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The Poor Children
Take heed of this small child of earth;He is great; he hath in him God most high.Children before their fleshly birthAre lights alive in the blue sky. In our light bitter world of wrongThey come; God gives us them awhile.His speech is in their stammering tongue,And his forgiveness in their smile. Their sweet light rests… Continue reading
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The Genesis of the Butterfly
The dawn is smiling on the dew that coversThe tearful roses; lo, the little loversThat kiss the buds, and all the flutteringsIn jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,With muffled music, murmured far and wide.Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the laysThat dreamy… Continue reading
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Spring
Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing— Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! The palm and may make country houses gay,Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay— Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we,… Continue reading
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Weathering Hate
The way, exposed to weather, a body is worn. Velvet threads begin towither, rapid ripened beyond the burst bloom. Vibrant strands, cut short,fray, unweaving faded fabric. Sun-struck, rain-warped, storm-blasted,rough-sanded in whipping wind that whittles rock. Small, torturous fractures opened in stone where water freezes in thepores with grains of salt. Cracks in the surface pried… Continue reading
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Winter
Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lieIn swaddling clouts, like new-born infancy;Bound up with frosts, and fur’d with hail & snows,And, like an infant, still it taller grows.December is my first, and now the sunTo the southward Tropick his swift race doth run.This month he’s hous’d in horned Capricorn,From thence he ’gins to length… Continue reading
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The Truth the Dead Know
For my mother, born March 1902, died March 1959and my father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church,refusing the stiff procession to the grave,letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I cultivatemyself where the sun… Continue reading
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Making the House Ready for the Lord
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed butstill nothing is as shining as it should befor you. Under the sink, for example, is anuproar of mice it is the season of theirmany children. What shall I do? And under the eavesand through the walls the squirrelshave gnawed their ragged entrances but it is… Continue reading
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Stone Canyon Nocturne
Ancient of Days, old friend, no one believes you’ll come back.No one believes in his own life anymore. The moon, like a dead heart, cold and unstartable, hangs by a threadAt the earth’s edge,Unfaithful at last, splotching the ferns and the pink shrubs. In the other world, children undo the knots in their tally strings.They… Continue reading
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Wanting to Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.Then the almost unnameable lust returns. Even then I have nothing against life.I know well the grass blades you mention,the furniture you have placed under the sun. But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They… Continue reading
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Thank You
If you find yourself half nakedand barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,again, the earth’s great, sonorous moanthat says you are the air of the now and gone,that says all you love will turn to dust,and will meet you there,do not raise your fist. Do not raise your small voice against it.And do not take cover.Instead,… Continue reading
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Redamancy Lit 