Short Poems

A misty bridge
and at riverside, the green—
of willows.

Those who are asleep in the earth
have an avian sense of the way.
Gone, they sleep with shoes on,
ready to rise and go
to the pink, dispensable,
barefooted insomniacs
who had laced up for them
the last pair of shoes.

It’s often those
who talk a streak

on world affairs
and love and peace

who seem to love
and peace the least.

In case you sit across from the meteorologist tonight,
and in case the dim light over the booth in the bar still shines
almost planetary on your large, smooth, winter-softened
forehead, in case all of the day—its woods and play, its fire—
has stayed on your beard, and will stay through the slight
drift of mouth, the slackening of even your heart’s muscle—
… well. I am filled with snow. There’s nothing to do now
but wait.

Hey ho, care away, let the world pass,
For I am as lusty as ever I was,
In flowers I flourish as blossoms in May,
Hey ho, care away: hey ho, care away.

Creator, of a smile, a sigh—
You gave us Madame Butterfly.

Heredity, the spectre of the past,
Ghost of the present,
Claims its own at last;
Ghosts of the future,
Lo! the child unborn
Yields its fair birthright
To a fate forlorn.

When Dixey in Adonis plays,
All hearts would sing their lightest lays,
For who could frown or who would sigh,
Or feel the world had gone awry—
When, luring us to happy ways,
Our Dixey in Adonis plays!

You, Marie Doro, do for us restore
Poor little Oliver who “wanted more.”
Plaintive, pathetic youth foregone and missed,
Oh! sad anomaly, a child unkissed!

Did ye ken our Rose as the Lady Gay,
Have ye heard her tell how she rode away,
To the crack of the whip at the break of day,
With the horse and the hounds in the morning?
Oh! the sound of the horn on the echoing hill,
And the cry of the pack as they ran at will,
And our dear Lady Gay,—I can hear her still,
As she told of the hunt in the morning.