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Oui, pour jamais Chassons l’image De la volage Que j’adorais.              PARNY. Matilda, farewell! Fate has doom’d us to part, But the prospect occasions no pang to my heart; No longer is love with my reason at strife, Though once thou wert dearer, far dearer than life. As together we roam’d, I the passion confess’d, Which thy beauty and virtue had rais’d in my breast; That the passion was mutual thou mad’st me believe, And I thought my Matilda could never deceive. My Matilda! no, false one! my claims I resign: Thou canst not, thou must not, thou shalt not be mine: I now scorn thee as much as I lov’d thee before, Nor sigh when I think I shall meet thee no more. Though fair be thy form, thou no lovers wilt find, While folly and falsehood inhabit thy mind, Though coxcombs may flatter, though ideots may prize, Thou art shunn’d by the good, and contemn’d by the wise. Than mine what affection more fervent could be, When I thought ev’ry virtue was center’d in thee? Of the vows thou hast broken I will not complain, For I mourn not the loss of a heart I disdain. Oh! hadst thou but constant and amiable prov’d As that fancied perfection I formerly lov’d, Nor absence, nor time, though supreme their controul, Could have dimm’d the dear image then stamp’d on my soul. How bright were the pictures, untinted with shade, By Hope’s glowing pencil on Fancy pourtray’d! Sweet visions of bliss! which I could not retain; For they, like thyself, were deceitful and vain. Some other, perhaps, to Matilda is dear, Some other, more pleasing, though not more sincere; May he fix thy light passions, now wav’ring as air, Then leave thee, inconstant, to shame and despair! Repent not, Matilda, return not to me: Unavailing thy grief, thy repentance will be: In vain will thy vows or thy smiles be resum’d, For love, once extinguish’d, is never relum’d.

Come, fallen angel, and your pink wings close; Doff your white robe, your rays that gild the skies; You must—from heaven, where once you used to rise— Streak, like a shooting star, fall into prose. Your bird’s feet now must strike an earthly pose. It is no time to fly: walk! Lock your prize— Your harp’s fair harmonies—in resting wise, Within your heart: vain, worthless treasures those! Poor child of heaven, but vainly would you sing: To them your tongue divine means not a thing! Their ear is closed to your sweet chords! But this I beg: O blue-eyed angel, first, before You leave, find my pale love, whom I adore, And give her brow one long, last farewell kiss.

May the Babylonish curse, Strait confound my stammering verse, If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, That, whichever thing I shew, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed. Sooty retainer to the vine, Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon Thy begrimed complexion, And, for thy pernicious sake, More and greater oaths to break Than reclaimed lovers take 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck'st the laboring breath Faster than kisses or than death. Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, thro' thy heightening steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem, And all about us does express (Fancy and wit in richest dress) A Sicilian fruitfulness. Thou through such a mist dost shew us, That our best friends do not know us, And, for those allowed features, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters that, who see us, fear us Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex can'st shew What his deity can do, As the false Egyptian spell Aped the true Hebrew miracle? Some few vapours thou may'st raise, The weak brain may serve to amaze, But to the reigns and nobler heart Can'st nor life nor heat impart. Brother of Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant - only thou His true Indian conquest art And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. Scent to match thy rich perfume Chemic art did ne'er presume Through her quaint alembic strain, None so sov'reign to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excel, Fram'd again no second smell. Roses, violets, but toys For the smaller sort of boys, Or for greener damsels meant; Thou art the only manly scent. Stinking'st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite — Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 'Twas but in a sort I blam'd thee; None e'er prosper'd who defam'd thee; Irony all, and feign'd abuse, Such as perplext lovers use, At a need, when, in despair To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe, — Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot Whether it be pain or not. Or, as men, constrained to part With what's nearest to their heart, While their sorrow's at the height, Lose discrimination quite, And their hasty wrath let fall, To appease their frantic gall, On the darling thing whatever Whence they feel it death to sever, Though it be, as they, perforce, Guiltless of the sad divorce. For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave the. For thy sake, TOBACCO, I Would do any thing but die, And but seek to extend my days Long enough to sing thy praise. But, as she, who once hath been A king's consort, is a queen Ever after, nor will bate Any tittle of her state, Though a widow, or divorced, So I, from thy converse forced, The old name and style retain, A right Katherine of Spain; And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys Of the blest Tobacco Boys; Where, though I, by sour physician, Am debarr'd the full fruition Of thy favours, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch Sidelong odours, that give life Like glances from a neighbour's wife; And still live in the by-places And the suburbs of thy graces; And in thy borders take delight, An unconquer'd Canaanite.

The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder, Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.” Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How pleasant To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she scratched Her cleft chin’s solitary hair. She remembered spinach And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach. “M’love,” he intercepted, “the plains are decked out in thunder Today, and it shall be as you wish.” He scratched The part of his head under his hat. The apartment Seemed to grow smaller. “But what if no pleasant Inspiration plunge us now to the stars?For this is my country.” Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country. Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach When the door opened and Swee’pea crept in. “How pleasant!” But Swee’pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. “Thunder And tears are unavailing,” it read. “Henceforth shall Popeye’s apartment Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or scratched.” Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched Her long thigh. “I have news!” she gasped. “Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment And all that it contains, myself and spinach In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder.” She grabbed Swee’pea. “I’m taking the brat to the country.” “But you can’t do that—he hasn’t even finished his spinach,” Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment. But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment Succumbed to a strange new hush. “Actually it’s quite pleasant Here,” thought the Sea Hag. “If this is all we need fear from spinach Then I don’t mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over”—she scratched One dug pensively—“but Wimpy is such a country Bumpkin, always burping like that.” Minute at first, the thunder Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder, The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.

Not coop so much as aviary. The way everyone thinks the youngest two are twins despite their differences. This memory of a blue dress the tall man called a cool drink of water. A carpet burning the skin right off my back. What I needed to say versus what I was able —the way you can't see an image in sunlight unless it's matte. Could you drink pee if there were nothing else?

A telephone line goes cold; birds tread it wherever it goes. A farm back of a great plain tugs an end of the line. I call that farm every year, ringing it, listening, still; no one is home at the farm, the line gives only a hum. Some year I will ring the line on a night at last the right one, and with an eye tapered for braille from the phone on the wall I will see the tenant who waits— the last one left at the place; through the dark my braille eye will lovingly touch his face. “Hello, is Mother at home?” No one is home today. “But Father—he should be there.” No one—no one is here. “But you—are you the one . . . ?” Then the line will be gone because both ends will be home: no space, no birds, no farm. My self will be the plain, wise as winter is gray, pure as cold posts go pacing toward what I know.

We sold it. To a man who would be a patriarch. I told John we were closed in, subdivisions and trailers all around, complaints of the smell (though there was none), Ira came out and told me to keep them fenced (though none broke out), the neighbors frightened because someone’s cousin’s friend heard of a hog that ate a child who fell in the pen (though their children rode my sows at feeding time), because I was tired, because Jan carried our child and could no longer help, because she wanted a home. And the patriarch lost his first crop to weeds, threw a rod in the tractor, dug a basement and moved the trailer on for extra bedrooms, cut the water lines for a ditch, subdivided the farm and sold the pigs for sausage. I told John they were his, they were no longer mine, I couldn’t be responsible. The wire connecting our voices was silent for a moment. “You stupid sonofabitch,” was all he finally said. “You poor stupid bastard.”

My father’s farm is an apple blossomer. He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose and the jack-in-the-pulpits. His sleek cows ripple in the pastures. The dog and purple iris keep watch at the garden’s end. His farm is rolling thunder, a lightning bolt on the horizon. His crops suck rain from the sky and swallow the smoldering sun. His fields are oceans of heat, where waves of gold beat the burning shore. A red fox pauses under the birch trees, a shadow is in the river’s bend. When the hawk circles the land, my father’s grainfields whirl beneath it. Owls gather together to sing in his woods, and the deer run his golden meadow. My father’s farm is an icicle, a hillside of white powder. He parts the snowy sea, and smooths away the valleys. He cultivates his rows of starlight and drags the crescent moon through dark unfurrowed fields.

“Lincoln?— Well, I was in the old Second Maine, The first regiment in Washington from the Pine Tree State. Of course I didn’t get the butt of the clip; We was there for guardin’ Washington— We was all green. “I ain’t never ben to the theayter in my life— I didn’t know how to behave. I ain’t never ben since. I can see as plain as my hat the box where he sat in When he was shot. I can tell you, sir, there was a panic When we found our President was in the shape he was in! Never saw a soldier in the world but what liked him. “Yes, sir. His looks was kind o’ hard to forget. He was a spare man, An old farmer. Everything was all right, you know, But he wasn’t a smooth-appearin’ man at all— Not in no ways; Thin-faced, long-necked, And a swellin’ kind of a thick lip like. “And he was a jolly old fellow—always cheerful; He wasn’t so high but the boys could talk to him their own ways. While I was servin’ at the Hospital He’d come in and say, ‘You look nice in here,’ Praise us up, you know. And he’d bend over and talk to the boys— And he’d talk so good to ’em—so close— That’s why I call him a farmer. I don’t mean that everything about him wasn’t all right, you understand, It’s just—well, I was a farmer— And he was my neighbor, anybody’s neighbor. I guess even you young folks would ‘a’ liked him.”

Three summers since I chose a maid, Too young maybe—but more’s to do At harvest-time than bide and woo. When us was wed she turned afraid Of love and me and all things human; Like the shut of a winter’s day Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman— More like a little frightened fay. One night, in the Fall, she runned away. “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said, ’Should properly have been abed; But sure enough she wadn’t there Lying awake with her wide brown stare. So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down We chased her, flying like a hare Before out lanterns. To Church-Town All in a shiver and a scare We caught her, fetched her home at last And turned the key upon her, fast. She does the work about the house As well as most, but like a mouse: Happy enough to chat and play With birds and rabbits and such as they, So long as men-folk keep away. “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech When one of us comes within reach. The women say that beasts in stall Look round like children at her call. I’ve hardly heard her speak at all. Shy as a leveret, swift as he, Straight and slight as a young larch tree, Sweet as the first wild violets, she, To her wild self. But what to me? The short days shorten and the oaks are brown, The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky, One leaf in the still air falls slowly down, A magpie’s spotted feathers lie On the black earth spread white with rime, The berries redden up to Christmas-time. What’s Christmas-time without there be Some other in the house than we! She sleeps up in the attic there Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down, The soft young down of her, the brown, The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!