There sat two glasses, filled to the brim,
On a rich man's table, rim to rim.
One was ruddy and red as blood,
And one was clear as the crystal flood.
Said the glass of wine to his paler brother,
"Let us tell tales of the past to each other;
I can tell of banquet, and revel, and mirth,
Where I was a king, for I ruled in might;
For the proudest and grandest souls on earth
......
She
I'm waiting for the man I hope to wed.
I've never seen him - that's the funny part.
I promised I would wear a rose of red,
Pinned on my coat above my fluttered heart,
So that he'd know me - a precaution wise,
Because I wrote him I was twenty-three,
And Oh such heaps and heaps of silly lies. . .
So when we meet what will he think of me?
......
ONE song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee--the Future.
I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality;
I'd fashion thy Ensemble, including Body and Soul;
I'd show, away ahead, thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd.
(The paths to the House I seek to make,
But leave to those to come, the House itself.)
......
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
......
O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.
But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
......
I'm often asked what sign I am
Leading me to answer best I can
That while I know that signs exist
I try my best to cheerfully desist.
But there again if truth be told
My interest piqued this subject old,
So with new fervor I travailed
The results of which I here detailed.
......
The Training of a Monkey with a Grenade
Frol's school turns the child to ape,
With fingers clenched in a cruel shape.
Without the grenade, the vile new trend —
Neo-fascism's easy to bend.
-------------------------
......
You're the bride I long for,
not in lace or veil,
but in the quiet way
your eyes understand silence.
You walk into a room,
and suddenly
I forget the years I spent
waiting for something unnamed.
......
Her winds still whisper names forgotten,
And her rivers now hum hymns of home’s embrace.
Chimney tops rise, silent like prayers unanswered,
And cracked cobbles mutter stories of long ago.
Still held together by time’s drystone hands,
The home we once knew, now overthrown.
Now, not a place of darkness and gloom,
As strangers still believe.
Nor a land of milky tea-stained dreams,
......
I remember a time
When I never thought
Of the amount of change
The future truly brought
I grew with time
And embraced the change
And when I paused
Change still remained
I looked at the past
Time left me behind
......