XXX Sonnets

 
Character poems of then-current events and personal romantic sonnets
 

 
By Gregg G Brown 
 
Copyright © 1991

Published by 
BLAST PRESS 

  

Jonathan Miller, U.S.M.

"It is night. Date-palms are rocking on the leash 
Of Time, the hurricane, that straddles our defeat 
With two-legged winds, and stalks the dusty town 
With a sheriff's clinkered heels until we're mown 
Down by our ambitions to police the world. 
Tonight the Mid-East's bunkered sandlots lash 
Dynamos of fire into the throttled air to crash, 
On cindered houses abandoned years before. 
The generals' camouflaged tent is staked 
In the vampired heart of our affairs of state; 
Our bloodless motive moves in for the spider-kill, 
Touching each fly-fat thread centered on our ill. 
 
All things are playthings, and the roar 
Of the black ocean here consumes our speech at night, 
Lifting its frail levities in a matchstick's 
Minute light. God knows I was not born to kill--- 
Who grew up in Indiana's tidy wheatfields tilled 
By machines as patient as mothers, giant-wheeled, 
That came sighing with sweet scythes when autumn cooled, 
Keats-like, and the silo's sundial shadow 
Met itself in the empty auguries of the meadow. 
Unhoused thousands are beating to our copter's mill; 
Prayers raise them cresting to their crescent moon 
And Allah's sweet-water paradise filled with girls. 
 
These are God's sufferers and wear his brand 
Of salvation creased in skin and hand; 
Doling out bags of rice and reconstituted milk 
From the throbbing helicopter's side, half tilt- 
Ing into the begging sea of faces, I wish 
For a lunatic's rare absolution of my guilt, his bliss. 
Stigmata almost washed away by weeping still 
Eat into the innocent wrists. Now, at Easter, 
They hold their small hands up, robbed 
Of all that held them, tongue-tied, to earth, 
And rise like moons, balloon-willed, lovely, free 
At last, to their creatured deaths; until we die 
Nothing stops the cresive wanting of our breath." 

Schwartzkopf, Duke of Iraq

"I will go wash; and drown these desert honors 
that stick in my throat. Three weeks before the grand 
defeat of our enemies, I dreamt my tent squalerous, 
ruined lieutenants killed by infiltrating mustard gas 
that couldn't sniff out the winning colors 
of our almighty flag. My aide snored on 
under his moony brow, refusing to wake 
for anything less than the Judgement Day; I'll pass. 
In the wheezing trenches we squeezed off rounds like mad 
in an unending philippic against the damned. 
Dust-erased faces blink skyward from their rust lakes 
of blood, off, on, off, on. 
Now downed in a North Carolina airplane hanger 
and tired of the itching laurels that itch my scalp 
I stare bemused at what our wanting has brought us here: 
Disinterred love scrambles up my lap." 

 

Nixon Now

"Broadbacked noon has come humbling among our wicked spires; 
I came trumping in, Ike's prat-boy VP, 
flipped the sinister death-ace on its head in Laos 
to a vermillioned flush, a cornucopia of flowers 
scissored off by dear Pat for my tweed lapel. 
Coronated by my foreign policy's jewelled accretions, old man 
of the treasons, whispers stitched to whispers, 
I age in New Jersey; grown familiarly bland 
I confer my Ovaltine-sweet opinions on the mass, 
saddled with a politician's over-zealous over-friendliness still. 
Whatever has happened has happened. 
Smooth-trunked Atwater by a humorous tumor felled; 
How many more must wither and lessen? Stopped 
at the bullet-proof pane all day, I watch 
the dogwood whiten and the rich magnolia finish... 
What love cannot conquer I leave to my will. 
The winning children still swing back 
to their crooked papa at Xmas... a few bright, colored lights. 
I am no thin-spined De Sade, adoring thorns!" 

 

William Casey

"Hitler once appeared to me in dream, grim, 
repentant, towing cowed Eva like a swallowed soul... 
a hang of flapping hair shut one demon-eye in, dimmed, 
wrestling with itself, whirlwind angels laughing in his skull. 
We killed him eventually; a few, true things 
penetrating to the innermost. I feel the arrow still 
my brother lumbered from my leg; atop a joyous swing 
I rubbed where its rubber cutting nose had thrilled. 
Our afternoons were resplendent, unhurried, vague, 
as we tumbled as cowboys and indians in an unholstered rush 
killing the shuffling vegetation and lizards that plagued 
our simmering summer patio. They would blink and push 
their low bellies in and out, alien, slow, 
themselves. I wish the doctor would come and kill my tumor now." 
 

Warm Tomb

Dad, high on inscrutability and his unconscious drive 
toward the meretricious, undoes the buzzing crust 
that baked him in place and disinterrs himself to give 
one final, lacerating lecture; weeds crush his memorial bust 
with an enduring, gorgeous green he'd scorn. 
Fearing the CIA and copper Kremlin in his West VA cave, 
his fevered eyes dripped in a marsupial's querulous skull 
as he cradled a shotgun's bucking butt to his shaved cheek 
rummaging for snagged fowl on the waste acres of his estate. 
"Interlopers... Boys, when the world inverts this time 
and the kikes come howling for your heart, nothing will be saved." 
His fat breathing heaved, "buy gold coins." 
What we cannot remember cannot save us. Blinking and appalled, 
I dream that the sun is one of us, like my dad, 
foredoomed, fated, monstrously alive. 
Disasters livened him, the minor death 
of a fly, stumbling and stumbling against the windowpane; 
the gross head all eyes, one damaged eye, limned in light. 
Dust leaps from the stone I skip, dust falls... 
I circle back: dust laps his grave. 

Middle Ground

Abandoned by our party in the garden park 
of Avon, I feel you shaken 
with a queasy stiffness; brackish 
as our garbaged New Jersey beach 
something's rising, radiant-spiked, 
rising, rising, to burst as light... 
Rocketing up from your ulcer's pit 
I ask myself, what is it, what is it? 
O how often have your hysterical, profound 
distemperate electricities hit ground! 
 
Spliced fire shams and sparks 
the matchstick held between us in the dark. 
Now undone by age, the spooky, loved 
hegemony of our plush masonic torch 
putters into mush in the gutted mud 
of the here and now, fading vivant, untouched. 
Still here after thirty remorseless years 
and too weak to laugh ourselves to tears, 
we lean like water against the sand: 
No world will hate what we cannot stand. 
 
Still posting for our finished race 
we stand outlined, awaiting grace 
that creeps against the boardwalk 
and seethes between the planks that cut our feet. 
Once, aching with a haltered wish to win 
and chalked white by spindly dawn 
we cantered to our easy beginnings and scoffed 
Bruno Latini on the loser's green. 
Remember winning? Scarred by crusts 
we cannot forget, that cannot forget us. 
 
Once, swelled by dreams, we labored down 
the awkward, parnassian slope, and stumbled 
crown over crown when we attempted Ararat... 
Religion had us stoned, overloading 
our middleaging ballast, filled 
with stones; they sat soldierly, 
round, white, yellow, white, alone. 
Look at what our childish 
urgent hands have crushed! 
An Atlantis lays buried between us. 
 
When the fatal plane zeroes on my heart, 
faint Fay Ray with cactus drink in hand, 
unerring in the air, amazed, alert, 
will you, love, move where I hurt, 
or like the gruesome Gorgon sprouting hooks 
spit useless fire still, caught in the traffic's brawl? 
Conspicuous the loss of consciousness.... 
rehabilitation the final joke of our crowd. 
Concentrating on the unmediated throb 
I think of you, myself, eyeing the prop. 
 

Election Day, Nov. 7, 1988

(A dying New Dealer looks askance at the changing of the guard)

"All night the grating visions. Curled 
in my electric bed against the prating arias of wind 
I watch my country go tiptoe towards the whirl 
.... The President's domineering, branded hip's unpinned 
by his eight typhooned, bleary years at the mast. 
Our older brother's younger rung squat-thrusts to the oarlock, lashed 
by the gold oar snapping from his grasp, spinning in quicksand... 
One Yalie summer nicknamed him, The Antidote. 
Unplugged by my heavy coronary, I lay lapsed, small. 
A tongue-red heart comes bleating like a wart 
sawn-off in the intern's dish, anxious to clasp my held-out hand... 
The anesthetist drops his mask. Mailing in my vote 
I weep for America's wrong, unflagging heart 
marooned like rescued Crusoe in the hospital." 
 

Edvard Shevardnashze

"Lenin in his tomb is white and weary. 
Before the world exploded into shards 
His voice was the bull-roarer, and it soared 
In waking syllables above the dreaming dead. 
Life's green branch is snapped above the boulevard 
Where we march shouting, and the stick 
Is in our hands whose slurring fire flamed 
The Kremlin's egg-shell spires back to ash. 
The ruling house is rubble rucked with tars; 
Tsars' bones cluck where dinosaur skeletons are. 
 
Smooth-skulled tanks from one-eyed turrets stare 
And move out like mastodons from their simple pits of ice, 
Rolling up the capitol with a wish to kill and eat 
The man-shaped offspring that teethed on mother-meat. 
It is incessant springtime now, and a rash 
Of bursting apples cracks the wintered bough 
Stunned by expectation and by prophesies; 
When I resigned Gorbachev to his statesman's fate, 
Telling off the congress with a blue face, 
What, love, rattled to the empty chute? 
 
Now we saunter and talk by the renewing river 
That sighs and shifts and corkscrews through Gorky Park 
Where the ferriswheel is shivering to its height 
And Moscow skaters wobble new-foaled, released 
From their eternal moment when Stalin stopped the stream, 
His mustache powdering like a giant Jack Frost pleased 
To see his humid hometown freezing into dream. 
Churches hold their quiver of new crosses up to light. 
Marooned in the humming populace of the Platz, larks 
Disperse with the bright bells beating like a gun; 
 
By starred asters starred children lamb and race 
Past buoyed parents walking, and cannot wait 
To see themselves staring up from the water's face. 
Dripping workers grown cold in soldered light 
Rivet the future's extinction together bolt by bolt... 
The Comintern's cragging inmates stare and scream  
Like storks in pilgrim plumage from their bobwire nest 
Topping the charring stacks; how long will stapled feathers stick? 
When the atom bomb blisters and their faces melt 
Before the torn waters of the burning lake 
What will rise in ecstatic showers to dissipate?" 
 

“All those who in roaring triumph died…”

All those who in roaring triumph died 
Must live in us, and, living, must suffer still 
Some bright ache of sacrifice enforced 
By a doubtful will. Aim no spade at that 
Chaste composure gods guard in forgetfulness. 
Remember the Fates' forgiveless testament, 
Nailing Prometheus to his crag at dawn 
For high hubris that was man's first sin; 
Or nodding Narcissus, winking at his twin 
Among gold flowers loaded with their own sweet dew, 
Until beauty like a surgeon's knife 
Had sawn him out of life to adorn a pool. 
 

When we lie with the hot worst of our beings spent

When we lie with the hot worst of our beings spent 
And may with the tired betters of our natures speak 
Conferring solidity to what had been lent 
When passion's cry had come amidst our squeaks, 
How can all our honest talk supplant the boast 
Perjured lust had disinterred with sighs 
Or gird our tropic with an icy coast 
Who had viewed spare reality through panting eyes 
That embroiders fine over grievous faults 
With threads of desire, spurring false shapes from dross, 
By peck and pull of the seamstress's wanton art 
Covering our many minor shames with one gross? 
When we into a twinned couplet twist our spans, 
Our bodies' rhyme is more than others can. 
 

Nothing is in a little space confined

Nothing is in a little space confined, 
And, once, confined, is finished in its effects; 
Not so the love that your eyes divines, 
In speculation out-vying philosopher's packs, 
In dwelling on what has no inward bound-- 
The sovereign rarity of a single soul-- 
Blessed with magnifying power to catch sounds, 
Showing your dimmest whisper true to all; 
That love which your eye to all eyes shows 
In universal application spills, 
Healing sick knots of hate that in loved bowers grow, 
Erasing from men's sins their stain of ill. 
As there is no staying of the sun by obstinate night, 
So there is no caging of such love's light. 

When, all insecure, before howling mountains

When, all insecure, before howling mountains 
Thrown, I make my breviary all of pleas 
And pull a dark choir of fears from one tone: 
That you forbid with "No" my devoutest "Please." 
When begging poorly after with my poor bowl of want 
Some thrifty grain of your rich rice to eat, 
I repeat my fervent graces for that sup 
Until all my kneeled body a trembled flare 
Of stark uncertainty resembles, 
My hopes all poured in the concentration of a cup 
That I might from the spices of your eye unpent 
Some seasoning of affection by my heat. 
But whether it is a matter of soul or bowl, 
The sum is this: from your least grows my all. 

 

My silent love is ripped by warring thoughts

My silent love is ripped by warring thoughts 
That troop to rebellion from my crowded heart 
And from my tongue's enemy camp cry all my cause. 
Armies in my veins raise blushing fires 
To burn me out of hiding towards your tender smile. 
But since I am so modest shy of light, 
And like the gloomy groundhog room in caves, 
My dark eyes may never touch your pure sight 
Or caress with lurid roll the motive of your sighs 
Which like a bonfire from space, neatly tucked 
Beneath quilted clouds of opposing rain, 
Burns obscured, or lies damped to dross unless 
Your dripping eyes these fired words drift across. 

The wasteful sun wakes blinking in morning’s weeds

The wasteful sun wakes blinking in morning's weeds, 
Stoking bland buds until they burn as leaves 
Adding shade while the sun must spend his seed, 
And end generation in a spilling breeze. 
Crowded near the generous golds you smear 
Greedy plants, like myself, stand wiped by light, 
Offering hungry faces that all in green appear 
To feed on molten surplus of your beams. 
Do not with banker's measure judge too hard 
All those who live in interest of your sight; 
Such scales would swing me too lightly into clouds 
And judge my weighty love a zero dram. 
Paymaster of all my joy's fees, with me descend 
Or cycle skyward, where all our wages end. 

 

Time has set his eating stamp on your kind face,

Time has set his eating stamp on your kind face, 
Infecting more deeply what each day's renown 
Promotes, until he has all smooth grace consumed, 
Raking acid trenches where flowered fields had blown. 
But you shall be revenged on what thief time can take, 
For though every flower dies that in April had its head, 
And woodpeckers mark seconds while they make, 
And blossoms burst, their shriveled petals shed, 
And mountains wash eventually to sea,  
They have nothing of what your soul intends--- 
For effortless beauty cannot from you leave 
That have in mental gates stored beauty others lend. 
In your mind revolves an uncorrupted rose, 
As in a glass ball, whose petals cannot close. 
 

Out of time’s cramped oblivion let

Out of time's cramped oblivion let 
Your gentle nature shake glad tomorrows 
That goes all honied now with sorrow 
And walks in shrouds of sighs blaspheming heaven 
That ever spiked such bitter in your palette 
Which only youthful sweetness had leavened. 
Do not tread in anger at the skies 
Which melt and change indifferent to men 
And all their waste of importuning cries. 
Return to dewy looks of love again 
And let the sad house of death, draped with pall, 
The merry carpenter delight reframe 
And with each love-look build new chapel halls 
Arched against the tart recurrence of your pain. 
 

Who can mourn what time has stripped bare

Who can mourn what time has stripped bare 
And left standing with an empty purse? 
If you cannot breed sighs for fleas, by time's char 
Defaced, and drained, weep not for me, nor curse 
That my descending bier, like the locust, 
Must hibernate some days in winking earth. 
My long shadow still scuttles on the crust 
In these crabbed figures you now rehearse; 
As long as men use some ounce of breath for speech 
My weight will not be all in bones dispersed, 
But may by their moist utterance some white heaven reach. 
All things in all things somewhat mingle; 
Death, whose wreath is thorns, but compounds the tangle. 

 
 

Let me not drape with too much dignity

Let me not drape with too much dignity 
The little sinful wishes of my will; 
For when I come cajoling from the wanting sea 
That beats within me, my dripping wishes make me chill. 
But even so, all sogged with indecisions, 
And trailing everywhere dark seaweed thoughts, 
My desires throng past watery hesitations 
To overpress your protesting shore of rocks. 
Then the cold squid that wraps my tepid heart 
Contracts, urging me all my wickedness retract, 
Who blusters lack-breath still among your parts 
While my inner sense eyes the sea's retreating tract. 
So it is I have come to love too all-sudden 
And with sighing whim walk backwards, begging pardon. 
 

When love’s swelling wound is by conscience pricked

When love's swelling wound is by conscience pricked 
And all the propping stilts like lily stalks 
Are with comic's timing out from under kicked, 
What is left that may be bandaged by our talk? 
Attraction's balloon, which gave us mild rise, 
Has had all its static power neutered 
By our cross looks, and no new-issued sighs 
Come lowing from our bellows here abed. 
Our tender wide swaths of kind regard 
Are stapled through by compelling argument 
Until we, bloody-fingered, but prop shards 
Against the next assault on our separate sinking tents. 
Still, when I feel you lying here, I think 
There's fire in us yet to swell our loves 
And all our rubber war of hatreds shrink. 
 

Have I not, laden with my melancholy

Have I not, laden with my melancholy 
Dose of liquid dreams, poured all out at your want 
And gilded laughter on my lips' disease 
Til your lips Midas' taste? And have I not 
A little nation of desires spent 
In the sovereign country of your thigh? 
Or the fission of all my atoms burnt 
Like a penny candle, extinguished by your sighs? 
And have I not, the gold of owning love 
Out of my pockets picked, made towards you 
With all the winking signals of a delighted ship 
No matter what tars in my ballast moved? 
Still I'll burn my tars, and my weightless body wreck 
If you'll still prove a catching coral for my wrack. 

 

Although you shrink in all the world’s commend

Although you shrink in all the world's commend, 
My eye, being so bound below, must see your state 
Exalted forever, and in lisping wish hear commands, 
Training all my weak powers to stand as your prelate. 
Although you wish stern winds in changed motion blow, 
Or face themselves, and in opposition end, 
They shall bend and stop as your desire goes; 
Although you wish time's ruin to suspend 
And keep vital death inactive that yearns to kill 
Or erase all your age's scars back to birth, 
Each small wish shall be the everything of my will, 
Overturning Atlas and his tipsy earth 
By my modest course; for what your least dream has said 
Speaks prophecies to my ear of lead. 
 

You had grown quiet in a snowy field

You had grown quiet in a snowy field, 
Stood a little near the fence, did not move 
But led sleeping flakes on your blushing tongue to yield 
Their bodies back to water, misting love. 
How like those little crystals, though in large, 
My solemn wishes harmless fall on your magnificence 
To dissolve in the huge waters of your marge 
And, losing all themselves, add nothing to your sense. 
For you are more, in your silent warmth, 
Like constant earth that wears seasons for her veils, 
Changing summer green for autumn's gaiety,-- 
More constant, more true, more everything of worth 
Than the fretful melts that touch your least detail 
And must, with touching, the seasons of their being interchange, 
Losing their winter dignity in your kissing spring. 

You into every raging ache of nature

You into every raging ache of nature 
Extend some modest drop of placid bliss. 
Have I not seen the self-conflicting features 
Of some close friend melt to joy at your sweet kiss? 
Have I not myself myself reviled, 
Meditating bruises in a moody wood 
Where mild leaves hiss seeming accusations 
And all my discontented soul moved hooded 
By low-flying thoughts, until you stepped brightly by 
Whistling secret smiles from my black shards? 
Each good that thrives steals some good from you, no lie. 
Until you stooped in grace, with leaning eye 
Peering from heaven into my sad case, 
And turned all my wrath to froth, I was waste. 
 

Sweet delight that perishes on the hour!

Sweet delight that perishes on the hour! 
How many more, to amend your faded score 
Of graces, must here attend and pass? 
Cakes left at Diana's virgin temple cannot sour 
Nor marching corruption force that holy door 
Blossoms have stopped up; those flowers are of glass- 
And sacred plantings cannot die. Although sore 
To go with you, and not one extra empty minute 
Be commanded to rehearse, I must die 
Now sometime after rarest bliss has left 
A lonely globe abandoned by delight 
Where birds twitter riches to impoverished skies 
Dumb of answering song. O, look, the light 
Is lashing westward once again, extending night. 
 

Bronze eyes that stare unmoving at the sun

Bronze eyes that stare unmoving at the sun 
While living glances wince, can no more stare 
At that which dances here beneath, and runs, 
Shouting dying cries to the deafened air. 
No sinking eye can raise re-lauded 
What went hissing down, no monument of tears 
Fountain forth what sadness mixed with water. 
Memory must her crowded chariot forbear 
And carry nothing, until statued grief 
By gradual time has her banded sands dispersed 
To stand no more; those distraught features lapsed. 
Distemperate art but paints a shadowed wreath 
Not real roses, nor can pinch dull clay to breath 
As spent as Adam's, and nothing near his worth. 

Prometheus Bound

"Do not think my penitential silence pride 
Or arrogant stubbornness. It is not. 
No, it is a consuming meditation 
That works in me when my mind considers 
The subtle hurts that load my outcast state, 
And of how in past time my estimation 
Showered ignorant honors on my jailers, 
Gilding their crimes before their doing of them. 
But enough; of what your hearts know how should I speak? 
Listen to mortal suffering,-- how I 
Spied them fumbling with their helpless wits, and helped. 
It is a tale briefly told. Not to scold 
Erring man, but to show how much his stature's grown. 
In their uncouncilled sight first spread vain webs 
Of woven pride that gave far-seeing judgement 
Close cataracts, obscuring heinous crimes. 
And into their young hearing they had poured 
Not mellow summer songs gathered from the air, 
But stuffed deaf ears with brays of their own praises. 
They were not men, but instead resembled 
The shapes we see in dreams, mingling all. 
To their burrowing lives I broke some light 
That had been darker else. Like timid ants 
They lived and ate, and kept house in foul caves. 
Neither stars of winter nor the presaging scent 
Of springtime did they know by counting moons, 
Nor was laden summer by signs revealed. 
But every matter was pursued in ignorance, 
Full of wrong causes, false heads and false tails, 
Inverting logic until I came and gave 
Risen stars names and mapped their difficult settings. 
I ferreted out the art of numbers 
That put in the simple scope of man's discretion 
The control of nature, and lettered rude mouths 
With speech that made but oohs and ahs before, giving thus 
Discursive memory its mothering talk 
That nursed the nine. By my gentle bough 
Beasts came lowing to the yoke and plow 
To perform with docile thanks hard labor 
Men laid idly by. I made them love the rein 
Who move lordly chariots with prideful steps. 
And from the burning tongues of gods brought down 
Stolen fire 
All these fool's arts I made for man alone 
Who can't glue together some salvation for himself. 
But when gods threat, saving devices perish 
And cleverness holds up stumps, not hands, to pluck 
This downcast body from its tortured state." 

Among Fugitive Hills

Caught in sweat under a May moon's baleful eye, 
Trembling in his stripes, the rapist's case 
Twists against him: cops are rooting in the cleft 
Where he has hid, and has bloomed his mortal joy; 
White was ever the webbed habiliment 
Of innocence, of youth not yet betrayed 
By aching age, the body stretched and splayed 
That had known quiet concentration for a toy 
And stared down blowing hours at a spider's weft. 
A spotlight loiters up the cliff in searing zigs. 
 
Red sirens in a burning forest moan, 
Stage left; another crooked mountain over, 
Another tragedy. Our killer in the brambles 
Mumbles curses, thumbs a furious bee 
Out of his dirty ear, and spits against night clover. 
Scratched like Christ, but cynical-tired 
As prosecuting Pilate, he must pause and puff, 
And stain the winter hawthorne that upholds a spray 
Of indifferent spring, swelling the sublime 
With idle odors under a star's demurring haze. 
 
But round again, like a repeating hymn 
Flashed the indicting needle of their light 
Pinning him, an ape-man up a tree, pinned 
Him who thought to leap and bite and still escape. 
Every downstream salmon dreams the ocean's home, 
Their first mistake. The manhunt's gripping snare 
Inches in, a time-lapse bullwhip zeroed on a tiger's nose, 
To ring an empty hawthorne hollywood moonlight spots. 
He'd fled nimbly bleeding from the hot 
Pursuit, but left his card; in an oozed gash 
Of one snapped limb, it read: "Fred, Illusionast." 

To A Young Man

I 
Close up the grave that called you idly by 
And bid you linger who, lingering, must fall. 
Although death's embassy out of tulips blows 
And spins fine madness from the spider's crowded eye 
And purls about the dusty adder's tongue 
Hissing salvation, and is by soft promise pressed, 
Do not listen; Ay, although it reason  
With a multitude, and fix the staring crowd 
On the last things, and make each one a ghost,  
Out of straining vapors traced, do not;  
The mournful tones of those forgathered tongues 
But make a solemn moan of bone to bone. 

II 
First stitch love to every circumstance, and sail 
The round horizon through, sunset-stained, 
To flat heaven, which holds all joys in one wide view... 
Then melt scars from the very hardness of all life 
And be resolved to a contented water-drop 
Before you question death. Was there ever sound 
Of trammelled corpses startled laughing from the ground? 
Although you tear at eyes decayed, begging see, 
And from dead tongues crave lavish answer, 
That can never come; those hearts are sunk through bursting ribs, 
Unmanned by living wind those lungs, that once 
Shouted down the busy sky's testament of thunder. 

III 
Walk a humbler track, kiss pilgrims' dust, 
Set your laurel down to shade a sleeping bee, 
Or leave some lonely sacrament in a hilltop wood 
Where it may go to seed in the depthless shade 
And sprout new sanctity to untutored wilderness. 
But first shake off those saddest looks that weight an unwiped brow, 
And lift clear smiles to those now clouded lips 
That indulged love, and from passion's unwearied kiss 
Grew frenzied, to touch, and stretch, and touch again, 
The final mystery with whitened lips. 
Then drown the hop-toad sorrow in anonymous wine, 
Let afternoons unravel in the sun, and rest, 
And drowse in each moment's uninstructed joy. 
 
Ay! Throw stones at your accusers' mirrored scorn 
And see yourself perched in their curled frowns no more. 
Life was a happy adventure first, where dewlaps sang 
In an undiscovered dale in secret Arcady 
Where grass was higher than our eyes. Once again, 
Though embattled powers and misted storms profane, 
Race to meet that child cringing in the din. 
 
[ NOT USED  II ]
 
When a man stares in his face, 
By rich deceit and intricate age undone, 

Teach the spirit that is your rich inhabitant 
To foster lilies 
For your portioned bed, to sleep and wake upon. 

 

Kennedy’s Inauguration Night, Nixon

 
"Eisenhower was a rube, I know, I loved 
to watch his pinned medals glitter against the sun, 
out-shining heaven in our low human eyes; 
even a deaf man hears the exploding power of a gun 
that's pointing at him. So I heard 
that hissing voice escape from a head bald as a tire. 
Unshaved in my happy rush to greet him at ugly dawn's 
each initiation, I kneeled and scraped 
the dog-lickings from my master's unwashed plate, 
revelled in the white-house grease, and after that 
displayed to my warm house-mate the tired, flat 
unscolded coating of my obsequious tongue 
unleavened by any pentecostal haste, or arching stab 
of truth's spirit, that catches fire on the worst dross 
to drag a grand thing back to its humble embers 
topped by a smoky spire. I would brood my ruins. 
But I knew how to keep my acid grumblings down. 
One knew what one was and what one wanted to be. 
But how did one know what wanting was worth? 
Have I closed up too much of what I ought 
to have left seething open? Was I too-much a mouse 
waiting for the lion's roaring chance as I peered 
out from my walled hole? The drain-hole 
that saves a whelming lung could suck my zest; 
I crest the world's wash, and watch 
the lancing TV-eye mount my blubbered burn, an Ahab 
on his wild whale, ready to needle me open again 
and sip my ambitious innards into its downward din. 
Around me grin and whiten the papers' lettered teeth. 
O Horatian mouth, drooling sibilants, o 
ocean hunger raising the rage of insistent seas 
that grind all my lifted fakes of paint to one grey truth, 
please forget me, a shrimp among your inks, a tired tale 
to regale dry old maids with, not a storming nation.  
After my quiet time I shall cut flesh 
to tailor my new suit with, all golds, 
to implore the masses' adoration. Eh, Checkers? 
so, absorbent nation, swear in your Kennedys and Johnsons; 
i swear, before the world has spun its globe to mush 
under a forgetful sun, I'll come back to win, 
surprising the reeling competition with a smile as thin 
as a knife-edge, and grind 
these snowy pediments under my heel to dust. 
But for now, turn in your watered sleep, bury me 
far back behind the advice column, or cramped ads 
for toothpaste. Sleep, o recumbent nation, 
while dreams are cheap. When teased into the arena 
by Fate's fickle feather once again 
and treated traitorously by our desires 
until we long for the approach of the lions, 
lying in the dusty sun, we listen to 
our overdue bruises mumble invective against us." 
 

End