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Best Famous Fall In Poems

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American Feuillage

 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of
 square
 miles; 
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the thirty
 thousand
 miles of
 river navigation, 
The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always
 these,
 and
 more, branching forth into numberless branches; 
Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of Democracy! 
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows;
Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge
 oval
 lakes; 
Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the
 habitans,
 friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; 
All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, 
All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed, 
Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering;
On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up; 
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and
 Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; 
In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or
 lapping
 the
 Saginaw waters to drink; 
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking
 silently; 
In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done—they rest
 standing—they are too tired;
Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; 
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d—the farthest polar sea, ripply,
 crystalline, open, beyond the floes; 
White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes; 
On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; 
In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream
 of the
 panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk;
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in summer visible through the
 clear
 waters, the great trout swimming; 
In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating
 slowly,
 high
 beyond the tree tops, 
Below, the red cedar, festoon’d with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing
 out
 of the
 white sand that spreads far and flat; 
Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with color’d
 flowers
 and
 berries, enveloping huge trees, 
The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind;
The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and
 eating
 by
 whites and *******, 
Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, 
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the
 flames—with
 the
 black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; 
Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina’s
 coast—the
 shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on
 shore
 work’d by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing-houses; 
Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the
 trees—There
 are the turpentine works,
There are the ******* at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is
 cover’d
 with
 pine straw: 
—In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the
 furnace-blaze, or
 at the corn-shucking; 
In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom’d
 and
 kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse; 
On rivers, boatmen safely moor’d at night-fall, in their boats, under shelter of high
 banks, 
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the
 gunwale,
 smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal
 Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the
 cypress
 tree,
 and the juniper tree; 
—Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion
 returning
 home at
 evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; 
Children at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips
 move! how
 he smiles in his sleep!) 
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a
 knoll
 and
 sweeps his eye around; 
California life—the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume—the stanch
 California
 friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just
 aside the
 horsepath;
Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the *****-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen
 before
 rude
 carts—cotton bales piled on banks and wharves; 
Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal
 hemispheres—one
 Love,
 one Dilation or Pride; 
—In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the
 pipe
 of
 good-will, arbitration, and indorsement, 
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, 
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march, 
The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies; 
—All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These States—reminiscences,
 all
 institutions, 
All These States, compact—Every square mile of These States, without excepting a
 particle—you also—me also, 
Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields,
Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each
 other,
 ascending high in the air; 
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall traveler southward, but
 returning
 northward early in the spring; 
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as
 they
 loiter to browse by the road-side; 
The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San
 Francisco, 
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan;
—Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, 
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended,
 balancing
 in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows
 in
 specks
 on the opposite wall, where the shine is; 
The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; 
Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of
 The
 States,
 each for itself—the money-makers; 
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley—All
 certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, 
In space, the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the
 lands, my
 lands; 
O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I become a part of that,
 whatever it
 is; 
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slowly flapping, with the myriads of gulls
 wintering
 along
 the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding; 
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the
 Brazos, the
 Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters
 laughing
 and
 skipping and running;
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons
 wading in
 the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; 
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill,
 for
 amusement—And I triumphantly twittering; 
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body
 of
 the
 flock feed—the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from
 time
 to
 time reliev’d by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; 
In Kanadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, corner’d by hunters, rising
 desperately on
 his
 hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—And I,
 plunging
 at the
 hunters, corner’d and desperate; 
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen
 working in
 the
 shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself than the whole of
 the
 Mannahatta in itself, 
Singing the song of These, my ever united lands—my body no more inevitably united,
 part to
 part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE
 IDENTITY; 
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great Pastoral Plains; 
Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—these me, 
These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can
 I do
 less
 than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am?

How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the
 incomparable
 feuillage of These States?

Written by William Wordsworth |

THE COMPLAINT OF A FORSAKEN INDIAN WOMAN

[When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to continue his journey with his companions; he is left behind, covered over with Deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel if the situation of the place will afford it.
He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or overtake them, he perishes alone in the Desart; unless he should have the good fortune to fall in with some other Tribes of Indians.
It is unnecessary to add that the females are equally, or still more, exposed to the same fate.
See that very interesting work, Hearne's Journey from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean.
In the high Northern Latititudes, as the same writer informs us, when the Northern Lights vary their position in the air, they make a rustling and a crackling noise.
This circumstance is alluded to in the first stanza of the following poem.
]

THE COMPLAINT, etc.

  Before I see another day,
  Oh let my body die away!
  In sleep I heard the northern gleams;
  The stars they were among my dreams;
  In sleep did I behold the skies,
  I saw the crackling flashes drive;
  And yet they are upon my eyes,
  And yet I am alive.
  Before I see another day,
  Oh let my body die away!

  My fire is dead: it knew no pain;
  Yet is it dead, and I remain.
  All stiff with ice the ashes lie;
  And they are dead, and I will die.
  When I was well, I wished to live,
  For clothes, for warmth, for food, and fire;
  But they to me no joy can give,
  No pleasure now, and no desire.
  Then here contented will I lie;
  Alone I cannot fear to die.

  Alas! you might have dragged me on
  Another day, a single one!
  Too soon despair o'er me prevailed;
  Too soon my heartless spirit failed;
  When you were gone my limbs were stronger,
  And Oh how grievously I rue,
  That, afterwards, a little longer,
  My friends, I did not follow you!
  For strong and without pain I lay,
  My friends, when you were gone away.

  My child! they gave thee to another,
  A woman who was not thy mother.
  When from my arms my babe they took,
  On me how strangely did he look!
  Through his whole body something ran,
  A most strange something did I see;
  —As if he strove to be a man,
  That he might pull the sledge for me.
  And then he stretched his arms, how wild!
  Oh mercy! like a little child.

  My little joy! my little pride!
  In two days more I must have died.
  Then do not weep and grieve for me;
  I feel I must have died with thee.
  Oh wind that o'er my head art flying,
  The way my friends their course did bend,
  I should not feel the pain of dying,
  Could I with thee a message send.
  Too soon, my friends, you went away;
  For I had many things to say.

  I'll follow you across the snow,
  You travel heavily and slow:
  In spite of all my weary pain,
  I'll look upon your tents again.
  My fire is dead, and snowy white
  The water which beside it stood;
  The wolf has come to me to-night,
  And he has stolen away my food.
  For ever left alone am I,
  Then wherefore should I fear to die?

  My journey will be shortly run,
  I shall not see another sun,
  I cannot lift my limbs to know
  If they have any life or no.
  My poor forsaken child! if I
  For once could have thee close to me,
  With happy heart I then should die,
  And my last thoughts would happy be.
  I feel my body die away,
  I shall not see another day.

Written by Billy Collins |

The First Dream

 The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.


He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.


Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

Written by Rg Gregory |

from the Ansty Experience

 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving the poet's self
estranged from the once-intending man)
and six ears in the room have tuned
objectives sifting the coloured strands
the words have hidden from the poet
asking what world has come to light

people measured by their heartbeats
language can't flout that come-and-go
to touch the heartbeat in a poem
calls for the brain's surrender
a warm diffusion of the mind
a listening to an eery silence
the words both mimic and destroy
(no excuses slipping off the tongue)

and when a poem works the unknown
opens a timid shutter on a world
so familiar it's not been seen
before - and then it's gone bringing
a frisson to an altered room
and in a stuttering frenzy dusty
attributes are tried to resurrect
a glimpse of what it's like inside

a truth (the glow a glow-worm makes)
this is not (not much) what happens
there's serious concern and banter
there's opacity there's chit-chat
diversions and derailings from
a line some avalanche has blocked
(what a fine pass through the mountains)
poetry and fidgets are blood-brothers

it's within all these the cosmos calls
that makes these afternoons a rich
adventure through a common field
when three men moving towards death
(without alacrity but conscious of it)
find youth again and bubble with
its springs - opening worn valves
to give such flow their own direction

there's no need of competition
no wish to prove that one of us
holds keys the others don't to the
sacral chambers - no want to find
consensus in technique or drench 
the rites of words in orthodox 
belief - difference is essential
and delightful (integrity's all)

quality's a private quarrel
between the poem and the poet - taste
the private hang-up of receivers
mostly migrained by exposure
to opinions not their own - fed
from a culture no one bleeds in
sustained by reputations manured
by a few and spread by hearsay

(b)
these meetings are a modest vow
to let each poet speak uncluttered
from establishment's traditions
and conditions where passions rippling
from the marrow can choose a space
to innocent themselves and long-held
tastes for carlos williams gurney
poems to siva (to name a few)

can surface in a side-attempt 
to show unexpected lineage from
the source to present patterns
of the poet - but at the core
of every poem read and comment made
it's not the poem or the poet
being sifted to the seed but
poetry itself given the works

the most despised belittled
enervated creative cowcake
of them all in the public eye
prestigious when it doesn't matter
to the clapped-out powers and turned
away from when too awkward and 
impolitic to confront - ball
to be bounced from high art to low

when fights break out amongst the teachers
and shakespeare's wielded as a cane
as the rich old crusty clan reverts
to the days it hated him at school
but loved the beatings - loudhailer
broken-down old-banger any ram-it-
up-your-**** and suck-my-prick to those
who want to tear chintz curtains down

and shock the cosy populace to taste
life at its rawest (most obscene)
courtesan to fashion and today's 
ploy - advertisement's gold gimmick
slave of beat and rhythm - dead but
much loved donkey in the hearts of all
who learned di-dah di-dah at school
and have been stuck in the custard since

plaything political-tool pop-
star's goo - poetry's been made to garb
itself in all these rags and riches
this age applauds the eye - is one 
of outward exploration - the earth
(in life) and universe (in fiction)
are there for scurrying over - haste
is everything and the beat is all

fireworks feed the fancy - a great ah
rewards the enterprise that fills
night skies with flashing bountifuls
of way-out stars - poetry has to be
in service to this want (is fed
into the system gracelessly)
there can be no standing-still or
stopping-by no take a little time

and see what blossoms here - we're into
poetry in motion and all that ****
and i can accept it all - what stirs
the surface of the ocean ignores
the depths - what talks the hindlegs off
the day can't murder dreams - that's not
to say the depths and dreams aren't there
for those who need them - it's commonplace

they hold the keystones of our lives
i fear something else much deeper
the diabolical self-deceiving
(wilful destruction of the spirit)
by those loudspeaking themselves
as poetry's protectors - publishers
editors literature officers
poetry societies and centres

all all jumping on the flagship
competition's crock of gold
find the winners pick the famous
all the hopefuls cry please name us
aspiring poets search their wardrobes
for the wordy swimsuit likely
to catch the eyeful of the judges
(winners too in previous contests

inured to the needle of success
but this time though now they are tops
totally pissed-off with the process
only here because the money's good)
winners' middle name is wordsworth
losers swallow a dose of shame
organisers rub their golden hands
pride themselves on their discernment

these jacks have found the beanstalk
castle harp and the golden egg
the stupid giant and his frightened wife
who let them steal their best possessions
whose ear for poetry's so poor
they think fum rhymes with englishman
and so of course they get no prizes
thief and trickster now come rich

poetry's purpose is to hit the jackpot
so great the lust for poetic fame
thousands without a ghost of winning
find poems like mothballs in their drawers
sprinkle them with twinkling stardust
post them off with copperplate cheques
the judges wipe their arses on them
the money's gone to a super cause

everyone knows it's just a joke
who gets taken - the foolish and vain
if they're daft enough and such bad poets
more money than sense the best advice 
is - keep it up grannies the cause
is noble and we'll take your cheque
again and again and again
it's the winners who fall in the bog

to win is to be preened - conceit
finds a little fluffy nest dear
to the feted heart and swells there
fed (for a foetal space) on all 
the praisiest worms but in the nest 
is a bloated thing that sucks (and chokes)
on hurt that has the knack of pecking
where there's malice - it grows two heads

winners by their nature soon become
winged and weighted - icarus begins
to prey upon their waking dreams 
prometheus gnawed by eagles 
the tight-shut box epimetheus
gave pandora about to burst
apart - yeats's centre cannot hold
being poets they know the references

and they learn the lesson quickly
climb upon others as they would
climb on you - in short be ruthless
or be dead they mostly fade away
being too intact or too weak-willed
to go the shining way with light-
ning bolts at every second bend 
agents breathing fire up their pants

those who withstand the course become
the poets of their day (and every one
naturally good as gold - exceptions
to the rule - out of the hearing
and the judgment of their rivals)
the media covet the heartache
and the bile - love the new meteor
can't wait to blast it from the heavens

universities will start the cult
with-it secondary teachers catch
the name on fast - magazines begin
to taste the honey on the plate
and soon another name is buzzing 
round the bars where literary pass-
ons meet to dole out bits of hem
i accept it all - it's not for me

above it all the literary lions
(jackals to each other) stand posed
upon their polystyrene mountains
constructed by their fans and foes
alike (they have such need of them)
disdaining what they see but terror-
stricken when newcomers climb up 
waving their thin bright books

for so long they've dubbed themselves
the intellectual cream - deigning
to hand out poems when they're asked
(for proper recompense in cash
or fawning) - but well beyond the risk
of letting others turn the bleeders
down so sure they are they're halfway
to the gods (yet still need preening)

a poem from one of them is like 
the loaves and fishes jesus touched
and rendered food for the five thousand
they too can walk on water in
their home - or so the reviewers say
poetry from their mouths is such a gift
if you don't read or understand it
you'll be damned - i accept all that

but what i can't accept is (all 
this while) the source and bed of what
is poetry to me as cracked and parched -
condemned ignored made mock of 
shoved in wilderness by those 
who've gone the gilded route (mapped out 
by ego and a driving need to claim
best prick with a capital pee)

it's being roomed with the said poem
coming back and back to the same
felt heartbeat having its way with words
absorbing the strains and promises
that make the language opt for paths
no other voice would go - shifting
a dull stone and knowing what bright
creature this instinct has bred there

it's trusting the poet with his own map
not wanting to tear it up before
the ink is dry because the symbols
he's been using don't suit your own
conception of terrain you've not
been born to - it's being pleased
to have connections made in ways
you couldn't dream of (wouldn't want to)

Written by Rg Gregory |

adventure

 just as the dusk comes hooting
down through the shivering black leaves
of the swinging trees we (the brave ones
swaggering like marshalls through a lynch-mob)
crash-bang our way to the door
of the so-called haunted house

knock knock - kick in a pane of glass
and the dusk hoots louder in our ears
and the swinging trees ride like a mob
with murder in mind - knock knock -
the heavy knocker on the solid door
shaking the house - knock knock
knock knock - louder shaking our brave
bodies the heavy knocker of our hearts

knock knock - knock knock knock

we laugh with a harsh laughter we
have never heard before push and shove
each other in a boisterous fear
lean on heave crash open the door
fall in a heap inside - pick ourselves up
courageous still giggling and bruised.
.
.
.
.


shush

find words bounce our voices off the walls.
.
.
.


shush shush

yell catcalls scream shriek roar
batter and shatter.
.
.
.
.


shush shush shush

oh shush yourselves

no really - shush
in the air
under the stair
what can we hear
shush

are you getting scared
we knew it
we knew that if we dared.
.
.
.


we can hear noises

noises noises
in an empty house
the sound of our voices
echoes in crevices
rattles in doorways booms
in the hollowness of empty rooms

no that isn't all
that doesn't explain
the tall hooded silence
standing in the hall
or the whispering smell
of dust bristling the floor
scurrying like the dried-up 
bones of mice to the hole
in the crumbling wall
something snatches our voices
away from us too quickly
for our voices to be all

nonsense the house is dead
it can't harm us old bricks and wood
you're letting the darkness go to your head
shout if you don't believe us shout
 if anybody's there
 if anybody's there
 you won't get us afraid of you
 whoever you are
 whoever you are
 this is what we think of you
 boo boo boo
what's wrong
what's wrong
tell us what's wrong

listen

nothing

no nothing at all
your voices went
but they didn't return
you called
but nothing came back at all
there's something there
swallowing up words
absorbing them into air
heavy waiting alert

(daddy-longlegs pitch on skin
sinister fingers whisper
through the roots of our hair.
.
.
.
)

.
.
.
.
we're not afraid of you
nothing nobody
we know you're there

what is it at the end of the passage
in the gloom by the still door
eyeing without eyes everything we do
sucking us in with its black stare

you think it's funny don't you
trying to frighten us keeping out of sight
come out here if you're anything - we'll show you

arms move suddenly along the wall
the moon riding hard on foaming clouds
stands solid in the door
and it's not a good moon at all

why did we come
we should have stayed home
but here we are in an evil room
trapped between the witchcraft of an empty house
and the cold hard grin of the moon

i'm going in

you can't

i must

you'll become air
a heavy silence
a dance of dust

there's nothing there
nothing nothing there

he gives a brave laugh
but a laugh drained of blood
and moves down the passage 
to the masked door
hesitates and turns
wanting our support
frightened to his heart's core
steps no - is drawn - backwards
into a black space rapidly
dissolving in our misted eyes
we half-hear a short gasp - no more
the moon's grin is louder
as (on his restless clouds)
he bucks about the sky

no one returns to us
and in the morning
(rooted in fear
we could not leave the place
but spent the night
huddled in one big stack
in the frozen hall)
and in the morning
we find not a single trace
of the friend who went
as simply as any word
into thin air

Written by Nazim Hikmet |

Letters From A Man In Solitary

 1
I carved your name on my watchband
with my fingernail.

Where I am, you know,
I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife
(they won't give me anything sharp)
 or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.

Trees may grow in the yard,
but I'm not allowed
 to see the sky overhead.
.
.

How many others are in this place?
I don't know.

I'm alone far from them,
they're all together far from me.

To talk anyone besides myself 
 is forbidden.

So I talk to myself.

But I find my conversation so boring,
 my dear wife, that I sing songs.

And what do you know,
that awful, always off-key voice of mine
 touches me so
 that my heart breaks.

And just like the barefoot orphan
 lost in the snow
in those old sad stories, my heart
-- with moist blue eyes 
and a little red runny rose --
 wants to snuggle up in your arms.

It doesn't make me blush
 that right now
 I'm this weak,
 this selfish,
 this human simply.

No doubt my state can be explained
physiologically, psychologically, etc.

Or maybe it's
 this barred window,
 this earthen jug,
 these four walls,
 which for months have kept me from hearing
 another human voice.


It's five o'clock, my dear.

Outside,
 with its dryness,
 eerie whispers,
 mud roof,
and lame, skinny horse
 standing motionless in infinity
-- I mean, it's enough to drive the man inside crazy with grief --
outside, with all its machinery and all its art,
a plains night comes down red on treeless space.


Again today, night will fall in no time.

A light will circle the lame, skinny horse.

And the treeless space, in this hopeless landscape
stretched out before me like the body of a hard man,
will suddenly be filled with stars.

We'll reach the inevitable end once more,
which is to say the stage is set
again today for an elaborate nostalgia.

Me,
the man inside,
once more I'll exhibit my customary talent,
and singing an old-fashioned lament
in the reedy voice of my childhood,
once more, by God, it will crush my unhappy heart
to hear you inside my head,
so far
away, as if I were watching you
 in a smoky, broken mirror.
.
.


2
It's spring outside, my dear wife, spring.

Outside on the plain, suddenly the smell
of fresh earth, birds singing, etc.

It's spring, my dear wife,
the plain outside sparkles.
.
.

And inside the bed comes alive with bugs,
 the water jug no longer freezes,
and in the morning sun floods the concrete.
.
.

The sun--
every day till noon now
it comes and goes
from me, flashing off
 and on.
.
.

And as the day turns to afternoon, shadows climb the walls,
the glass of the barred window catches fire,
 and it's night outside,
 a cloudless spring night.
.
.

And inside this is spring's darkest hour.

In short, the demon called freedom,
with its glittering scales and fiery eyes,
possesses the man inside
 especially in spring.
.
.

I know this from experience, my dear wife,
 from experience.
.
.


3
Sunday today.

Today they took me out in the sun for the first time.

And I just stood there, struck for the first time in my life
 by how far away the sky is,
 how blue
 and how wide.

Then I respectfully sat down on the earth.

I leaned back against the wall.

For a moment no trap to fall into,
no struggle, no freedom, no wife.

Only earth, sun, and me.
.
.

I am happy.

Written by Duncan Campbell Scott |

The Height of Land

 Here is the height of land:
The watershed on either hand
Goes down to Hudson Bay
Or Lake Superior;
The stars are up, and far away
The wind sounds in the wood, wearier
Than the long Ojibwa cadence
In which Potàn the Wise
Declares the ills of life
And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound
Of acquiescence.
 The fires burn low
With just sufficient glow
To light the flakes of ash that play
At being moths, and flutter away
To fall in the dark and die as ashes:
Here there is peace in the lofty air,
And Something comes by flashes
Deeper than peace: --
The spruces have retired a little space
And left a field of sky in violet shadow
With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.


Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound unless the soul can hear
The gathering of the waters in their sources.

We have come up through the spreading lakes
From level to level, --
Pitching our tents sometimes over a revel
Of roses that nodded all night,
Dreaming within our dreams, 
To wake at dawn and find that they were captured
With no dew on their leaves;
Sometimes mid sheaves
Of bracken and dwarf-cornel, and again
On a wide blueberry plain 
Brushed with the shimmer of a bluebird's wing;
A rocky islet followed
With one lone poplar and a single nest
Of white-throat-sparrows that took no rest
But sang in dreams or woke to sing, --
To the last portage and the height of land --:
Upon one hand
The lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams,
And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay,
Glimmering all night
In the cold arctic light;
On the other hand
The crowded southern land
With all the welter of the lives of men.

But here is peace, and again
That Something comes by flashes
Deeper than peace, -- a spell
Golden and inappellable
That gives the inarticulate part
Of our strange being one moment of release
That seems more native than the touch of time,
And we must answer in chime;
Though yet no man may tell
The secret of that spell
Golden and inappellable.


Now are there sounds walking in the wood,
And all the spruces shiver and tremble,
And the stars move a little in their courses.

The ancient disturber of solitude
Breathes a pervasive sigh,
And the soul seems to hear
The gathering of the waters at their sources;
Then quiet ensues and pure starlight and dark;
The region-spirit murmurs in meditation,
The heart replies in exaltation
And echoes faintly like an inland shell
Ghost tremors of the spell;
Thought reawakens and is linked again
With all the welter of the lives of men.

Here on the uplands where the air is clear
We think of life as of a stormy scene, --
Of tempest, of revolt and desperate shock;
And here, where we can think, on the brights uplands
Where the air is clear, we deeply brood on life
Until the tempest parts, and it appears
As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock:
A Something to be guided by ideals --
That in themselves are simple and serene --
Of noble deed to foster noble thought,
And noble thought to image noble deed,
Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate,
Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt
Whether the perfect beauty that escapes
Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing
Mingled of both, a greater boon than either:
Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest
The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain,
And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.


The ancient disturber of solitude
Stirs his ancestral potion in the gloom,
And the dark wood
Is stifled with the pungent fume
Of charred earth burnt to the bone
That takes the place of air.

Then sudden I remember when and where, --
The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths
And slimy viscid things the spirit loathes,
Skin of vile water over viler mud
Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches,
And the canoes seemed heavy with fear,
Not to be urged toward the fatal shore
Where a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roar
Leaped on a cedar and smothered it with light
And terror.
 It had left the portage-height
A tangle of slanted spruces burned to the roots,
Covered still with patches of bright fire
Smoking with incense of the fragment resin
That even then began to thin and lessen
Into the gloom and glimmer of ruin.

'Tis overpast.
 How strange the stars have grown;
The presage of extinction glows on their crests
And they are beautied with impermanence;
They shall be after the race of men
And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions,
Entangled in the meshes of bright words.


A lemming stirs the fern and in the mosses
Eft-minded things feel the air change, and dawn
Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces.

How often in the autumn of the world
Shall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuilt
With deeper meaning! Shall the poet then,
Wrapped in his mantle on the height of land,
Brood on the welter of the lives of men
And dream of his ideal hope and promise
In the blush sunrise? Shall he base his flight
Upon a more compelling law than Love
As Life's atonement; shall the vision
Of noble deed and noble thought immingled
Seem as uncouth to him as the pictograph
Scratched on the cave side by the cave-dweller
To us of the Christ-time? Shall he stand
With deeper joy, with more complex emotion,
In closer commune with divinity,
With the deep fathomed, with the firmament charted,
With life as simple as a sheep-boy's song,
What lies beyond a romaunt that was read
Once on a morn of storm and laid aside
Memorious with strange immortal memories?
Or shall he see the sunrise as I see it
In shoals of misty fire the deluge-light
Dashes upon and whelms with purer radiance,
And feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion,
Turn the rich lands and inundant oceans
To the flushed color, and hear as now I hear
The thrill of life beat up the planet's margin
And break in the clear susurrus of deep joy
That echoes and reëchoes in my being?
O Life is intuition the measure of knowledge
And do I stand with heart entranced and burning
At the zenith of our wisdom when I feel
The long light flow, the long wind pause, the deep
Influx of spirit, of which no man may tell
The Secret, golden and inappellable?

Written by Edward Field |

The Bride of Frankenstein

 The Baron has decided to mate the monster,
to breed him perhaps,
in the interests of pure science, his only god.


So he goes up into his laboratory
which he has built in the tower of the castle
to be as near the interplanetary forces as possible,
and puts together the prettiest monster-woman you ever saw
with a body like a pin-up girl
and hardly any stitching at all
where he sewed on the head of a raped and murdered beauty queen.


He sets his liquids burping, and coils blinking and buzzing,
and waits for an electric storm to send through the equipment
the spark vital for life.

The storm breaks over the castle
and the equipment really goes crazy
like a kitchen full of modern appliances
as the lightning juice starts oozing right into that pretty corpse.


He goes to get the monster
so he will be right there when she opens her eyes,
for she might fall in love with the first thing she sees as ducklings do.

That monster is already straining at his chains and slurping,
ready to go right to it:
He has been well prepared for coupling
by his pinching leering keeper who's been saying for weeks,
"Ya gonna get a little nookie, kid,"
or "How do you go for some poontang, baby?"
All the evil in him is focused on this one thing now
as he is led into her very presence.


She awakens slowly,
she bats her eyes,
she gets up out of the equipment,
and finally she stands in all her seamed glory,
a monster princess with a hairdo like a fright wig,
lightning flashing in the background
like a halo and a wedding veil,
like a photographer snapping pictures of great moments.


She stands and stares with her electric eyes,
beginning to understand that in this life too
she was just another body to be raped.


The monster is ready to go:
He roars with joy at the sight of her,
so they let him loose and he goes right for those knockers.

And she starts screaming to break your heart
and you realize that she was just born:
In spite of her big **** she was just a baby.


But her instincts are right --
rather death than that green slobber:
She jumps off the parapet.

And then the monster's sex drive goes wild.

Thwarted, it turns to violence, demonstrating sublimation crudely;
and he wrecks the lab, those burping acids and buzzing coils,
overturning the control panel so the equipment goes off like a bomb,
and the stone castle crumbles and crashes in the storm
destroying them all .
 .
 .
 perhaps.


Perhaps somehow the Baron got out of that wreckage of his dreams
with his evil intact, if not his good looks,
and more wicked than ever went on with his thrilling career.

And perhaps even the monster lived
to roam the earth, his desire still ungratified;
and lovers out walking in shadowy and deserted places
will see his shape loom up over them, their doom --
and children sleeping in their beds
will wake up in the dark night screaming
as his hideous body grabs them.

Written by Anne Sexton |

Rapunzel

 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young.
 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other.
 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away.
 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch.
 
Old breast against young breast.
.
.
 
Let your dress fall down your shoulder, 
come touch a copy of you 
for I am at the mercy of rain, 
for I have left the three Christs of Ypsilanti 
for I have left the long naps of Ann Arbor 
and the church spires have turned to stumps.
 
The sea bangs into my cloister 
for the politicians are dying, 
and dying so hold me, my young dear, 
hold me.
.
.
 

The yellow rose will turn to cinder 
and New York City will fall in 
before we are done so hold me, 
my young dear, hold me.
 
Put your pale arms around my neck.
 
Let me hold your heart like a flower 
lest it bloom and collapse.
 
Give me your skin 
as sheer as a cobweb, 
let me open it up 
and listen in and scoop out the dark.
 
Give me your nether lips 
all puffy with their art 
and I will give you angel fire in return.
 
We are two clouds 
glistening in the bottle galss.
 
We are two birds 
washing in the same mirror.
 
We were fair game 
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
 
We are strong.
 
We are the good ones.
 
Do not discover us 
for we lie together all in green 
like pond weeds.
 
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.
 

They touch their delicate watches 
one at a time.
 
They dance to the lute 
two at a time.
 
They are as tender as bog moss.
 
They play mother-me-do 
all day.
 
A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young.



Once there was a witch's garden 
more beautiful than Eve's 
with carrots growing like little fish, 
with many tomatoes rich as frogs, 
onions as ingrown as hearts, 
the squash singing like a dolphin 
and one patch given over wholly to magic -- 
rampion, a kind of salad root 
a kind of harebell more potent than penicillin, 
growing leaf by leaf, skin by skin.
 
as rapt and as fluid as Isadoran Duncan.
 
However the witch's garden was kept locked 
and each day a woman who was with child 
looked upon the rampion wildly, 
fancying that she would die 
if she could not have it.
 
Her husband feared for her welfare 
and thus climbed into the garden 
to fetch the life-giving tubers.
 

Ah ha, cried the witch, 
whose proper name was Mother Gothel, 
you are a thief and now you will die.
 
However they made a trade, 
typical enough in those times.
 
He promised his child to Mother Gothel 
so of course when it was born 
she took the child away with her.
 
She gave the child the name Rapunzel, 
another name for the life-giving rampion.
 
Because Rapunzel was a beautiful girl 
Mother Gothel treasured her beyond all things.
 
As she grew older Mother Gothel thought: 
None but I will ever see her or touch her.
 
She locked her in a tow without a door 
or a staircase.
 It had only a high window.
 
When the witch wanted to enter she cried" 
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.
 
Rapunzel's hair fell to the ground like a rainbow.
 
It was as strong as a dandelion 
and as strong as a dog leash.
 
Hand over hand she shinnied up 
the hair like a sailor 
and there in the stone-cold room, 
as cold as a museum, 
Mother Gothel cried: 
Hold me, my young dear, hold me, 
and thus they played mother-me-do.
 

Years later a prince came by 
and heard Rapunzel singing her loneliness.
 
That song pierced his heart like a valentine 
but he could find no way to get to her.
 
Like a chameleon he hid himself among the trees 
and watched the witch ascend the swinging hair.
 
The next day he himself called out: 
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, 
and thus they met and he declared his love.
 
What is this beast, she thought, 
with muscles on his arms 
like a bag of snakes? 
What is this moss on his legs? 
What prickly plant grows on his cheeks? 
What is this voice as deep as a dog? 
Yet he dazzled her with his answers.
 
Yet he dazzled her with his dancing stick.
 
They lay together upon the yellowy threads, 
swimming through them 
like minnows through kelp 
and they sang out benedictions like the Pope.
 

Each day he brought her a skein of silk 
to fashion a ladder so they could both escape.
 
But Mother Gothel discovered the plot 
and cut off Rapunzel's hair to her ears 
and took her into the forest to repent.
 
When the prince came the witch fastened 
the hair to a hook and let it down.
 
When he saw Rapunzel had been banished 
he flung himself out of the tower, a side of beef.
 
He was blinded by thorns that prickled him like tacks.
 
As blind as Oedipus he wandered for years 
until he heard a song that pierced his heart 
like that long-ago valentine.
 
As he kissed Rapunzel her tears fell on his eyes 
and in the manner of such cure-alls 
his sight was suddenly restored.
 

They lived happily as you might expect 
proving that mother-me-do 
can be outgrown, 
just as the fish on Friday, 
just as a tricycle.
 
The world, some say, 
is made up of couples.
 
A rose must have a stem.
 

As for Mother Gothel, 
her heart shrank to the size of a pin, 
never again to say: Hold me, my young dear, 
hold me, 
and only as she dreamed of the yellow hair 
did moonlight sift into her mouth.

Written by Ezra Pound |

Tsai Chih

 The petals fall in the fountain, 
the orange-coloured rose-leaves, 
Their ochre clings to the stone.