Slow flapping to the setting sun
By twos and threes, in wavering rows.
As twilight shadows dimly close,
The crows fly over Washington.

Under the crimson sunset sky
Virginian woodlands leafless lie,
In wintry torpor bleak and dun.
Through the rich vault of heaven, which shines
Like a warmed opal in the sun,
With wide advance in broken lines
The crows fly over Washington.

Over the Capitol's white dome,
Across the obelisk soaring bare
To prick the clouds, they travel home,
Content and weary, winnowing

The mid-day sun, with fiercest glare,
Broods o'er the hazy twinkling air:
Along the level sand
The palm-tree's shade unwavering lies,
Just as thy towers, Damascus, rise
To greet you wearied band.

The leader of that martial crew
Seems bent some mighty deed to do,
So steadily he speeds,
With lips firm closed and fixed eye,
Like warrior when the fight is night,
Nor talk nor landscape heeds.

What sudden blaze is round him poured,
As though all Heaven's refulgent hoard
In one rich glory shone?

Circa 1904 -- Done out of Boethius by Geoffrey Chaucer


Blessed was our first age and morning-time. Then were no
waies tarren, ne no cars numberen, but each followed his owne
playing-busyness to go about singly or by large interspaces,
for to leden his viage after his luste and layen under clene hedge.
Jungling there was not, nor the overtaking wheele, and all those
now cruel clarions were full-hushed and full-still. Then nobile
horses, lest they should make the chariots moveable to run by

Does pleasant spring return once more?
Does earth her happy youth regain?
Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er;
Soft brooklets burst their icy chain:
Upon the blue translucent river
Laughs down an all-unclouded day,
The winged west winds gently quiver,
The buds are bursting from the spray;
While birds are blithe on every tree;
The Oread from the mountain-shore
Sighs, "Lo! thy flowers come back to thee--
Thy child, sad mother, comes no more!"

Alas! how long an age it seems
Since all the earth I wandered over,

Beside the pounding cataracts
Of midnight streams unknown to us
'Tis builded in the leafless tracts
And valleys huge of Tartarus.
Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;
It hath no rounded name that rings,
But I have heard it called in dreams
The City of the End of Things.
Its roofs and iron towers have grown
None knoweth how high within the night,
But in its murky streets far down
A flaming terrible and bright
Shakes all the stalking shadows there,
Across the walls, across the floors,

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,

Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain --
Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred
Were marking scores against me,
But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
I in life was the Circuit judge, a maker of notches,
Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored,
Not on the right of the matter.
O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone!
For worse than the anger of the wronged,
The curses of the poor,
Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear,
Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer,

Courageous lair "might prevail"
Waking up to her your "yellow coal"

Steals a its way

harm's imbrogliatic murmur
to concatenate

has been "said"
a mortal habitation or cut in air

that air leaks through

here too

***

Tricked again out of
hope's chord

The oscillatory hum in the head, or
amygdala

continual reaction in the wet mouth to
old oranges, or

mistakes in form
"I retain a clear memory of afternoon light."

A vertebra unfolds its wing, its smallest

Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you so farewell.
That I can leave you, quite go out,
Go out, go out beyond all doubt,
My father says, is the miracle.

You are so great, and I so small:
I am nothing, you are all:
Being nothing, I can take this way.
Oh I need neither rise nor fall,
For when I do not move at all
I shall be out of all your day.

It's said some memory will remain
In the other place, grass in the rain,
Light on the land, sun on the sea,
A flitting grace, a phantom face,

Remember that object we saw, dear soul,
In the sweetness of a summer morn:
At a bend of the path a loathsome carrion
On a bed with pebbles strewn,

With legs raised like a lustful woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
It spread open, nonchalant and scornful,
Its belly, ripe with exhalations.

The sun shone onto the rotting heap,
As if to bring it to the boil,
And tender a hundredfold to vast Nature
All that together she had joined;

And the sky watched that superb carcass
Like a flower blossom out.