time

I've been home a long time among the vast porticos,
Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires,
Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold
Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires.

The swells' overwhelming accords of rich music,
Heaving images of heaven to the skies,
Mingle in a way solemn and mystic
With the colors of the horizon reflected by my eyes.

It was here I was true to the voluptuous calm,
The milieu of azure, the waves, the splendors,

Let them say whatever they want to say about me
Let them do whatever the want to do to me
They are just wasting their time
I don’t care anymore
They are just trying to distract me
As a poet I know what are my 'raison d’être'

As a poet,
I have duties to carry out
As a poet,
I have responsibilities to fulfil
As a poet,
I have a destiny to reach

So let them play the negative part
Of the game
And I, as a poet, will always play the positive part of the game

When I bethink me on that speech whilere,
Of Mutability, and well it weigh:
Me seems,that though she all unworthy were
Of the Heav'ns Rule; yet very sooth to say,
In all things else she bears the greatest sway.
Which makes me loathe this state of life so tickle,
And love of things so vain to cast away;
Whose flow'ring pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle.

Then gin I think on that which Nature said.
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,

Mr Kessler, you know, was in the army,
And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
And stood on the corner talking politics,
Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs;
And I supported the family by washing,
Learning the secrets of all the people
From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.
For things that are new grow old at length,
They're replaced with better or none at all:
People are prospering or falling back.
And rents and patches widen with time;
No thread or needle can pace decay,

I know that he told how I snared his soul
With a snare which bled him to death.
And all the men loved him,
And most of the women pitied him.
But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,
And loathe the smell of whisky and onions.
And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears,
While he goes about from morning till night
Repeating bits of that common thing;
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
And then, suppose:
You are a woman well endowed,

Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old
That cried on each other,
All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled,
Alas my brother!

As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother
With fold upon fold,
The past years gleam that linked us one with another.

Time sunders hearts as of brethren whose eyes behold
No more their mother:
But a cry sounds yet from the shrine whose fires wax cold,
Alas my brother!

Mud is Beauty in the making,
Mud is melody awaking;
Laughter, leafy whisperings,
Butterflies with rainbow wings;
Baby babble, lover's sighs,
Bobolink in lucent skies;
Ardours of heroic blood
All stem back to Matrix Mud.

Mud is mankind in the moulding,
Heaven's mystery unfolding;
Miracles of mighty men,
Raphael's brush and Shakespear's pen;
Sculpture, music, all we owe
Mozart, Michael Angelo;
Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,
Issue out of primal mire.

In the raw, red womb of Time

When this country it was woody,
Its great champion, Mrs. Moody,
She showed she had both pluck and push,
In her work, roughing in the bush.

For there all alone she will dwell,
At time McKenzie did rebel,
Outbreak her husband strove to quell --
Her own grand struggles she doth tell.

Round bush life she threw a glory,
Pioneer renowned in story;
But her tale it is more cheering
When she wrote about the clearing.

Her other sister, Mrs. Traill,
Though eighty-six, she doth not fail;

Old Mr. Philosopher
Comes for Ben and Claire,
An ugly man, a tall man,
With bright-red hair.

The books that he’s written
No one can read.
“In fifty years they’ll understand:
Now there’s no need.

“All that matters now
Is getting the fun.
Come along, Ben and Claire;
Plenty to be done.”

Then old Philosopher,
Wisest man alive,
Plays at Lions and Tigers
Down along the drive—

Gambolling fiercely
Through bushes and grass,
Making monstrous mouths,

Mount Kearsarge shines with ice; from hemlock branches
snow slides onto snow; no stream, creek, or river
               budges but remains still. Tonight
we carry armloads of logs

from woodshed to Glenwood and build up the fire
that keeps the coldest night outside our windows.
Sit by the woodstove, Camilla,
               while I bring glasses of white,

and we'll talk, passing the time, about weather
without pretending that we can alter it:
Storms stop when they stop, no sooner,