10 Best Famous Hells Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Hells poems. This is a select list of the best famous Hells poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Hells poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of hells poems.

• All Famous Hells Poems

 "Aug." 10, 1911.

Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In the pure light that filled our firmament
Of supreme silence and unbarred extent,
Wherein one sacrament was ours, one Lord,
One resurrection, one recurrent chord,
One incarnation, one descending dove,
All these being one, and that one being Love!

You sent your spirit into tunes; my soul
Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll
Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked
That might have graced your garland. I induct
Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song,
Each longing a little, each a little long,
But each aspiring only to express
Your excellence and my unworthiness --- 
Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense
And spirit too of that same excellence.

So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle:
I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle,
While, as for love, the sun went through the signs,
And not a star but told him how love twines
A wreath for every decanate, degree,
Minute and second, linked eternally
In chains of flowers that never fading are,
Each one as sempiternal as a star.

Let me go back to your last birthday. Then
I was already your one man of men
Appointed to complete you, and fulfil
From everlasting the eternal will.
We lay within the flood of crimson light
In my own balcony that August night,
And conjuring the aright and the averse
Created yet another universe.

We worked together; dance and rite and spell
Arousing heaven and constraining hell.
We lived together; every hour of rest
Was honied from your tiger-lily breast.
We --- oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed
My life to fate! --- we parted. Was I afraid?
I was afraid, afraid to live my love,
Afraid you played the serpent, I the dove,
Afraid of what I know not. I am glad 
Of all the shame and wretchedness I had,
Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you,
And also that I cannot live without you.

Then I came back to you; black treasons rear
Their heads, blind hates, deaf agonies of fear,
Cruelty, cowardice, falsehood, broken pledges,
The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges,
Sickness and poverty, a thousand evils,
Concerted malice of a million devils; ---
You never swerved; your high-pooped galleon
Went marvellously, majestically on
Full-sailed, while every other braver bark
Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark.

Then Easter, and the days of all delight!
God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight,
While above all, true centre of our world,
True source of light, our great love passion-pearled
Gave all its life and splendour to the sea
Above whose tides stood our stability.

Then sudden and fierce, no monitory moan,
Smote the mad mischief of the great cyclone.
How far below us all its fury rolled!
How vainly sulphur tries to tarnish gold!
We lived together: all its malice meant
Nothing but freedom of a continent!

It was the forest and the river that knew
The fact that one and one do not make two. 
We worked, we walked, we slept, we were at ease,
We cried, we quarrelled; all the rocks and trees
For twenty miles could tell how lovers played,
And we could count a kiss for every glade.
Worry, starvation, illness and distress?
Each moment was a mine of happiness.

Then we grew tired of being country mice,
Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice
There, giving holy berries to the moon,
July's thanksgiving for the joys of June.

And you are gone away --- and how shall I
Make August sing the raptures of July?
And you are gone away --- what evil star
Makes you so competent and popular?
How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's
Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else?
I wish you were like me a man forbid,
Banned, outcast, nice society well rid
Of the pair of us --- then who would interfere
With us? --- my darling, you would now be here!

But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed,
Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed,
Lash dogs to kennel, trample snakes, put bit
In the mule-mouths that have such need of it,
Until the world there's so much to forgive in
Becomes a little possible to live in.

God alone knows if battle or surrender
Be the true courage; either has its splendour. 
But since we chose the first, God aid the right,
And damn me if I fail you in the fight!
God join again the ways that lie apart,
And bless the love of loyal heart to heart!
God keep us every hour in every thought,
And bring the vessel of our love to port!

These are my birthday wishes. Dawn's at hand,
And you're an exile in a lonely land.
But what were magic if it could not give
My thought enough vitality to live?
Do not then dream this night has been a loss!
All night I have hung, a god, upon the cross;
All night I have offered incense at the shrine;
All night you have been unutterably mine,
Miner in the memory of the first wild hour
When my rough grasp tore the unwilling flower
From your closed garden, mine in every mood,
In every tense, in every attitude,
In every possibility, still mine
While the sun's pomp and pageant, sign to sign,
Stately proceeded, mine not only so
In the glamour of memory and austral glow
Of ardour, but by image of my brow
Stronger than sense, you are even here and now
Miner, utterly mine, my sister and my wife,
Mother of my children, mistress of my life!

O wild swan winging through the morning mist!
The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed, 
The infinite device our love devised
If by some chance its truth might be surprised,
Are these all past? Are these to come? Believe me,
There is no parting; they can never leave me.
I have built you up into my heart and brain
So fast that we can never part again.
Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms
When all the time I have you in my arms?
Why? 'tis the murmur of our love that swells
Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles.

But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest
Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest
Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast.

 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
 is our life's whole nemesis. 

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
 about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
 implacably from twelve to one. 

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
 and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
 who insists his playmates run. 

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
 like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
 should inflame the sleeping town. 

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
 caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
 playing his prodigal charades. 

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
 blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
 graves all carol in reply. 

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
 brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
 while footlights flare and houselights dim. 

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
 the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
 joins his enemies' recruits. 

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
 there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
 an insight like the flight of birds: 

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
 some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
 cycling phoenix never stops. 

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
 and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
 away our rationed days and weeks. 

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
 in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
 the simple sum of heart plus heart.

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach,
I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach.
Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound,
You couldn't even call out my name.
You were helpless and so was I,
But unfortunately throughout history
You've worn a badge of shame.

I say, the night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark
And the walls have been steep.

But today, voices of old spirit sound
Speak to us in words profound,
Across the years, across the centuries,
Across the oceans, and across the seas.
They say, draw near to one another,
Save your race.
You have been paid for in a distant place,
The old ones remind us that slavery's chains
Have paid for our freedom again and again.

The night has been long,
The pit has been deep,
The night has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

The hells we have lived through and live through still,
Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.
The night has been long.
This morning I look through your anguish
Right down to your soul.
I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole.
I look through the posture and past your disguise,
And see your love for family in your big brown eyes.

I say, clap hands and let's come together in this meeting ground,
I say, clap hands and let's deal with each other with love,
I say, clap hands and let us get from the low road of indifference,
Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts,
Let us come together and revise our spirits,
Let us come together and cleanse our souls,
Clap hands, let's leave the preening
And stop impostering our own history.
Clap hands, call the spirits back from the ledge,
Clap hands, let us invite joy into our conversation,
Courtesy into our bedrooms,
Gentleness into our kitchen,
Care into our nursery.

The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain
We are a going-on people who will rise again.

And still we rise.

Poem read at the Million Man March

 'A letter from my love to-day!
Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!'
She struck a happy tear away,
And broke the crimson seal.

'My love, there is no help on earth,
No help in heaven; the dead-man's bell
Must toll our wedding; our first hearth
Must be the well-paved floor of hell.'

The colour died from out her face,
Her eyes like ghostly candles shone;
She cast dread looks about the place,
Then clenched her teeth and read right on.

'I may not pass the prison door;
Here must I rot from day to day,
Unless I wed whom I abhor,
My cousin, Blanche of Valencay.

'At midnight with my dagger keen,
I'll take my life; it must be so.
Meet me in hell to-night, my queen,
For weal and woe.'

She laughed although her face was wan,
She girded on her golden belt,
She took her jewelled ivory fan,
And at her glowing missal knelt.

Then rose, 'And am I mad?' she said:
She broke her fan, her belt untied;
With leather girt herself instead,
And stuck a dagger at her side.

She waited, shuddering in her room,
Till sleep had fallen on all the house.
She never flinched; she faced her doom:
They two must sin to keep their vows.

Then out into the night she went,
And, stooping, crept by hedge and tree;
Her rose-bush flung a snare of scent,
And caught a happy memory.

She fell, and lay a minute's space;
She tore the sward in her distress;
The dewy grass refreshed her face;
She rose and ran with lifted dress.

She started like a morn-caught ghost
Once when the moon came out and stood
To watch; the naked road she crossed,
And dived into the murmuring wood.

The branches snatched her streaming cloak;
A live thing shrieked; she made no stay!
She hurried to the trysting-oak—
Right well she knew the way.

Without a pause she bared her breast,
And drove her dagger home and fell,
And lay like one that takes her rest,
And died and wakened up in hell.

She bathed her spirit in the flame,
And near the centre took her post;
From all sides to her ears there came
The dreary anguish of the lost.

The devil started at her side,
Comely, and tall, and black as jet.
'I am young Malespina's bride;
Has he come hither yet?'

'My poppet, welcome to your bed.'
'Is Malespina here?'
'Not he! To-morrow he must wed
His cousin Blanche, my dear!'

'You lie, he died with me to-night.'
'Not he! it was a plot' ... 'You lie.'
'My dear, I never lie outright.'
'We died at midnight, he and I.'

The devil went. Without a groan
She, gathered up in one fierce prayer,
Took root in hell's midst all alone,
And waited for him there.

She dared to make herself at home
Amidst the wail, the uneasy stir.
The blood-stained flame that filled the dome,
Scentless and silent, shrouded her.

How long she stayed I cannot tell;
But when she felt his perfidy,
She marched across the floor of hell;
And all the damned stood up to see.

The devil stopped her at the brink:
She shook him off; she cried, 'Away!'
'My dear, you have gone mad, I think.'
'I was betrayed: I will not stay.'

Across the weltering deep she ran;
A stranger thing was never seen:
The damned stood silent to a man;
They saw the great gulf set between.

To her it seemed a meadow fair;
And flowers sprang up about her feet
She entered heaven; she climbed the stair
And knelt down at the mercy-seat.

Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.

 ARRANGING long-locked drawers and shelves 
Of cabinets, shut up for years, 
What a strange task we've set ourselves ! 
How still the lonely room appears ! 
How strange this mass of ancient treasures, 
Mementos of past pains and pleasures; 
These volumes, clasped with costly stone, 
With print all faded, gilding gone; 

These fans of leaves, from Indian trees­ 
These crimson shells, from Indian seas­ 
These tiny portraits, set in rings­ 
Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things; 
Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith, 
And worn till the receiver's death, 
Now stored with cameos, china, shells, 
In this old closet's dusty cells. 

I scarcely think, for ten long years, 
A hand has touched these relics old; 
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears, 
The growth of green and antique mould. 

All in this house is mossing over; 
All is unused, and dim, and damp; 
Nor light, nor warmth, the rooms discover­ 
Bereft for years of fire and lamp. 

The sun, sometimes in summer, enters 
The casements, with reviving ray; 
But the long rains of many winters 
Moulder the very walls away. 

And outside all is ivy, clinging 
To chimney, lattice, gable grey; 
Scarcely one little red rose springing 
Through the green moss can force its way. 

Unscared, the daw, and starling nestle, 
Where the tall turret rises high, 
And winds alone come near to rustle 
The thick leaves where their cradles lie. 

I sometimes think, when late at even 
I climb the stair reluctantly, 
Some shape that should be well in heaven, 
Or ill elsewhere, will pass by me. 

I fear to see the very faces, 
Familiar thirty years ago, 
Even in the old accustomed places 
Which look so cold and gloomy now. 

I've come, to close the window, hither, 
At twilight, when the sun was down, 
And Fear, my very soul would wither, 
Lest something should be dimly shown. 

Too much the buried form resembling, 
Of her who once was mistress here; 
Lest doubtful shade, or moonbeam trembling, 
Might take her aspect, once so dear. 

Hers was this chamber; in her time 
It seemed to me a pleasant room, 
For then no cloud of grief or crime 
Had cursed it with a settled gloom; 

I had not seen death's image laid 
In shroud and sheet, on yonder bed. 
Before she married, she was blest­ 
Blest in her youth, blest in her worth; 
Her mind was calm, its sunny rest 
Shone in her eyes more clear than mirth. 

And when attired in rich array, 
Light, lustrous hair about her brow, 
She yonder sat­a kind of day 
Lit up­what seems so gloomy now. 
These grim oak walls, even then were grim; 
That old carved chair, was then antique; 
But what around looked dusk and dim 
Served as a foil to her fresh cheek; 
Her neck, and arms, of hue so fair, 
Eyes of unclouded, smiling, light; 
Her soft, and curled, and floating hair, 
Gems and attire, as rainbow bright. 

Reclined in yonder deep recess, 
Ofttimes she would, at evening, lie 
Watching the sun; she seemed to bless 
With happy glance the glorious sky. 
She loved such scenes, and as she gazed, 
Her face evinced her spirit's mood; 
Beauty or grandeur ever raised 
In her, a deep-felt gratitude. 

But of all lovely things, she loved 
A cloudless moon, on summer night; 
Full oft have I impatience proved 
To see how long, her still delight 
Would find a theme in reverie. 
Out on the lawn, or where the trees 
Let in the lustre fitfully, 
As their boughs parted momently, 
To the soft, languid, summer breeze. 
Alas ! that she should e'er have flung 
Those pure, though lonely joys away­ 
Deceived by false and guileful tongue, 
She gave her hand, then suffered wrong; 
Oppressed, ill-used, she faded young, 
And died of grief by slow decay. 

Open that casket­look how bright 
Those jewels flash upon the sight; 
The brilliants have not lost a ray 
Of lustre, since her wedding day. 
But see­upon that pearly chain­ 
How dim lies time's discolouring stain ! 
I've seen that by her daughter worn: 
For, e'er she died, a child was born; 
A child that ne'er its mother knew, 
That lone, and almost friendless grew; 
For, ever, when its step drew nigh, 
Averted was the father's eye; 
And then, a life impure and wild 
Made him a stranger to his child; 
Absorbed in vice, he little cared 
On what she did, or how she fared. 
The love withheld, she never sought, 
She grew uncherished­learnt untaught; 
To her the inward life of thought 
Full soon was open laid. 
I know not if her friendlessness 
Did sometimes on her spirit press, 
But plaint she never made. 

The book-shelves were her darling treasure, 
She rarely seemed the time to measure 
While she could read alone. 
And she too loved the twilight wood, 
And often, in her mother's mood, 
Away to yonder hill would hie, 
Like her, to watch the setting sun, 
Or see the stars born, one by one, 
Out of the darkening sky. 
Nor would she leave that hill till night 
Trembled from pole to pole with light; 
Even then, upon her homeward way, 
Long­long her wandering steps delayed 
To quit the sombre forest shade, 
Through which her eerie pathway lay. 

You ask if she had beauty's grace ? 
I know not­but a nobler face 
My eyes have seldom seen; 
A keen and fine intelligence, 
And, better still, the truest sense 
Were in her speaking mien. 
But bloom or lustre was there none, 
Only at moments, fitful shone 
An ardour in her eye, 
That kindled on her cheek a flush, 
Warm as a red sky's passing blush 
And quick with energy. 
Her speech, too, was not common speech, 
No wish to shine, or aim to teach, 
Was in her words displayed: 
She still began with quiet sense, 
But oft the force of eloquence 
Came to her lips in aid; 
Language and voice unconscious changed, 
And thoughts, in other words arranged, 
Her fervid soul transfused 
Into the hearts of those who heard, 
And transient strength and ardour stirred, 
In minds to strength unused. 
Yet in gay crowd or festal glare, 
Grave and retiring was her air; 
'Twas seldom, save with me alone, 
That fire of feeling freely shone; 
She loved not awe's nor wonder's gaze, 
Nor even exaggerated praise, 
Nor even notice, if too keen 
The curious gazer searched her mien. 
Nature's own green expanse revealed 
The world, the pleasures, she could prize; 
On free hill-side, in sunny field, 
In quiet spots by woods concealed, 
Grew wild and fresh her chosen joys, 
Yet Nature's feelings deeply lay 
In that endowed and youthful frame; 
Shrined in her heart and hid from day, 
They burned unseen with silent flame; 
In youth's first search for mental light, 
She lived but to reflect and learn, 
But soon her mind's maturer might 
For stronger task did pant and yearn; 
And stronger task did fate assign, 
Task that a giant's strength might strain; 
To suffer long and ne'er repine, 
Be calm in frenzy, smile at pain. 

Pale with the secret war of feeling, 
Sustained with courage, mute, yet high; 
The wounds at which she bled, revealing 
Only by altered cheek and eye; 

She bore in silence­but when passion 
Surged in her soul with ceaseless foam, 
The storm at last brought desolation, 
And drove her exiled from her home. 

And silent still, she straight assembled 
The wrecks of strength her soul retained; 
For though the wasted body trembled, 
The unconquered mind, to quail, disdained. 

She crossed the sea­now lone she wanders 
By Seine's, or Rhine's, or Arno's flow; 
Fain would I know if distance renders 
Relief or comfort to her woe. 

Fain would I know if, henceforth, ever, 
These eyes shall read in hers again, 
That light of love which faded never, 
Though dimmed so long with secret pain. 

She will return, but cold and altered, 
Like all whose hopes too soon depart; 
Like all on whom have beat, unsheltered, 
The bitter blasts that blight the heart. 

No more shall I behold her lying 
Calm on a pillow, smoothed by me; 
No more that spirit, worn with sighing, 
Will know the rest of infancy. 

If still the paths of lore she follow, 
'Twill be with tired and goaded will; 
She'll only toil, the aching hollow, 
The joyless blank of life to fill. 

And oh ! full oft, quite spent and weary, 
Her hand will pause, her head decline; 
That labour seems so hard and dreary, 
On which no ray of hope may shine. 

Thus the pale blight of time and sorrow 
Will shade with grey her soft, dark hair 
Then comes the day that knows no morrow, 
And death succeeds to long despair. 

So speaks experience, sage and hoary; 
I see it plainly, know it well, 
Like one who, having read a story, 
Each incident therein can tell. 

Touch not that ring, 'twas his, the sire 
Of that forsaken child; 
And nought his relics can inspire 
Save memories, sin-defiled. 

I, who sat by his wife's death-bed, 
I, who his daughter loved, 
Could almost curse the guilty dead, 
For woes, the guiltless proved. 

And heaven did curse­they found him laid, 
When crime for wrath was rife, 
Cold­with the suicidal blade 
Clutched in his desperate gripe. 

'Twas near that long deserted hut, 
Which in the wood decays, 
Death's axe, self-wielded, struck his root, 
And lopped his desperate days. 

You know the spot, where three black trees, 
Lift up their branches fell, 
And moaning, ceaseless as the seas, 
Still seem, in every passing breeze, 
The deed of blood to tell. 

They named him mad, and laid his bones 
Where holier ashes lie; 
Yet doubt not that his spirit groans, 
In hell's eternity. 

But, lo ! night, closing o'er the earth, 
Infects our thoughts with gloom; 
Come, let us strive to rally mirth, 
Where glows a clear and tranquil hearth 
In some more cheerful room.

 The hands of the clock were reaching high
In an old midtown hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell's own flame
Illumes the lobby garish,
A gilded snare just off Times Square
For the maidens of the parish.

The revolving door swept the grimy floor
Like a crinoline grotesque,
And a lowly bum from an ancient slum
Crept furtively past the desk.
His footsteps sift into the lift
As a knife in the sheath is slipped,
Stealthy and swift into the lift
As a vampire into a crypt.

Old Maxie, the elevator boy,
Was reading an ode by Shelley,
But he dropped the ode as it were a toad
When the gun jammed into his belly.
There came a whisper as soft as mud
In the bed of an old canal:
"Take me up to the suite of Pinball Pete,
The rat who betrayed my gal."

The lift doth rise with groans and sighs
Like a duchess for the waltz,
Then in middle shaft, like a duchess daft,
It changes its mind and halts.
The bum bites lip as the landlocked ship
Doth neither fall nor rise,
But Maxie the elevator boy
Regards him with burning eyes.
"First, to explore the thirteenth floor,"
Says Maxie, "would be wise."

Quoth the bum, "There is moss on your double cross,
I have been this way before,
I have cased the joint at every point,
And there is no thirteenth floor.
The architect he skipped direct
From twelve unto fourteen,
There is twelve below and fourteen above,
And nothing in between,
For the vermin who dwell in this hotel
Could never abide thirteen."

Said Max, "Thirteen, that floor obscene,
Is hidden from human sight;
But once a year it doth appear,
On this Walpurgis Night.
Ere you peril your soul in murderer's role,
Heed those who sinned of yore;
The path they trod led away from God,
And onto the thirteenth floor,
Where those they slew, a grisly crew,
Reproach them forevermore.

"We are higher than twelve and below fourteen,"
Said Maxie to the bum,
"And the sickening draft that taints the shaft
Is a whiff of kingdom come.
The sickening draft that taints the shaft
Blows through the devil's door!"
And he squashed the latch like a fungus patch,
And revealed the thirteenth floor.

It was cheap cigars like lurid scars
That glowed in the rancid gloom,
The murk was a-boil with fusel oil
And the reek of stale perfume.
And round and round there dragged and wound
A loathsome conga chain,
The square and the hep in slow lock step,
The slayer and the slain.
(For the souls of the victims ascend on high,
But their bodies below remain.)

The clean souls fly to their home in the sky,
But their bodies remain below
To pursue the Cain who each has slain
And harry him to and fro.
When life is extinct each corpse is linked
To its gibbering murderer,
As a chicken is bound with wire around
The neck of a killer cur.

Handcuffed to Hate come Doctor Waite
(He tastes the poison now),
And Ruth and Judd and a head of blood
With horns upon its brow.
Up sashays Nan with her feathery fan
From Floradora bright;
She never hung for Caesar Young
But she's dancing with him tonight.

Here's the bulging hip and the foam-flecked lip
Of the mad dog, Vincent Coll,
And over there that ill-met pair,
Becker and Rosenthal,
Here's Legs and Dutch and a dozen such
Of braggart bullies and brutes,
And each one bends 'neath the weight of friends
Who are wearing concrete suits.

Now the damned make way for the double-damned
Who emerge with shuffling pace
From the nightmare zone of persons unknown,
With neither name nor face.
And poor Dot King to one doth cling,
Joined in a ghastly jig,
While Elwell doth jape at a goblin shape
And tickle it with his wig.

See Rothstein pass like breath on a glass,
The original Black Sox kid;
He riffles the pack, riding piggyback
On the killer whose name he hid.
And smeared like brine on a slavering swine,
Starr Faithful, once so fair,
Drawn from the sea to her debauchee,
With the salt sand in her hair.

And still they come, and from the bum
The icy sweat doth spray;
His white lips scream as in a dream,
"For God's sake, let's away!
If ever I meet with Pinball Pete
I will not seek his gore,
Lest a treadmill grim I must trudge with him
On the hideous thirteenth floor."

"For you I rejoice," said Maxie's voice,
"And I bid you go in peace,
But I am late for a dancing date
That nevermore will cease.
So remember, friend, as your way you wend,
That it would have happened to you,
But I turned the heat on Pinball Pete;
You see - I had a daughter, too!"

The bum reached out and he tried to shout,
But the door in his face was slammed,
And silent as stone he rode down alone
From the floor of the double-damned.

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.

The only water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--

--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem

and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past--

and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--

corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial-- modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown--

and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos--all these

entangled in your mummied roots--and you standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of your railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,

and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul too, and anyone who'll listen,

--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.

 [Dedicated to Austin Osman Spare]


Have pity ! show no pity !
Those eyes that send such shivers
Into my brain and spine : oh let them
Flame like the ancient city
Swallowed up by the sulphurous rivers
When men let angels fret them !

Yea ! let the south wind blow,
And the Turkish banner advance,
And the word go out : No quarter !
But I shall hod thee -so !
While the boys and maidens dance
About the shambles of slaughter !

I know thee who thou art,
The inmost fiend that curlest
Thy vampire tounge about
Earth's corybantic heart,
Hell's warrior that whirlest
The darts of horror and doubt !

Thou knowest me who I am
The inmost soul and saviour
Of man ; what hieroglyph
Of the dragon and the lamb
Shall thou and I engrave here
On Time's inscandescable cliff ?

Look ! in the plished granite,
Black as thy cartouche is with sins,
I read the searing sentence
That blasts the eyes that scan it :
"HOOR and SET be TWINS."
A fico for repentance !

Ay ! O Son of my mother
That snarled and clawed in her womb
As now we rave in our rapture,
I know thee, I love thee, brother !
Incestuous males that consumes
The light and the life that we capture.

Starve thou the soul of the world,
Brother, as I the body !
Shall we not glut our lust
On these wretches whom Fate hath hurled
To a hell of jesus and shoddy,
Dung and ethics and dust ?

Thou as I art Fate.
Coe then, conquer and kiss me !
Come ! what hinders? Believe me :
This is the thought we await.
The mark is fair ; can you miss me ?

See, how subtly I writhe !
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death ! how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils !
Ah ! this is the spasm that kills us !

Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.

This weird is of the tongue of Khem,
The Conjuration used of them.
Whoso shall speak it, let him die,
His bowels rotting inwardly,
Save he uncover and caress
The God that lighteth his liesse.

 My most respected
 comrades of posterity!
Rummaging among
 these days’ 
 petrified crap,
exploring the twilight of our times,
you,
 possibly,
 will inquire about me too.

And, possibly, your scholars
 will declare,
with their erudition overwhelming
 a swarm of problems;
once there lived
 a certain champion of boiled water,
and inveterate enemy of raw water.

Professor,
 take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
 those times
 and myself.

I, a latrine cleaner
 and water carrier,
by the revolution
 mobilized and drafted,
went off to the front
 from the aristocratic gardens 
of poetry - 
 the capricious wench
She planted a delicious garden,
the daughter,
 cottage,
 pond
 and meadow.

Myself a garden I did plant,
myself with water sprinkled it.
some pour their verse from water cans;
others spit water
 from their mouth - 
the curly Macks,
 the clever jacks - 
but what the hell’s it all about!
There’s no damming al this up - 
beneath the walls they mandoline:
“Tara-tina, tara-tine,
tw-a-n-g...” 
It’s no great honor, then,
 for my monuments
to rise from such roses
above the public squares,
 where consumption coughs,
where whores, hooligans and syphilis
 walk.

Agitprop
 sticks
 in my teeth too,
and I’d rather
 compose
 romances for you - 
more profit in it
 and more charm.

But I
 subdued
 myself,
 setting my heel
on the throat
 of my own song.
Listen,
 comrades of posterity,
to the agitator
 the rabble-rouser.

Stifling
 the torrents of poetry,
I’ll skip
 the volumes of lyrics;
as one alive,
 I’ll address the living.
I’ll join you
 in the far communist future,
I who am
 no Esenin super-hero.

My verse will reach you
 across the peaks of ages,
over the heads
 of governments and poets.

My verse 
 will reach you
not as an arrow
 in a cupid-lyred chase,
not as worn penny
Reaches a numismatist,
not as the light of dead stars reaches you.

My verse
 by labor
 will break the mountain chain of years,
and will present itself
 ponderous, 
 crude,
 tangible,
as an aqueduct,
 by slaves of Rome
constructed,
 enters into our days.

When in mounds of books,
 where verse lies buried,
you discover by chance the iron filings of lines,
touch them
 with respect,
 as you would
some antique
 yet awesome weapon.

It’s no habit of mine
 to caress
 the ear
 with words;
a maiden’s ear
 curly-ringed
will not crimson
 when flicked by smut.

In parade deploying
 the armies of my pages,
I shall inspect
 the regiments in line.

Heavy as lead,
 my verses at attention stand,
ready for death
 and for immortal fame.

The poems are rigid,
 pressing muzzle
to muzzle their gaping
 pointed titles.

The favorite 
 of all the armed forces
the cavalry of witticisms
 ready
to launch a wild hallooing charge,
reins its chargers still,
 raising
the pointed lances of the rhymes.
and all
 these troops armed to the teeth,
which have flashed by
 victoriously for twenty years,
all these,
 to their very last page,
I present to you,
 the planet’s proletarian.

The enemy
 of the massed working class
is my enemy too
 inveterate and of long standing.

Years of trial
 and days of hunger
 ordered us
to march 
 under the red flag.

We opened
 each volume
 of Marx
as we would open
 the shutters
 in our own house;
but we did not have to read
 to make up our minds
which side to join,
 which side to fight on.

Our dialectics
 were not learned
 from Hegel.
In the roar of battle
 it erupted into verse,
when,
 under fire,
 the bourgeois decamped
as once we ourselves
 had fled
 from them.
Let fame
 trudge
 after genius
like an inconsolable widow
 to a funeral march - 
die then, my verse,
 die like a common soldier,
like our men
 who nameless died attacking!
I don’t care a spit
 for tons of bronze;
I don’t care a spit
 for slimy marble.
We’re men of kind,
 we’ll come to terms about our fame;
let our
 common monument be
socialism
 built
 in battle.
Men of posterity
 examine the flotsam of dictionaries:
out of Lethe
 will bob up
 the debris of such words
as “prostitution,” 
 “tuberculosis,” 
 “blockade.” 
For you,
 who are now
 healthy and agile,
the poet
 with the rough tongue
 of his posters,
has licked away consumptives’ spittle.
With the tail of my years behind me,
 I begin to resemble
those monsters,
 excavated dinosaurs.
Comrade life,
 let us
 march faster,
march
 faster through what’s left
 of the five-year plan.
My verse
 has brought me
 no rubles to spare:
no craftsmen have made
 mahogany chairs for my house.
In all conscience,
 I need nothing
except
 a freshly laundered shirt.
When I appear 
 before the CCC
 of the coming
 bright years,
by way of my Bolshevik party card,
 I’ll raise
above the heads
 of a gang of self-seeking
 poets and rogues,
all the hundred volumes
 of my 
 communist-committed books.


Transcribed: by Mitch Abidor.

 Lough, vessel, plough the British main,
Seek the free ocean's wider plain; 
Leave English scenes and English skies,
Unbind, dissever English ties; 
Bear me to climes remote and strange, 
Where altered life, fast-following change,
Hot action, never-ceasing toil, 
Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil; 
Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow, 
Till a new garden there shall grow, 
Cleared of the weeds that fill it now,­ 
Mere human love, mere selfish yearning, 
Which, cherished, would arrest me yet. 
I grasp the plough, there's no returning, 
Let me, then, struggle to forget. 

But England's shores are yet in view, 
And England's skies of tender blue 
Are arched above her guardian sea. 
I cannot yet Remembrance flee; 
I must again, then, firmly face 
That task of anguish, to retrace. 
Wedded to home­I home forsake, 
Fearful of change­I changes make; 
Too fond of ease­I plunge in toil; 
Lover of calm­I seek turmoil: 
Nature and hostile Destiny 
Stir in my heart a conflict wild; 
And long and fierce the war will be 
Ere duty both has reconciled. 

What other tie yet holds me fast
To the divorced, abandoned past?
Smouldering, on my heart's altar lies
The fire of some great sacrifice,
Not yet half quenched. The sacred steel
But lately struck my carnal will, 
My life-long hope, first joy and last, 
What I loved well, and clung to fast; 
What I wished wildly to retain, 
What I renounced with soul-felt pain; 
What­when I saw it, axe-struck, perish­ 
Left me no joy on earth to cherish; 
A man bereft­yet sternly now 
I do confirm that Jephtha vow: 
Shall I retract, or fear, or flee ? 
Did Christ, when rose the fatal tree 
Before him, on Mount Calvary ? 
'Twas a long fight, hard fought, but won, 
And what I did was justly done. 

Yet, Helen ! from thy love I turned,
When my heart most for thy heart burned;
I dared thy tears, I dared thy scorn­
Easier the death-pang had been borne.
Helen ! thou mightst not go with me,
I could not­dared not stay for thee !
I heard, afar, in bonds complain
The savage from beyond the main;
And that wild sound rose o'er the cry
Wrung out by passion's agony;
And even when, with the bitterest tear
I ever shed, mine eyes were dim,
Still, with the spirit's vision clear,
I saw Hell's empire, vast and grim,
Spread on each Indian river's shore,
Each realm of Asia covering o'er. 

There the weak, trampled by the strong,
Live but to suffer­hopeless die; 
There pagan-priests, whose creed is Wrong, 
Extortion, Lust, and Cruelty, 
Crush our lost race­and brimming fill 
The bitter cup of human ill; 
And I­who have the healing creed, 
The faith benign of Mary's Son; 
Shall I behold my brother's need 
And selfishly to aid him shun ? 
I­who upon my mother's knees, 
In childhood, read Christ's written word, 
Received his legacy of peace, 
His holy rule of action heard; 
I­in whose heart the sacred sense 
Of Jesus' love was early felt; 
Of his pure full benevolence, 
His pitying tenderness for guilt; 
His shepherd-care for wandering sheep, 
For all weak, sorrowing, trembling things, 
His mercy vast, his passion deep 
Of anguish for man's sufferings; 
I­schooled from childhood in such lore­ 
Dared I draw back or hesitate, 
When called to heal the sickness sore 
Of those far off and desolate ? 
Dark, in the realm and shades of Death, 
Nations and tribes and empires lie, 
But even to them the light of Faith 
Is breaking on their sombre sky: 
And be it mine to bid them raise 
Their drooped heads to the kindling scene, 
And know and hail the sunrise blaze 
Which heralds Christ the Nazarene. 
I know how Hell the veil will spread 
Over their brows and filmy eyes, 
And earthward crush the lifted head 
That would look up and seek the skies; 
I know what war the fiend will wage 
Against that soldier of the cross, 
Who comes to dare his demon-rage, 
And work his kingdom shame and loss. 
Yes, hard and terrible the toil 
Of him who steps on foreign soil, 
Resolved to plant the gospel vine, 
Where tyrants rule and slaves repine; 
Eager to lift Religion's light 
Where thickest shades of mental night 
Screen the false god and fiendish rite; 
Reckless that missionary blood, 
Shed in wild wilderness and wood, 
Has left, upon the unblest air, 
The man's deep moan­the martyr's prayer. 
I know my lot­I only ask 
Power to fulfil the glorious task; 
Willing the spirit, may the flesh 
Strength for the day receive afresh. 
May burning sun or deadly wind 
Prevail not o'er an earnest mind; 
May torments strange or direst death
Nor trample truth, nor baffle faith.
Though such blood-drops should fall from me
As fell in old Gethsemane,
Welcome the anguish, so it gave
More strength to work­more skill to save.
And, oh ! if brief must be my time,
If hostile hand or fatal clime
Cut short my course­still o'er my grave, 
Lord, may thy harvest whitening wave. 
So I the culture may begin,
Let others thrust the sickle in;
If but the seed will faster grow,
May my blood water what I sow ! 

What ! have I ever trembling stood,
And feared to give to God that blood ?
What ! has the coward love of life
Made me shrink from the righteous strife ?
Have human passions, human fears
Severed me from those Pioneers,
Whose task is to march first, and trace
Paths for the progress of our race ?
It has been so; but grant me, Lord,
Now to stand steadfast by thy word !
Protected by salvation's helm,
Shielded by faith­with truth begirt,
To smile when trials seek to whelm
And stand 'mid testing fires unhurt ! 
Hurling hell's strongest bulwarks down, 
Even when the last pang thrills my breast, 
When Death bestows the Martyr's crown, 
And calls me into Jesus' rest. 
Then for my ultimate reward­ 
Then for the world-rejoicing word­ 
The voice from Father­Spirit­Son: 
" Servant of God, well hast thou done !"