'Tis evening; the black snail has got on his track,
And gone to its nest is the wren,
And the packman snail, too, with his home on his back,
Clings to the bowed bents like a wen.

The shepherd has made a rude mark with his foot
Where his shadow reached when he first came,
And it just touched the tree where his secret love cut
Two letters that stand for love's name.

The evening comes in with the wishes of love,
And the shepherd he looks on the flowers,
And thinks who would praise the soft song of the dove,

Touched with the delicate green of early May,
Or later, when the rose uplifts her face,
The world hangs glittering in starry space,
Fresh as a jewel found but yesterday.
And yet 'tis very old; what tongue may say
How old it is? Race follows upon race,
Forgetting and forgotten; in their place
Sink tower and temple; nothing long may stay.
We build on tombs, and live our day, and die;
From out our dust new towers and temples start;
Our very name becomes a mystery.
What cities no man ever heard of lie

At that time I didn't understand
snow, the absence inside July,
water and what holds the water
in. Heard "It takes more than a forest

to make a tree" in no one's voice. By then
the word meridian was extinct, echo
without a face to place it, make it
stay. Birds' theories of heat

hunch humid air
flat. Sparrows, finches, wrens,
and chickadees, their bodies
move too quickly through it

and exhaust their element: drop
like Coke cans and smoked-down cigarettes
beside the berm. Natter of bees
above new garbage cans

some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;

O happiness, I know not what far seas,
Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround,
That thus in Music's wistful harmonies
And concert of sweet sound
A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore,
Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store:


Whether thy beams be pitiful and come,
Across the sundering of vanished years,
From childhood and the happy fields of home,
Like eyes instinct with tears
Felt through green brakes of hedge and apple-bough
Round haunts delightful once, desert and silent now;

and green plaid shorts goes strolling
through Juneau Park at eight o’clock
with only a hooded yellow windbreaker
for protection, trawling the bushes after work

while tugboats crawl the dark freshwater
outlook. Mist coming in not even from a sea, rain
later in the evening from Lake Michigan, a promise
like wait till your father gets home. The air

is full of fog and botched seductions, reluctance
of early summer to arrive. It’s fifty-five degrees
in June, the bodies can barely be made out
leaning on picnic tables under trees or

'Twas summer, when softly the breezes were blowing,
And Hudson majestic so sweetly was flowing,
The groves rang with music & accents of pleasure
And nature in rapture beat time to the measure,
When Helen and Jonas, so true and so loving,
Along the green lawn were seen arm in arm moving,
Sweet daffodils, violets and roses spontaneous
Wherever they wandered sprang up instantaneous.
The ascent the lovers at length were seen climbing
Whose summit is grac'd by the temple of Hymen:
The genius presiding no sooner perceived them

We expected the violin's finger on the upturned nerve;
Its importunate cry, too laxly curved:
And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute;
Unadorned statement, accurately carved.

We expected the screen, the background for reverie
Which cloudforms usefully weave:
And you built the immaculate, adamant, blue-green steel
Arch of a balanced wave.

We expected a pool with flowers to diffuse and break
The child-round face of the mirrored moon:
And you blazed a rock-path, begun near the sun, to be finished

An old willow with hollow branches
slowly swayed his few high gright tendrils
and sang:

Love is a young green willow
shimmering at the bare wood's edge.

Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretched supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should never hear Apollo's song,
Though feathery clouds were floating all along
The purple west, and, two bright streaks between,
The golden lyre itself were dimly seen: