25 Living poems

“Man wants but little here below” Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;— And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;— If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice;— My choice would be vanilla-ice. I care not much for gold or land;— Give me a mortgage here and there,— Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share,— I only ask that Fortune send A little more than I shall spend. Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names; I would,perhaps, be Plenipo,— But only near St. James; I’m very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator’s chair. Jewels are baubles; ’t is a sin To care for such unfruitful things;— One good-sized diamond in a pin,— Some,not so large, in rings,— A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;—I laugh at show. My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;)— I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true Cashmere,— Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait—two forty-five— Suits me; I do not care;— Perhaps, for just a single spurt, Some seconds less would do no hurt. Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four,— I love so much their style and tone, One Turner, and no more, (A landscape,—foreground golden dirt,— The sunshine painted with a squirt.) Of books but few,—some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;— Some little luxury there Of red morocco’s gilded gleam And vellum rich as country cream. Busts, cameos, gems,—such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;— One Stradivarius, I confess, Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. Wealth’s wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;— Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,— I ask but one recumbent chair. Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas’ golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much,— Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content!

I tried one or two but they were stale and broke like sticks or crumbled when I rolled them and lighting a match was useless nor could I put them back in the refrigerator— it was too late for that—even licking them filled my mouth with ground-up outer leaf, product of Lancaster or eastern Virginia, so schooled I am with cigars, it comes in the blood, and I threw handfuls of them into the street from three floors up and, to my horror, sitting on my stoop were four or five street people who ran to catch them as if they were suddenly rich, and I apologize for that, no one should be degraded that way, my hands were crazy, and I ran down to explain but they were smoking already nor did I have anything to give them since we were living on beans ourselves, I sat and smoked too, and once in a while we looked up at the open window, and one of us spit into his empty can. We were visionaries.

To all events I squirted you knowing this not to be this came to pass when we were out and it looked good. Why wouldn’t you want a fresh piece of outlook to stand in down the years? See, your house, a former human energy construction, crashed with us for a few days in May and sure enough, the polar inscape brought about some easier poems, which I guessed was a good thing. At least some of us were relaxed, Steamboat Bill included. He didn’t drink nothing. It was one thing to be ready for their challenge, quite another to accept it. And if I had a piece of advice for you, this is it: Poke fun at balm, then suffer lethargy to irradiate its shallow flood in the new packaging our enemies processed. They should know. The Gold Dust Twins never stopped supplicating Hoosiers to limn the trail. There’s no Shakespeare. Through the window, Casanova. Couldn’t get to sleep in the dumb incident of those days, crimping the frozen feet of Lincoln.

Cul-de-sac Pastoral The sill plays a cruel joke—thrones me. Frames me lording over lawn mower stripes—myself in a shallow trench. In grass blades. Myself persisting, despite a dickhead sun—me in chlorophyll. Early, I find myself swaying—me! in the black chokeberry, me! in the rabbit’s throat. Me, the rabbit. Me dancing out pellets. Out-dancing myself— my father’s pellet gun, the hawk. The joke is a bright belly full of dark hopping along my father’s garden & the joke small, between wrapped talons, is the hawking too, is the axe sun, swift, rising, this joy. This joy, it swallows itself far too soon!

What are they looking for running to the summit of lost time?

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did. Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone’s any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain

He comes here by whatever way he can, not too late, not too soon. He sits, waiting. He doesn’t know why he should have such a patience. He sits at a table on a chair. He is comfortable sitting there. No one else in this room, no others, no expectations, no sounds. Had he walked another way, would he be here, like they say.

Sugar dries on paper plates. The cake’s decimated and barely touched. What to do with the balloons? A few float listlessly, unattached, still bearing like bandages the tape that bore them to the wall. They’ve gone dull, rubber tips darkening to a bottle’s pinch. It’s too late, or too early. There are too many on the floor, stirred up as I stir. In the end, I cut them, urge a blade into the inch between knot and blossom. Slow deflation. It reveals what they are: sacs of plastic, stale with air. I’ve seen this before, in the newspaper picture of Nefertiti, bound in the antechamber of a tomb, cast out of favor, her body, barely wrapped. How they know her: by the queenly jaw, age of limbs and teeth. Also, by the broken mouth, smashed by priests so she cannot eat, cannot breathe in the afterlife.

(for James Simmons) 1 I wake in a dark flat To the soft roar of the world. Pigeons neck on the white Roofs as I draw the curtains And look out over London Rain-fresh in the morning light. This is our element, the bright Reason on which we rely For the long-term solutions. The orators yap, and guns Go off in a back street; But the faith doesn’t die That in our time these things Will amaze the literate children In their non-sectarian schools And the dark places be Ablaze with love and poetry When the power of good prevails. What middle-class shits we are To imagine for one second That our privileged ideals Are divine wisdom, and the dim Forms that kneel at noon In the city not ourselves. 2 I am going home by sea For the first time in years. Somebody thumbs a guitar On the dark deck, while a gull Dreams at the masthead, The moon-splashed waves exult. At dawn the ship trembles, turns In a wide arc to back Shuddering up the grey lough Past lightship and buoy, Slipway and dry dock Where a naked bulb burns; And I step ashore in a fine rain To a city so changed By five years of war I scarcely recognize The places I grew up in, The faces that try to explain. But the hills are still the same Grey-blue above Belfast. Perhaps if I’d stayed behind And lived it bomb by bomb I might have grown up at last And learnt what is meant by home.

In the morning that comes up behind the roof, in the shelter of the bridge, in the corner of  the cypresses that rise above the wall, a rooster 
has crowed. In the bell tower that rips the air with its shining point, the notes ring out and already the morning din can be heard in the street; the only street that goes from the river to the mountain 
dividing the woods. One looks for some other words but the ideas are always just as dark, just as simple and singularly painful. There is hardly more than the eyes, the open air, the grass and the water in the distance with, around every bend, a well or a cool basin. In the right-hand corner the last house with a larger head at the window. The trees are extremely alive and all those familiar companions walk along the demolished wall that is crushed into the thorns with bursts of laughter. Above the ravine the din augments, swells, and if the car passes on the upper road one no longer knows if it is the flowers or the little bells that are chiming. Under the blazing sun, when the landscape is on fire, the traveler crosses the stream on a very narrow bridge, before a dark hole where the trees line the water that falls asleep in the afternoon. And, against the trembling background of the woods, the motionless man.