If I were young I could
Make eager grief of this grave
And let the warm sorrow come
And cover me like a wave,
The cathartic tears ease out
That soothe the constricted heart.

It would be over and done--
Aromantic memory made
Out of this drift of rain
And the passive part I played.
Spontaneous youth is gone;
The moved heart is a stone.

Time makes a flint of the heart
That grief cannot spark into flame,
A stubborn, intractable weight
Moves but to inadequate blame.
Here, between hill and sea,
Resignation rukes finally.

So I'll not denouce this death
Nor embitter the ordinary air
With blown words that ny breath
Is now to small to wear.
Sufficient that he is gone;
A great man dies alone.

Headland , river and bay
Wait for the implied night
And I, as  move away,
Accept a mutinous fate,
accept the perpetual sea's
Recurrent elegies.

Seabirds adorning the hill
Move with a bickeribg grace
As each descending bird
Settles into its place.
Smoothly the plain day ends.
Nothing can make amends.

Spring and Fall

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Golden grove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah,  as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by , nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leaf meal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why,
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you morn for.
 
 
 
 

And did those feet in ancient time

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's  mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of Desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.

I will not cease from Mental Flight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

HOMAGE to Dafydd ap Gwilym

Modest Morvith of the golden hair
that lily-browed girl in Enid's shape,
Made passion catch and glow to flame
When in bright leaves once around my neck
her white arms went to take me slave
To lips I'd not known.  And now by love's knot
I'm bound as by her arms, white as winter,
When face to face, when sin was simple,
she thralled me down, in the bright-brown leaves.
But a collar shy and smooth as arms is slavery
I could take.  Arms white as lime are gifts
on any neck.  And her's seem torques of gold
and blinding spells, bright beauty's famed design.
And I blond Dafydd, the wine-bred bard, am bolder boy
For having known them there, and without care
and drunk on her-my slim, my strong
my Morvith of the Golden hair.

The Desk

Under the fire escape, crouched, one knee in cinders,
I pulled the ball-peen hammer from my belt,
cracked a square of window pane,
the gummed latch, and swung the window,
crawled through that stone hole into the boiler room
of Canton Elementary School, once Canton High,
where my father served three extra years
as star halfback and sprinter.
Behind a flashlight's
cane of light, I climbed a staircase almost a ladder
and found a door.  On the second nudge of my shoulder,
it broke into a hallway dark as history,
at whose end lay the classroom I had studied
over and over in the deep obsession of memory.

I swept that room with light - an empty blackboard,
a metal table, a half-globe lying on the floor
like a punctured basketball - then followed
that beam across the rows of desks,
the various catalogs of lovers, the lists
of all those who would and would not do what,
until it stopped on the corner desk of the back row,
and I saw again, after many years the name
of my father, my name, carved deep into the oak top.

To gauge the depth I ran my finger across that scar,
and wondered at the dreams he must have lived
as his eyes ran back and forth
from the cinder yard below the window
to the empty practice field
to the blade of his pocket knife etching carefully
the long, angular lines of his name,
 the dreams he must have laid out one behind another
like yard lines, in the dull, pre-practice
afternoons
of geography and civics, before he ever dreamed
of Savo Sound or Guadalcanal.
                                                In honor of dreams
I sank to my knees on the smooth, oiled floor,
and stood my flashlight on its end.
Half the yellow circle lit the underedge of the desk,
the other threw a half moon on the ceiling,
and in that split light I tapped the hammer
easy up the overhang of the desk top. Nothing gave
but the walls' sharp echo, so I swung again,
and again harder, and harder still in half anger
rising to anger at the stubborn joint, losing all fear
of my first crime against the city, the county,
the state, whatever government claimed dominion,
until I had hammered up in the ringing dark
a salvo of crossfire, and on a frantic recoil glanced
the flashlight, the classroom spinning black
as a coma.

I've often pictured the face of the teacher
whose student first pointed to that topless desk,
the shock of a slow hand rising from the back row,
their eyes meeting over the question of absence.
I've wondered too if some low authority of the system
discovered that shattered window,
and finding no typewriters, no business machines,
no audiovisual gear missing, failed to account for
it, so let it pass as minor vandalism.
                                             I've heard nothing.
And rarely do I fret when I see that oak scar leaning
against my basement wall, though I wonder what it
means to own my father's name.
 

Under the Vulture-Tree

We have all seen them circling pastures,
have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own backyards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,
every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old
who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the side of the road,
who pray over the leaf graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.
 

Who Goes With Fergus?
Who will go drive with Fergus now?
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your Russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fears no more.

And no more turn around a brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all the disheveled wandering stars.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattle made:
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live along in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
 
 
 
 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glittering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old and wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone
And kissed her lips and take her hands;
And walk among the dappled grass
And pluck till times and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
 
 

Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
Then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.  No one ever thanked him

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking
When the rooms were warm, he'd call.
And slowly I would rise and dress,
Fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Morning Swim
Into my empty head there come
A cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

I set out, oily and nude
Through mist , in chilly solitude.

There was no line, no roof or floor
To tell the water from the air.

Night fog thick as terry cloth
closed me in its fuzzy growth.

I hung my bathrobe on two pegs.
I took the lake between my legs.

Invaded and invader, I
went overhand on that flat sky.

Fish twitched beneath me, quick and tame
In their green zone they sang my name

and in the rhythm of the swim
I hummed a two-four-time slow hymn.

I hummed Abide with Me, the beat
rose in the fine thrash of my feet,

rose in the bubbles I put out
slantwise, tailing through my mouth.

My bones drank water, water fell
through all my doors.  I was the well

That fed the lake, that met my sea
In which I sang Abide with Me.

The Rural Carrier Stops to Kill a Nine-Foot Cottonmouth
Lord God, I saw the son-of a bitch uncoil
In the road ahead of me , uncoil and squirm
For the Ditch, squirm a hell of a long time.
Missed him with the car.  When I got back to him, he was all
But gone, nothing left on the road, but the tip end
Of his tail, and that disappearing into Johnson grass.
I leaned over the ditch and saw him, balled up now, hiss
I aimed for the mouth and shot him.  And shot him again.

Then I got a good strong stick and dragged him out.
He was long and evil, thick as the top of my arm.
There are things in this world a man can't look at without
Wanting to kill.  Don't ask me why.  I was calm
Enough, I thought.  But I felt my spine
Squirm, suddenly.  I admit it.  It was mine.