Poemunity — your poem community

When thou, poor excommunicate From all the joys of love, shalt see The full reward and glorious fate Which my strong faith shall purchase me, Then curse thine own inconstancy. A fairer hand than thine shall cure That heart, which thy false oaths did wound; And to my soul, a soul more pure Than thine shall by Love's hand be bound, And both with equal glory crown'd. Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain To Love, as I did once to thee; When all thy tears shall be as vain As mine were then, for thou shalt be Damn'd for thy false apostasy.

You’re still there in the spectral impress, the plied afterimage grid of trucks and buses, diesel fume and bloodspoor streaked on wet streets, and cars biting evening papers from the black newsstand. Above, the trestle’s gravel bed hums expectantly, or with relief, and the gritty pinpoints of snow, at rest on silver rails, flare into the coming dark, while everywhere your hungry light still tries to reconstruct itself, charm the space in and around the looseknit ironworks, winter’s checkered yellowings glaring past the dark. From here, two years away, I see in your middle distance a trestle stretched between two brownstones, the whole scene droning deep: the train tears through the gap, ratcheting the space with green aquatic squares that flick past like old sluggish film, each frame a piece of failing, played-back fact, and the unseen wheels click, mumble, click in flukes of young clean snow fountaining up around those strangers abiding in the glass.

Since you dare Brave me, with a Rivals Name, You shall prevail, and I will quite my Claime: For know, proud Maid, I Scorn to call him mine, Whom thou durst ever hope to have made thine: Yet I confess, I lov’d him once so well, His presence was my Heav’n, his absence Hell: With gen’rous excellence I fill’d his Brest, And in sweet Beauteous Forms his Person drest; For him I did heaven, and its Pow’r despise, And onely lived by th’Influence of his Eyes: I fear’d not Rivals, for I thought that he That was possess’d of such a Prize as me, All meaner Objects wou’d Contemn, and Slight, Nor let an abject thing Usurpe my Right: But when I heard he was so wretched Base To pay devotion to thy wrinkled Face I Banish’t him my sight, and told the Slave, He had not Worth, but what my Fancy gave: ’Twas I that rais’d him to this Glorious State, And can as easily Annihilate: But let him live, Branded with Guilt and Shame, And Shrink into the Shade from whence he came; His Punishment shall be, the Loss of Me, And be Augumented, by his gaining Thee.

And does the heart grow old? You know In the indiscriminate green Of summer or in earliest snow A landscape is another scene, Inchoate and anonymous, And every rock and bush and drift As our affections alter us Will alter with the season’s shift. So love by love we come at last, As through the exclusions of a rhyme, Or the exactions of a past, To the simplicity of time, The antiquity of grace, where yet We live in terror and delight With love as quiet as regret And love like anger in the night.

Incautious Youth , why do'st thou so mis-place Thy fine Encomiums on an o’er-blown Face; Which after all the Varnish of thy Quill, Its Pristine wrinkles shew apparent still: Nor is it in the power of Youth to move An Age-chill’d heart to any strokes of Love. Then chuse some budding Beauty , which in time May crown thy Wishes in thy blooming prime: For nought can make a more preposterous show, Than April’s Flowers stuck on St. Michael’s Bow. To consecrate thy first-born Sighs to me, A superannuated Deity; Makes that Idolatry and deadly Sin, Which otherwise had only Venial been.

You are riding the bus again burrowing into the blackness of Interstate 80, the sole passenger with an overhead light on. And I am with you. I’m the interminable fields you can’t see, the little lights off in the distance (in one of those rooms we are living) and I am the rain and the others all around you, and the loneliness you love, and the universe that loves you specifically, maybe, and the catastrophic dawn, the nicotine crawling on your skin— and when you begin to cough I won’t cover my face, and if you vomit this time I will hold you: everything’s going to be fine I will whisper. It won’t always be like this. I am going to buy you a sandwich.

(for jazz orchestra and trumpet solo) New York! At first I was bewildered by your beauty, Those huge, long-legged, golden girls. So shy, at first, before your blue metallic eyes and icy smile, So shy. And full of despair at the end of skyscraper streets Raising my owl eyes at the eclipse of the sun. Your light is sulphurous against the pale towers Whose heads strike lightning into the sky, Skyscrapers defying storms with their steel shoulders And weathered skin of stone. But two weeks on the naked sidewalks of Manhattan— At the end of the third week the fever Overtakes you with a jaguar’s leap Two weeks without well water or pasture all birds of the air Fall suddenly dead under the high, sooty terraces. No laugh from a growing child, his hand in my cool hand. No mother’s breast, but nylon legs. Legs and breasts Without smell or sweat. No tender word, and no lips, Only artificial hearts paid for in cold cash And not one book offering wisdom. The painter’s palette yields only coral crystals. Sleepless nights, O nights of Manhattan! Stirring with delusions while car horns blare the empty hours And murky streams carry away hygenic loving Like rivers overflowing with the corpses of babies. II Now is the time of signs and reckoning, New York! Now is the time of manna and hyssop. You have only to listen to God’s trombones, to your heart Beating to the rhythm of blood, your blood. I saw Harlem teeming with sounds and ritual colors And outrageous smells— At teatime in the home of the drugstore-deliveryman I saw the festival of Night begin at the retreat of day. And I proclaim Night more truthful than the day. It is the pure hour when God brings forth Life immemorial in the streets, All the amphibious elements shinning like suns. Harlem, Harlem! Now I’ve seen Harlem, Harlem! A green breeze of corn rising from the pavements Plowed by the Dan dancers’ bare feet, Hips rippling like silk and spearhead breasts, Ballets of water lilies and fabulous masks And mangoes of love rolling from the low houses To the feet of police horses. And along sidewalks I saw streams of white rum And streams of black milk in the blue haze of cigars. And at night I saw cotton flowers snow down From the sky and the angels’ wings and sorcerers’ plumes. Listen, New York! O listen to your bass male voice, Your vibrant oboe voice, the muted anguish of your tears Falling in great clots of blood, Listen to the distant beating of your nocturnal heart, The tom-tom’s rhythm and blood, tom-tom blood and tom-tom. III New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood. Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines. Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored, The reconciliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning. See your rivers stirring with musk alligators And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens. Just open your eyes to the April rainbow And your eyes, especially your ears, to God Who in one burst of saxophone laughter Created heaven and earth in six days, And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep.

At first you'll joy to see the playful snow, Like white moths trembling on the tropic air, Or waters of the hills that softly flow Gracefully falling down a shining stair. And when the fields and streets are covered white And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, Or underneath a spell of heat and light The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw, Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry, And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong, Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky. But oh! more than the changeless southern isles, When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm, You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on!”—but o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast! For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er! No more—no more—no more— (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams— In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.

Why do I love? Go, ask the Glorious Sun Why every day it round the world doth run; Ask Thames and Tiber, why they Ebb and Flow: Ask Damask Roses why in June they blow; Ask Ice and Hail, the reason, why they’re Cold: Decaying Beauties, why they will grow Old They’ll tell thee, Fate, that every thing doth move, Inforces them to this, and me to Love. There is no Reason for our Love or Hate; ’Tis irresistible, as Death or Fate; ’Tis not his face; I’ve sence enough to see, That is not good, though doated on by me; Not is’t his Tongue, that has this Conquest won; For that at least is equall’d by my own: His Carriage can to none obliging be, ’Tis Rude, Affected, full of Vanity: Strangely Ill-natur’d, Peevish and Unkind, Unconstant, False, to Jealousie inclin’d, His Temper cou’d not have so great a Pow’r, ’Tis mutable, and changes every hour: Those vigorous Years that Women so Adore, Are past in him: he’s twice my Age, and more; And yet I love this false, this worthless Man With all the Passion that a Woman can; Doat on his Imperfections, though I spy Nothing to Love; I Love, and know not why. Since ’tis Decreed in the dark Book of Fate That I shou’d Love, and he shou’d be ingrate.