Written by
Edna St Vincent Millay |
(On reflecting that the world
is ready to go to war again)
Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build
bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest,
be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacateria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach,
expand, expunge yourself, die out,
*****called sapiens.
|
Written by
Philip Levine |
The doctor fingers my bruise.
"Magnificent," he says, "black
at the edges and purple
cored.
" Seated, he spies for clues,
gingerly probing the slack
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull
for air, losing the battle.
Faced by his aged diploma,
the heavy head of the X-
ray, and the iron saddle,
I grow lonely.
He finds my
secrets common and my sex
neither objectionable
nor lovely, though he is on
the hunt for significance.
The shelved cutlery twinkles
behind glass, and I am on
the way out, "an instance
of the succumbed through extreme
fantasy.
" He is alarmed
at last, and would raise me, but
I am floorward in a dream
of lowered trousers, unarmed
and weakly fighting to shut
the window of my drawers.
There are others in the room,
voices of women above
white oxfords; and the old floor,
the friendly linoleum,
departs.
I whisper, "my love,"
and am safe, tabled, sniffing
spirits of ammonia
in the land of my fellows.
"Open house!" my openings
sing: pores, nose, anus let go
their charges, a shameless flow
into the outer world;
and the ceiling, equipped with
intelligence, surveys my
produce.
The doctor is thrilled
by my display, for he is half
the slave of necessity;
I, enormous in my need,
justify his sciences.
"We have alternatives," he
says, "Removal.
.
.
" (And my blood
whitens as on their dull trays
the tubes dance.
I must study
the dark bellows of the gas
machine, the painless maker.
)
".
.
.
and learning to live with it.
"
Oh, but I am learning fast
to live with any pain, ache,
growth to keep myself intact;
and in imagination
I hug my bruise like an old
Pooh Bear, already attuned
to its moods.
"Oh, my dark one,
tell of the coming of cold
and of Kings, ancient and ruined.
"
|
Written by
Henry Lawson |
Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Cause of half the fun that's started --
`Hard-case' Dan --
Isn't like a broken-hearted,
Ruined man.
Walking-coat from tail to throat is
Frayed and greened --
Like a man whose other coat is
Being cleaned;
Gone for ever round the edging
Past repair --
Waistcoat pockets frayed with dredging
After `sprats' no longer there.
Wearing summer boots in June, or
Slippers worn and old --
Like a man whose other shoon are
Getting soled.
Pants? They're far from being recent --
But, perhaps, I'd better not --
Says they are the only decent
Pair he's got.
And his hat, I am afraid, is
Troubling him --
Past all lifting to the ladies
By the brim.
But, although he'd hardly strike a
Girl, would Dan,
Yet he wears his wreckage like a
Gentleman!
Once -- no matter how the rest dressed --
Up or down --
Once, they say, he was the best-dressed
Man in town.
Must have been before I knew him --
Now you'd scarcely care to meet
And be noticed talking to him
In the street.
Drink the cause, and dissipation,
That is clear --
Maybe friend or kind relation
Cause of beer.
And the talking fool, who never
Reads or thinks,
Says, from hearsay: `Yes, he's clever;
But, you know, he drinks.
'
Been an actor and a writer --
Doesn't whine --
Reckoned now the best reciter
In his line.
Takes the stage at times, and fills it --
`Princess May' or `Waterloo'.
Raise a sneer! -- his first line kills it,
`Brings 'em', too.
Where he lives, or how, or wherefore
No one knows;
Lost his real friends, and therefore
Lost his foes.
Had, no doubt, his own romances --
Met his fate;
Tortured, doubtless, by the chances
And the luck that comes too late.
Now and then his boots are polished,
Collar clean,
And the worst grease stains abolished
By ammonia or benzine:
Hints of some attempt to shove him
From the taps,
Or of someone left to love him --
Sister, p'r'aps.
After all, he is a grafter,
Earns his cheer --
Keeps the room in roars of laughter
When he gets outside a beer.
Yarns that would fall flat from others
He can tell;
How he spent his `stuff', my brothers,
You know well.
Manner puts a man in mind of
Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
Ugliness.
.
.
.
.
.
One of those we say of often,
While hearts swell,
Standing sadly by the coffin:
`He looks well.
'
.
.
.
.
.
We may be -- so goes a rumour --
Bad as Dan;
But we may not have the humour
Of the man;
Nor the sight -- well, deem it blindness,
As the general public do --
And the love of human kindness,
Or the GRIT to see it through!
|
Written by
Hugo Williams |
The smell of ammonia in the entrance hall.
The racing bike.
The junk mail.
The timer switch whose single naked bulb
allowed us as far as the first floor.
The backs of your legs
as you went ahead of me up the stairs.
The landing where we paused for breath
and impatient key searching.
The locks which would never open quickly enough
to let us in.
The green of the paintwork we slid down
as if we had nowhere else to go.
|