Here at the seashore they use the clouds over & over
again, like the rented animals in Aïda.
In the late morning the land breeze
turns and now the extras are driving
all the white elephants the other way.
What language are the children shouting in?
He is lying on the beach listening.

The sand knocks like glass, struck by bare heels.
He tries to remember snow noise.
Would powder snow ping like that?
But you don't lie with your ear to powder snow.
Why doesn't the girl who takes care
of the children, a Yale girl without flaw,

MY soul, sit thou a patient looker-on;
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot hath many changes; every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.

Too old to carry arms and fight like the others -

they graciously gave me the inferior role of chronicler
I record - I don't know for whom - the history of the siege

I am supposed to be exact but I don't know when the invasion began
two hundred years ago in December in September perhaps yesterday at dawn
everyone here suffers from a loss of the sense of time

all we have left is the place the attachment to the place
we still rule over the ruins of temples spectres of gardens and houses
if we lose the ruins nothing will be left

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at 'clink and bandy' 'chock' and 'taw' and
ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone

How dear to me the twilight hour!
It breathes, it speaks of pleasures past;
When Laura sought this humble bower,
And o'er it courtly splendours cast.

Fond fancy's friend, dim twilight, hail!
Thou canst the absent nymph restore;
And as around thy shadows sail,
They bring the form I still adore.

Again her pensive smile I view,
Her modest eye's soft chastened fire;
And mark her cheek of tender hue
From thee a softer tint acquire.

No eye but mine in that dim hour
The softly blushing maid could see;

He stood before the Sanhedrim;
The scowling rabbis gazed at him.
He recked not of their praise or blame;
There was no fear, there was no shame,
For one upon whose dazzled eyes
The whole world poured its vast surprise.
The open heaven was far too near,
His first day's light too sweet and clear,
To let him waste his new-gained ken
On the hate-clouded face of men.

But still they questioned, Who art thou?
What hast thou been? What art thou now?
Thou art not he who yesterday
Sat here and begged beside the way;

The light that spills through the crack in the door
Illumines only her face
And my grandmother smiles
If only all of life was this easy
To only be a child forever
With nothing to care about
And nothing to lose

Every day in the schoolyard
There was kickball
Dodge ball
Hopscotch
Friends were many, we were all the same
And nobody ever cried
When mothers called us home

Be the best, they told us

Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies,
And in that pool's broad bosom
Is room for all the stars;
Its bed of sand has drifted
O'er countless rocky bars.

Around the lower edges
There waves a bed of reeds,
Where water rats are hidden
And where the wild duck breeds;
And grassy slopes rise gently
To ridges long and low,
Where groves of wattle flourish
And native bluebells grow.

Beneath the granite ridges
The eye may just discern

O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken.

Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning;
Nor let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over him forgetfulness
Of all save deeds of kindness,
And, save to smiles of grateful eyes,
Press down his lids in blindness.

Now on the hill
The fitful wind is so still
That never a wimpling mist uplifts,
Nor a trembling leaf drop-laden stirs;
From the ancient firs
Aroma of balsam drifts,
And the silent places are filled
With elusive odors distilled
By the rain from asters empearled and frilled,
And a wild wet savor that dwells
Far adown in tawny fallows and bracken dells.

Then with a rush,
Breaking the beautiful hush
Where the only sound was the lisping, low
Converse of raindrops, or the dear sound
Close to the ground,