'Twas Goethe taught us all
By diagnosis,
That change in plants we call
Metamorphosis!

Happy, happy glowing fire!

Zephyr
Fragrant air! delicious light!

Dusketha
Let me to my glooms retire!

Breama
I to green-weed rivers bright!

Salamander
Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourished wing,
Like a bat's, still wandering,
Nimbly fan your fiery spaces,
Spirit sole in deadly places.
In unhaunted roar and blaze,
Open eyes that never daze,
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of men and beasts, and fish, and apes,
Portrayed in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen

Who dares affirm this is no pious age,
When Charity begins to tread the stage?
When actors who at best are hardly savers,
Will give a night of benefit to weavers?
Stay,--let me see, how finely will it sound!
Imprimis, From his Grace an hundred pound.
Peers, clergy, gentry, all are benefactors;
And then comes in the Item of the actors.
Item, the actors, freely gave a day,--
The poet had no more who made the play.

But whence this wondrous charity in players?
They learnt it not at sermons, or at prayers:
Under the rose, since here are none but friends,

Talk not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

the poem her belly marched through me as
one army. From her nostrils to her feet

she smelled of silence. The inspired cleat

of her glad leg pulled into a sole mass
my separate lusts
her hair was like a gas
evil to feel. Unwieldy....


the bloodbeat
In her fierce laziness tried to repeat
a trick of syncopation Europe has

—One day i felt a mountain touch me where
I stood (maybe nine miles off). It was spring

sun-stirring. sweetly to the mangling air
muchness of buds mattered. a valley spilled
its tickling river in my eyes,

the skinny voice

of the leatherfaced
woman with the crimson
nose and coquettishly-
cocked bonnet

having ceased the

captain
announces that as three
dimes seven nickels and ten
pennies have been deposited upon

the drum there is need

of just twenty five cents
dear friends
to make it an even
dollar whereupon

the Divine Average who was

attracted by the inspired
sister's howling moves
off
will anyone tell him why he should

blow two bits for the coming of Christ Jesus

?
??
???

I will wade out
till my things are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
Will i complete the mystery
of my flesh
I will rise
After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

I grew a rose once more to please mine eyes.
All things to aid it--dew, sun, wind, fair skies--
Were kindly; and to shield it from despoil,
I fenced it safely in with grateful toil.
No other hand than mine shall pluck this flower, said I,
And I was jealous of the bee that hovered nigh.
It grew for days; I stood hour after hour
To watch the slow unfolding of the flower,
And then I did not leave its side at all,
Lest some mischance my flower should befall.
At last, oh joy! the central petals burst apart.
It blossomed--but, alas! a worm was at its heart!

Down comes the winter rain—
Spoils my hat and bow—
Runs into the poll of me;
But mother won't know.

We've been out and caught a cold,
Knee-deep in snow;
Such a lucky thing it is
That mother won't know!

Rosy lost herself last night—
Couldn't tell where to go.
Yes—it rather frightened her,
But mother didn't know.

Somebody made Willy drunk
At the Christmas show:
O 'twas fun! It's well for him
That mother won't know!

Howsoever wild we are,
Late at school or slow,
Mother won't be cross with us,

Wind , the season-climate mixer,
In my Witches' Weather Primer
Says, to make this Fall Elixir
First you let the summer simmer,
Using neither spoon nor skimmer,

Till about the right consistence.
(This like fate by stars is reckoned,
None remaining in existence
Under magnitude the second.)

Then take some leftover winter
Far to north of the St Lawrence.
Leaves to strip and branches splinter,
Bring on wind. Bring rain in torrents—
Colder than the season warrants.

Dash it with some snow for powder.
If this seems like witchcraft rather,