Short Poems

From my mother"s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

From Ghoulies and Ghosties,
And long-leggity Beasties,
And all Things that go bump in the Night,
Good Lord deliver us.

O RTHO'S E PITAPH

Friend , Ortho of Syracuse gives thee this charge:
Never venture out, drunk, on a wild winter's night
I did so and died. My possessions were large;
Yet the turf that I'm clad with is strange to me quite.

Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead
Who would not cut the Body from the Head.

When I dream
of spring wind
scattering cherry blossoms
my heart stirs
even after waking.

Suzuka Mountain,
I've tossed aside the world of sorrows
as a stranger to myself,
so what note will I now sound,
what will become of me?

For travelers going sidereal
The danger they say is bacterial.
I don't know the pattern
On Mars or on Saturn
But on Venus it must be venereal.

For love he offered me his perfect world.
This world was so constricted, and so small,
It had no sort of loveliness at all,
And I flung back the little silly ball.
At that cold moralist I hotly hurled
His perfect, pure, symmetrical, small world.

A FLOCK of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
With a resounding call: —

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries —
Between what warming seas and conquering skies —
And fold, and fall?

Every day,
Every day,
Tell the hours
By their shadows,
By their shadows.