snake

Small is the new-born plant scarce seen
Amid the soft encircling green,
Where yonder budding acorn rears,
Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head:
Slow pass along the train of years,
And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed.
Anon it rears aloft its giant form,
And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet the storm.
Beneath its boughs far shadowing o'er the plain,
From summer suns, repair the grateful village train.

Nor BEDFORD will my friend survey

Crow
I detest the Carrion Crow!
(He's a raven, don't you know?)
He's a greedy glutton, also, and a ghoul,
And his sanctimonious caw
Rubs my temper on the raw.
He's a demon, and a most degraded fowl.

Blue Wren
I admire the pert Blue-wren
And his dainty little hen-
Though she hasn't got a trace of blue upon her;
But she's pleasing, and she's pretty,
And she sings a cheerful ditty;
While her husband is a gentleman of honour.

Cuckoo
I despise the Pallid Cuckoo,

They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down
here in an iron car
On a long cable; here the ships warped in
And took their loads from the engine, the water
is deep to the cliff. The car
Hangs half way over in the gape of the gorge,
Stationed like a north star above the peaks of
the redwoods, iron perch
For the little red hawks when they cease from
hovering
When they've struck prey; the spider's fling of a
cable rust-glued to the pulleys.
The laborers are gone, but what a good multitude

Beowulf spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:
"Sorrow not, sage! It beseems us better
friends to avenge than fruitlessly mourn them.
Each of us all must his end abide
in the ways of the world; so win who may
glory ere death! When his days are told,
that is the warrior's worthiest doom.
Rise, O realm-warder! Ride we anon,
and mark the trail of the mother of Grendel.
No harbor shall hide her -- heed my promise! --
enfolding of field or forested mountain
or floor of the flood, let her flee where she will!

DAY, like our souls, is fiercely dark;
   What then? 'Tis day!
We sleep no more; the cock crows--hark!
   To arms! away!
They come! they come! the knell is rung
   Of us or them;
Wide o'er their march the pomp is flung
   Of gold and gem.
What collar'd hound of lawless sway,
   To famine dear--
What pension'd slave of Attila,
   Leads in the rear?
Come they from Scythian wilds afar,
   Our blood to spill?
Wear they the livery of the Czar?
   They do his will.

Dona Josefina has thrown my goat
out onto the calle El Fez--
Ay! The menu of pain is as big
as a queen-sized aha umbrella.

The lolita from the barrio chino licks
the sellos and then my luau--
there is a hint of ajo from Ab-derabad,
with periodos of adages and lapis lazuli.

I have known the fonda of Dona Josefina,
the jetty of her hips, under the veil
of her mild protests where pigs and lox
do mix in a yodel of ah-do-do-dah.

The lolita from the barrio chino is a rider

[Dedicated to G. M. Marston]


Pale as the night that pales
In the dawn's pearl-pure pavillion,
I wait for thee, with my dove's breast
Shuddering, a god its bitter guest-
Have I not gilded my nails
And painted my lips with vermillion ?

Am I not wholly stript
Of the deeds and thoughts that obscure thee?
I wait for thee, my soul distraught
With aching for some nameless naught
In its most arcane crypt-
Am I not fit to endure thee?

Girded about the paps
With a golden girdle of glory,

It's all so familiar and clear,
My eye's accustomed to every turn;
I'm not mistaken- I'm at home;
The wallpaper flowers, the chains of books...

I don't disturb yesterday's ashes -
The fire here has long gone cold.
Like a snake surveying its molted skin,
I gaze upon what I was.

Though many hymns remain unsung
And many blessings unbestowed,
I sense the glint of a different world,
A chance for new perfection!

I am called to unknown mountain peaks
By the chorus of spring,

Looking to harvest what makes him happy.
The AA meetings have thrown
him into iconoclastic jousts with Titans
and Gorgons with glowing snake eyes
and leather pants. This is life
without the Filipino bottle,
without the star fruit boogie,
without the "bomba" films. He wears black
Dr. Martens boots because slippers
would expose his "provinciano" feet
to the snow. He wants to ride
the back of a caribou and bolt
up Madison Avenue screaming
like Tandang Sora or shout
"hala-bira! hala-bira! hala-bira!"

I weep for Adonais -he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania