I want to erase your footprints
from my walls. Each pillow
is thick with your reasons. Omens

fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman
in a party hat, clinging
to a tin-foil balloon. Shadows

creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes. I can't watch

as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief

stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,

I

THERE’S not a person in the street,
This merry-making summer day!
The houses stand in dull array;
No profit on their doors to beat,
For all their owners are away.

The gardens blossom white and red
All solitary in the sun,
Save where some timid creatures run;
Secure across the lawns to tread,
No human dangers here to shun,—

Since men have gone on holiday;
Have left the still, suburban street
For that wide park, where people meet

MISFORTUNE to have lived not knowing thee!
’T were not high living, nor to noblest end,
Who, dwelling near, learned not sincerity,
Rich friendship’s ornament that still doth lend
To life its consequence and propriety.
Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,


my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 5OO bales we've put up


this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn


by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed. Yet exhaustion and the way

A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT.
When, by th' Almighty's dread command
Elijah, call'd from Israel's land,
Rose in the sacred flame,
His Mantle good Elisha caught,
And, with the Prophet's spirit fraught,
Her second hope became.


In Pitt our Israel saw combined
The Patriot's heart--the Prophet's mind,
Elijah's spirit here:
Now, sad reverse!--that spirit reft,
No confidence, no hope is left;
For no Elijah's near.


Is there, among the greedy band
Who've seized on power, with harpy hand,

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove
Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, This lies, this sounds despair:
Nor by th' eyes water call a malady
Desperately hot, or changing feverously.
I had not taught thee, then, the Alphabet
Of flowers, how they devisefully being set
And bound up might with speechless secrecy
Deliver errands mutely, and mutually.

You left in the morning, at evening my heart is in a
thousand pieces.
Why is it so far away?

Thinking of you, I go up on the hill and wander.
Around the hill, why is it such a sadness?

Dandelions yellow and shepherds-purse blooming white --
not anyone to look at them.

I hear a pheasant, calling and calling fervently.
Once a friend was there across the river, living.

Ghostly smoke rises and fades away with a west wind
strong in fields of small bamboo grasses and reedy fields.
Nowhere to leave for.

NEAR yon bleak mountain's dizzy height,
That hangs o'er AVON's silent wave;
By the pale Crescent's glimm'ring light,
I sought LORENZO's lonely grave.

O'er the long grass the silv'ry dew,
Soft Twilight's tears spontaneous shone;
And the dank bough of baneful yew
Supply'd the place of sculptured stone.

Oft, as my trembling steps drew near,
The aëry voice of FANCY gave
The plaint of GENIUS to mine ear,
That, lingering, murmur'd on his grave.

"Cold is that heart, where honour glow'd,

DEAR SHADE OF HIM, who grac'd the mimick scene,
And charm'd attention with resistless pow'r;
Whose wond'rous art, whose fascinating mien,
Gave glowing rapture to the short-liv'd hour!

Accept the mournful verse, the ling'ring sigh,
The tear that faithful Mem'ry stays to shed;
The SACRED TEAR, that from Reflection's eye,
Drops on the ashes of the sainted dead.

Lov'd by the grave, and courted by the young,
In social comforts eminently blest;
All hearts rever'd the precepts of thy tongue,
And Envy's self thy eloquence confess'd.