Written by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot |
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat;
She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!
But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
And when all the family's in bed and asleep,
She tucks up her skirts to the basement to creep.
She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice--
Their behaviour's not good and their manners not nice;
So when she has got them lined up on the matting,
She teachs them music, crocheting and tatting.
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots.
All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!
But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
As she finds that the mice will not ever keep quiet,
She is sure it is due to irregular diet;
And believing that nothing is done without trying,
She sets right to work with her baking and frying.
She makes them a mouse--cake of bread and dried peas,
And a beautiful fry of lean bacon and cheese.
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
The curtain-cord she likes to wind, and tie it into sailor-knots.
She sits upon the window-sill, or anything that's smooth and flat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!
But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
She thinks that the cockroaches just need employment
To prevent them from idle and wanton destroyment.
So she's formed, from that lot of disorderly louts,
A troop of well-disciplined helpful boy-scouts,
With a purpose in life and a good deed to do--
And she's even created a Beetles' Tattoo.
So for Old Gumbie Cats let us now give three cheers--
On whom well-ordered households depend, it appears.
|
Written by
Donald Hall |
Katie could put her feet behind her head
Or do a grand plié, position two,
Her suppleness magnificent in bed.
I strained my lower back, and Katie bled,
Only a little, doing what we could do
When Katie tucked her feet behind her head.
Her torso was a C-cup'd figurehead,
Wearing below its navel a tattoo
That writhed in suppleness upon the bed.
As love led on to love, love's goddess said,
"No lovers ever fucked as fucked these two!
Katie could put her feet behind her head!"
When Katie came she never stopped.
Instead,
She came, cried "God!," and came, this dancer who
Brought ballerina suppleness to bed.
She curled her legs around my neck, which led
To depths unplumbed by lovers hitherto.
Katie could tuck her feet behind her head
And by her suppleness unmake the bed.
|
Written by
Carl Sandburg |
KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me.
I can not tell you what they say.
Other faces rise on the prairie.
They are the unborn.
The future.
Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the skyline
The two are lost in a purple haze.
One forgets.
One waits.
In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o’clock June nights … the dead men and the unborn children speak to me … I can not tell you what they say … you listen and you know.
I don’t care who you are, man:
I know a woman is looking for you
and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind.
(The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling the cows; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X’s of milk.
)
I don’t care who you are, man:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are gray dust working toward star paths
And you see them from a garret window when you laugh
At your luck and murmur, “I don’t care.
”
I don’t care who you are, woman:
I know a man is looking for you
And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-tassel.
(The kitchen girl on the farm is throwing oats to the chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset’s late maroon.
)
I don’t care who you are, woman:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are next year’s wheat or the year after hidden in the dark and loam.
My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana.
My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee.
My love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper on her shoulders in March and April.
My love is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter.
Why is my love always a crying thing of wings?
On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
Is it only a dog’s jaw or a horse’s skull whitening in the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut?
Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies?
|
Written by
Wallace Stevens |
The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there--
Its two webs.
The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.
|
Written by
Marilyn L Taylor |
In another time, a linen winding sheet
would already have been drawn
about her, the funeral drums by now
would have throbbed their dull tattoo
into the shadows writhing
behind the fire’s eye
while a likeness
of her narrow torso, carved
and studded with obsidian
might have been passed from hand
to hand and rubbed against the bellies
of women with child
and a twist of her gray hair
been dipped in oil
and set alight, releasing the essence
of her life’s elixir, pricking
the nostrils of her children
and her children’s children
whose amber faces nod and shine
like a ring of lanterns
strung around her final flare--
but instead, she lives in this white room
gnawing on a plastic bracelet
as she is emptied, filled and emptied.
|
Written by
Henry Van Dyke |
In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour
and riches and confusion,
Where there were many running to and fro, and
shouting, and striving together,
In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise,
I heard the voice of one singing.
"What are you doing there, O man, singing
quietly amid all this tumult?
This is the time for new inventions, mighty
shoutings, and blowings of the trumpet.
"
But he answered, "I am only shepherding my
sheep with music.
"
So he went along his chosen way, keeping his
little flock around him;
And he paused to listen, now and then, beside
the antique fountains,
Where the faces of forgotten gods were refreshed
with musically falling waters;
Or he sat for a while at the blacksmith's door,
and heard the cling-clang of the anvils;
Or he rested beneath old steeples full of bells,
that showered their chimes upon him;
Or he walked along the border of the sea,
drinking in the long roar of the billows;
Or he sunned himself in the pine-scented ship-
yard, amid the tattoo of the mallets;
Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting
his thoughts flow with the whispering river;
He hearkened also to ancient tales, and made
them young again with his singing.
Then a flaming arrow of death fell on his flock,
and pierced the heart of his dearest!
Silent the music now, as the shepherd entered
the mystical temple of sorrow:
Long he tarried in darkness there: but when he
came out he was singing.
And I saw the faces of men and women and
children silently turning toward him;
The youth setting out on the journey of life, and
the old man waiting beside the last mile-stone;
The toiler sweating beneath his load; and the
happy mother rocking her cradle;
The lonely sailor on far-off seas; and the grey-
minded scholar in his book-room;
The mill-hand bound to a clacking machine; and
the hunter in the forest;
And the solitary soul hiding friendless in the
wilderness of the city;
Many human faces, full of care and longing, were
drawn irresistibly toward him,
By the charm of something known to every heart,
yet very strange and lovely,
And at the sound of that singing wonderfully
all their faces were lightened.
"Why do you listen, O you people, to this old
and world-worn music?
This is not for you, in the splendour of a new
age, in the democratic triumph!
Listen to the clashing cymbals, the big drums, the
brazen trumpets of your poets.
"
But the people made no answer, following in
their hearts the simpler music:
For it seemed to them, noise-weary, nothing
could be better worth the hearing
Than the melodies which brought sweet order
into life's confusion.
So the shepherd sang his way along, until he
came unto a mountain:
And I know not surely whether it was called
Parnassus,
But he climbed it out of sight, and still I heard
the voice of one singing.
|