Lord Archer, Death, whom sent you in your stead?
What faltering prentice fumbled at your bow,
That now should wander with the insanguine dead
In whom forever the bright blood must flow?
Or is it rather that impairing Time
Renders yourself so random, or so dim?
Or are you sick of shadows and would climb
A while to light, a while detaining him?
For know, this was no mortal youth, to be
Of you confounded, but a heavenly guest,
Assuming earthly garb for love of me,
And hell's demure attire for love of jest:

Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly
Of all the things that are the outward you,
And my gaze wanders ere your tale is through
To webs of my own weaving, or I see
Abstractedly your hands about your knee
And wonder why I love you as I do,
Then I recall, " Yet Sorrow thus he drew " ;
Then I consider, " Pride thus painted he. "
Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line:
So are we bound till broken is the throat

That Love at length should find me out and bring
This fierce and trivial brow unto the dust,
Is, after all, I must confess, but just;
There is a subtle beauty in this thing,
A wry perfection; wherefore now let sing
All voices how into my throat is thrust,
Unwelcome as Death's own, Love's bitter crust,
All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring.
This being done, there let the matter rest.
What more remains is neither here nor there.
That you requite me not is plain to see;
Myself your slave herein have I confessed:

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your chariot till I die,—
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!—
Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!
I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire,
Lifted my face into its puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

You mince, you start
advancing indirectly —
your tail upright
knocking about among the
frail, heavily flowered
sprays.

Yes, you are lovely
with your ingratiating
manners, sleek sides and
small white paws but
I wish you had not come

To the bob-white's call
and drone of reaper

tumbling daisies in the sun —
one by one

about the smutting panels of
white doors

grey shingles slip and fall —
But you, a loveliness

of even lines
curving to the throat, the

crossroads is your home.
You are, upon

your steady stem
one trumpeted wide flower

slightly tilted
above a scale of buds —

Sometimes a farmer's wife
gathers an armful

for her pitcher on the porch —
Topping a stone wall

against the shale-ledge

What about all this writing?

O " Kiki "
O Miss Margaret Jarvis
The backhandspring

I: clean
clean
clean: yes . . New-York

Wrigley's, appendicitis, John Marin:
skyscraper soup —

Either that or a bullet!

Once
anything might have happened
You lay relaxed on my knees —
the starry night
spread out warm and blind
above the hospital —

Pah!

It is unclean
which is not straight to the mark —

In my life the furniture eats me

the chairs, the floor
the walls

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air — The edge
cuts without cutting
meets — nothing — renews
itself in metal or porcelain —

whither? It ends —

But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry —

Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica —
the broken plate
glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses —

The rose carried weight of love

Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad,
And love me if you like.
I shall not hear the door shut
Nor the knocker strike.

Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts,
And wed me if you will.
I'd make a man a good wife,
Sensible and still.

And why should I be cold, my lad,
And why should you repine,
Because I love a dark head
That never will be mine?

I might as well be easing you
As lie alone in bed
And waste the night in wanting
A cruel dark head.

You might as well be calling yours
What never will be his,

Vast and grey, the sky
is a simulacrum
to all but him whose days
are vast and grey, and —
In the tall, dried grasses
a goat stirs
with nozzle searching the ground.
— my head is in the air
but who am I ..?
And amazed my heart leaps
at the thought of love
vast and grey
yearning silently over me.