25 Lines or Fewer

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

You knock on the door

You knock on the door but nobody answers. Cupping your hands around your face you peer through the side-panel of frosted glass. A kettle is whistling, a woman singing as she sets the table. This is a familiar house. You knock again. Inside, the sounds are festive. Glasses clink and a band starts up. Pressing your ear to the door, you hear the sound of your own laughter. This is the house you...

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...

Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I)

In the onion, there’s

something of fire. That fire known as

Fog. The onion is the way

fog has of entering the earth.

Into the soil. Through the green leaves of the onion....

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...

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...

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...

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...

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans...

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman’s boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings...

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white...

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed compliment. Bats, houses of parliament, giants, stones.

What woman, witness to such Thought, does not feel

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...

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...

Dream Jobs

Random Link Clicker.

Royal Bath Taker.

Receiver of Foot Rubs and Praise.

Ingenue Emeritus.

Good Samaritan Emeritus.

Undersecretary of Trivial Pursuits.

Chief Executive Napper.

Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom of Spring.

Procurer of Unnecessary Hats.

Empress of Ice Cream.

Cloud-...

En Route

The train has stopped for no apparent reason

In the wilds;

A frozen lake is level and fretted over

With rippled wind lines;

The sun is burning in the South; the season

Is winter trembling at a touch of spring.

A little hill with birches and a ring

Of cedars — all so still, so pure with snow —

It seems a tiny landscape in...

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:

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...

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...

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

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...

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

and I’m filled with peace, perfect peace

No longer shall I speak of electrocuted poets

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.

...

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?...

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

Comes like the stir of the day:

One whose breath is an odor,

Whose eyes show the road to stars,

The breeze in his face,

The glory of heaven on his back.

He steps like a vision hung in air,

Diffusing the passion of eternity;

...

The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;

Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.

The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

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.

Echolalia

Once one gets what one wants

one no longer wants it.

One no longer wants what?

One no longer wants what

one wanted.

-

A man and a woman want a woman and a man

or a man and a woman depending

on the man and the woman.

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Not Horses

What I adore is not horses, with their modern

domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore

is a bug that lives only one day, especially if

it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or

chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day

when no one thinks of anything else, least of all

that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ve been

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...

Flaxman

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,

Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,

And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought

Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone, —

A higher charm than modern culture won

With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,

Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.

A many-colored light flows from one sun...

Skeena Crossing

What is this         this crossing?

In the photo   just in front of the train with the crane at the edge of the    drop

                                      off from track into river

              stands a young man. 

              Truss truss.       From left.       

              Truss truss.       From right.

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields.

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...

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

or bad-humoured fields that hoard curses

& promises that there won't be a harvest

this year or next year or ever...

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...

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...

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

What horror to awake at night

What horror to awake at night

and in the dimness see the light.

               Time is white

               mosquitoes bite

I’ve spent my life on nothing.

Ella Josephine Campbell

Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones.

Cords of her hands like spruce roots.

Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch

with little more than the child inside her,

landed in a small shack flanked by

an outhouse, train tracks. Made it work,

had to. No surviving a place like this

without some acceptance, some yield

to the...

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...

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,

And children’s faces looking up

Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,

Music like a curve of gold,

...

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...

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

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...

Song to Celia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I’ll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

I would not change for thine....

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...

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...

you aren't going to like what i have to say

before i start i want to say you shouldn’t blame yourself

there’s no point in beating around the bush

there’s something we need to talk about

this is the most difficult thing i’ve ever had to tell anyone

the longer i wait the harder it’s going to be

it’s best if we face this right now

what i’m about to tell you won’t be easy to hear

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...

Icicle Glasses

Day thirty-nine

The thing that death gave you —

your face leaks

your face overflows

Your face is the grave of your nose

your face is the grave of your ears

your face is the grave of your face

once again your face overflows uncontrollably

The subzero temperature grows on your face then...

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...

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...

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...

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

Which nothing, nothing can divide:

When she the word obey has said,

And man by law supreme has made,

Then all that’s kind is laid aside,

And nothing left but state and pride:

Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows,

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...

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never...

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...

La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo...

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —

Lean on a garden urn —

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —

Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise —

Fling them to the ground and turn

With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:

But weave, weave the...

The Last Laugh

‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.

Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,

The Bullets chirped — In vain! vain! vain!

Machine-guns chuckled, — Tut-tut! Tut-tut!

And the Big Gun guffawed.

Another sighed, — ‘O Mother, mother! Dad!’

Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.

...

January 1, Dawn

After the celebrations,

people, TV channels, telephones,

the year’s recently-corrected digit

finally falls asleep.

Between the final night and the first dawn

a jagged piece of sky

as if viewed from the open mouth of a whale.

Inside her belly and inside the belly of time,

there’s no point worrying.

You...

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...

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,...

From Correspondences

Sometimes we are led through the doorway

by a child, sometimes

by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing

the past, for if there is anything we must change

it is the past. To look back

and see another map.

Love enough to fill

a shoe, a suitcase, a bit of ink,

a painting, a child’s eyes at a chalkboard,...

Deto(nation)

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.

To even write father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough...

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,

...

When I consider how my light is spent

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

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,

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...

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

slit them free of their spotless pelts.

The storm...

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert.... Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

...

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene’er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And...

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...

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!

The Dead

How great unto the living seem the dead!

How sacred, solemn; how heroic grown;

How vast and vague, as they obscurely tread

The shadowy confines of the dim unknown! —

For they have met the monster that we dread,

Have learned the secret not to mortal shown.

E’en as gigantic shadows on the wall

The spirit of the daunted child amaze...

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...

On Monsieur’s Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

...

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...

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,

What Is Poetry

(a twelve-tone poem)

trite yap show

rosy twit heap

posterity haw

a wept history

it’s yawp rot, eh

a wisher potty

a power shitty

a whitey sport

poetry is what

whips yo tater

pets it awry, oh

oh, twisty pear

two hearts yip

it’s paw theory...

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,

...

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;

Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I

fluorine

arsenic in calculators, mercury in felt

hats, mad as a poisoned hatter

pyrophoric undercurrent in mundane

acts assume poison unless otherwise

informed crowded alloys detect no

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!

“Where are thy father and mother? say?”

“They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smil’d among the winter’s snow,

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing...

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...

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...

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...

11. Headwinds

When I began to write, I didn’t know

each of my words would bit by bit remove

things from the world and in return leave blank

spaces. That poems would begin to take

the place of my own homeland, mother, father,

first love, and second youth, and what I write

would fade from this world, trade its solid being

for unstable...

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

“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 — ...

Eight

The trick to building houses was making sure

they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste

was growing more sophisticated and occasionally

its appetite was unwieldy. It ate boats and children,

the occasional shoe. Pants. A diamond ring.

Hammers. It ate promises and rants. It snatched up

names like...

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...

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...

Little Song

Both guitars run trebly. One noodles 

Over a groove. The other slushes chords.

Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair.

They close my eyes. I close their eyes. A horn

Blares its inner air to brass. A girl shakes

Her ass. Some dude does the same. The music’s

Gone moot. Who doesn’t love it when the bass

Doesn’t hide? When...

Self-Portrait

He wants to be

a brutal old man,

an aggressive old man,

as dull, as brutal

as the emptiness around him,

He doesn’t want compromise,   

Experience

The lords of life, the lords of life, —

I saw them pass,

In their own guise,

Like and unlike,

Portly and grim, —

Use and Surprise,

Surface and Dream,

Succession swift and spectral Wrong,

Temperament without a tongue,

And the inventor of the game

Omnipresent without name; —

Some to see, some to...

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...

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;

...

from Sharking of the Birdcage ["the spirit of"]

                   the spirit of

                 your flowers is

         my favourite shelter

             we were in love is

                           the main

                                thing

      faintest green light in

      tree pulls me forward

whenever life is

beautiful makes

me think of...

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

Sign has no future or past; it is a present language.

You are never more present than when a gun

is pointed at you. What language says this...

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller...

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...

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they...

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...

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...

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...

Love Armed

Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,

Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,

For whom Fresh pains he did Create,

And strange Tyrannic power he showed;

From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,

Which round about, in sport he hurled;

But ’twas from mine he took desire

Enough to undo the Amorous World.

From me he...

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.

Poem for My Body

No one else rescued me. Not my father

or my brother or, years later, the gentle man

who became my husband. Not my mother

or my best friend or any of the women

who listened to me tell my story

and told me their own stories as we drank

cups of hot chocolate in cafés in Vancouver

while outside the rain poured and fallen leaves