Eyes the color of winter water,
eyes the winter of water where I

Quoits in the Spartan month
Hyacinthius, the game
joins us, pronounces

us god and boy: I toss him
the discus thinking This is mine
and the wind says Not yet

Memory with small hairs
pasted to pale wet skin
(the flower hyacinthos,
perhaps a fritillaria, not
the modern Hyacinthus orientalis)

After he smells of orange groves,
spreads white ass meat for me
him with a hole drilled in him I try
to fill: I ease my way into his orchard

A-sitttin' on a cracker box an' spittin' in the stove,
I took a sudden notion that I'd kindo' like to rove;
An' so I bought a ticket, jest as easy as could be,
From Pumpkinville in Idaho to Rome in Italy;
An' found myself in seven days of mostly atmosphere
A-starin' at a statoo called Appoller Belvydeer.
II
Now I'm a rum-soaked sinner, an' religion ain't my plan,
Yet, I was flabbergasted by that gol-darned Vattyican;
An' when I seed Saint Peter's dome, all I could do was swear,
The which I reckon after all may be a form o' prayer;

Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out.
Summers in your absence are as dark as a room.
I have closed my arms again. They must do without.
To knock at my heart is like knocking at a tomb.
                Do not write!

Do not write. Let us learn to die, as best we may.
Did I love you? Ask God. Ask yourself. Do you know?
To hear that you love me, when you are far away,
Is like hearing from heaven and never to go.

On the life of Andrew Jackson,
Now dear people I will write,
And in sketches, I will tell you
His career with great delight.
His career on earth is ended;
But his name is ever bright,
And his memory is cherished
As a great glorious knight.
II
The early life of Andrew Jackson,
Its marked in high renown,
As a lover of his country
He proved steadfastly profound,
Through kind teaching of his mother,
That patriot lady brave;
His mind strengthened by her wisdom,
Ere she sank into her grave.
III

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are, ” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:

And doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I've been wandering away --
To see thus around me my youth's early friends,
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?
Though haply o'er some of your brows, as o'er mine,
The snow -- fall of time may be stealing -- what then?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,
We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again.

What soften'd remembrances come o'er the heart,
In gazing on those we've been lost to so long!
The sorrows, the joys, of which once they were part,

Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
'Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed? ' Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
   instantly, instantly falls
   victim of long intrigue,
   assuming memory and mortal
   mortal fatigue.

Dustily over the highway pipes the loud nor'-wester at morn,
Wind and the rising sun, and waving tussock and corn;
It brings to me days gone by when first in my ears it rang,
The wind is the voice of my home, and I think of the songs it sang
When, fresh from the desk and ledger, I crossed the long leagues of sea --
"The old worn world is gone and the new bright world is free."

The wide, wild pastures of old are fading and passing away,
All over the plain are the homes of the men who have come to stay --

Dear old road, wheel-worn and broken,
   Winding thro' the forest green,
Barred with shadow and with sunshine,
   Misty vistas drawn between.
Grim, scarred bluegums ranged austerely,
   Lifting blackened columns each
To the large, fair fields of azure,
   Stretching ever out of reach.

See the hardy bracken growing
   Round the fallen limbs of trees;
And the sharp reeds from the marshes,
   Washed across the flooded leas;

1
A sudden bliss has seized my mind,
And to a mountain peak it carries me
Up where the wind's forgotten how to stir the trees;
The deepest valley lies in silence.
Perceiving something, quiet goes the brook
That used to babble without cease
When rushing swiftly down the hill.
There, they are braiding laurel wreaths
And word is spread to every side;
Smoke curls up from the fields afar.

2
Do I see Pindus down below me?
I hear the pristine sisters' songs!
With flame Permessian I burn,
I strive in haste toward their visage.