Reuben Pantier

Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,
Your love was not all in vain.
I owe whatever I was in life
To your hope that would not give me up,
To your love that saw me still as good.
Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.
I pass the effect of my father and mother;
The milliner's daughter made me trouble
And out I went in the world,
Where I passed through every peril known
Of wine and women and joy of life.
One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli,
I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte,


Reverence

I saw the Greatest Man on Earth,
Aye, saw him with my proper eyes.
A loin-cloth spanned his proper girth,
But he was naked otherwise,
Excepting for his grey sombrero;
And when his domelike head he bared,
With reverence I stared and stared,
As mummified as any Pharaoh.

He leaned upon a little cane,
A big cigar was in his mouth;
Through spectacles of yellow stain
He gazed and gazed toward the South;
And then he dived into the sea,
As if to Corsica to swim;
His side stroke was so strong and free


Reunited

Let us begin, dear love, where we left off;
Tie up the broken threads of that old dream;
And go on happy as before; and seem
Lovers again, though all the world may scoff.

Let us forget the graves, which lie between
Our parting and our meeting, and the tears
That rusted out the goldwork of the years;
The frosts that fell upon our gardens green.

Let us forget the cold malicious Fate
Who made our loving hearts her idle toys,
And once more revel in the old sweet joys


Rise, lovers

Rise, lovers, that we may go towards heaven; we have seen this world, so let us go to that world.
No, no, for thought these two gardens are beautiful and fair, let us pass beyond these two, and go to that Gardener.
Let us go prostrating to the sea like a torrent, then let us go foaming upon the face of the sea.
Let us journey from this street of mourning to the wedding feast, let us go from this saffron face to the face of the Judas tree blossom.


Riot Act, April 29, 1992

I'm going out and get something.
I don't know what.
I don't care.
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it.
Look in those shop windows at boxes
and boxes of Reeboks and Nikes
to make me fly through the air
like Michael Jordan
like Magic.
While I'm up there, I see Spike Lee.
Looks like he's flying too
straight through the glass
that separates me
from the virtual reality
I watch everyday on TV.
I know the difference between
what it is and what it isn't.
Just because I can't touch it


Rime 28

When before those eyes, my life and light,
my beauty and fortune in the world, I stand,
the style, speech, passion, genius I command,
the thoughts, conceits, feelings I incite,
in all I'm overwhelmed, utterly spent,
like a deaf mute, virutally dazed, all reverence, nothing but amazed
in that lovely light, I'm fixed and rent.
Enough, not a word can I intone
for that divine incubus never quits
sapping my strength, leaving my soul prone.
Oh Love, what strange and wonderful fits:
one sole thing, one beauty alone,


Rime 08

If I, who am an abject, low-born woman,
Can bear within me such lofty fire,
Why should I not possess at least a little
Poetic power to tell it to the world?
If Love, with such a new unheard-of flint
Lifted me up where I could never climb,
Why cannot I, in an unusual way,
Make pain and pen be equal in myself?
If Love cannot do this by force of nature,
Perhaps as by a miracle he may
Passing and bursting every common measure.
How that can be, I cannot well explain
But yet I feel, because of my great fortune,


Ribblesdale

Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavés throng
And louchéd low grass, heaven that dost appeal
To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;
That canst but only be, but dost that long—

Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong
Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,
Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel
Thy river, and o’er gives all to rack or wrong.

And what is Earth’s eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dear and dogged man?—Ah, the heir


Re-voyage

What of the days when we two dreamed together?
Days marvellously fair,
As lightsome as a skyward floating feather
Sailing on summer air--
Summer, summer, that came drifting through
Fate's hand to me, to you.

What of the days, my dear? I sometimes wonder
If you too wish this sky
Could be the blue we sailed so softly under,
In that sun-kissed July;
Sailed in the warm and yellow afternoon,
With hearts in touch and tune.

Have you no longing to re-live the dreaming,


Returning to Live in the South I

Little not fit common charm
Nature basic love mound hill
Mistake fall world net in
Thus went ten three years
Cage bird long for old forest
Pond fish long for old deep pool
Start barren south fields border
Observe awkward return field orchard
Plot residence 10 more acre
Grass house 8 9 rooms
Elm willow shade behind eaves
Peach plum collect hall before
Dim far person village
Reluctant to part ruins village smoke
Dog bark deep alley in
Chicken mulberry tree peak


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