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Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving. Lofty mansions, warm and spacious; Courtiers cringing and voracious; Misers scarce the wretched heeding; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding. Wives who laugh at passive spouses; Theatres, and meeting-houses; Balls, where simp’ring misses languish; Hospitals, and groans of anguish. Arts and sciences bewailing; Commerce drooping, credit failing; Placemen mocking subjects loyal; Separations, weddings royal. Authors who can’t earn a dinner; Many a subtle rogue a winner; Fugitives for shelter seeking; Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking. Taste and talents quite deserted; All the laws of truth perverted; Arrogance o’er merit soaring; Merit silently deploring. Ladies gambling night and morning; Fools the works of genius scorning; Ancient dames for girls mistaken, Youthful damsels quite forsaken. Some in luxury delighting; More in talking than in fighting; Lovers old, and beaux decrepid; Lordlings empty and insipid. Poets, painters, and musicians; Lawyers, doctors, politicians: Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes, Seeking fame by diff’rent roads. Gallant souls with empty purses; Gen’rals only fit for nurses; School-boys, smit with martial spirit, Taking place of vet’ran merit. Honest men who can’t get places, Knaves who shew unblushing faces; Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded; Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.

On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move: Yet though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love! My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; The worm—the canker, and the grief Are mine alone! The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some Volcanic Isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze A funeral pile. The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of Love I cannot share, But wear the chain. But 'tis not thus—and 'tis not here Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now, Where Glory decks the hero's bier, Or binds his brow. The Sword, the Banner, and the Field, Glory and Greece around us see! The Spartan borne upon his shield Was not more free. Awake (not Greece—she is awake!) Awake, my Spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake And then strike home! Tread those reviving passions down Unworthy Manhood—unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of beauty be. If thou regret'st thy Youth,why live? The land of honourable Death Is here:—up to the Field, and give Away thy breath! Seek out—less often sought than found— A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy Ground, And take thy rest.

We must stop bragging. There are limits For us to the cold and the twelfth night Marks them all. Just off the coast of Maine The lobster boats pass, dragging their nets. Capsize once in a while, in water Like that you die, that’s all, that water Isn’t even frozen. Not even Frozen, and that’s as cold as it gets. The hearts of birds beat voraciously So they keep warm, so if you put out A feeder, keep it full of the seeds Their hearts feed on, then it is only When their food runs out that you find them Inexpressibly taut in hollows, And that’s as cold as it ever gets.

All Nashville is a chill. And everywhere Like desert sand, when the winds blow, There is each moment sifted through the air, A powdered blast of January snow. O! thoughtless Dandelion, to be misled By a few warm days to leave thy natural bed, Was folly growth and blooming over soon. And yet, thou blasted yellow-coated gem, Full many a heart has but a common boon With thee, now freezing on thy slender stem. When the heart has bloomed by the touch of love’s warm breath Then left and chilling snow is sifted in, It still may beat but there is blast and death To all that blooming life that might have been.

It needn’t be tinder, this juncture of the year, a cigarette second guessed from car to brush. The woods’ parchment is given to cracking asunder the first puff of wind. Yesterday a big sycamore came across First and Hawthorne and is there yet. The papers say it has to happen, if just as dribs and drabs on the asbestos siding. But tonight is buckets of stars as hard and dry as dimes. A month’s supper things stacks in the sink. Tea brews from water stoppered in the bath and any thirst carried forward is quenched thinking you, piece by piece, an Xmas gift hidden and found weeks after: the ribbon, the box. I have reservoirs of want enough to freeze many nights over.

Between the bent boughs of the splayed sumac the silver owl rests his head. The perimeter left by your absence is long to walk in one day. The angel in her credenza of extreme beauty dogs swim the river I look for my heart by the lamp where the light is skitter in the wet black leaves

O lord, he said, Japanese women, real women, they have not forgotten, bowing and smiling closing the wounds men have made; but American women will kill you like they tear a lampshade, American women care less than a dime, they’ve gotten derailed, they’re too nervous to make good: always scowling, belly-aching, disillusioned, overwrought; but oh lord, say, the Japanese women: there was this one, I came home and the door was locked and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife and chased me under the bed and her sister came and they kept me under that bed for two days, and when I came out, at last, she didn’t mention attorneys, just said, you will never wrong me again, and I didn’t; but she died on me, and dying, said, you can wrong me now, and I did, but you know, I felt worse then than when she was living; there was no voice, no knife, nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall, all those tiny people sitting by red rivers with flying green birds, and I took them down and put them face down in a drawer with my shirts, and it was the first time I realized that she was dead, even though I buried her; and some day I’ll take them all out again, all the tan-faced little people sitting happily by their bridges and huts and mountains— but not right now, not just yet.

for j. byrd i am a man's head hunched in the road. i was chosen to speak by the members of my body. the arm as it pulled away pointed toward me, the hand opened once and was gone. why and why and why should i call a white man brother? who is the human in this place, the thing that is dragged or the dragger? what does my daughter say? the sun is a blister overhead. if i were alive i could not bear it. the townsfolk sing we shall overcome while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth into the dirt that covers us all. i am done with this dust. i am done.

In party outfits, two by two or one by one (I was expected to go along as well), They step up the steep gangplank, hands on Metal railing. The river, youthful also In midnight blue with sunset-tinted wavelets, Lets them borrow its broad back For an evening’s unhurried round trip, Which won’t interrupt old river habits for long. Not the chop and churn of big propellers As the rocking stern heaves off and wheels fanwise Into the current, nor a short blast from the stack, Not the up-tempo drumbeat of the black-tie combo Nor an answering fusillade of popped corks, not geysers Of laughter pitched flagpole high among flailing Limbs out on the polished floor nor the mixed Babble of sideline comment over bubbling glasses Can shake that seamless imperturbability. . . . When the springy net of sparkles has shrunk and faded Out of sight, the last rough throb been coaxed From the tenor sax’s frog-in-the-throat, the final Needling tremolo of the clarinet been wrapped up In distance, suddenly it is strange to be here In lilac afterglow with trout-leap and mayfly. . . . Strange, too, how our part of the river continues To trundle along its tonnages of water and motion. The unused ticket spins to the ground. As much as any person not two people can I miss the jaunt, for just this one hour of dusk. . . . Then, a veiled echo, my name called as I turn To answer, eyes adjusting to where we are At the pivot of night, the cusp of light. Light enough to feel our way back to the grove Of alders along the curving path beside the river; Light enough to recognize my life when I see it, Going in its direction, more or less at the same pace.

for sandy and henry carlile Some great musicians got no place to play Above the freeway, over the music, we speak of the strategy of poems, bleeding wives who ulcerate our voices rhythming in the cut-heat Portland stink from the Willamette River; arteries of smog fixate this place in each recording, music, music, on Impulse. This little racist community has few friends; thousands of deerslayers hum into Beaverton, the one talk show driven out for their talk as the liberals dig in to KGO out of San Francisco; we troop toward the Lloyd Center for the ice-skating, the colorette bloomered dream merchants on rented skates, and the Sunday Chronicle near the big hotel. The poets, man and wife, write in the dimming air, their daughter in the toy rooms connecting them, the typewriter tacking the nails and snaps of her gown. This image of separation begins in adoption: her mother adopted out in San Jose; her father disowned, abandoned, torn out of the will; her name: Phoebe. And the sun does shine on them for this visit in squat pigeontoes, and this beach ball sings.