Written by
Robinson Jeffers |
I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon.
There was a little cataract crossed the path,
flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling
water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up.
Wondering at it I clam-
bered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and found in the midst of bush-oak and laurel,
Hung like a bird's nest on the precipice brink a small hidden clearing,
Grass and a shallow pool.
But all about there were bones Iying in the grass,
clean bones and stinking bones,
Antlers and bones: I understood that the place was a refuge for wounded
deer; there are so many
Hurt ones escape the hunters and limp away to lie hidden; here they have
water for the awful thirst
And peace to die in; dense green laurel and grim cliff
Make sanctuary, and a sweet wind blows upward from the deep gorge.
--I
wish my bones were with theirs.
But that's a foolish thing to confess, and a little cowardly.
We know that life
Is on the whole quite equally good and bad, mostly gray neutral, and can
be endured
To the dim end, no matter what magic of grass, water and precipice, and
pain of wounds,
Makes death look dear.
We have been given life and have used it--not a
great gift perhaps--but in honesty
Should use it all.
Mine's empty since my love died--Empty? The flame-
haired grandchild with great blue eyes
That look like hers?--What can I do for the child? I gaze at her and wonder
what sort of man
In the fall of the world .
.
.
I am growing old, that is the trouble.
My chil-
dren and little grandchildren
Will find their way, and why should I wait ten years yet, having lived sixty-
seven, ten years more or less,
Before I crawl out on a ledge of rock and die snapping, like a wolf
Who has lost his mate?--I am bound by my own thirty-year-old decision:
who drinks the wine
Should take the dregs; even in the bitter lees and sediment
New discovery may lie.
The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
bones: I must wear mine.
|
Written by
Philip Larkin |
At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted.
All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.
My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose --
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat
(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) --
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.
But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,
But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,
In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being you; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.
Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry.
We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across
The gap from eye to page.
So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,
In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.
|
Written by
John Berryman |
Plop, plop.
The lobster toppled in the pot,
fulfilling, dislike man, his destiny,
glowing fire-red,
succulent, and on the whole becoming what
man wants.
I crack my final claw singly,
wind up the grave, & to bed.
—Sound good, Mr Bones.
I wish I had me some.
(I spose you got a lessen up your slave.
)
—O no no no.
Sole I remember; where no lobster swine,—
pots hot or cold is none.
With you I grieve
lightly, and I have no lesson.
Bodies are relishy, they say.
Here's mine,
was.
What ever happened to Political Economy,
leaving me here?
Is a rare—in my opinion—responsibility.
The military establishments perpetuate themselves forever.
Have a bite, for a sign.
|
Written by
David Lehman |
Though
Already
Perhaps
However.
On one level,
Among other things,
With
And with.
In a similar vein
To be sure:
Make no mistake.
Nary a trace.
However,
Aside from
With
And with,
Not
And not,
Rather
Manifestly
Indeed.
Which is to say,
In fictional terms,
For reasons that are never made clear,
Not without meaning,
Though (as is far from unusual)
Perhaps too late.
The first thing that must be said is
Perhaps, because
And, not least of all,
Certainly more,
Which is to say
In ever other respect
Meanwhile.
But then perhaps
Though
And though
On the whole
Alas.
Moreover
In contrast
And even
Admittedly
Partly because
And partly because
Yet it must be said.
Even more significantly, perhaps
In other words
With and with,
Whichever way
One thing is clear
Beyond the shadow of a doubt.
|
Written by
Philip Larkin |
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detect my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.
|
Written by
Eugene Field |
Play that my knee was a calico mare
Saddled and bridled for Bumpville;
Leap to the back of this steed, if you dare,
And gallop away to Bumpville!
I hope you'll be sure to sit fast in your seat,
For this calico mare is prodigiously fleet,
And many adventures you're likely to meet
As you journey along to Bumpville.
This calico mare both gallops and trots
While whisking you off to Bumpville;
She paces, she shies, and she stumbles, in spots,
In the tortuous road to Bumpville;
And sometimes this strangely mercurial steed
Will suddenly stop and refuse to proceed,
Which, all will admit, is vexatious indeed,
When one is en route to Bumpville!
She's scared of the cars when the engine goes "Toot!"
Down by the crossing at Bumpville;
You'd better look out for that treacherous brute
Bearing you off to Bumpville!
With a snort she rears up on her hindermost heels,
And executes jigs and Virginia reels -
Words fail to explain how embarrassed one feels
Dancing so wildly to Bumpville!
It's bumpytybump and it's jiggytyjog,
Journeying on to Bumpville
It's over the hilltop and down through the bog
You ride on your way to Bumpville;
It's rattletybang over boulder and stump,
There are rivers to ford, there are fences to jump,
And the corduroy road it goes bumpytybump,
Mile after mile to bumpville!
Perhaps you'll observe it's no easy thing
Making the journey to Bumpville,
So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring
An end to this ride to Bumpville;
For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint,
The calico mare must be blowing and faint -
What's more to the point, I'm blowed if I ain't!
So play we have got to Bumpville!
|
Written by
Ellis Parker Butler |
Well, eight months ago one clear cold day,
I took a ramble up Broadway,
And with my hands behind my back
I strolled along on the streetcar track—
(I walked on the track, for walking there
Gives one, I think, a distinguished air.
)
“Well, all of a sudden I felt a jar
And I said, “I’ll bet that’s a trolley car,”
And, sure enough, when I looked to see
I saw it had run right over me!
And my limbs and things were so scattered about
That for a moment I felt put out.
Well, the motorman was a nice young chap!
And he came right up and tipped his cap
And said, “Beg pardon,” and was so kind
That his gentle manner soothed my mind:
Especially as he took such pains
To gather up my spilt remains.
Well, he found my arms and found my head,
And then, in a contrite voice, he said,
“Say, mister, I guess I’ll have to beg Your pardon,
I can’t find your left leg,”
And he would have wept, but I said,
“No! no! It doesn’t matter, just let it go.
”
Well, I went on home and on the way
I considered what my wife would say:
I knew she would have some sharp reply
If I let her know I was one leg shy,
So I thought, on the whole, ’twould be just as well
For my peace of mind if I didn’t tell.
Well, that was the first thing in my life
That I kept a secret from my wife.
And for eight long months I was in distress
To think that I didn’t dare confess,
And I’d probably still feel just that way
If it hadn’t come ’round to Christmas Day.
Well, in good old customs I still believe,
So I hung up my stocking Christmas Eve;
(A brand-new left one I’d never worn.
)
And when I looked in it Christmas morn
There was my leg, as large as life,
With a ticket on it, “From your wife.
”
Well, my wife had had it stored away
In cotton, since last Easter Day,
When she ran across it, quite by chance,
In the left hip-pocket of my pants;
And the only reproachful thing she said
Was, “Look out or some day you’ll lose your head.
”
|
Written by
John Berryman |
Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!
I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done.
The hospitals were fun
in certain ways, and an honour or so,
but on the whole fifty was a mess as though
heavy clubs from below
and from—God save the bloody mark—above
were loosed upon his skull & soles.
O love,
what was you loafing of
that fifty put you off, out & away,
leaving the pounding, horrid sleep by day,
nights naught but fits.
I pray
the opening decade contravene its promise
to be as bad as all the others.
Is
there something Henry miss
in the jungle of the gods whom Henry's prayer to?
Empty temples—a decade of dark-blue
sins, son, worse than you.
|
Written by
Algernon Charles Swinburne |
One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;
Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this.
What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under;
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.
Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without?
Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;
Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.
Two and two may be four; but four and four are not eight;
Fate and God may be twain; but God is the same as fate.
Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;
God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.
Body and spirit are twins; God only knows which is which;
The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.
More is the whole than a part; but half is more than the whole;
Clearly, the soul is the body; but is not the body the soul?
One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two;
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.
Once the mastodon was; pterodactyls were common as cocks;
Then the mammoth was God; now is He a prize ox.
Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew;
You are certainly I; but certainly I am not you.
Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock;
Cocks exist for the hen; but hens exist for the cock.
God, whom we see not, is; and God, who is not, we see;
Fiddle, we know, is diddle, and diddle, we take it, is dee.
|
Written by
John Berryman |
His malice was a pimple down his good
big face, with its sly eyes.
I must be sorry
Mr Frost has left:
I like it so less I don't understood—
he couldn't hear or see well—all we sift—
but this is a bad story.
He had fine stories and was another man
in private; difficult, always.
Courteous,
on the whole, in private.
He apologize to Henry, off & on,
for two blue slanders; which was good of him.
I don't know how he made it.
Quickly, off stage with all but kindness, now.
I can't say what I have in mind.
Bless Frost,
any odd god around.
Gentle his shift, I decussate & command,
stoic deity.
For a while here we possessed
an unusual man.
|