(1948)
#Americans
When I put her out, once, by the… She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a si… Or a wizened aster in late Septem… I brought her back in again
I wake to sleep, and take my wakin… I feel my fate in what I cannot f… I learn by going where I have to… We think by feeling. What is ther… I hear my being dance from ear to…
By day the bat is cousin to the mo… He likes the attic of an aging hou… His fingers make a hat about his h… His pulse beat is so slow we think… He loops in crazy figures half the…
I have known the inexorable sadnes… Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad… All the misery of manila folders a… Desolation in immaculate public pl… Lonely reception room, lavatory, s…
The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans
Let others probe the mystery if th… Time—harried prisoners of Shall a… The right thing happens to the hap… The bird flies out, the bird flies… The hill becomes the valley, and i…
A cloud moved close. The bulk of… A tree swayed over water. A voice said: Stay. Stay by the slip—ooze. Stay… Dearest tree, I said, may I rest…
All profits disappear: the gain Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum; And now grim digits of old pain Return to litter up our home. We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
This urge, wrestle, resurrection o… Cut stems struggling to put down f… What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new… I can hear, underground, that suck…
Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the night While others take their rest.
My secrets cry aloud. I have no need for tongue. My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely swung. An epic of the eyes
The wind billowing out the seat of… My feet crackling splinters of gla… The half-grown chrysanthemums star… Up through the streaked glass, fla… A few white clouds all rushing eas…
Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes,… The flying fabric stitched on bone… The vesture of the skeleton, The garment neither fur nor hair,
In purest song one plays the const… As changes shimmer in the inner ey… I stare and stare into a deepening… And tell myself my image cannot di… I love myself: that’s my one const…
I think the dead are tender. Shal… My lady laughs, delighting in what… If she but sighs, a bird puts out… She makes space lonely with a love… She lilts a low soft language, and…