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When the Master was calling the roll At the primary school in Collegelands, You were meant to call back Anseo And raise your hand As your name occurred. Anseo, meaning here, here and now, All present and correct, Was the first word of Irish I spoke. The last name on the ledger Belonged to Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward And was followed, as often as not, By silence, knowing looks, A nod and a wink, the Master's droll 'And where's our little Ward-of-court?' I remember the first time he came back The Master had sent him out Along the hedges To weigh up for himself and cut A stick with which he would be beaten. After a while, nothing was spoken; He would arrive as a matter of course With an ash-plant, a salley-rod. Or, finally, the hazel-wand He had whittled down to a whip-lash, Its twist of red and yellow lacquers Sanded and polished, And altogether so delicately wrought That he had engraved his initials on it. I last met Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward In a pub just over the Irish border. He was living in the open, In a secret camp On the other side of the mountain. He was fighting for Ireland, Making things happen. And he told me, Joe Ward, Of how he had risen through the ranks To Quartermaster, Commandant: How every morning at parade His volunteers would call back Anseo And raise their hands As their names occurred.

I broke at last the terror-fringed fascination that bound my ancient gaze to those crowding faces of plunder and seized my remnant life in a miracle of decision between white- collar hands and shook it like a cheap watch in my ear and threw it down beside me on the earth floor and rose to my feet. I made of their shoulders and heads bobbing up and down a new ladder and leaned it on their sweating flanks and ascended till midair my hands so new to harshness could grapple the roughness of a prickly day and quench the source that fed turbulence to their feet. I made a dramatic descent that day landing backways into crouching shadows into potsherds of broken trance. I flung open long-disused windows and doors and saw my hut new-sept by rainbow brooms of sunlight become my home again on whose trysting floor waited my proud vibrant life.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations To Pope’s Impromptu Title and Epigraph This poem is also known by a longer title: "To Mr. Pope In answer to a coppy of verses occasion'd by a little dispute upon four lines in the Rape of the Lock" Finch is responding to these four lines from Pope's The Rape of the Lock (first published 1712, finished 1717): Parent of vapors and of female wit, Who give the hysteric or poetic fit, On various tempers act by various ways, Make some take physic, other scribble plays; (Canto 4, lines 59-62) Alexander Pope's poem "Impromptu, To Lady Winchelsea Occasion'd by Four Satyrical Verses on Women-Wits, in The Rape of the Lock": In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapphos we admire no more: Fate doom'd the Fall of ev'ry Female Wit; But doom'd it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confess'd, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia's Throne; Fights and subdues in Quarrels not her own. To write their Praise you but in vain essay; Ev'n while you write, you take that Praise away: Light to the Stars the Sun does thus restore, But shines himself till they are seen no more. "Ardelia" is Finch's pen-name. The poem was written around 1714, and published in Bayle's Dictionary in 1741. Pope’s and Finch’s poem share the words "fate" and "world," and Pope's use of "admire" is echoed in Finch's use of "admiration." Disarmed with so genteel an air, The contest I give o’er; Yet, Alexander, have a care, And shock shock Echoes the Shock from Pope's The Rape of the Lock where the word suggests a military campaign: "Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall. /. . . / Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock." (Canto 2, lines 110, 116), and in Belinda's words from Canto 4, line 164: ". . . Shock was most unkind!" the sex no more no more Finch echoes Pope's use of “no more” in "Impromptu": “In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, / And cite those Sapphos we admire no more:“ and “Light to the Stars the Sun does thus restore, / But shines himself till they are seen no more.” . We rule the world our life’s whole race, Men but assume that right; First slaves to ev’ry tempting face First slaves to ev’ry tempting face Compare Pope's lines from The Rape of the Lock: "If to her share some female errors fall, / Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all." (Canto 2, lines 17-18) , Then martyrs to our spite. You of one Orpheus Orpheus . . . Hebrus . . . flood From Greek mythology: Orpheus was a legendary poet who could tame wild animals with his lute playing. He was allowed to lead his wife Eurydice out of Hades, provided he not look back as she followed him. Disobeying this command, he lost her forever. Afterward, lamenting his loss and disregarding the Thracian Maenads (women who followed Bacchus) these women tore him apart and threw his head into the Hebrus river. John Milton presents a brief account of Orpheus in Lycidas(1638), lines 58-63, which includes the river Hebrus: "His goary visage down the stream was sent, / Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore" (lines 62-63). sure have read, Who would like you have writ writ . . . wit Finch reverses the end rhyme of lines 3 and 4 from Pope's "Impromptu": “Fate doom'd the Fall of ev'ry Female Wit; / But doom'd it then when first Ardelia writ.” Had he in London town been bred, And polished too his wit writ . . . wit Finch reverses the end rhyme of lines 3 and 4 from Pope's "Impromptu": “Fate doom'd the Fall of ev'ry Female Wit; / But doom'd it then when first Ardelia writ.” ; But he poor soul thought all was well, And great should be his fame, When he had left his wife in hell, And birds and beasts could tame. Yet venturing then with scoffing rhymes The women to incense, Resenting heroines of those times Soon punished his offense. And as the Hebrus Orpheus . . . Hebrus . . . flood From Greek mythology: Orpheus was a legendary poet who could tame wild animals with his lute playing. He was allowed to lead his wife Eurydice out of Hades, provided he not look back as she followed him. Disobeying this command, he lost her forever. Afterward, lamenting his loss and disregarding the Thracian Maenads (women who followed Bacchus) these women tore him apart and threw his head into the Hebrus river. John Milton presents a brief account of Orpheus in Lycidas(1638), lines 58-63, which includes the river Hebrus: "His goary visage down the stream was sent, / Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore" (lines 62-63). rolled his skull, And harp besmeared with blood, They clashing as the waves grew full, Still harmonized the flood Orpheus . . . Hebrus . . . flood From Greek mythology: Orpheus was a legendary poet who could tame wild animals with his lute playing. He was allowed to lead his wife Eurydice out of Hades, provided he not look back as she followed him. Disobeying this command, he lost her forever. Afterward, lamenting his loss and disregarding the Thracian Maenads (women who followed Bacchus) these women tore him apart and threw his head into the Hebrus river. John Milton presents a brief account of Orpheus in Lycidas(1638), lines 58-63, which includes the river Hebrus: "His goary visage down the stream was sent, / Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore" (lines 62-63). . But you our follies gently treat, And spin so fine the thread, You need not fear his awkward fate, The lock won’t cost the head The lock won’t cost the head Refers to Pope's The Rape of the Lock, while also playing on "maidenhead": that is, virginity. . Our admiration admiration Echoes Pope's "admire" from his "Impromptu": In vain you . . . / . . . cite those Sapphos we admire no more” you command For all that’s gone before; What next we look for at your hand Can only raise it more. Yet sooth the ladies I advise (As me too pride has wrought) We’re born to wit, but to be wise By admonitions taught.

Debasement is the password of the base, Nobility the epitaph of the noble. See how the gilded sky is covered With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead. The Ice Age is over now, Why is there ice everywhere? The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered, Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea? I came into this world Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow, To proclaim before the judgment The voice that has been judged: Let me tell you, world, I—do—not—believe! If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet, Count me as number thousand and one. I don't believe the sky is blue; I don't believe in thunder's echoes; I don't believe that dreams are false; I don't believe that death has no revenge. If the sea is destined to breach the dikes Let all the brackish water pour into my heart; If the land is destined to rise Let humanity choose a peak for existence again. A new conjunction and glimmering stars Adorn the unobstructed sky now; They are the pictographs from five thousand years. They are the watchful eyes of future generations.

When I go back to earth And all my joyous body Puts off the red and white That once had been so proud, If men should pass above With false and feeble pity, My dust will find a voice To answer them aloud: “Be still, I am content, Take back your poor compassion— Joy was a flame in me Too steady to destroy. Lithe as a bending reed Loving the storm that sways her— I found more joy in sorrow Than you could find in joy.” October 1915

Forbear, bold youth, all’s Heaven here, And what you do aver, To others, courtship may appear, ’Tis sacriledge to her. She is a publick deity, And were’t not very odd She should depose her self to be A pretty household god? First make the sun in private shine, And bid the world adieu, That so he may his beams confine In complement to you. But if of that you do despair, Think how you did amiss, To strive to fix her beams which are More bright and large than this.

I call and hear your voice on the answering machine weeks after your death, a fledgling ghost still longing for human messages. Shall I leave one, telling how the fabric of our lives has been ripped before but that this sudden tear will not be mended soon or easily? In your emptying house, others roll up rugs, pack books, drink coffee at your antique table, and listen to messages left on a machine haunted by the timbre of your voice, more palpable than photographs or fingerprints. On this first day of this first fall without you, ashamed and resisting but compelled, I dial again the number I know by heart, thankful in a diminished world for the accidental mercy of machines, then listen and hang up.

After Robert Hooke All afternoon a reddish trickle out of the roots of the beech and across the lawn, a sort of  rust that shines and dances. Close up, it proves to be ant, each droplet a horned traveler finicking its way round the crooked geometry of a grass forest. A finger felled in their path rocks them, amazed, back on their haunches. I see them tasting the air for subtle intelligence, till one ventures to scale it, and others follow. They are fidgety subjects to draw. If you sink the feet in glue the rest twists and writhes; kill one, the juices evaporate in seconds, leaving only the shriveled casing. I dunked one in brandy. It struggled till the air rose from its mouth in pinprick bubbles. I let it soak an hour, then dried it, observed the spherical head, the hairlike feelers, the grinning vice of its sideways jaw, the coppery armor plate with its scattered spines. Some draft stirred it then. It rose to all its feet, and set off across the rough miles of desk.

to Helena Shire The Makers did not make The muddy winter hardening to privation, Or cholera in the keep, or frost’s long ache Afflicting every mortal nation From lord to villagers in their fading dyes —Those who like oxen strained On stony clearings of the ground From church to sties. They sought an utterance, Or sunshine soluble in institution, An orthodoxy justified, at once The dream and dreamer warmed in fusion, As in the great Rose Window, pieced from duty, Where through Christ’s crimson, sun Shines on your clothes till they take on Value and beauty. But carved on a high beam Far in the vault from the official version Gape gnarled unChristian heads out of whom stream Long stems of contrary assertion, Shaped leaf ridging their scalps in place of hair. Their origins lost to sight, As they are too, cast out from light. They should despair. What stays for its own sake, Occulted in the dark, may slip an ending, Recalcitrant, and strengthened by the ache Of winter not for the transcending. Ice and snow pile the gables of the roof Within whose shade they hold, Intimate with its slaty cold, To Christ aloof.

Like nights we knelt on the dirt floor of a dugout, leaned our heads back, eyes twitching gone, and popped nitrous canisters into the communion shapes of our mouths, slipped inside where everything seemed to be falling snow, ice, the time split between chasing flies through a darkened park and sprawling in sycamore bark—how clean that abyss we drifted in, like dew, more like pollen, on our skins; and, beneath, a want for touch, a kiss, a return. Like nothing back then, to break an arm latching on to the bumper of an Impala, or settling back as the car took us as far as the salted bridge, before letting the ride go with a mitten caught behind the chrome waving from the other side of the river.Like this, you said, sliding a needle, watching dope plunge, the body's rush and tow until you felt something like an angel hovering above, but it was only pigeon feathers deviling the air. Those friends are gone: some dead, dying, locked up or jailed in themselves; and when I see some kids running in the heat of a taillight swirling behind them, I remember we wanted only to quiet our bodies, their unnatural hum, a vague pull inward, some thin furrows gliding over the snow.