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I ran up six flights of stairs to my small furnished room opened the window and began throwing out those things most important in life First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink: “Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!” “Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide ... OUT!” Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement: “It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!” Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency! All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!” I pushed her fat ass out and screamed: “You always end up a bummer!” I picked up Faith Hope Charity all three clinging together: “Without us you’ll surely die!” “With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!” Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty— As I led her to the window I told her: “You I loved best in life ... but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!” Not really meaning to drop her I immediately ran downstairs getting there just in time to catch her “You saved me!” she cried I put her down and told her: “Move on.” Went back up those six flights went to the money there was no money to throw out. The only thing left in the room was Death hiding beneath the kitchen sink: “I’m not real!” It cried “I’m just a rumor spread by life ... ” Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all and suddenly realized Humor was all that was left— All I could do with Humor was to say: “Out the window with the window!”

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas , I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere , for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Why Brownlee left, and where he went, Is a mystery even now. For if a man should have been content It was him; two acres of barley, One of potatoes, four bullocks, A milker, a slated farmhouse. He was last seen going out to plough On a March morning, bright and early. By noon Brownlee was famous; They had found all abandoned, with The last rig unbroken, his pair of black Horses, like man and wife, Shifting their weight from foot to Foot, and gazing into the future.

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies— Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury. So he will be, though law be clear as crystal, Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony. Come, let us vote against our human nature, Crying to God in all the polling places To heal our everlasting sinfulness And make us sages with transfigured faces.

Because we rage inside the old boundaries, like a young girl leaving the Church, scared of her parents. Because we all dream of saving the shaggy, dung-caked buffalo, shielding the herd with our bodies. Because grief unites us, like the locked antlers of moose who die on their knees in pairs.

Comes the time when it’s later and onto your table the headwaiter puts the bill, and very soon after rings out the sound of lively laughter— Picking up change, hands like a walrus, and a face like a barndoor’s, and a head without any apparent size, nothing but two eyes— So that’s you, man, or me. I make it as I can, I pick up, I go faster than they know— Out the door, the street like a night, any night, and no one in sight, but then, well, there she is, old friend Liz— And she opens the door of her cadillac, I step in back, and we’re gone. She turns me on— There are very huge stars, man, in the sky, and from somewhere very far off someone hands me a slice of apple pie, with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it, and I eat it— Slowly. And while certainly they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket of these cats not making it, I make it in my wicker basket.

Nothing curves at sea, and the men there die abruptly, in imitation of the fact, except when the ship rises higher than necessary and then they must drop suddenly but for a long time, so that their deaths appear natural in the end, and the women sweeping the coutyards pause, thinking the dust to be the cause of a specific dryness in the mouth. They leave half of a pastry to harden on a plate. They leave all of the lemons and figs in bowls. They leave fuschia splattered on the stone steps leading down to the bay. They carry their brooms with them, keep sweeping the air, cleaning it back to the sea. They sweep the sand from the shore, feet standing in neat little rows of foam. Each at the edge of something when the foghorns remind them: they will not clearly remember it, they will not altogether forget it. They will wait for something to emerge, like a man at sea carving his children from soap. One woman will start the rumor that the sea is deeper than necessary: Tell her, when has anyone ever come back for one day’s effort on earth?

The wild and wavy event now chintz at the window was revolution . . . Adams to Miss Abigail Smith: You have faults You hang your head down like a bulrush you read, you write, you think but I drink Madeira to you and you cross your Leggs while sitting. (Later:) How are the children? If in danger run to the woods. Evergreen o evergreen how faithful are your branches.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations 1 When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap coonskin cap A cap made from a raccoon pelt , and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut butternut A shade of yellow similar to khaki. In the Civil War, some Confederate soldiers wore butternut-colored uniforms, leading them to be nicknamed Butternuts. Southern sympathizers in the North were also referred to as Butternuts. ’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor lotus-eating ancestor An allusion to the Lotos (Lotus) Eaters of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus’ men who ate the lotos lost the desire to return home. In Robert Fitzgerald’s translation: “but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotos / never cared to report, nor to return: / they longed to stay forever, browsing on / that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland” (Book IX, lines 101-104). , We’ll swim in milk and honey milk and honey Attributes of the Promised Land mentioned several times in the Bible, first at Exodus 3.8, where God promises the Israelites “a land flowing with milk and honey” (New Revised Standard Version) till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong scuppernong A type of wine made from the scuppernong grape, native to the surrounding area of the Scuppernong River in North Carolina ; All seasons sweet All seasons sweet Echoes Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lines, “Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee”, from his poem “ Frost at Midnight ” , but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers mufflers Heavy scarves ; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins water moccasins A venomous water snake, also known as cottonmouth Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake Chesapeake The Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland In shoals shoals Sandbars new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback canvasback A wild duck “so called from the color of the back” (A Dictionary of Americanisms, 1951) . 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones Puritan marrow of my bones The Puritans were a persecuted religious group of English Protestants, in the 16th and 17th centuries that wanted to reform or “purify” the Church of England from within. Some Puritans eventually came to New England in the 1630s and 40s, supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. “Puritan” has been used as a pejorative term to describe strict moralists against all worldly pleasures. Marrow is a fatty substance found in the cavities of bones, where blood cells are produced. Marrow provides moisture to bones, which give them further strength. “Marrow of my bones” is a phrase common back to the Bible, referring less literally to the center or core of a thing or issue. There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Spate Freshet or flood Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves Sheaves A bundle of cut stalks of grain tied together after reaping ; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter sleepy winter In the same volume,Nets to Catch the Wind, Wylie published the poem “Winter Sleep.” , like the sleep of death.

Amazing to believe that nothingness Surrounds us with delight and lets us be, And that the meekness of nonentity, Despite the friction of the world of sense, Despite the leveling of violence, Is all that matters. All the energy We force into the matchhead and the city Explodes inside a loving emptiness. Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth, Out of which comes and into which light goes, This God recedes from every metaphor, Turns the hardest data into untruth, And fills all blanks with blankness. This love shows Itself in absence, which the stars adore.