My mother
Foresaw deaths
And walked among
Chrysanthemums,
Winecolored,
Withe red rose,
The earthy blossoms.
My very breath
Disowned
In nights of study,
And page by page
I came on spring.
The rats run on the roof,
These words come hard---
Sadder than cockcrow
In a dreamless, earthen sleep.
The Christ, eternal
In the scented cold; my love,
Her hand on the sill
White, as if out of earth;
And spring, the sleep of the dead.
O MY Dark Rosaleen,
Do not sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green,
They march along the deep.
There 's wine from the royal Pope,
Upon the ocean green;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Over hills, and thro' dales,
The poet Phernazis is composing
the important part of his epic poem.
How Darius, son of Hystaspes,
assumed the kingdom of the Persians. (From him
is descended our glorious king
Mithridates, Dionysus and Eupator). But here
philosophy is needed; he must analyze
the sentiments that Darius must have had:
maybe arrogance and drunkenness; but no -- rather
like an understanding of the vanity of grandeurs.
The poet contemplates the matter deeply.
But he is interrupted by his servant who enters
running, and announces the portendous news.
When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
I meant to return for you, yes I did.
But Laura, my landlady's daughter,
Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.
Then after some years whom should I meet
But Georgine Miner from Niles -- a sprout
Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished
Before the war all over Ohio.
Her dilettante lover had tired of her,
And she turned to me for strength and solace.
She was some kind of a crying thing
One takes in one's arms, and all at once
It slimes your face with its running nose,
In law an infant, and in years a boy,
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;
Women his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;
Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Damætas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal when others just begin:
Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure's bowl;
Where the thistle lifts a purple crown
Six foot out of the turf,
And the harebell shakes on the windy hill--
O breath of the distant surf!--
The hills look over on the South,
And southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand
Came innocence and she.
Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry
Red for the gatherer springs;
Two children did we stray and talk
Wise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise,
Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine:
Her skin was like a grape whose veins
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
I wish you joy, my little ragged throng--
Your Dad's a millionaire!
The fortune's come, we've waited for so long,
And I'm a millionaire!
Come Will, come Bub--go buy some better shoes;
Come Liz, come Lu--go tell your Ma the news--
Though once poor, we're now as rich as Jews,
For I'm a millionaire.
Hurrah! hurrah! now give us a rousing song--
Good bye! good bye! to poverty, want and care;
The fortune's come, we've waited for so long,
And Dad's a millionaire!
Good news! I'll go a shopping--so I will,
For Dad's a millionaire!
the final curtain on one of the longest running
musicals ever, some people claim to have
seen it over one hundred times.
I saw it on the tv news, that final curtain:
flowers, cheers, tears, a thunderous
accolade.
I have not seen this particular musical
but I know if I had that I wouldn't have
been able to bear it, it would have
sickened me.
trust me on this, the world and its
peoples and its artful entertainment has
done very little for me, only to me.
still, let them enjoy one another, it will
keep them from my door
Cupid, ere depriv'd of Sight,
Young and apt for all Delight,
Met with Folly on the way,
As Idle and as fond of Play.
In gay Sports the time they pass;
Now run, now wrestle on the Grass;
Their painted Wings then nimbly ply,
And ev'ry way for Mast'ry try:
'Till a Contest do's arise,
Who has won th' appointed Prize.
Gentle Love refers the Case
To the next, that comes in Place;
Trusting to his flatt'ring Wiles,
And softens the Dispute with Smiles.
But Folly, who no Temper knows,
Words pursues with hotter Blows: