Poetry

verywhere I go your smile is there
When I think of you the stars overhead are bright
My love for you kindles even in the
darkness of night.

I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is
measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we will walk with a walk that is
measured and slow,
And we will go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the
children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I am not cute or built to suit a fashion
models size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I am telling lies.
I say,
It is in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I am a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That is me.

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I will be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody will dare
Say to me,
Eat in the kitchen,
Then.
Besides,
They will see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-
I, too, am America.

You gouged my minds eye,
Tantalised all inner thought,
Shocked from unknown angles;
Sold me, told me cold,
Unfolded, moulded;
Shouldered any harbouring
Of empty morals.
You spun me round; undressed –
Pestered me with background riddle –
Piffle came to gleaning meaning.
And you stripped out prejudice – for none Must exist in poetry,
Lest you close up an open mind
And up as reader;
Lest your heart is not a bleeder –
It has to be – let it flush out
Upon your sleeve.
You lay apart my thinking brain
And let in the literary pickings of a
Great poetic phallus.
Yes, poetry can be callous.

somehwere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very
beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair
The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

Had I been some young sailor, continent
Perforce three weeks and then well plied with wine,
I might in time have tried to yield consent
And almost (though I doubt it) made her mine.
Or had it been but once and never again,
Come what come might, she should have had her way;
But yielding once were yielding twice, and then
I had been hers for ever and a day.
Or had she only been content to crave
A marriage of true minds, her wish was granted;
My mind was hers, I was her willing slave
In all things else except the one she wanted:
And here, alas! at any rate to me
She was an all too, too impossible she.

And now, though twenty years are come and gone,
That little lame lady is face is with me still;
Never a day but what, on every one,
She dwells with me, as dwell she ever will.
She said she wished I knew not wrong from right;
It was not that; I knew, and would have chosen
Wrong if I could, but, in my own despite,
Power to choose wrong in my chilled veins was frozen.
Tis said that if a woman woo, no man
Should leave her till she have prevailed; and, true,
A man will yield for pity, if he can,
But if the flesh rebels what can he do?
I could not. Hence I grieve my whole life long
The wrong I did, in that I did no wrong.