When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--W. B. Yeats

Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries

EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES

by: A.E. Housman (1860-1936)

THESE, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Follow'd their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandon'd, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

"My

dear,
really there is no point in giving a gift unless one also treasures it oneself."

-Colette

Resistant Gosling

Resistant
gosling
to
a coal sunrise
and
a shower
of chilled water
from the rain gutter.
What little task (always unknown?)
could you have missed
this time
...any
given
time.
Pinched light from
the little kitchen window.
There will
be no
breakfast
at
the dinner table.

This day.

Schoolyard in an hour.
Mean little murmuring
shoes
and
the walk
is swollen with
young wrathful
tears.

A simple request-
beyond the peril
that pounds
from the taunts
embedded in
woodchips

To Leap.

Fallen from rusted metal bars,
with breath
searing through a
fledgling
cage…

To leap!

From
cemented booties
into the
coal
blue
sundown.

Gosling,
resistant
to
safety
as you are
and have been.
This
mornings
curses
were
destroyed
in the pebbles,
in the gravel,
as you
left
with
naked
heels
and
freshly
scabbed
knees.

These
steps
have been
sympathetically
left

to
untangle.

If and When I See You

If and when I see
You
You might be one of the trees
both straight and loping.
The tallest parts
of your California
limbs shake just
so slightly,
it sounds of paper
oceans and passing storms.
Eucalyptus!


But then I passed
The Sycamore,
and here I saw you again.
Susceptible skin
paired away
crackling
layers
on a
rouged
trunk.
Smiling.

What drove the
wrench in
though,
what cut to
the marrow
as you say
was the Giant Redwood,
always
slumbering
ever just so.

With a golden mind.
A diseased mind.

With slow amber words
that came in blazes,
You did
manage to
fold
us.

And it seemed to
take all the ages
before we could
have the
want to
see you again.

wanting
and terrified
and wonderful
in
a summer fog..

A twisted
frail necked
Cyprus
that belonged more to
what grew beyond the shore
than to the
untimely voices
of little ones.

On the land.

Raised and
sloped
and
slope

and slumber

and slumber

and rest.

The Garden of Love by William Blake

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Hard

These speckets of days
have been labeled as
the times the sun,
occluded by
downy nests
sat
drinking anise liquor
resignedly,
from a
hawkish
floating tumbler.

Why does her always say
why?

Below,
simpering
and right on schedule,
a chorus of peacock
kettles
fretfully
beg for
half naked
understanding.

Gloomyriders,
bundled
in
peevish
vapors
remain
unconvinced
yet
determined to fly.

Say why does him always
scream why?

Yes,
the menacing closeness
and territorial mouth
of
mechanical buffalo's
is omnipresent.

Yet,
how quickly graveled
twists
and
arrogant neeighhhhss
did
take thee down!

Record this.
Put it there.

The delicate frame,
and ready breath
forgotten in a lick
and
with a wily gesture...
...barely a gasp
the beginning
of this hardness
threads it’s eye.

Tell they,
why does them always
moan
why?

Put it down.
With a strong headwind
and icy rain pellets,
transition on the seat
and keep in
undifferentiated awareness.

Tell my then
why?
Her
is one way to
be in this mess.