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Whose cheek is this?
What rosy face
Has lost a blush today?
I found her—"pleiad"—in the woods
And bore her safe away.
Robins, in the tradition
Did cover such with leaves,
But which the cheek—
And which the pall
My scrutiny deceives.
73
Who never lost, are unprepared
A Coronet to find!
Who never thirsted
Flagons, and Cooling Tamarind!
Who never climbed the weary league—
Can such a foot explore
The purple territories
On Pizarro's shore?
How many Legions overcome—
The Emperor will say?
How many Colors taken
On Revolution Day?
How many Bullets bearest?
Hast Thou the Royal scar?
Angels! Write "Promoted"
On this Soldier's brow!
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Where I have lost, I softer tread—
I sow sweet flower from garden bed—
I pause above that vanished head
And mourn.
Whom I have lost, I pious guard
From accent harsh, or ruthless word—
Feeling as if their pillow heard,
Though stone!
When I have lost, you'll know by this—
A Bonnet black—A dusk surplice—
A little tremor in my voice
Like this!
Why, I have lost, the people know
Who dressed in flocks of purest snow
Went home a century ago
Whene'er I see those smiling eyes,
So full of hope, and joy, and light,
As if no cloud could ever rise,
To dim a heaven so purely bright --
I sigh to think how soon that brow
In grief may lose its every ray,
And that light heart, so joyous now,
Almost forget it once was gay.
For time will come with all its blights,
The ruin'd hope, the friend unkind,
And love, that leaves, where'er it lights,
A chill'd or burning heart behind:
While youth, that now like snow appears,
1
When the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
Blandly mother
takes him strolling
by railroad and by river
-he's the son of the absconded
hot rod angel-
and he imagines cars
and rides them in his dreams,
so lonely growing up among
the imaginary automobiles
and dead souls of Tarrytown
to create
out of his own imagination
the beauty of his wild
forebears-a mythology
he cannot inherit.
Will he later hallucinate
his gods? Waking
among mysteries with
an insane gleam
of recollection?
There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
Where are you O Wild Deer?
I have known you for a while, here.
Both loners, both lost, both forsaken
The wild beast, for ambush, have all waken
Let us inquire of each other's state
If we can, each other's wishes consummate
I can see this chaotic field
Joy and peace sometimes won't yield
O friends, tell me who braves the danger
To befriend the forsaken, behold the stranger
Unless blessed Elias may come one day
And with his good office open the way
It is time to cultivate love
Why do you strive for greatness, fool?
Go pluck a bough and wear it.
It is as sufficing.
My Lord, there are certain barbarians
Who tilt their noses
As if the stars were flowers,
And Thy servant is lost among their shoe-buckles.
Fain would I have mine eyes even with their eyes.
Fool, go pluck a bough and wear it.
I haven't locked the door,
Nor lit the candles,
You don't know, don't care,
That tired I haven't the strength
To decide to go to bed.
Seeing the fields fade in
The sunset murk of pine-needles,
And to know all is lost,
That life is a cursed hell:
I've got drunk
On your voice in the doorway.
I was sure you'd come back.
