MANY ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood --
And gone are phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
......
Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,
lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods
inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
......
It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has bestowed the love of masks and masquerading, the hate of home, and the passion for roaming.
Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet. The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd.
The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself of someone else, as he chooses. Like those wandering souls who go looking for a body, he enters as he likes into each man's personality. For him alone everything is vacant; and if certain places seem closed to him, it is only because in his eyes they are not worth visiting.
The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.
What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire, all it poetry and all its charity, to the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger as he passes.
......
So many stones have been thrown at me,
That I'm not frightened of them anymore,
And the pit has become a solid tower,
Tall among tall towers.
I thank the builders,
May care and sadness pass them by.
From here I'll see the sunrise earlier,
Here the sun's last ray rejoices.
And into the windows of my room
The northern breezes often fly.
......
I have old women's secrets now
That had those of the young;
Madge tells me what I dared not think
When my blood was strong,
And what had drowned a lover once
Sounds like an old song.
Though Margery is stricken dumb
If thrown in Madge's way,
We three make up a solitude;
......
How my heart does pour with the blood of you
No bandage can stop you from seeping through
You have forcibly held me against my will
With a gaping hole too deep to fill
You have nurtured an existence, so solitaire
One starved of affection, in need of care
Quiet is my enemy, loud the ticking clock
Urging my life to take stock
......
Birds and trees beckoned
and like a rocket to the
stars, I was alone.
A triumph of fern green woods
in the glamour of stillness.
Lost in the vastness
yet God sees my every move.
Songs of the sunshine
......
in the rail yard
at dawn
a stray dog barks
as night rolls over
its spine
No-hope Tuesdays have become my favourite
as i fall deeper into a sense of helplessness of a blissful kind
a dull,full moment of acceptance.
And many empty ones of grief.
the bar is falling lower everyday
spirits down swimming in the depths of the
depressions in the ocean floor of my soul
that's where my joy hides.
And love
but i haven't seen her in a while.
......
It's left quiet after snow fall
I'm left in silence without you all
So many things to do that must be done
So many battles, so few won
I march through the fields of cotton
Pretending the pain is all forgotten
Waiting for a sweet respite
Although I know I never leave it behind
......