872 Life poems

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm. Your reputation for saying things of interest Will not be marred, if you hasten to other topics, Nor will the delicate web of human trust Be ruptured by that airy fabrication. Later, however, talking with toxic zest Of golf, or taxes, or the rest of it Where the beaked ladle plies the chuckling ice, You may enjoy a chill of severance, hearing Above your head the shrug of unreal wings. Not that the world is tiresome in itself: We know what boredom is: it is a dull Impatience or a fierce velleity, A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude, To make or do. In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light: Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof, Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town In sheen-swept pastureland, the horse’s neck Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones Beginning now to tug their shadows in And track the air with glitter. All these things Are there before us; there before we look Or fail to look; there to be seen or not By us, as by the bee’s twelve thousand eyes, According to our means and purposes. So too with strangeness not to be ignored, Total eclipse or snow upon the rose, And so with that most rare conception, nothing. What is it, after all, but something missed? It is the water of a dried-up well Gone to assail the cliffs of Labrador. There is what galled the arch-negator, sprung From Hell to probe with intellectual sight The cells and heavens of a given world Which he could take but as another prison: Small wonder that, pretending not to be, He drifted through the bar-like boles of Eden In a black mist low creeping, dragging down And darkening with moody self-absorption What, when he left it, lifted and, if seen From the sun’s vantage, seethed with vaulting hues. Closer to making than the deftest fraud Is seeing how the catbird’s tail was made To counterpoise, on the mock-orange spray, Its light, up-tilted spine; or, lighter still, How the shucked tunic of an onion, brushed To one side on a backlit chopping-board And rocked by trifling currents, prints and prints Its bright, ribbed shadow like a flapping sail. Odd that a thing is most itself when likened: The eye mists over, basil hints of clove, The river glazes toward the dam and spills To the drubbed rocks below its crashing cullet, And in the barnyard near the sawdust-pile Some great thing is tormented. Either it is A tarp torn loose and in the groaning wind Now puffed, now flattened, or a hip-shot beast Which tries again, and once again, to rise. What, though for pain there is no other word, Finds pleasure in the cruellest simile? It is something in us like the catbird’s song From neighbor bushes in the grey of morning That, harsh or sweet, and of its own accord, Proclaims its many kin. It is a chant Of the first springs, and it is tributary To the great lies told with the eyes half-shut That have the truth in view: the tale of Chiron Who, with sage head, wild heart, and planted hoof Instructed brute Achilles in the lyre, Or of the garden where we first mislaid Simplicity of wish and will, forgetting Out of what cognate splendor all things came To take their scattering names; and nonetheless That matter of a baggage-train surprised By a few Gascons in the Pyrenees Which, having worked three centuries and more In the dark caves of France, poured out at last The blood of Roland, who to Charles his king And to the dove that hatched the dove-tailed world Was faithful unto death, and shamed the Devil.

From the third floor window you watch the mailman’s slow progress through the blowing snow. As he goes from door to door he might be searching for a room to rent, unsure of the address, which he keeps stopping to check in the outdated and now obliterated clipping he holds, between thickly gloved fingers, close to his eyes in a hunched and abruptly simian posture that makes you turn away, quickly switching off the lamp.

its method is men the fact and the game disorder grounded expressed real named the facts of life the planet its field the same day vehicles lived by the masses become contemplative attitudes powered by the joys of this world a glorious sign propagated with lightning speed at the same time its goal the use of time the speed of transport the margin of life the rational journeys by another path none of it bad the work from his world themselves rediscovers nature its essential green easily seen through like a window but intimate like a summer meadow as a result cold dreams draw misty truths to the surface official forgetfulness looks back on and chooses to forget the first half of to focus discussion on the second half like "I'm fine" as a journey all to itself and beautiful to the voyager particularly this service its servants our passage of time vanishes quickly like a leaf its eulogy a terrestrial paradise the very spirit of the renaissance to act on the basis of an obsession with death well, death pronounce it be-u-ti-full slowly revealed to eliminate this lived time men live in sea turtles to the laws

If you come to Mojacar and peel open an orange full of worms, count how many there are because those are the days it will take for your body to decompose after you are buried. If you come to Mojacar and find a small green snake with its back broken, don't step on it or you'll cause an earthquake that will catch up to you while you sleep in a continent far, far away. If you come to Mojacar and two brown long-legged spiders crawl on your face and shoulders, keep a sharp eye out for two individuals, a mother-son, or sister-sister who will try to take your money. If you come to Mojacar and see a scorpion scurry by your feet, note the direction it ran to, north, south, east, or west. You must avoid going there or risk the sting of losing a loved one. If you come to Mojacar and a cock crows ten times at three in the morning, lock your door and all the wooden windows because nightmares in silver dresses will arrive to slip into your bed.

My God, I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is man, to whose creation All things are in decay? For man is ev'ry thing, And more: he is a tree, yet bears more fruit; A beast, yet is, or should be, more; Reason and speech we only bring; Parrots may thank us if they are not mute, They go upon the score. Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another, And all to all the world besides; Each part may call the furthest brother, For head with foot hath private amity, And both with moons and tides. Nothing hath got so far But man hath caught and kept it as his prey; His eyes dismount the highest star; He is in little all the sphere; Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they Find their acquaintance there. For us the winds do blow, The earth doth rest, heav'n move, and fountains flow. Nothing we see but means our good, As our delight, or as our treasure; The whole is either our cupboard of food, Or cabinet of pleasure. The stars have us to bed; Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws; Music and light attend our head; All things unto our flesh are kind In their descent and being; to our mind In their ascent and cause. Each thing is full of duty; Waters united are our navigation; Distinguished, our habitation; Below, our drink; above, our meat; Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty? Then how are all things neat! More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of; in ev'ry path He treads down that which doth befriend him, When sickness makes him pale and wan. Oh mighty love! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him. Since then, my God, thou hast So brave a palace built, O dwell in it, That it may dwell with thee at last! Till then, afford us so much wit, That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee, And both thy servants be.

A part of, a part of love, hates, hates a part of. A part of, a part of hate, loves, loves a part of. Loves a part of, a part of the man, the man the state hates. Hates a part of, a part of the name, the name the people love. Hates wholeness, hate. Loves togetherness, love, the togetherness of the large human movement. Loves togetherness, loves. Hates wholeness, hate, the wholeness of the small human hyphen. De Wet, de Klerks. De Klerk, de Wets. Botha. Moneydeala, your worship makes an island of freedom. Detained Harassed Banned. The trap, the trap, the trap. The capture, the capture, the capture. The trial, the trial, the trial. So do we So we to. So do the Cape parts, a part of, the Dutch parts. Ho wick, Ri vo nia. She Who Tries her sacred knock, her High Organ of little male Anasi. Her Eastern Star in his Malta night. Order, a part of. Breytenback's albino, Gordimer's Beethoven. A part his, a part hers. The odor of Resistance, Brutus Dennis! A part invests. Victor, a Verster. A part divests. All American     Apartheids    pulled South. Dela "

Six years ago, the big museum sold eight famous paintings to purchase, for unspecified millions, Gustave Caillebotte’s Man at His Bath. Now it’s hip to have a print of it, and whenever I see one hung for decoration, I’m almost certain that this is what Caillebotte had in mind when he broke out the oils in 1884: some twenty-first-century bitch in Boston catching a glimpse of a framed reproduction, recollecting a study about how washing oneself may induce a sense of culpability. What I remember is he insisted I clean before leaving. That, and he was trying to be dreamlike. He took my jaw in his hand and said in the next life, we’ll really be together , and the clamp in his voice made me almost certain he knew something I did not. Now I eat right, train hard, get my shots. This life — I’m angling to remain in this life as long as I can, being almost certain, as I am, what’s after —

The man I could have been works for a vital institution,is a vital institution. Without him, walls will crumble, somewhere, paint will peel. He takes a catch. He is outdoorsy and says It was a nightmare and means the traffic. He’s happy to watch a film and stops short of living in one. The man I could have been owns a Subaru pickup the colour of cherry tomatoes. He’s in the black, not in the dark. His mother is calm. Women keep his baby picture in the windownooks of wallets. No one dies on him. The man I could have been owns bits of clothes not worn by uncles first. He has no need of medicine. He walks from Powderhall to Newington in twenty minutes. He plays the piano a little. Without him, havens buckle, sickbeds bloom. The man I could have been lives locally. He is quietly algebraic. Without him, granite will not glister. And when he sees a crisis, he does not dive in feet first. He votes, for he believes in their democracy. The man I could have been has a sense of direction. For him, it was never Miss Scarlet with the dagger in the kitchen. He knows his tilth and sows his seed. He’ll make a father. He is no maven nor a connoisseur. The man I could have been has a season ticket at Tynecastle. He comes in at night and puts on The Best of U2 He browses. He puts fancy stuff in his bathwater. He doesn’t lace up his life with secrets. The man I could have been was born on a high horse. He knows the story of the Willow Pattern. He had a dream last night you’d want to hear about and remembers the words to songs. His back is a saddle where lovers have ridden. The man I could have been has a sovereign speech in him he’s yet to give. He might well wrassle him a bear. He is a man about town. He has the exact fare on him. Without him, motley trauma. The man I could have been, he learns from my mistakes. He never thought it would be you. And no one says he’s looking rather biblical. He has no need of London and walks the middle of the road for it is his. The man I could have been is quick and clean. He is no smalltown Jesus nor a sawdust Cesear. Without him, salt water would enter your lungs. He doesn’t hear these endless xylophones. That’s not him lying over there.

Under the French horns of a November afternoon a man in blue is raking leaves with a wide wooden rake (whose teeth are pegs or rather, dowels). Next door boys play soccer: “You got to start over!” sort of. A round attic window in a radiant gray house waits like a kettledrum. “You got to start . . .” The Brahmsian day lapses from waltz to march. The grass, rough-cropped as Bruno Walter’s hair, is stretched, strewn and humped beneath a sycamore wide and high as an idea of heaven in which Brahms turns his face like a bearded thumb and says, “There is something I must tell you!” to Bruno Walter. “In the first movement of my Second, think of it as a family planning where to go next summer in terms of other summers. A material ecstasy, subdued, recollective.” Bruno Walter in a funny jacket with a turned-up collar says, “Let me sing it for you.” He waves his hands and through the vocalese-shaped spaces of naked elms he draws a copper beech ignited with a few late leaves. He bluely glazes a rhododendron “a sea of leaves” against gold grass. There is a snapping from the brightwork of parked and rolling cars. There almost has to be a heaven! so there could be a place for Bruno Walter who never needed the cry of a baton. Immortality— in a small, dusty, rather gritty, somewhat scratchy Magnavox from which a forte drops like a used Brillo Pad? Frayed. But it’s hard to think of the sky as a thick glass floor with thick-soled Viennese boots tromping about on it. It’s a whole lot harder thinking of Brahms in something soft, white, and flowing. “Life,” he cries (here, in the last movement), “is something more than beer and skittles!” “And the something more is a whole lot better than beer and skittles,” says Bruno Walter, darkly, under the sod. I don’t suppose it seems so dark to a root. Who are these men in evening coats? What are these thumps? Where is Brahms? And Bruno Walter? Ensconced in resonant plump easy chairs covered with scuffed brown leather in a pungent autumn that blends leaf smoke (sycamore, tobacco, other), their nobility wound in a finale like this calico cat asleep, curled up in a breadbasket, on a sideboard where the sun falls.

They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another man’s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new charged of sodomy. A spokesman for the police department said they found him with his pants down and it appeared that his penis was in another man’s anus. But since they could not prove to what degree his penis had penetrated the other man’s anus they dropped the charges of sodomy and filed new charges of assault and battery. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said that he assaulted a worker from the Department of Public Health who used a Q-tip to extract from inside of his urethra a rare strand of bacteria capable of causing pneumonia in chickens. He was placed in solitary confinement and a spokesman for the Department of Corrections suggested that he was a serious threat to the community. They examined the strand of bacteria found in his urethra but since they did not properly store the bacteria in the appropriate container with the appropriate seals and signatures they could not charge him with intent to commit crimes against humanity. They dropped the charges of intent to commit crimes against humanity and filed new charges of larceny. They said he had stolen the rare strand of bacteria from his employer and that he had done so with the deliberate and malicious intent to harm as many civilians as possible. They tried to verify for whom he had worked during the given time period but since they could not verify the name or location of his employer they dropped the charges of larceny and filed new charges of tax fraud. When they discovered he was privately employed, they dropped the charges of tax fraud and filed new charges of theft with an unregistered weapon. A grocery store in his neighborhood had recently been robbed and the cashier said that the thief had carried the same model of weapon that the man in question kept beneath his bed in case of emergencies. They dropped the charges of theft with an unregistered weapon when they discovered the cashier was partially blind and that the weapon the man in question kept beneath his bed in case of emergencies had been properly purchased and registered. When they found on his bookshelves several works of fiction with blind characters, including King Lear,Oedipus Rex,Endgame, and Blindness by José Saramago, they accused him of conspiring to use the rare strand of bacteria to blind not only the grocer but the seven other blind residents of his neighborhood, each of whom had had perfectly good eyesight until he came to town. They asked him why he had so many books about blindness, but he refused to answer the question. They asked him why he had so many books about blindness and when his attorney arrived the man in question said that he did not know why he had so many books about blindness. They asked his friends and family why he had so many books about blindness. No one knew why he had so many books about blindness and they accused him in the press of anti-social behavior. When his neighbors testified that the man in question enjoyed society as much as he enjoyed a quiet night at home, they dropped the charges of anti-social behavior. They dropped the charges of anti-social behavior and filed new charges of jaywalking. An undercover police officer filmed him with a video camera as he illegally crossed the street. At the advice of his attorney, he pleaded guilty to the charges of jaywalking. He agreed to pay the fine.