When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big jok
A dance that’s walked
A song that’s spoke,

We wear the mask that grins and li
It shades our cheeks and hides our
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts…
We smile and mouth the myriad subt

Go to Tibet.
Ride a camel.
Read the Bible.
Dye your shoes blue.
Grow a Beard.

The sun has come.
The mist has gone.
We see in the distance...
our long way home.
I was always yours to have.

I thought it would last my time—
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and f
Where the village louts could clim
Such trees as were not cut down;

There are similarities
I notice: that the hills
which the eyes make flat as a wall
together, open as I move
to let me through; become

To step over the low wall that div
Road from concrete walk above the
Brings sharply back something know
The miniature gaiety of seasides.
Everything crowds under the low ho

My man is Black Golden Amber Cha
Warm mouths of Brandy Fine
Cautious sunlight on a patterned r
Coughing laughter, rocked on a whi
Graceful turns on woolen stilts S

The highway is full of big cars
going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that
Some people wrap their lies around
And you sit wondering

Up, black, striped and demasked li
At a funeral mass, the skunk’s tai
Paraded the skunk. Night after ni
I expected her like a visitor.The
My desk light softened beyond the

What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without la
upon some shellacked and grinning
eyes that open, blue, steel, and c

Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,

On the grass when I arrive,
Filling the stillness with life,
But ready to scare off
At the very first wrong move.
In the ivy when I leave.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief
Is it that they are born again

Let me tell you a little story
About Miss Edith Gee;
She lived in Clevedon Terrace
At number 83.
She’d a slight squint in her left

Among
of
green
stiff
old

My son, my executioner,
I take you in my arms,
Quiet and small and just astir
And whom my body warms.
Sweet death, small son, our instru

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
Going to church
Would entail a fording

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils

WHAT guile is this, that those h
She doth attire under a net of gol
And with sly skill so cunningly th
That which is gold, or hair, may s
Is it that men’s frail eyes, which

you won’t see them often
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.
those odd ones, not

Let others pray for the passenger
the dodo, the whooping crane, the
everyone must specialize
I will confine myself to a meditat
upon the giant tortoises

No speed of wind or water rushing
But you have speed far greater. Y
Back up a stream of radiance to th
And back through history up the st
And you were given this swiftness,

Be infinitesimal under that sky, a
even the sailing hawk misses, a wr
among the rocks where the mist par
Recall the way mere mortals are ov
by circumstance, how great reputat

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am star
The rapid clouds, the moon’s clean
Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed garde
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked s

We sit indoors and talk of the col
And every gust that gathers streng
Is a threat to the house. But the
We think of the tree. If it never
We’ll know, we say, that this was

Green-shadowed people sit, or walk
Their children finger the awakened
Calmly a cloud stands, calmly a bi
And, flashing like a dangled-looki
Sun lights the balls that bounce,

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blo
The winter sun creeps by the snow
The stubborn season has made stand
My life is light, waiting for the
Like a feather on the back of my h

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –
a worthy pastime.

Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.

It seemed an unlikely match. All
grinding its teeth in a plastic sl
nose-down from a hook in the darkr
under the hatch in the floor. When
it knocked back a quarter-pint of

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

“you know,” she said, “you were at
the bar so you didn’t see
but I danced with this guy.
we danced and we danced
close.

Every tan rolling meadow will turn
Freeways are clogged all day
Academies packed with scholars wri
City people lean and dark
This land most real

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye

And the traveller hopes: “Let me
Physician”; and the ports have nam
The citiless, the corroding, the s
And North means to all: “Reject”.
And the great plains are for ever

О Greater Light, we praise Thee f
The eastern light our spires touch
The light that slants upon our wes
The twilight over stagnant pools a
Moon light and star light, owl and

I’d seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night
under the pines, walking

The earth was green, the sky was b
I saw and heard one sunny morn,
A skylark hang between the two,
A singing speck above the corn;
A stage below, in gay accord,

I can see myself now
after all these suicide days and n
being wheeled out of one of those
(of course, this is only if I get
by a subnormal and bored nurse

Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
my pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign
the day's divinity

Grey haunted eyes, absent-mindedly
From wide, uneven orbits; one brow
Somewhat over the eye
Because of a missile fragment stil
Skin-deep, as a foolish record of

the
sky
was
can dy lu
minous

When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an att