SPONTANEOUS me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same, late in autumn--the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and
light and dark green,
The rich coverlid of the grass--animals and birds--the private
untrimm'd bank--the primitive apples--the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments--the negligent list of one after
another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them,
......
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune--I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth--that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
......
O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of
fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.
......
Two doors open—
one flat on a sandy hill,
mine beneath a flickering light,
like a dying eye.
We step through,
and the tearing begins—
the skin of the world,
the brittle edge that held us in,
and kept us apart.
......
Poem Is a Verb
Strike flint to flame, let the lines take flight,
They bite at the dark, they shoulder the light;
No throne for the poem, no chair for its nerve—
It walks till it bleeds, for a poem’s a verb.
......
Poems for Money, and No Kicks for Free
Verse 1
The air smells of printer’s ink and cold coffee,
and the page stares back like a shopfront window
where the mannequins wear my metaphors,
price tags swinging from their wrists.
I used to think the words were a kind of weather —
blowing in from nowhere,
......
Poem Is a Verb
Strike flint to flame, let the lines take flight,
They bite at the dark, they shoulder the light;
No throne for the poem, no chair for its nerve—
It walks till it bleeds, for a poem’s a verb.
......
Soms denk ik
dat mijn gedachten
niet in mijn hoofd wonen
maar in de lucht om mij heen.
Als losse zaden
die wachten
op een stukje aarde
dat luistert.
......
Sometimes I think
my thoughts
don't live in my head
but in the air around me.
Like scattered seeds
waiting
for a patch of earth
that listens.
......
Manchmal denke ich,
dass meine Gedanken
nicht in meinem Kopf wohnen,
sondern in der Luft um mich herum.
Wie verstreute Samen,
die warten
auf ein Stück Erde,
das zuhört.
......