Poetry
The Oriole sings in the greening grove As if he were half-way waiting, The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green, Timid, and hesitating. The rain comes down in a torrent sweep And the nights …
Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was a child, Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild. Only in sleep Time is …
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head — Do you think, at your age, it is right?” “In …
I used to think that to write poetry I needed absolute silence, so I could hear the muse in her bare feet. I imagined special pens, ink the color of Shelley’s eyes, and paper made …
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night How did you end up in there, Trapped beneath my vacant stare? Am I supposed to quake in awe At thy claws, thy fearsome jaw? …
Finally morning. This loneliness feels more ordinary in the light, more like my face in the mirror. My daughter in the ER again. Something she ate? Some freshener someone spritzed in the air? They’re trying …
Come, my Celia, let us prove While we may, the sports of love; Time will not be ours forever; He at length our good will sever. Spend not then his gifts in vain. Suns that …
The sun goes down and the sky turns dusky And everything tastes like homesick You drape the sky around your shoulders And know how lonesome feels. Every chord is minor Every light dim And if …
Come, spritz of seltzer in the face, implacable banana peel. Come, brickbats, pratfalls, amazing grace- lessness, the yowl of the schlemiel. Away with wit, you clever flights of phrase it takes a Ph.D. to explicate. …
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You’d see me with my puffy petulant face, …
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife were happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize …
Addressed to Liu Mēng-tē Between thirty and forty, one is distracted by the Five Lusts; Between seventy and eighty, one is a prey to a hundred diseases. But from fifty to sixty one is free …