change

Oh, Bill and Joe to the north have gone,
A green shirt on their back;
There are not many ewes and lambs
Along Kokoda track.

There are not many ewes and lambs,
But men in single file
Like sheep along a mountain pad
Walk mile on sweating mile;

And each half-hour they change the lead,
Though I have never read
Where any fat bell-whether was
Shot, in the mountains, dead.

The only sheep they muster there
Leap through the mind at night;
'Twould be as red as marking time

Mother! Darling mother, you are seeking me I know,
And I feel thy love will follow through the world where'er I go;
But I cannot come, dear mother; I am sadly altered now:
The once fair wreath of innocence that garlanded my brow
Has faded ne'er to bloom again; and from the things of yore-
The fair, the good, the beautiful - I'm severed ever-more.
My onward way must be a path of darkness and of pain,
But I must tread it all alone - I cannot come again.

Of all the changes that have come, I know that this will be,

Nothing seems changed; here's the oaken chair,
That every night I knelt beside,
As I whispered to God the simple prayer
I learned from my mother when I was her pride.
The old familiar things of then,
Unchanged, are beautiful still to the now;
But I am transformed in heart, and when
Will guilt ever cease to shadow my brow?

After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
And with a silent, gliding step they move
Over the footlights, in familiar glare,
Panther-like in the Tango whirl of love,
He fawning close on her with idiot stare.
Swiftly they cross the stage. O lyric ease!
The drunken music follows the sure feet,
The swaying elbows, intergliding knees,
Moving with slow precision on the beat.

Your mind and mine are such great lovers they
Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,
And on wild clouds of thought, naked together
They ride above us in extreme delight;
We see them, we look up with a lone envy
And watch them in their zone of crystal weather
That changes not for winter or the night.

Sorrow and sin have worked their will
For years upon your sovereign face,
And yet it keeps a faded trace
Of its unequalled beauty still,
As ruined sanctuaries hold
A crumbled trace of perfect mould
In shrines which saints no longer fill.

I knew you in your splendid morn,
Oh, how imperiously sweet!
I bowed and worshipped at your feet,
And you received my love with scorn.
Now I scorn you. It is a change,
When I consider it, how strange
That you, not I, should be forlorn.

The years of my youth, my sensual life --
how clearly I see their meaning now.

What needless repentances, how futile....

But I did not understand the meaning then.

In the dissolute life of my youth
the desires of my poetry were being formed,
the scope of my art was being plotted.

This is why my repentances were never stable.
And my resolutions to control myself, to change
lasted for two weeks at the very most.

Real as a dream
What shall I do with this great opportunity to fly?
What is the interpretation of this planet, this moon?
if I can dream that I dream / and dream anything dreamable / can I dream
I am awake / and why do that?
When I dream in a dream that I wake / up what
happens when I try to move?
I dream that I move
and the effort moves and moves
till I move / and my arm hurts
Then I wake up / dismayed / I was dreaming / I was waking
when I was dreaming still / just now.
and try to remember next time in dreams

This is the place where they all were bred;
Some of the rafters are standing still;
Now they are scattered and lost and dead,
Every one from the old nest fled,
Out of the shadow of Kiley's Hill.

Better it is that they ne'er came back --
Changes and chances are quickly rung;
Now the old homestead is gone to rack,
Green is the grass on the well-worn track
Down by the gate where the roses clung.

Gone is the garden they kept with care;
Left to decay at its own sweet will,

Siren. COME, worthy Greek! Ulysses, come,
   Possess these shores with me:
The winds and seas are troublesome,
   And here we may be free.
Here may we sit and view their toil
   That travail in the deep,
And joy the day in mirth the while,
   And spend the night in sleep.

Ulysses. Fair Nymph, if fame or honour were
   To be attain'd with ease,
Then would I come and rest me there,
   And leave such toils as these.
But here it dwells, and here must I
   With danger seek it forth: