Written by
Sylvia Plath |
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
|
Written by
Joyce Kilmer |
(For S. M. L.)
I like to look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea,
But it isn't half so fine a sight as Main Street used to be
When it all was covered over with a couple of feet of snow,
And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing sleighs would go.
Now, Main Street bordered with autumn leaves, it
was a pleasant thing,
And its gutters were gay with dandelions early in the Spring;
I like to think of it white with frost or dusty in the heat,
Because I think it is humaner than any other street.
A city street that is busy and wide is ground by
a thousand wheels,
And a burden of traffic on its breast is all it ever feels:
It is dully conscious of weight and speed and of work that never
ends,
But it cannot be human like Main Street, and recognise its friends.
There were only about a hundred teams on Main Street
in a day,
And twenty or thirty people, I guess, and some children out to play.
And there wasn't a wagon or buggy, or a man or a girl or a boy
That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow seem to enjoy.
The truck and the motor and trolley car and the
elevated train
They make the weary city street reverberate with pain:
But there is yet an echo left deep down within my heart
Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made beneath a butcher's
cart.
God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across
the sky,
That's the path that my feet would tread whenever I have to die.
Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly Crown,
But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street, Heaventown.
|
Written by
Frank Bidart |
"When I hit her on the head, it was good,
and then I did it to her a couple of times,--
but it was funny,--afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it ...
Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line.
Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,
tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,
hop out and do it to her ...
The whole buggy of them waiting for me
made me feel good;
but still, just like I knew all along,
she didn't move.
When the body got too discomposed,
I'd just jack off, letting it fall on her ...
--It sounds crazy, but I tell you
sometimes it was beautiful--; I don't know how
to say it, but for a miute, everything was possible--;
and then,
then,--
well, like I said, she didn't move: and I saw,
under me, a little girl was just lying there in the mud:
and I knew I couldn't have done that,--
somebody else had to have done that,--
standing above her there,
in those ordinary, shitty leaves ...
--One time, I went to see Dad in a motel where he was
staying with a woman; but she was gone;
you could smell the wine in the air; and he started,
real embarrassing, to cry ...
He was still a little drunk,
and asked me to forgive him for
all he hasn't done--; but, What the ****?
Who would have wanted to stay with Mom? with bastards
not even his own kids?
I got in the truck, and started to drive
and saw a little girl--
who I picked up, hit on the head, and
screwed, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, then
buried,
in the garden of the motel ...
--You see, ever since I was a kid I wanted
to feel things make sense: I remember
looking out the window of my room back home,--
and being almost suffocated by the asphalt;
and grass; and trees; and glass;
just there, just there, doing nothing!
not saying anything! filling me up--
but also being a wall; dead, and stopping me;
--how I wanted to see beneath it, cut
beneath it, and make it
somehow, come alive ...
The salt of the earth;
Mom once said, 'Man's ***** is the salt of the earth ...'
--That night, at that Twenty-nine Palms Motel
I had passed a million times on the road, everything
fit together; was alright;
it seemed like
everything had to be there, like I had spent years
trying, and at last finally finished drawing this
huge circle ...
--But then, suddenly I knew
somebody else did it, some bastard
had hurt a little girl--; the motel
I could see again, it had been
itself all the time, a lousy
pile of bricks, plaster, that didn't seem to
have to be there,--but was, just by chance ...
--Once, on the farm, when I was a kid,
I was screwing a goat; and the rope around his neck
when he tried to get away
pulled tight;--and just when I came,
he died ...
I came back the next day; jacked off over his body;
but it didn't do any good ...
Mom once said:
'Man's ***** is the salt of the earth, and grows kids.'
I tried so hard to come; more pain than anything else;
but didn't do any good ...
--About six months ago, I heard Dad remarried,
so I drove over to Connecticut to see him and see
if he was happy.
She was twenty-five years younger than him:
she had lots of little kids, and I don't know why,
I felt shaky ...
I stopped in front of the address; and
snuck up to the window to look in ...
--There he was, a kid
six months old on his lap, laughing
and bouncing the kid, happy in his old age
to play the papa after years of sleeping around,--
it twisted me up ...
To think that what he wouldn't give me,
he wanted to give them ...
I could have killed the bastard ...
--Naturally, I just got right back in the car,
and believe me, was determined, determined,
to head straight for home ...
but the more I drove,
I kept thinking about getting a girl,
and the more I thought I shouldn't do it,
the more I had to--
I saw her coming out of the movies,
saw she was alone, and
kept circling the blocks as she walked along them,
saying, 'You're going to leave her alone.'
'You're going to leave her alone.'
--The woods were scary!
As the seasons changed, and you saw more and more
of the skull show through, the nights became clearer,
and the buds,--erect, like nipples ...
--But then, one night,
nothing worked ...
Nothing in the sky
would blur like I wanted it to;
and I couldn't, couldn't,
get it to seem to me
that somebody else did it ...
I tried, and tried, but there was just me there,
and her, and the sharp trees
saying, "That's you standing there.
You're ...
just you.'
I hope I fry.
--Hell came when I saw
MYSELF ...
and couldn't stand
what I see ..."
|
Written by
Donald Hall |
All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.
In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;
and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.
Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.
For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.
|
Written by
Edgar Lee Masters |
The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
Set fire to the house
They were trying Dr. Duval
For the murder of Zora Clemens,
And I sat in the court two weeks
Listening to every witness.
It was clear he had got her in a family way;
And to let the child be born
Would not do.
Well, how about me with eight children,
And one coming, and the farm
Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?
And when I got home that night,
(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,
And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)
The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,
Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,
Was the hatchet!
And just as I entered there was my wife,
Standing before me, big with child.
She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,
And I killed her.
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
heeley (sheffield) autumn 1988
dodging the broken bottles
dog-**** the pavement spew
i wheel my young son matthew
through the heeley streets
shop to shop this early
morning (short of milk)
unsettled day - the sun
comes through the clouds in
ragged strips where windy
rain has had the night
to puff and piddle
puddles idle in
the dips of surfaces
neglected for decades
another place where caring's
lost a public vision
only detritus of hope
dares poke its battered
visage out of doors
no pride here on pavements
what's local's long been
squashed - wealth's dogs
prefer more stately
avenues to piss up
the air is fresh
i'm moving briskly
getting a lift from
my negotiating skills
take a buggy on
two wheels to skirt
a sudden pool a twirl
past faeces - a kind of
hop-scotch over jags
of milky glass - and come
to stop on a hillside
where slopes of grass drop
sleekly on what were
backs of houses
i'm out of breath
a darkness ripples
past my eyes and knocks
on my unfitness
i am locked for one
brief aeon as a rock
that's held its place upon
this hill inscrutably
a wildness explodes
from every blade of grass
i touch upon deep springs
(a healing flow upsurging
through the **** and glass
the torn-down homes)
my body's lapped - my
old eyes washed of dirt
a comb's gone through the
landscape at my feet
the muck's redeemed
a larger time lets
nothing be what is
but everything is used
for what is coming
today-defunct breeds
trees that bloom tomorrow
nothing's next step on
is one - what's poor is
where new worlds are just
beginning - the ****
spew glass the death
of hope have done their time
(cartons which the future's
thrown away as minds
and spirits snout amongst
the refuse seeking forms
to dress their fresh selves in)
the meek are gathered
in millions on this hill
disparaged destitute
of any say in this
dead time as others
roll their tongues
round easy riches
but here's the future
too - a start of ages
a cry whose agony's
a pinprick or a seedling
a drib of red and green
the statute's blind to
across the valley
sheffield snarls itself
to this day's life
its smoke-tuned buildings
boxed-in by the past
(upheavals mortised in
its joints make it confused)
for all its roar it
slumbers through its present
wanting its glory back
the talk of its old
workers flawed with steely
pride (that stainless stain)
there's no dawn there - its power
and wealth have long borne
all its sons away
it's in the detritus
i stand in (in this mix
of race and stymied
passion heeley has become
- and all such cast-off
cesspits of our dreams)
the not-yet written
songs of human dignity
are not yet being sung
the shudder leaves me
i'm just this oldish
man with his youngest son
pushing a buggy through
scarred heeley streets
more concerned to get
no **** upon the wheels
than to hold a sand-grain
to the world and turn
its atoms inside out
i'll not live to see
the newlaid honest
pavements going down
and houses have that look
within their glass that sings
of confidence-returned
i push on up the hill
(to where my oldest son
has done his house up)
once more safely in
the compound of my
aging flesh talking
with matthew playing
buggy games
triumphant
only that after
so many sorry shops
i'd found one that did
sell milk - the morning
cup of tea reclaimed
the real world put to rights
|
Written by
Henry Lawson |
It chanced upon the very day we'd got the shearing done,
A buggy brought a stranger to the West-o'-Sunday Run;
He had a round and jolly face, and he was sleek and stout,
He drove right up between the huts and called the super out.
We chaps were smoking after tea, and heard the swell enquire
For one as travelled by the name of `Dunn of Nevertire'.
Jack Dunn of Nevertire,
Poor Dunn of Nevertire;
There wasn't one of us but knew Jack Dunn of Nevertire.
`Jack Dunn of Nevertire,' he said; `I was a mate of his;
And now it's twenty years since I set eyes upon his phiz.
There is no whiter man than Jack -- no straighter south the line,
There is no hand in all the land I'd sooner grip in mine;
To help a mate in trouble Jack would go through flood and fire.
Great Scott! and don't you know the name of Dunn of Nevertire?
Big Dunn of Nevertire,
Long Jack from Nevertire;
He stuck to me through thick and thin, Jack Dunn of Nevertire.
`I did a wild and foolish thing while Jack and I were mates,
And I disgraced my guv'nor's name, an' wished to try the States.
My lamps were turned to Yankee Land, for I'd some people there,
And I was right when someone sent the money for my fare;
I thought 'twas Dad until I took the trouble to enquire,
And found that he who sent the stuff was Dunn of Nevertire,
Jack Dunn of Nevertire,
Soft Dunn of Nevertire;
He'd won some money on a race -- Jack Dunn of Nevertire.
`Now I've returned, by Liverpool, a swell of Yankee brand,
To reckon, guess, and kalkilate, 'n' wake my native land;
There is no better land, I swear, in all the wide world round --
I smelt the bush a month before we touched King George's Sound!
And now I've come to settle down, the top of my desire
Is just to meet a mate o' mine called `Dunn of Nevertire'.
Was raised at Nevertire --
The town of Nevertire;
He humped his bluey by the name of `Dunn of Nevertire'.
`I've heard he's poor, and if he is, a proud old fool is he;
But, spite of that, I'll find a way to fix the old gum-tree.
I've bought a station in the North -- the best that could be had;
I want a man to pick the stock -- I want a super bad;
I want no bully-brute to boss -- no crawling, sneaking liar --
My station super's name shall be `Jack Dunn of Nevertire'!
Straight Dunn of Nevertire,
Old Dunn of Nevertire;
I guess he's known up Queensland way -- Jack Dunn of Nevertire.'
The super said, while to his face a strange expression came:
`I THINK I've seen the man you want, I THINK I know the name;
Had he a jolly kind of face, a free and careless way,
Gray eyes that always seem'd to smile, and hair just turning gray --
Clean-shaved, except a light moustache, long-limbed, an' tough as wire?'
`THAT'S HIM! THAT'S DUNN!' the stranger roared, `Jack Dunn of Nevertire!
John Dunn of Nevertire,
Jack D. from Nevertire,
They said I'd find him here, the cuss! -- Jack Dunn of Nevertire.
`I'd know his walk,' the stranger cried, `though sobered, I'll allow.'
`I doubt it much,' the boss replied, `he don't walk that way now.'
`Perhaps he don't!' the stranger said, `for years were hard on Jack;
But, if he were a mile away, I swear I'd know his back.'
`I doubt it much,' the super said, and sadly puffed his briar,
`I guess he wears a pair of wings -- Jack Dunn of Nevertire;
Jack Dunn of Nevertire,
Brave Dunn of Nevertire,
He caught a fever nursing me, Jack Dunn of Nevertire.'
We took the stranger round to where a gum-tree stood alone,
And in the grass beside the trunk he saw a granite stone;
The names of Dunn and Nevertire were plainly written there --
`I'm all broke up,' the stranger said, in sorrow and despair,
`I guess he has a wider run, the man that I require;
He's got a river-frontage now, Jack Dunn of Nevertire;
Straight Dunn of Nevertire,
White Jack from Nevertire,
I guess Saint Peter knew the name of `Dunn of Nevertire'.'
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
'E was warned agin' 'er --
That's what made 'im look;
She was warned agin' 'im --
That is why she took.
'Wouldn't 'ear no reason,
'Went an' done it blind;
We know all about 'em,
They've got all to find!
Cheer for the Sergeant's weddin' --
Give 'em one cheer more!
Grey gun-'orses in the lando,
An' a rogue is married to, etc.
What's the use o' tellin'
'Arf the lot she's been?
'E's a bloomin' robber,
An' 'e keeps canteen.
'Ow did 'e get 'is buggy?
Gawd, you needn't ask!
'Made 'is forty gallon
Out of every cask!
Watch 'im, with 'is 'air cut,
Count us filin' by --
Won't the Colonel praise 'is
Pop -- u -- lar -- i -- ty!
We 'ave scores to settle --
Scores for more than beer;
She's the girl to pay 'em --
That is why we're 'ere!
See the chaplain thinkin'?
See the women smile?
Twig the married winkin'
As they take the aisle?
Keep your side-arms quiet,
Dressin' by the Band.
Ho! You 'oly beggars,
Cough be'ind your 'and!
Now it's done an' over,
'Ear the organ squeak,
"'Voice that breathed o'er Eden" --
Ain't she got the cheek!
White an' laylock ribbons,
Think yourself so fine!
I'd pray Gawd to take yer
'Fore I made yer mine!
Escort to the kerridge,
Wish 'im luck, the brute!
Chuck the slippers after --
[Pity 'tain't a boot!]
Bowin' like a lady,
Blushin' like a lad --
'Oo would say to see 'em
Both is rotten bad?
Cheer for the Sergeant's weddin' --
Give 'em one cheer more!
Grey gun-'orses in the lando,
An' a rogue is married to, etc.
|
Written by
Donald Hall |
All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.
In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;
and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.
Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.
For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.
|