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poem.id | poem.ts | poem.title | poem.author | poem.content | poem.category_1_x_poem_id |
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41 | 2018-02-27 21:06:16 | this evangelist... (XXIX) | E. E. Cummings | Unfortunately this poem has been removed from our archives at the insistence of the copyright holder. | { "41": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 41, "category_1.id": 2, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:26", "category_1.title": "Angel Poems" } } |
42 | 2018-02-27 21:06:18 | Angels | Russell Edson | They have little use. They are best as objects of torment.No government cares what you do with them.Like birds, and yet so human . . .They mate by briefly looking at the other.Their eggs are like white jellybeans.Sometimes they have been said to inspire a manto do more with his life than he might have.But what is there for a man to do with his life?. . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame.When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . . |
{ "42": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 42, "category_1.id": 2, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:26", "category_1.title": "Angel Poems" } } |
43 | 2018-02-27 21:06:18 | The Changeling | Russell Edson | A man had a son who was an anvil. And then sometimes he was an automobile tire. I do wish you would sit still, said the father. Sometimes his son was a rock. I realize that you have quite lost boundary, where no excess seems excessive, nor to where poverty roots hunger to need. But should you allow time to embrace you to its bosom of dust, that velvet sleep, then were you served even beyond your need; and desire in sate was properly spilling from its borders, said the father. Then his son became the corner of a room. Don't don't, cried the father. And then his son became a floorboard. Don't don't, the moon falls there and curdles your wits into the grain of the wood, cried the father. What shall I do? screamed his son. Sit until time embraces you into the bosom of its velvet quiet, cried the father. Like this? Cried his son as his son became dust. Ah, that is more pleasant, and speaks well of him, who having required much in his neglect of proper choice, turns now, on good advice, to a more advantageous social stance, said the father. But then his son became his father. Behold, the son is become as one of us, said the father. His son said, behold, the son is become as one of us. Will you stop repeating me, screamed the father. Will you stop repeating me, screamed his son. Oh well, I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, sighed the father. Oh well, I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, sighed his son. |
{ "43": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 43, "category_1.id": 2, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:26", "category_1.title": "Angel Poems" }, "2127": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 2127, "category_1.id": 100, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:20:10", "category_1.title": "Son Poems" } } |
44 | 2018-02-27 21:06:23 | On Angels | Czeslaw Milosz | All was taken away from you: white dresses,wings, even existence.Yet I believe you,messengers. There, where the world is turned inside out,a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems. Shorts is your stay here:now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,in a melody repeated by a bird,or in the smell of apples at close of daywhen the light makes the orchards magic. They say somebody has invented youbut to me this does not sound convincingfor the humans invented themselves as well. The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof,as it can belong only to radiant creatures,weightless and winged (after all, why not?),girdled with the lightening. I have heard that voice many a time when asleepand, what is strange, I understood more or lessan order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue: day draw nearanother onedo what you can. |
{ "44": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 44, "category_1.id": 2, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:26", "category_1.title": "Angel Poems" } } |
45 | 2018-02-27 21:06:24 | Essay on Man | Alexander Pope | The First EpistleAwake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of Kings. Let us (since Life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate(2) free o'er all this scene of Man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot, Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; The latent tracts(3), the giddy heights explore Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the Manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate(4) the ways of God to Man. 1. Say first, of God above, or Man below, What can we reason, but from what we know? Of Man what see we, but his station here, From which to reason, or to which refer? Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known, 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own. He, who thro' vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe, Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns, What vary'd being peoples ev'ry star, May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are. But of this frame the bearings, and the ties, The strong connections, nice dependencies, Gradations just, has thy pervading soul Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole? Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind! First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less! Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? Or ask of yonder argent fields(5) above, Why JOVE'S Satellites are less than JOVE?(6) Of Systems possible, if 'tis confest That Wisdom infinite must form the best, Where all must full or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain There must be, somewhere, such rank as Man; And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong? Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call, Nay, must be right, as relative to all. In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain, A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; In God's, one single can its end produce; Yet serves to second too some other use. So Man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God:(7) Then shall Man's pride and dullness comprehend His actions', passions', being's, use and end; Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity. Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault; Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought; His knowledge measur'd to his state and place, His time a moment, and a point his space. If to be perfect in a certain sphere, What matter, soon or late, or here or there? The blest today is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago.III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescrib'd, their present state; From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer Being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play? Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n; Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore! What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that Hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never Is, but always To be blest: The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come. Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the watry waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold! To Be, contents his natural desire, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's(8) fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense Weigh thy Opinion against Providence; Call Imperfection what thou fancy'st such, Say, here he gives too little, there too much; Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,(9) Yet cry, If Man's unhappy, God's unjust; If Man alone ingross not Heav'n's high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there: Snatch from his hand the balance(10) and the rod, Re-judge his justice, be the GOD of GOD! In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods. Aspiring to be Gods, if Angels fell, Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel; And who but wishes to invert the laws Of ORDER, sins against th' Eternal Cause.V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, Earth for whose use? Pride answers, "Tis for mine: For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r, Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r; Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies." But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No ('tis reply'd) the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws; Th' exceptions few; some change since all began, And what created perfect?" -- Why then Man? If the great end be human Happiness, Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less? As much that end a constant course requires Of show'rs and sun-shine, as of Man's desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As Men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design, Why then a Borgia,(11) or a Catiline?(12) Who knows but he, whose hand the light'ning forms, Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce Ambition in a Caesar's(13) mind, Or turns young Ammon(14) loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs; Account for moral as for nat'ral things: Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right is to submit. Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here; That never air or ocean felt the wind; That never passion discompos'd the mind: But ALL subsists by elemental strife; and Passions are the elements of Life. The gen'ral ORDER, since the whole began, Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he soar, And little less than Angel,(15) would be more; Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears. Made for his use all creatures if he call, Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all? Nature to these, without profusion kind, The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd; Each seeming want compensated of course, Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own; Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all? The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No pow'rs of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite,(16) not comprehend the heav'n? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore? Or quick effluvia(17) darting thro' the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still The whisp'ring Zephyr,(18) and the purling rill?(19) Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies?VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends: Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the people grass: What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between, And hound sagacious(20) on the tainted(21) green: Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,(22) To that which warbles thro' the vernal(23) wood: The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew:(24) How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine, Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine: 'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier; For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near! Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd; What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide: And Middle natures,(25) how they long to join, Yet never pass th' insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be Subjected these to those, or all to thee? The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone, Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one?VIII. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go! Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast chain of being, which from God began, Natures ethereal,(26) human, angel, man Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see, No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee, From thee to Nothing! -- On superior pow'rs Were we to press, inferior might on ours: Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destoy'd: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. And if each system in gradation roll, Alike essential to th' amazing whole; The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole must fall. Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly, Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky, Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd, Being on being wreck'd, and world on world, Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, And Nature tremble to the throne of God: All this dread ORDER break -- for whom? for thee? Vile worm! -- oh, Madness, Pride, Impiety!IX. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread, Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd(27) To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind? Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains The great directing MIND of ALL ordains. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body, Nature is, and God the soul; That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent, Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal parts, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns, As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns; To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.X. Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee. Submit -- In this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony, not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good: And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, One truth is clear, "Whatever IS, is RIGHT."Argument of the Second Epistle:Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to Himself, as an Individual. The business of Man not to pry into God, butto study himself.Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,(28) A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest, In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much: Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd; Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!ENDNOTES: 1[His friend, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke] 2[to wander] 3[hidden areas] 4[explain or defend] 5[silvery fields, i.e., the heavens] 6[the planet Jupiter] 7[ancient Egyptians sometimes worshipped oxen] 8[the highest level of angels] 9[pleasure] 10[the balance used to weigh justice] 11[Caesar Borgia (1476-1507) who used any cruelty to achieve his ends] 12[Lucious Sergius Catilina (108-62 B.C.) who was a traitor to Rome] 13[Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) who was thought to be overly ambitious Roman] 14[Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.)] 15[Psalm 8:5--"Thou hast made him [man] a little lower than the angels...."] 16[small insect] 17[vapors which were believed to pass odors to the brain] 18[the West Wind] 19[stream] 20[able to pick up a scent] 21[having the odor of an animal] 22[ocean] 23[green] 24[honey was thought to have medicinal properties] 25[Animals slightly below humans on the chain of being] 26[heavenly] 27[complained] 28[i.e., on the chain of being between angels and animals] |
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46 | 2018-02-27 21:06:26 | The Animals | Edwin Muir | They do not live in the world, Are not in time and space. From birth to death hurled No word do they have, not one To plant a foot upon, Were never in any place. For with names the world was called Out of the empty air, With names was built and walled, Line and circle and square, Dust and emerald; Snatched from deceiving death By the articulate breath. But these have never trod Twice the familiar track, Never never turned back Into the memoried day. All is new and near In the unchanging Here Of the fifth great day of God, That shall remain the same, Never shall pass away. |
{ "46": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 46, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
47 | 2018-02-27 21:06:31 | Part 10 of Trout Fishing in America | Richard Brautigan | WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA PEACEIn San Francisco around Easter time last year, they had atrout fishing in America peace parade. They had thousandsof red stickers printed and they pasted them on their smallforeign cars, and on means of national communication liketelephone poles. The stickers had WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AM-ERICA PEACE printed on them. Then this group of college- and high-school-trained Com-munists, along with some Communist clergymen and theirMarxist-taught children, marched to San Francisco fromSunnyvale, a Communist nerve center about forty miles away. It took them four days to walk to San Francisco. Theystopped overnight at various towns along the way, and slepton the lawns of fellow travelers. They carried with them Communist trout fishing in Ameri-ca peace propaganda posters:"DON'T DROP AN H-BOMB ON THE OLD FISHING HOLE I" "ISAAC WALTON WOULD'VE HATED THE BOMB!" "ROYAL COACHMAN, SI! ICBM, NO!" They carried with them many other trout fishing in Amer-ica peace inducements, all following the Communist worldconquest line: the Gandhian nonviolence Trojan horse. When these young, hard-core brainwashed members ofthe Communist conspiracy reached the "Panhandle, " theemigre Oklahoma Communist sector of San Francisco, thou-sands of other Communists were waiting for them. Thesewere Communists who couldn't walk very far. They barelyhad enough strength to make it downtown. Thousands of Communists, protected by the police, marcheddown to Union Square, located in the very heart of San Fran-cisco. The Communist City Hall riots in 1960 had presentedevidence of it, the police let hundreds of Communists escape,but the trout fishing in America peace parade was the finalindictment: police protection. Thousands of Communists marched right into the heart ofSan Francisco, and Communist speakers incited them forhours and the young people wanted to blow up Colt Tower, butthe Communist clergy told them to put away their plasticbombs. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men shoulddo to you, do ye even so to them . . . There will be no needfor explosives, " they said. America needs no other proof. The Red shadow of theGandhian nonviolence Trojan horse has fallen across Ameri-ca, and San Francisco is its stable. Obsolete is the mad rapist's legendary piece of candy. Atthis very moment, Communist agents are handing out Witnessfor trout fishing in America peace tracts to innocent childrenriding the cable cars. FOOTNOTE CHAPTER TO "RED LIP"Living in the California bush we had no garbage service. Ourgarbage was never greeted in the early morning by a manwith a big smile on his face and a kind word or two. Wecouldn't burn any of the garbage because it was the dry seas-on and everything was ready to catch on fire anyway, includ-ing ourselves. The garbage was a problem for a little whileand then we discovered a way to get rid of it. We took the garbage down to where there were three aban-doned houses in a row. We carried sacks full of tin cans,papers, peelings, bottles and Popeyes. We stopped at the last abandoned house where there werethousands of old receipts to the San Francisco Chroniclethrown all over the bed and the children's toothbrushes werestill in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Behind the place was an old outhouse and to get down to it,you had to follow the path down past some apple trees and apatch of strange plants that we thought were either a goodspice that would certainly enhance our cooking or the plantswere deadly nightshade that would cause our cooking to beless. We carried the garbage down to the outhouse and alwaysopened the door slowly because that was the only way youcould open it, and on the wall there was a roll of toilet paper,so old it looked like a relative, perhaps a cousin, to the Mag-na Carta. We lifted up the lid of the toilet and dropped the garbagedown into the darkness. This went on for weeks and weeksuntil it became very funny to lift the lid of the toilet and in-stead of seeing darkness below or maybe the murky abstractoutline of garbage, we saw bright, definite and lusty garbageheaped up almost to the top. If you were a stranger and went down there to take an in-nocent crap, you would've had quite a surprise when you lift-ed up the lid. We left the California bush just before it became necessaryto stand on the toilet seat and step into that hole, crushingthe garbage down like an accordion into the abyss. THE CLEVELAND WRECKING YARDUntil recently my knowledge about the Cleveland WreckingYard had come from a couple of friends who'd bought thingsthere. One of them bought a huge window: the frame, glassand everything for just a few dollars. It was a fine-lookingwindow. Then he chopped a hole in the side of his house up onPotrero Hill and put the window in. Now he has a panoramicview of the San Francisco County Hospital. He can practically look right down into the wards and seeold magazines eroded like the Grand Canyon from endlessreadings. He can practically hear the patients thinking aboutbreakfast: I hate milk and thinking about dinner: I hate peas,and then he can watch the hospital slowly drown at night,hopelessly entangled in huge bunches of brick seaweed. He bought that window at the Cleveland Wrecking Yard. My other friend bought an iron roof at the Cleveland Wreck-ing Yard and took the roof down to Big Sur in an old stationwagon and then he carried the iron roof on his back up theside of a mountain. He carried up half the roof on his back.It was no picnic. Then he bought a mule, George, from Pleas-anton. George carried up the other half of the roof. The mule didn't like what was happening at all. He lost alot of weight because of the ticks, and the smell of the wild-cats up on the plateau made him too nervous to graze there.My friend said jokingly that George had lost around two hun-dred pounds. The good wine country around Pleasanton in theLivermore Valley probably had looked a lot better to Georgethan the wild side of the Santa Lucia Mountains. My friend's place was a shack right beside a huge fire-place where there had once been a great mansion during the1920s, built by a famous movie actor. The mansion was builtbefore there was even a road down at Big Sur. The mansionhad been brought over the mountains on the backs of mules,strung out like ants, bringing visions of the good life to thepoison oak, the ticks, and the salmon. The mansion was on a promontory, high over the Pacific.Money could see farther in the 1920s and one could look outand see whales and the Hawaiian Islands and the Kuomintangin China. The mansion burned down years ago. The actor died. His mules were made into soap. His mistresses became bird nests of wrinkles. Now only the fireplace remains as a sort of Carthaginianhomage to Hollywood. I was down there a few weeks ago to see my friend's roof.I wouldn't have passed up the chance for a million dollars,as they say. The roof looked like a colander to me. If thatroof and the rain were running against each other at BayMeadows, I'd bet on the rain and plan to spend my winningsat the World's Fair in Seattle. My own experience with the Cleveland Wrecking Yard be-gan two days ago when I heard about a used trout streamthey had on sale out at the Yard. So I caught the Number 15bus on Columbus Avenue and went out there for the first time. There were two Negro boys sitting behind me on the bus.They were talking about Chubby Checker and the Twist. Theythought that Chubby Checker was only fifteen years old be-cause he didn't have a mustache. Then they talked about someother guy who did the twist forty-four hours in a row untilhe saw George Washington crossing the Delaware. "Man, that's what I call twisting, " one of the kids said. "I don't think I could twist no forty-four hours in a row, "the other kid said. "That's a lot of twisting. " I got off the bus right next to an abandoned Time Gasolinefilling station and an abandoned fifty-cent self-service carwash. There was a long field on one side of the filling station.The field had once been covered with a housing project dur-ing the war, put there for the shipyard workers. On the other side of the Time filling station was the Cleve-land Wrecking Yard. I walked down there to have a look atthe used trout stream. The Cleveland Wrecking Yard has avery long front window filled with signs and merchandise. There was a sign in the window advertising a laundry marking machine for $65. 00. The original cost of the mach- ine was $175. 00. Quite a saving. There was another sign advertising new and used two and three ton hoists. I wondered how many hoists it would take to move a trout stream. There was another sign that said: THE FAMILY GIFT CENTER, GIFT SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY The window was filled with hundreds of items for the en- tire family. Daddy, do you know what I want for Christmas? son? A bathroom. Mommy do you know what I want for Christmas? What, Patricia? Some roofing material There were jungle hammocks in the window for distant relatives and dollar-ten-cent gallons of earth-brown enamel paint for other loved ones. There was also a big sign that said: USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE. MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED, I went inside and looked at some ship's lanterns that were for sale next to the door. Then a salesman came up to me and said in a pleasant voice, "Can I help you?" "Yes, " I said. "I'm curious about the trout stream you have for sale. Can you tell me something about it? How are you selling it?" "We're selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little as you want or you can buy all we've got left. A man came in here this morning and bought 563 feet. He's going to give it to his niece for a birthday present, " the salesman said. "We're selling the waterfalls separately of course, and the trees and birds, flowers grass and ferns we're also sell- ing extra. The insects we're giving away free with a mini- mum purchase of ten feet of stream. " "How much are you selling the stream for?" I asked. "Six dollars and fifty-cents a foot, " he said. "That's for the first hundred feet. After that it's five dollars a foot." "How much are the birds?" I asked. "Thirty-five cents apiece, " he said. "But of course they're used. We can't guarantee anything." "How wide is the stream?" I asked. "You said you wereselling it by the length, didn't you?" "Yes, " he said. "We're selling it by the length. Its widthruns between five and eleven feet. You don't have to pay any-thing extra for width. It's not a big stream, but it's verypleasant. " "What kinds of animals do you have 7" I asked. "We only have three deer left, " he said. "Oh What about flowers 7" "By the dozen, " he said. "Is the stream clear?" I asked. "Sir, " the salesman said. "I wouldn't want you to thinkthat we would ever sell a murky trout stream here. We al-ways make sure they're running crystal clear before we eventhink about moving them. " "Where did the stream come from?" I asked. "Colorado, " he said. "We moved it with loving care. We'venever damaged a trout stream yet. We treat them all as ifthey were china. " "You're probably asked this all the time, but how's fish-ing in the stream?" I asked. "Very good, " he said. "Mostly German browns, but thereare a few rainbows. " "What do the trout cost?" I asked. "They come with the stream, " he said. "Of course it's allluck. You never know how many you're going to get or howbig they are. But the fishing's very good, you might say it'sexcellent. Both bait and dry fly, " he said smiling. "Where's the stream at?" I asked. "I'd like to take a lookat it. " "It's around in back, " he said. "You go straight throughthat door and then turn right until you're outside. It's stackedin lengths. You can't miss it. The waterfalls are upstairs inthe used plumbing department. " "What about the animals?" "Well, what's left of the animals are straight back fromthe stream. You'll see a bunch of our trucks parked on aroad by the railroad tracks. Turn right on the road and fol-low it down past the piles of lumber. The animal shed's rightat the end of the lot. " "Thanks, " I said. "I think I'11 look at the waterfalls first.You don't have to come with me. Just tell me how to get thereand I'11 find my own way. "All right, " he said. "Go up those stairs. You'll see abunch of doors and windows, turn left and you'll find theused plumbing department. Here's my card if you need anyhelp. " "Okay, " I said. "You've been a great help already. Thanksa lot. I'11 take a look around." "Good luck, " he said. I went upstairs and there were thousands of doors there.I'd never seen so many doors before in my life. You couldhave built an entire city out of those doors. Doorstown. Andthere were enough windows up there to build a little suburbentirely out of windows. Windowville. I turned left and went back and saw the faint glow of pearl-colored light. The light got stronger and stronger as I wentfarther back, and then I was in the used plumbing department,surrounded by hundreds of toilets. The toilets were stacked on shelves. They were stackedfive toilets high. There was a skylight above the toilets thatmade them glow like the Great Taboo Pearl of the South Seamovies. Stacked over against the wall were the waterfalls. Therewere about a dozen of them, ranging from a drop of a fewfeet to a drop of ten or fifteen feet. There was one waterfall that was over sixty feet long.There were tags on the pieces of the big falls describing thecorrect order for putting the falls back together again. The waterfalls all had price tags on them. They weremore expensive than the stream. The waterfalls were sellingfor $19.00 a foot. I went into another room where there were piles of sweet-smelling lumber, glowing a soft yellow from a different colorskylight above the lumber. In the shadows at the edge of theroom under the sloping roof of the building were many sinksand urinals covered with dust, and there was also anotherwaterfall about seventeen feet long, lying there in two lengthsand already beginning to gather dust. I had seen all I wanted of the waterfalls, and now I wasvery curious about the trout stream, so I followed the sales-man's directions and ended up outside the building. O I had never in my life seen anything like that troutstream. It was stacked in piles of various lengths: ten, fif-teen, twenty feet, etc. There was one pile of hundred-footlengths. There was also a box of scraps. The scraps werein odd sizes ranging from six inches to a couple of feet. There was a loudspeaker on the side of the building andsoft music was coming out. It was a cloudy day and seagullswere circling high overhead. Behind the stream were big bundles of trees and bushes.They were covered with sheets of patched canvas. You couldsee the tops and roots sticking out the ends of the bundles. I went up close and looked at the lengths of stream. Icould see some trout in them. I saw one good fish. I sawsome crawdads crawling around the rocks at the bottom. It looked like a fine stream. I put my hand in the water.It was cold and felt good. I decided to go around to the side and look at the animals.I saw where the trucks were parked beside the railroadtracks. I followed the road down past the piles of lumber,back to the shed where the animals were. The salesman had been right. They were practically outof animals. About the only thing they had left in any abun-dance were mice. There were hundreds of mice. Beside the shed was a huge wire birdcage, maybe fiftyfeet high, filled with many kinds of birds. The top of the cagehad a piece of canvas over it, so the birds wouldn't get wetwhen it rained. There were woodpeckers and wild canariesand sparrows. On my way back to where the trout stream was piled, Ifound the insects. They were inside a prefabricated steelbuilding that was selling for eighty-cents a square foot. Therewas a sign over the door. It said INSECTS A HALF-SUNDAY HOMAGE TO A WHOLE LEONARDO DA VINCIOn this funky winter day in rainy San Francisco I've had avision of Leonardo da Vinci. My woman's out slaving away,no day off, working on Sunday. She left here at eight o'clockthis morning for Powell and California. I've been sitting hereever since like a toad on a log dreaming about Leonardo daVinci. I dreamt he was on the South Bend Tackle Company pay-roll, but of course, he was wearing different clothes andspeaking with a different accent and possessor of a differentchildhood, perhaps an American childhood spent in a townlike Lordsburg, New Mexico, or Winchester, Virginia. I saw him inventing a new spinning lure for trout fishingin America. I saw him first of all working with his imagina-tion, then with metal and color and hooks, trying a little ofthis and a little of that, and then adding motion and then tak-ing it away and then coming back again with a different motion,and in the end the lure was invented. He called his bosses in. They looked at the lure and allfainted. Alone, standing over their bodies, he held the lurein his hand and gave it a name. He called it "The Last Supper."Then he went about waking up his bosses. In a matter of months that trout fishing lure was the sen-sation of the twentieth century, far outstripping such shallowaccomplishments as Hiroshima or Mahatma Gandhi. Millionsof "The Last Supper" were sold in America. The Vatican or-dered ten thousand and they didn't even have any trout there. Testimonials poured in. Thirty-four ex-presidents of theUnited States all said, ''I caught my limit on 'The Last Supper.''' TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA NIBHe went up to Chemault, that's in Eastern Oregon, to cutChristmas trees. He was working for a very small enter-prise. He cut the trees, did the cooking and slept on thekitchen floor. It was cold and there was snow on the ground.The floor was hard. Somewhere along the line, he found anold Air Force flight jacket. That was a big help in the cold. The only woman he could find up there was a three-hundred-pound Indian squaw. She had twin fifteen-year-old daughtersand he wanted to get into them. But the squaw worked it sohe only got into her. She was clever that way. The people he was working for wouldn't pay him up there.They said he'd get it all in one sum when they got back toSan Francisco. He'd taken the job because he was broke,really broke. He waited and cut trees in the snow, laid the squaw,cooked bad food--they were on a tight budget--and hewashed the dishes. Afterwards, he slept on the kitchen floorin his Air Force flight jacket. When they finally got back to town with the trees, thoseguys didn't have any money to pay him off. He had to waitaround the lot in Oakland until they sold enough trees to payhim off. "Here's a lovely tree, ma'am. " "How much7" "Ten dollars. " "That's too much. " "I have a lovely two-dollar tree here, ma'am. Actually,it's only half a tree, but you can stand it up right next to awall and it'll look great, ma'am. " "I'11 take it. I can put it right next to my weather clock.This tree is the same color as the queen's dress. I'11 take it.You said two dollars?" "That's right, ma'am." "Hello, sir. Yes . . . Uh-huh . . . Yes . . . You saythat you want to bury your aunt with a Christmas tree in hercoffin? Uh-huh . . . She wanted it that way . . . I'11 seewhat I can do for you, sir. Oh, you have the measurementsof the coffin with you? Very good . . . We have our coffin-sized Christmas trees right over here, sir. " Finally he was paid off and he came over to San Francis-co and had a good meal, a steak dinner at Le Boeuf and somegood booze, Jack Daniels, and then went out to the Fillmoreand picked up a good-looking, young, Negro whore, and hegot laid in the Albert Bacon Fall Hotel. The next day he went down to a fancy stationery store onMarket Street and bought himself a thirty-dollar fountain pen,one with a gold nib. He showed it to me and said, "Write with this, but don'twrite hard because this pen has got a gold nib, and a goldnib is very impressionable. After a while it takes on the per-sonality of the writer. Nobody else can write with it. Thispen becomes just like a person's shadow. It's the only pento have. But be careful. " I thought to myself what a lovely nib trout fishing in Am-erica would make with a stroke of cool green trees along theriver's shore, wild flowers and dark fins pressed againstthe paper. PRELUDE TO THE MAYONNAISE CHAPTER"The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but havesingle word for ice. " --Man: His First Million YearsM. F. Ashley Montagu "Human language is in some ways similar to, but in otherways vastly different from, other kinds of animal communi-cation. We simply have no idea about its evolutionary history,though many people have speculated about its possible origins.There is, for instance, the 'bow-bow' theory, that languagestarted from attempts to imitate animal sounds. Or the 'ding-dong' theory, that it arose from natural sound-producingresponses. Or the 'pooh-pooh' theory, that it began with vio-lent outcries and exclamations . . . We have no way ofknow-ing whether the kinds of men represented by the earliestfos-sils could talk or not . . . Language does not leave fossils,at least not until it has become written . . ." --Man inNature, by Marston Bates "But no animal up a tree can initiate a culture. " -"TheSimian Basis of Human Mechanics," in Twilight of Man, byEarnest Albert Hooton Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write abookthat ended with the word Mayonnaise. THE MAYONNAISE CHAPTER Feb 3-1952 Dearest Florence and Harv. I just heard from Edith about the passing of Mr. Good. Our heart goes out to you in deepest sympathy Gods will be done. He has lived a good long life and he has gone to a better place. You were expecting it and it was nice you could see him yesterday even if he did not know you. You have our prayers and love and we will see you soon. God bless you both. Love Mother and Nancy. P.S. Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonaise. |
{ "47": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 47, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
48 | 2018-02-27 21:06:32 | The Rebel Surprise Near Tamai | William Topaz McGonagall | 'Twas on the 22nd of March, in the year 1885,That the Arabs rushed like a mountain torrent in full drive,And quickly attacked General M'Neill's transport-zereba,But in a short time they were forced to withdraw. And in the suddenness of surprise the men were carried away,Also camels, mules, and horses were thrown into wild disarray,By thousands of the Arabs that in ambush lay,But our brave British heroes held the enemy at bay. There was a multitude of camels heaped upon one another,Kicking and screaming, while many of them did smother,Owing to the heavy pressure of the entangled mass,That were tramping o'er one another as they lay on the grass. The scene was indescribable, and sickening to behold,To see the mass of innocent brutes lying stiff and cold,And the moaning cries of them were pitiful to hear,Likewise the cries of the dying men that lay wounded in the rear. Then General McNeill ordered his men to form in solid square,Whilst deafening shouts and shrieks of animals did tend the air,And the rush of stampeded camels made a fearful din,While the Arabs they did yell, and fiendishly did grin. Then the gallant Marines formed the east side of the square,While clouds of dust and smoke did darken the air,And on the west side the Berkshire were engaged in the fight,Firing steadily and cooly with all their might. Still camp followers were carried along by the huge animal mass,And along the face of the zereba 'twas difficult to pass,Because the mass of brutes swept on in wild dismay,Which caused the troops to be thrown into disorderly array. Then Indians and Bluejackets were all mixed together back to back,And for half-an-hour the fire and din didn't slack;And none but steady troops could have stood that fearful shock,Because against overwhelming numbers they stood as firm as a rock. The Arabs crept among the legs of the animals without any dread,But by the British bullets many were killed dead,And left dead on the field and weltering in their gore,Whilst the dying moans of the camels made a hideous roar. Then General McNeill to his men did say,Forward! my lads, and keep them at bay!Come, make ready, my men, and stand to your arms,And don't be afraid of war's alarms So forward! and charge them in front and rear,And remember you are fighting for your Queen and country dear,Therefore, charge them with your bayonets, left and right,And we'll soon put this rebel horde to flight. Then forward at the bayonet-charge they did rush,And the rebel horde they soon did crush;And by the charge of the bayonet they kept them at bay,And in confusion and terror they all fled away. The Marines held their own while engaged hand-to-hand,And the courage they displayed was really very grand;But it would be unfair to praise one corps more than another,Because each man fought as if he'd been avenging the death of a brother. The Berkshire men and the Naval Brigade fought with might and main,And, thank God! the British have defeated the Arabs again,And have added fresh laurels to their name,Which will be enrolled in the book of fame. 'Tis lamentable to think of the horrors of war,That men must leave their homes and go abroad afar,To fight for their Queen and country in a foreign land,Beneath the whirlwind's drifting scorching sand. But whatsoever God wills must come to pass,The fall of a sparrow, or a tiny blade of grass;Also, man must fall at home by His command,Just equally the same as in a foreign land. |
{ "48": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 48, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
49 | 2018-02-27 21:06:34 | Howl | Allen Ginsberg | For Carl Solomon I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- ery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- ing their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al- cohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo- tionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook- lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook- lyn Bridge, lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- ings and migraines of China under junk-with- drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grand- father night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep- athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in- stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis- ionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla- homa on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom- prehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu- scripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can- dle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet- ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy- ment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess- fully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis- ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap- pened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas- saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in- stantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho- therapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock- ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night- mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur- nished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination--ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time--and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat- ing plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intel- ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con- fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years. II What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi- nation? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob tainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun- ned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni- bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac- tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch! Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible mad houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave- ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De- spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! IIICarl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am I'm with you in Rockland where you must feel very strange I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother I'm with you in Rockland where you've murdered your twelve secretaries I'm with you in Rockland where you laugh at this invisible humor I'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter I'm with you in Rockland where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio I'm with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses I'm with you in Rockland where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica I'm with you in Rockland where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx I'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss I'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse I'm with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void I'm with you in Rockland where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha I'm with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb I'm with you in Rockland where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com- rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale I'm with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep I'm with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col- lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night San Francisco 1955-56 |
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"49": {
"category_1_x_poem.id": 49,
"category_1.id": 3,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28",
"category_1.title": "Animal Poems"
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"category_1.id": 59,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:16:07",
"category_1.title": "Humorous Poems"
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"category_1.id": 109,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:21:15",
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50 | 2018-02-27 21:06:37 | The Circus Animals' Desertion | William Butler Yeats | II sought a theme and sought for it in vain,I sought it daily for six weeks or so.Maybe at last, being but a broken man,I must be satisfied with my heart, althoughWinter and summer till old age beganMy circus animals were all on show,Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. IIWhat can I but enumerate old themes?First that sea-rider Oisin led by the noseThrough three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;But what cared I that set him on to ride,I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?And then a counter-truth filled out its play,'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it.I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,And this brought forth a dream and soon enoughThis dream itself had all my thought and love.And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the breadCuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is saidIt was the dream itself enchanted me:Character isolated by a deedTo engross the present and dominate memory.players and painted stage took all my love,And not those things that they were emblems of. IIIThose masterful images because completeGrew in pure mind, but out of what began?A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slutWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,I must lie down where all the ladders startIn the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. |
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51 | 2018-02-27 21:06:38 | How Shall My Animal | Dylan Thomas | How shall my animalWhose wizard shape I trace in the cavernous skull,Vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell,Endure burial under the spelling wall,The invoked, shrouding veil at the cap of the face,Who should be furious,Drunk as a vineyard snail, flailed like an octopus,Roaring, crawling, quarrelWith the outside weathers,The natural circle of the discovered skiesDraw down to its weird eyes?How shall it magnetize,Towards the studded male in a bent, midnight blazeThat melts the lionhead's heel and horseshoe of the heartA brute land in the cool top of the country daysTo trot with a loud mate the haybeds of a mile,Love and labour and killIn quick, sweet, cruel light till the locked ground sproutThe black, burst sea rejoice,The bowels turn turtle,Claw of the crabbed veins squeeze from each red particleThe parched and raging voice?Fishermen of mermenCreep and harp on the tide, sinking their charmed, bent pinWith bridebait of gold bread, I with a living skein,Tongue and ear in the thread, angle the temple-boundCurl-locked and animal cavepools of spells and bone,Trace out a tentacle,Nailed with an open eye, in the bowl of wounds and weedTo clasp my fury on groundAnd clap its great blood down;Never shall beast be born to atlas the few seasOr poise the day on a horn.Sigh long, clay cold, lie shorn,Cast high, stunned on gilled stone; sly scissors ground in frostClack through the thicket of strength, love hewn in pillars dropsWith carved bird, saint, and suns the wrackspiked maiden mouthLops, as a bush plumed with flames, the rant of the fierce eye,Clips short the gesture of breath.Die in red feathers when the flying heaven's cut,And roll with the knocked earth:Lie dry, rest robbed, my beast.You have kicked from a dark den, leaped up the whinnying light,And dug your grave in my breast. |
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52 | 2018-02-27 21:06:40 | The Pangolin | Marianne Moore | Another armored animal--scale lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until theyform the uninterrupted central tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard,the night miniature artist engineer is, yes, Leonardo da Vinci's replica-- impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear. Armor seems extra. But for him, the closing ear-ridge-- or bare ear lacking even this small eminence and similarly safecontracting nose and eye apertures impenetrably closable, are not; a true ant-eater,not cockroach eater, who endures exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night, returning before sunrise, stepping in the moonlight, on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the claws for digging. Serpentined about the tree, he draws away from danger unpugnaciously, with no sound but a harmless hiss; keepingthe fragile grace of the Thomas- of-Leighton Buzzard Westminster Abbey wrought-iron vine, orrolls himself into a ball that has power to defy all effort to unroll it; strongly intailed, neat head for core, on neck not breaking off, with curled-in-feet. Nevertheless he has sting-proof scales; and nest of rocks closed with earth from inside, which can thus darken. Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast each with a splendor which man in all his vileness cannot set aside; each with an excellence!"Fearfull yet to be feared," the armored ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, butengulfs what he can, the flattened sword- edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg- and body-plates quivering violently when it retaliates and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill on the hat-brim of Gargallo's hollow iron head of a matador, he will drop and will then walk away unhurt, although if unintruded on, he cautiously works down the tree, helpedby his tail. The giant-pangolin- tail, graceful tool, as a prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped likean elephant's trunkwith special skin, is not lost on this ant- and stone-swallowing uninjurable artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between dusk and day they have not unchain-like machine-like form and frictionless creep of a thing made graceful by adversities, con-versities. To explain grace requires a curious hand. If that which is at all were not forever,why would those who graced the spires with animals and gathered there to rest, on cold luxurious low stone seats--a monk and monk and monk--between the thus ingenious roof supports, have slaved to confuse grace with a kindly manner, time in which to pay a debt, the cure for sins, a graceful use of what are yet approved stone mullions branching out across the perpendiculars? A sailboatwas the first machine. Pangolins, made for moving quietly also, are models of exactness,on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade, with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon, man slaving to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth having, needing to choose wisely how to use his strength; a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs, like the ant; spidering a length of web from bluffs above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked like the pangolin; capsizing indisheartenment. Bedizened or stark naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing-masters to this world, griffons a dark "Like does not like like that is abnoxious"; and writes error with four r's. Among animals, one has sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it saves years. Unignorant, modest and unemotional, and all emotion, he has everlasting vigor, power to grow, though there are few creatures who can make one breathe faster and make one erecter. Not afraid of anything is he, and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacleat every step. Consistent with the formula--warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few hairs-- that is a mammal; there he sits on his own habitat, serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work partly done, says to the alternating blaze, "Again the sun! anew each day; and new and new and new, that comes into and steadies my soul." |
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53 | 2018-02-27 21:06:44 | As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario’s Shores. | Walt Whitman | 1AS I sat alone, by blue Ontario’s shore, As I mused of these mighty days, and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more, A Phantom, gigantic, superb, with stern visage, accosted me; Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America—chant me the carol of victory; And strike up the marches of Libertad—marches more powerful yet;And sing me before you go, the song of the throes of Democracy. (Democracy—the destin’d conqueror—yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere, And Death and infidelity at every step.) 2A Nation announcing itself, I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms. A breed whose proof is in time and deeds; What we are, we are—nativity is answer enough to objections; We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,We are executive in ourselves—We are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves; We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world; From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn. Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only. (O mother! O sisters dear! If we are lost, no victor else has destroy’d us; It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.) 3Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme?There can be any number of Supremes—One does not countervail another, any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another. All is eligible to all, All is for individuals—All is for you, No condition is prohibited—not God’s, or any. All comes by the body—only health puts you rapport with the universe. Produce great persons, the rest follows. 4America isolated I sing; I say that works made here in the spirit of other lands, are so much poison in The States. (How dare such insects as we see assume to write poems for America? For our victorious armies, and the offspring following the armies?) Piety and conformity to them that like! Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like! I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, Crying, Leap from your seats, and contend for your lives! I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet;Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense? (With pangs and cries, as thine own, O bearer of many children! These clamors wild, to a race of pride I give.) O lands! would you be freer than all that has ever been before?If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me. Fear grace—Fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse, Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice; Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature, Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men. Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials, America brings builders, and brings its own styles. The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work, and pass’d to other spheres, A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done. America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards,Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound—initiates the true use of precedents, Does not repel them, or the past, or what they have produced under their forms, Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house, Perceives that it waits a little while in the door—that it was fittest for its days, That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,And that he shall be fittest for his days. Any period, one nation must lead, One land must be the promise and reliance of the future. These States are the amplest poem, Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations,Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, Here is what moves in magnificent masses, careless of particulars, Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the Soul loves, Here the flowing trains—here the crowds, equality, diversity, the Soul loves. 6Land of lands, and bards to corroborate!Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light his west-bred face, To him the hereditary countenance bequeath’d, both mother’s and father’s, His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees, Built of the common stock, having room for far and near, Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,Attracting it Body and Soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits, Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him, Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes—Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south, Spanning between them, east and west, and touching whatever is between them, Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia, Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp, He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice,Off him pasturage, sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle; His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil, Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle, The haughty defiance of the Year 1—war, peace, the formation of the Constitution, The separate States, the simple, elastic scheme, the immigrants, The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and always sure and impregnable, The unsurvey’d interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers;Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States, Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost parts; Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men, Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships—the gait they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors, The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and decision of their phrenology,The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong’d, The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good temper, and open-handedness—the whole composite make, The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness, The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement of the population, The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,Wharf-hemm’d cities, railroad and steamboat lines, intersecting all points, Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the north-east, north-west, south-west, Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life, Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the ruins of all the rest; On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! then your life or ours be the stake—and respite no more. 7(Lo! high toward heaven, this day, Libertad! from the conqueress’ field return’d, I mark the new aureola around your head; No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce, With war’s flames, and the lambent lightnings playing,And your port immovable where you stand; With still the inextinguishable glance, and the clench’d and lifted fist, And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner, utterly crush’d beneath you; The menacing, arrogant one, that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife; —Lo! the wide swelling one, the braggart, that would yesterday do so much!To-day a carrion dead and damn’d, the despised of all the earth! An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn’d.) 8Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive, and ever keeps vista; Others adorn the past—but you, O days of the present, I adorn you! O days of the future, I believe in you! I isolate myself for your sake;O America, because you build for mankind, I build for you! O well-beloved stone-cutters! I lead them who plan with decision and science, I lead the present with friendly hand toward the future. Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! But damn that which spends itself, with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness it is bequeathing. 9I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore, I heard the voice arising, demanding bards; By them, all native and grand—by them alone can The States be fused into the compact organism of a Nation. To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account; That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body, or the fibres of plants. Of all races and eras, These States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest; Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. (Soul of love, and tongue of fire! Eye to pierce the deepest deeps, and sweep the world! —Ah, mother! prolific and full in all besides—yet how long barren, barren?) 10Of These States, the poet is the equable man, Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,He is the equalizer of his age and land, He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what wants checking, In peace, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the Soul, health, immortality, government; In war, he is the best backer of the war—he fetches artillery as good as the engineer’s—he can make every word he speaks draw blood; The years straying toward infidelity, he withholds by his steady faith,He is no argurer, he is judgment—(Nature accepts him absolutely;) He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing; As he sees the farthest, he has the most faith, His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, He sees eternity in men and women—he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals, For that idea the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders, The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots. Without extinction is Liberty! without retrograde is Equality! They live in the feelings of young men, and the best women; Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for Liberty. 11For the great Idea! That, O my brethren—that is the mission of Poets. Songs of stern defiance, ever ready, Songs of the rapid arming, and the march, The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead, the flag we know, Warlike flag of the great Idea. (Angry cloth I saw there leaping!I stand again in leaden rain, your flapping folds saluting; I sing you over all, flying, beckoning through the fight—O the hard-contested fight! O the cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles! the hurtled balls scream! The battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour incessant from the line; Hark! the ringing word, Charge!—now the tussle, and the furious maddening yells;Now the corpses tumble curl’d upon the ground, Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you, Angry cloth I saw there leaping.) 12Are you he who would assume a place to teach, or be a poet here in The States? The place is august—the terms obdurate. Who would assume to teach here, may well prepare himself, body and mind, He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe, himself, He shall surely be question’d beforehand by me with many and stern questions. Who are you, indeed, who would talk or sing to America? Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?Have you learn’d the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship, of the land? its substratums and objects? Have you consider’d the organic compact of the first day of the first year of Independence, sign’d by the Commissioners, ratified by The States, and read by Washington at the head of the army? Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution? Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy? Are you faithful to things? do you teach as the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, angers, teach?Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities? Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole people? Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion? Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself? Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of These States?Have you too the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity; for the last-born? little and big? and for the errant? What is this you bring my America? Is it uniform with my country? Is it not something that has been better told or done before?Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in some ship? Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness? is the good old cause in it? Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats, of enemies’ lands? Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here? Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?Does it sound, with trumpet-voice, the proud victory of the Union, in that secession war? Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air—to appear again in my strength, gait, face? Have real employments contributed to it? original makers—not mere amanuenses? Does it meet modern discoveries, calibers, facts face to face?What does it mean to me? to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas? the planter, Yankee, Georgian, native, immigrant, sailors, squatters, old States, new States? Does it encompass all The States, and the unexceptional rights of all the men and women of the earth? (the genital impulse of These States;) Does it see behind the apparent custodians, the real custodians, standing, menacing, silent—the mechanics, Manhattanese, western men, southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the promptness of their love? Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever ask’d anything of America? What mocking and scornful negligence?The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons; By the roadside others disdainfully toss’d. 13Rhymes and rhymers pass away—poems distill’d from foreign poems pass away, The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes; Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soul of literature;America justifies itself, give it time—no disguise can deceive it, or conceal from it—it is impassive enough, Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them, If its poets appear, it will in due time advance to meet them—there is no fear of mistake, (The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr’d, till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb’d it.) He masters whose spirit masters—he tastes sweetest who results sweetest in the long run;The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint; In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, manners, engineering, an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft, any craft, he or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original practical example. Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the streets, People’s lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers; There will shortly be no more priests—I say their work is done,Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here, Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb; Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power; How dare you place anything before a man? 14Fall behind me, States!A man before all—myself, typical before all. Give me the pay I have served for! Give me to sing the song of the great Idea! take all the rest; I have loved the earth, sun, animals—I have despised riches, I have given alms to every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, I have gone freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families, I have read these leaves to myself in the open air—I have tried them by trees, stars, rivers, I have dismiss’d whatever insulted my own Soul or defiled my Body, I have claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for others on the same terms,I have sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State; (In war of you, as well as peace, my suit is good, America—sadly I boast; Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean’d, to breathe his last; This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish’d, rais’d, restored, To life recalling many a prostrate form:)—I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself, I reject none, I permit all. (Say, O mother! have I not to your thought been faithful? Have I not, through life, kept you and yours before me?) 15I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things!It is not the earth, it is not America, who is so great, It is I who am great, or to be great—it is you up there, or any one; It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories, Through poems, pageants, shows, to form great individuals. Underneath all, individuals!I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals, The American compact is altogether with individuals, The only government is that which makes minute of individuals, The whole theory of the universe is directed to one single individual—namely, to You. (Mother! with subtle sense severe—with the naked sword in your hand,I saw you at last refuse to treat but directly with individuals.) 16Underneath all, nativity, I swear I will stand by my own nativity—pious or impious, so be it; I swear I am charm’d with nothing except nativity, Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity. Underneath all is the need of the expression of love for men and women, I swear I have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of expressing love for men and women, After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men and women. I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself, (Talk as you like, he only suits These States whose manners favor the audacity and sublime turbulence of The States.) Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons, Underneath all, to me is myself—to you, yourself—(the same monotonous old song.) 17O I see now, flashing, that this America is only you and me, Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me, Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, slavery, are you and me,Its Congress is you and me—the officers, capitols, armies, ships, are you and me, Its endless gestations of new States are you and me, The war—that war so bloody and grim—the war I will henceforth forget—was you and me, Natural and artificial are you and me, Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,Past, present, future, are you and me. 18I swear I dare not shirk any part of myself, Not any part of America, good or bad, Not the promulgation of Liberty—not to cheer up slaves and horrify foreign despots, Not to build for that which builds for mankind,Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes, Not to justify science, nor the march of equality, Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn beloved of time. I swear I am for those that have never been master’d! For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master. I swear I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth! Who inaugurate one, to inaugurate all. I swear I will not be outfaced by irrational things! I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me!I will make cities and civilizations defer to me! This is what I have learnt from America—it is the amount—and it I teach again. (Democracy! while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your breast, I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children—saw in dreams your dilating form; Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.) 19I will confront these shows of the day and night! I will know if I am to be less than they! I will see if I am not as majestic as they! I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they! I will see if I am to be less generous than they!I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning! I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be enough for myself. 20I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes, Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself. America isolated, yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself?These States—what are they except myself? I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked—it is for my sake, I take you to be mine, you beautiful, terrible, rude forms. (Mother! bend down, bend close to me your face! I know not what these plots and wars, and deferments are for;I know not fruition’s success—but I know that through war and peace your work goes on, and must yet go on.) 21.... Thus, by blue Ontario’s shore, While the winds fann’d me, and the waves came trooping toward me, I thrill’d with the Power’s pulsations—and the charm of my theme was upon me, Till the tissues that held me, parted their ties upon me. And I saw the free Souls of poets; The loftiest bards of past ages strode before me, Strange, large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me. 22O my rapt verse, my call—mock me not! Not for the bards of the past—not to invoke them have I launch’d you forth,Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario’s shores, Have I sung so capricious and loud, my savage song. Bards for my own land, only, I invoke; (For the war, the war is over—the field is clear’d,) Till they strike up marches henceforth triumphant and onward,To cheer, O mother, your boundless, expectant soul. Bards grand as these days so grand! Bards of the great Idea! Bards of the peaceful inventions! (for the war, the war is over!) Yet Bards of the latent armies—a million soldiers waiting, ever-ready, Bards towering like hills—(no more these dots, these pigmies, these little piping straws, these gnats, that fill the hour, to pass for poets;)Bards with songs as from burning coals, or the lightning’s fork’d stripes! Ample Ohio’s bards—bards for California! inland bards—bards of the war;) (As a wheel turns on its axle, so I find my chants turning finally on the war;) Bards of pride! Bards tallying the ocean’s roar, and the swooping eagle’s scream! You, by my charm, I invoke! |
{
"53": {
"category_1_x_poem.id": 53,
"category_1.id": 3,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28",
"category_1.title": "Animal Poems"
},
"3410": {
"category_1_x_poem.id": 3410,
"category_1.id": 11,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:11:12",
"category_1.title": "Beautiful Poems"
},
"4698": {
"category_1_x_poem.id": 4698,
"category_1.id": 38,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:13:59",
"category_1.title": "Friendship Poems"
},
"5276": {
"category_1_x_poem.id": 5276,
"category_1.id": 50,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:15:17",
"category_1.title": "Hate Poems"
},
"5938": {
"category_1_x_poem.id": 5938,
"category_1.id": 65,
"category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:17:00",
"category_1.title": "Life Poems"
}
} |
54 | 2018-02-27 21:06:49 | Spontaneous Me. | Walt Whitman | SPONTANEOUS me, Nature, The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d bank—the primitive apples—the pebble-stones, Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them, The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,) The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me, This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always carry, and that all men carry,(Know, once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty, lurking, masculine poems;) Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap, Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb of love—breasts of love—bellies press’d and glued together with love, Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after love, The body of my love—the body of the woman I love—the body of the man—the body of the earth,Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west, The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down—that gripes the full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight till he is satisfied, The wet of woods through the early hours, Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other, The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming, The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still and content to the ground, The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with, The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one, The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are,The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves, The limpid liquid within the young man, The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful, The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest, The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in others,The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes, The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master him; The mystic amorous night—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats, The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers—the young man all color’d, red, ashamed, angry; The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them, The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts; The continence of vegetables, birds, animals, The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent; The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,The oath of procreation I have sworn—my Adamic and fresh daughters, The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through, The wholesome relief, repose, content; And this bunch, pluck’d at random from myself; It has done its work—I tossed it carelessly to fall where it may. |
{ "54": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 54, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
55 | 2018-02-27 21:06:51 | O Love, Sweet Animal | Delmore Schwartz | O Love, dark animal,With your strangeness goLike any freak or clown:Appease tee child in herBecause she is aloneMany years agoTerrified by a lookWhich was not meant for her.Brush your heavy furAgainst her, long and slowStare at her like a book,Her interests being suchNo one can look too much.Tell her how you knowNothing can be takenWhich has not been given:For you time is forgiven:Informed by hell and heavenYou are not mistaken |
{ "55": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 55, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
56 | 2018-02-27 21:06:54 | Animals Are Passing From Our Lives | Philip Levine | It's wonderful how I jogon four honed-down ivory toesmy massive buttocks slippinglike oiled parts with each light step.I'm to market. I can smellthe sour, grooved block, I can smellthe blade that opens the holeand the pudgy white fingersthat shake out the intestineslike a hankie. In my dreams the snouts drool on the marble,suffering children, suffering flies,suffering the consumerswho won't meet their steady eyesfor fear they could see. The boywho drives me along believesthat any moment I'll fallon my side and drum my toeslike a typewriter or squealand shit like a new housewifediscovering television,or that I'll turn like a beastcleverly to hook his teethwith my teeth. No. Not this pig. |
{ "56": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 56, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
57 | 2018-02-27 21:06:56 | I VENT MY WRATH ON ANIMALS | Jerome Rothenberg | I came alivewhen things wentcrazy.I pulled the plug onthe reports of sturm & drangWhen someonesignaled I left openwhat I could not close.I broke a covenant thatwas more fiercethan murder.I vent my wrathon animalspretending they will turndivine.I open uprare certaintiesthat test free will.I take from animalsa place in whichthe taste of deathpours from their mouths& drowns them.I support a lesser surface.I draw comfort fromthe knowledgeof their being. |
{ "57": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 57, "category_1.id": 3, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:28", "category_1.title": "Animal Poems" } } |
58 | 2018-02-27 21:06:59 | What do animals dream? | Yahia Lababidi | Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreamsunspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?Do they struggle to catch in their slumberwhat is too slippery for the fingers of day?Are there subtle nocturnal intimationsto illuminate their undreaming hours?Are they haunted by specters of regretdo they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude?Or are they revisited by their crimestranscribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs?Do they retrace the outline of their woundsor dream of transformation, instead?Do they tug at obstinate knotsinassimilable longings and thwarted strivings?Are there agitations, upheavals or mutiniesagainst their perceived selves or fate? Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiarto horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion?Are they ever neither animal nor humanbut creature and Being?Do they have holy moments of understandingdeep in the seat of their entity?Do they experience their existence more fullyrelieved of the burden of wakefulness? Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seemis but a dream within a dream? Or is it merely a small dying a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths? |
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59 | 2018-02-27 21:06:59 | Celebrate | Anna Akhmatova | Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you seetonight the snowy night of our first wintercomes back again in every road and tree -that winter night of diamantine splendour.Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,the Moika river’s sinking under snow,the moonlight’s misted as it is in fables,and where we are heading – I don’t know.There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.The Lebyazh’ya’s crazed with crystal art.....Whose soul can compare with my soul,if joy and fear are in my heart? - And if your voice, a marvellous bird’s,quivers at my shoulder, in the night,and the snow shines with a silver light,warmed by a sudden ray, by your words? |
{ "59": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 59, "category_1.id": 4, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:31", "category_1.title": "Anniversary Poems" } } |
60 | 2018-02-27 21:07:03 | On a Young Lady's Sixth Anniversary | Katherine Mansfield | Baby Babbles--only one,Now to sit up has begun.Little Babbles quite turned twoWalks as well as I and you.And Miss Babbles one, two, three,Has a teaspoon at her tea.But her Highness at fourLearns to open the front door.And her Majesty--now six,Can her shoestrings neatly fix.Babbles, babbles, have a care,You will soon put up your hair! | { "60": { "category_1_x_poem.id": 60, "category_1.id": 4, "category_1.ts": "2018-02-27 20:10:31", "category_1.title": "Anniversary Poems" } } |
poem.id | poem.ts | poem.title | poem.author | poem.content | poem.category_1_x_poem_id |