When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
My father is 88.
Yesterday I got a letter from him.
He said he has not been feeling very well lately
for in these last six months
he has lost four of his friends
and three of his teeth.
Be real.
Be fake, be sweet as boring cake.
Be real.
How does real feel?
Real feels right,
but right feels wrong.
Real feels like
punching you in the face
for the hurtful things you say.
Real feels horny.
Gotcha! feels real,
and anything said upon stepping in dog shit.
Fake feels wrong,
but wrong feels right.
Fake feels like
putting up with mistreatment
Let us go far away from buttered toast,
And tea, and marmalade, and all of it.
The feathered jostling of their hats, the wit
Unhumorous — I can not bear this host
Of warm, sweet women! Everything offends.
The murmurous movement of each gleaming bead,
Sly laughter on soft lips that do not feed
So much on tea as on their absent friends.
I knew you understood because your eyes
Were beckoning across the crowd to me.
Oh Child, who have so strangely learned to be
Unconsciously, mysteriously wise!
We went away, unnoticed, from the room
Into the drip of slow, autumnal rain.
And laughed, and drew deep breath, and laughed again,
We were so glad to leave that candled gloom.
Now must I these three praise--
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days;
One that no passing thought,
Nor those unpassing cares,
No, not in these fifteen
Many times troubled years,
Could ever come between
Heart and delighted heart;
And one because her hand
Had strength that could unbind
What none can understand,
What none can have and thrive,
Youth's dreamy load, till she
So changed me that I live
Labouring in ecstasy.
Oh little friend of half my days,
My little friend, who followed me
Along those crooked sullen ways
That only you had eyes to see.
You felt the same. You understood
You too, defensive and morose,
Encloaked your secret puppyhood--
Your secret heart--and hid them close.
For I alone have seen you serve,
Disciple of those early springs,
With ears awry and tail a-curve
You lost yourself in puppy things.
And you saw me. You bore in mind
The clean and sunny things I felt
When, throwing hate along the wind,
I flashed the lantern at my belt.
In Central Park the lovers sit,
On every hilly path they stroll,
Each thinks his love is infinite,
And crowns his soul.
But we are cynical and wise,
We walk a careful foot apart,
You make a little joke that tries
To hide your heart.
Give over, we have laughed enough;
Oh dearest and most foolish friend,
Why do you wage a war with love
To lose your battle in the end?
Grey, drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges
Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers.
So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you.
A green-shadowed trance of water
Is splintered to little, white tasseled awakenings
By the beat of long, black oars.
So do my thoughts enter yours.
Split, brown-blue clouds press into each other
Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze.
So do my thoughts slowly form
Over the draped mystery of you.
Beloved Friend,
I write this verse to you
As if it were a letter I could send.
It seems to me sometimes my heart slips through
The purple barriers between us two,
And finds again your fire, your sacred bread:
Their warmth and wholesome sweetness ...
Fire and Bread!
Beloved, these symbols nourish Life anew ...
You are not dead!
A MAN was sitting underneath a tree
Outside the village, and he asked me what
Name was upon this place, and said that he
Was never here before. He told a lot
Of stories to me too. His nose was flat.
I asked him how it happened, and he said
The first mate of the Mary Ann done that
With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead,
And jolly good job too ; and he'd have gone
A long way to have killed him, and he had
A gold ring in one ear ; the other one
" Was bit off by a crocodile, bedad."
That's what he said. He taught me how to chew.
He was a real nice man. He liked me too.
When you come in, it seems a brighter fire
Crackles upon the hearth invitingly,
The household routine which was wont to tire
Grows full of novelty.
You sit upon our home-upholstered chair
And talk of matters wonderful and strange,
Of books, and travel, customs old which dare
The gods of Time and Change.
Till we with inner word our care refute
Laughing that this our bosoms yet assails,
While there are maidens dancing to a flute
In Andalusian vales.
And sometimes from my shelf of poems you take
And secret meanings to our hearts disclose,
As when the winds of June the mid bush shake
We see the hidden rose.
I love the wet-lipped wind that stirs the hedge
And kisses the bent flowers that drooped for rain,
That stirs the poppy on the sun-burned ledge
And like a swan dies singing, without pain.
The golden bees go buzzing down to stain
The lilies' frills, and the blue harebell rings,
And the sweet blackbird in the rainbow sings.
Deep in the meadows I would sing a song,
The shallow brook my tuning-fork, the birds
My masters; and the boughs they hop along
Shall mark my time: but there shall be no words
For lurking Echo's mock; an angel herds
Words that I may not know, within, for you,
Words for the faithful meet, the good and true.