Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down.

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water
That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.
He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular sky,
Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,
That went with him but when he rested changed.
His mind was full of names
Learned from strange peoples speaking alien tongues,

1

Troy O Troy
an archeologist
will sift your ashes through his fingers
yet a fire occurred greater than that of the Iliad
for seven strings--

too few strings
one needs a chorus
a sea of laments
and thunder of mountains
rain of stone

--how to lead
people away from the ruins
how to lead
the chorus from poems--

thinks the faultless poet
respectably mute
as a pillar of salt
--The song will escape unharmed
It escaped
with flaming wing
into a pure sky

The moon rises over the ruins

1
I was sleeping when Namdeo and Vitthal Stepped into my dream.
'Your job is to make poems. Stop wasting time,' Namdeo said.
Vitthal gave me the measure and gently aroused me from a dream inside a dream.
Namdeo vowed to write one billion poems.
'Tuka, all the unwritten ones are your responsibility.'

2
To repeat Your name is to string pearls together.
The pleasure in your manifested form is always new.
I have ceased to desire the unembodied God.
Your worshippers do not seek liberation.

Abandoned houses are
illusion reaching
its end;

wind and rain and time
root for the
ground.

They have the calmness brought
by defeat,
the bearing of farmers

who are whittled
and resist no more than
enough.

See how easily the earth
takes them back:
an eye here,

a bone there, the same rite
as with the animate.
The open windows

are in the flight path of night
tired and bound
for home.

I saw her, Harry, first, in March --
You know the street that leadeth down
By the old bridge's crumbling arch? --
Just where it leaves the dusty town

A lonely house stands grim and dark --
You've seen it? then I need not say
How quaint the place is -- did you mark
An ivied window? Well! one day,

I, chasing some forgotten dream,
And in a poet's idlest mood,
Caught, as I passed, a white hand's gleam --
A shutter opened -- there she stood

Training the ivy to its prop.
Two dark eyes and a brow of snow

Among the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

II
No door the tenement requires,
And seldom needs a laboured roof;
Yet is it to the fiercest sun
Impervious, and storm-proof.

III
So warm, so beautiful withal,
In perfect fitness for its aim,
That to the Kind by special grace
Their instinct surely came.

IV
And when for their abodes they seek
An opportune recess,

I love a man who'll smile and joke
When with misfortune crowned;
Who'll pun beneath a pauper's yoke,
And as he breaks his daily toke,
Conundrums gay propound.

Just such a man was Bernaqrd Jupp
He scoffed at Fortune's frown;
He gaily drained his bitter cup -
Though Fortune often threw him up,
It never cast him down.

Though years their share of sorrow bring,
We know that far above
All other griefs, are griefs that spring
From some misfortune happening
To those we really love.

E'en sorrow for another's woe

The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill
And chides with angry moan the frosty skies,
The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes
That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still.
We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill,
Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies,
Lured by the hand of beckoning memories,
Back to those summer evenings on the hill
Where we together watched the sun go down
Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires
Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires