When You Go Away

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy


When You Get Home, Remember Me

Lieutenant De Long, commanding the Jeannette Artic
Expedition, having seen his vessel crushed by the ice,
undertook a perilous journey through the ice and snow
toward the coast of Siberia. With a part of his command
he finally reached the wilderness near the mouth of the
River Lena. Disabled by sickness, hunger and cold, the
little band was compelled to halt, while two of their
number went forward. When the pathetic parting was over,
and after the two seaman had begun their battle with the


When We Were Here Together

when we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one
another.
A bit of grass held between the teeth for a moment, bright hair on the
wind.
What we were we did not know, nor even the grass or the flame of
hair turning to ash on the wind.
But they lied about that. From the beginning they lied. To the child,
telling him that there was somewhere anger against him, and a
hatred against him, and the only reason for his being in the
world.
But never did they tell him that the only evil and danger was in


When the Year grows Old

I cannot but remember
   When the year grows old --
October -- November --
   How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
   Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
   With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
   Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
   Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
   That I wish I could forget --
The look of a scared thing
   Sitting in a net!


When The Grain Is Golden and The Wind Is Chilly Then it is Time To Harvest

Leron-leron sinta, umakyat sa papaya
Dala-dala’y buslo’, sisidlan ng bunga

In a dusty village in Cagayan Valley,
Ramon and his father were planting rice when soldiers

appeared on their farm. They questioned his father,
if he’d seen any communist rebels recently

in the area, and when he did not give them
a good enough answer, they beat him with the blunt ends

of their rifles, shot him as he was lying
on the ground. Ramon snuck away but remained hidden

in nearby bushes, to witness the soldiers


When the Fishing Boats Go Out

When the lucent skies of morning flush with dawning rose once more,
And waves of golden glory break adown the sunrise shore,
And o'er the arch of heaven pied films of vapor float.
There's joyance and there's freedom when the fishing boats go out.

The wind is blowing freshly up from far, uncharted caves,
And sending sparkling kisses o'er the brows of virgin waves,
While routed dawn-mists shiver­oh, far and fast they flee,
Pierced by the shafts of sunrise athwart the merry sea!


When the Dark Comes Down

When the dark comes down, oh, the wind is on the sea
With lisping laugh and whimper to the red reef's threnody,
The boats are sailing homeward now across the harbor bar
With many a jest and many a shout from fishing grounds afar.
So furl your sails and take your rest, ye fisher folk so brown,
For task and quest are ended when the dark comes down.

When the dark comes down, oh, the landward valleys fill
Like brimming cups of purple, and on every landward hill
There shines a star of twilight that is watching evermore


When Spring Goes By

The winds that on the uplands softly lie,
Grow keener where the ice is lingering still
Where the first robin on the sheltered hill
Pipes blithely to the tune, "When Spring goes by!"
Hear him again, "Spring! Spring!" He seems to cry,
Haunting the fall of the flute-throated rill,
That keeps a gentle, constant, silver thrill,
While he is restless in his ecstasy.

Ah! the soft budding of the virginal woods,
Of the frail fruit trees by the vanishing lakes:
There's the new moon where the clear sunset floods,


When Life Is But A Round Of Crushing Care

When life is but a round of crushing care
And, a great heap of stones, lies heavy on us,
There suddenly, God knows how, why, upon us
A joyous mood descends... Of balmy air
A breath comes from the past and, o'er us drifting,
Invades the heart, its fearful burden lifting.

At times with autumn's coming is it so,
When empty lie the fields, when bare the groves are,
And paler turn the skies - and of a sudden, over
The darkened earth a damp wind starts to blow.
A fallen leaf it chases with elation


Weather

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--


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