you know is there because 

doubt is inexorable; you put on your glasses. The trees,

their bark, their leaves, even the dead ones, are more

vibrant wet. Yes, and it’s raining. Each moment is like

this — before...

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England...

Gitanjali 35

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night

And she made all of light,

Yet follow thy fair sun unhappy shadow.

Follow her whose light thy light depriveth,

Though here thou liv’st disgraced,

And she in heaven is placed,

Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.

Sonoma

He totaled his blue truck —

slowly spun out on an icy bridge,

rammed it into a guard rail.

Climbed out unbruised.

Coal Creek. Middle of nowhere.

A passing couple brought him home.

Then three years

with letters from the Motor Vehicle Department

before he relinquished his license.

...

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as...

Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

Say that health and wealth have missed me,

Say I’m growing old, but add,

Jenny kissed me.

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.

I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,

For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;

As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.

Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

...

Adam Posed

Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,

Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,

Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,

Could he a vain fantastic nymph have seen,

In all her airs, in all her antic graces,

Her various fashions, and more various faces;

How had it posed that skill, which late assigned

Just appellations to...

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time,

the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed,

outside the gate. I waited a long time, waited

and waited, waited a very long time. I stood

next to the security guard from Securitas, who also

stood outside the gate. I waited, the security guard

Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing...

niya

When the stranger bumps his shoulder into me, hard, without an ounce of concern, I can feel the fire bubbling inside of me. The heat from the concrete rising up, through my feet, reverberating like electricity about to erupt magma through every orifice of my body. Lava that will oxidize every atom and molecule of his body on contact. The city as embodied trauma. The trauma of settlement. I...

Amor Mundi

“Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing

On the west wind blowing along this valley track?”

“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,

We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.”

So they two went together in glowing August weather,

The honey-...

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

“Hope” is the thing with feathers — 

That perches in the soul — 

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard — ...

They Flee From Me

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it...

The Boxers

We were combatants from the start. Our dad

Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten —

Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius

Of wooden-horse fame: ‘I am the greatest!’

‘Nobody’s going to knock me down!’ Listen,

Peter, to the commentary — gruesome teeth-­

Grinding, sweat splattering their arms and legs,

Huge fists in ox-­hide...

Full Moon

My bands of silk and miniver

Momently grew heavier;

The black gauze was beggarly thin;

The ermine muffled mouth and chin;

I could not suck the moonlight in.

Harlequin in lozenges

Of love and hate, I walked in these

Striped and ragged rigmaroles;

Along the pavement my footsoles

...

Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and check’d even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their...

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky

A boat, beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;

And I supported the family by washing,

Learning the secrets of all the people

From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.

For things that are...

The House on the Hill

They are all gone away,

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray

The winds blow bleak and shrill;

They are all gone away.

Nor is there one today

To speak them good or ill:

Blousy Guitar

Blousy guitar   I don’t want to count the beats   Hey Hey

My pen     I have bed hair in the best way    Daughter

of sunlight and air     and I’m glad you were born

on this day or put another way: that you were

born      Let’s be superstars    Let’s call each other “suckas”

Turn everything into writing      Lord of my Love

and...

grass

grass is unusual

it was invented by the Romans

unlike most people grass stays where it grows

if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today

because grass looks luxurious

people put it wherever they can

a wedge of grass can split a sidewalk

city block, manhattan skyscraper

make a dog sick

step on grass; it...

Good Day Villanelle

You ran naked out the door.

The neighbours laughed; I chased you down.

I hardly see you anymore.

I know you’re busy.

Did I tell you when you were little how

you ran naked out the door?

You got halfway down the street

before I caught you in my arms.

I hardly see you anymore.

I...

The Author to Her Book

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain,

Who after birth didst by my side remain,

Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,

Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,

Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge,

Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).

At thy return my blushing was not small,

My...

Sonnet XXIII: Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint

Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescu’d from death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint

Purification in the old Law did save...

Let the Ponies Out

oh papa, to have you drift up, some part of you drift up through

water through

fresh water into the teal plate of sky soaking foothills, papa,

to have your breath leave, escape you, escape the

weight of bone, muscle and organ, escape you, to rise up, to loft,

till you are all breath filling the room, rising, escaping the white...

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

If all the world and love were young,

And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move,

To live with thee, and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,

When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,

And Philomel becometh dumb,

The rest complains of cares...

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

the hand of my companion

gradually melts into mine

and her head on my shoulder

is as light as a dove

When we...

Introduction to the Songs of Innocence

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”

So I piped with merry cheer.

“Piper, pipe that song again;”

So I piped: he wept to hear.

“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs...

Cowboy Story

The books sit on the shelf, a row of coma patients

in a ward, a series of selves no longer able to learn

and trapped at the point of injury: the last page.

At the donor clinic I offer my arm to the spigot

of the needle and think, as I see the bag fill

with blood, there goes some of me. But that’s a lie:

as...

Poor Speaker

I understand you.

I get what you’re trying to say.

What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it.

I get it. You want me

to understand. You want me to know

not the words, but what’s behind them. Got it.

You’re trying to tell me

what you want me to hear. What I

hear is all words, but that’s not...

71. Song for a Silent Treatment.

I told her, in plain language, how I felt.

And by that I mean I mumbled a poorly

paraphrased and already cryptic passage

from one of Yeats’s later poems.

When she asked, “What was that?” I said, “Nothing.

Nothing. It doesn't matter.” It mattered,

of course. “Ma vie est usée. Allons, feignons ... ” 

On second...

Tide

Would I have seen her?

The tide tugging her gently past

the Comfort Inn; houses, tall and gabled,

the bridge and its passersby.

This is not a hidden place.

The graze and drag of her,

clumsy, obstructive in the divided

caress of eelgrass.

No search. Eight days.

Nights,

...

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate...

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows — through doors — burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Into the school where the scholar is studying;

Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no happiness must he have now with his bride,

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or...

Cocteau Twins

I’ve heard the phrase between you

and me too many times to believe

it to be true, but between me and you

there was Cocteau, wagging his testimonial

finger, as usual, while flat out on the floor

with my arms in receipt of the flower

of thought, palms upwards, I envisaged

the...

Pale Blue Cover

In the middle of the night Matt would fly to Vancouver so he could take a walk on the sea wall the next day, then go home.

Wouldnt tell anyone, no telephone call, just run a scene through his peculiar Ontario head, no snow on that beach.

No one can imagine Matt teaching religion at...

From Chapter I

for Dick Higgins

Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink

this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism,

disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish

hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t...

Epitaph

On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred

What on Earth deserves our trust?

Youth and Beauty both are dust.

Long we gathering are with pain,

What one moment calls again.

Seven years childless marriage past,

A Son, a son is born at last:

So...

Thou Poem

Thou poem of lost attention and half try,

do you fear more the inner world or outer?

I do not love the self less than the others,

my name is legion and my mouth one cry.

Walking with Walt Whitman Through Calgary's Eastside on a Winter Day

Blue-white afternoon. The Bow river churns and smokes

as the city rumbles, economy chokes and bundled homeless

build cardboard homes in the snow. Yes, Walt, this is the new

world, and how often has your huge, burled form lengthened

beside me as we strode through parking lots, the filth and ice

of streets? Great seer, I listen for your relentless...

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Very loud    a mad frenzy    The wooden

barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)

Left home to join the circus: 15 years old

You enter at the bottom and wind upwards

in spirals    the bike climbing the sides

You enter the barrel on a Peugeot

with automatic tied down handles

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

And burst the cannon’s roar; —

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more!...

Blank Sonnet

      The air smells of rhubarb, occasional

Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh,

Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls

Like flower. I step through snow as thin as script

Watch white stars spin dizzy as...

You charm’d me not with that fair face

You charm’d me not with that fair face

Though it was all divine:

To be another’s is the grace,

That makes me wish you mine.

The Gods and Fortune take their part

Who like young monarchs fight;

And boldly dare invade that heart

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang...

But I’m No One

for M. Maylor

Dear Anne Carson:

My friend read me the poem where your mom

said that the dead walk backwards.

You thought this myth arose from poor translation.

I can attest to your misapprehension.

My social studies teacher in grade 8, Ms. Rogers,

believed it was customary for the Chinese

to walk...

Susie Asado

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

    Susie Asado.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

    Susie Asado.

Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.

A lean on the shoe this means...

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

Modestine

We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

I was there, in the first of the long-term care centres, when he finished the story,

And we all shared the narrator’s sadness about giving up his donkey,

Not having...

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most...

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,

And let us hear no sound of human strife

After the click of the shutting. Life to life —

I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,

And feel as safe as guarded by a charm

Against the stab of worldlings,...

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,

The hurrying centres of the storm unite

And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,

Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,

Tower darkening...