time

The man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
God never gave to look with common eyes
Upon a world of anguish and of sin:
His brother was the branded man of Lynn;
And there are woven with his jollities
The nameless and eternal tragedies
That render hope and hopelessness akin.

We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel
A still chord sorrow-swept,—a weird unrest
And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal,
As if the very ghost of mirth were dead—

All through our lovely married life
I've had to go away.
And it was always you, my dear,
Who was back home to stay.

It wasn't my own choosing,
But the Government, which said
That I must leave my family,
And sacred marriage bed.

The FBI was first to pry
Our soothing arms apart.
And, each time I returned to you
With ever swelling heart.

The Foreign Service, next, attempted
Separate our arms.
But I was not to be denied,
Returning to your charms.

This time of year a twelvemonth past,
When Fred and I would meet,
We needs must jangle, till at last
We fought and I was beat.

So then the summer fields about,
Till rainy days began,
Rose Harland on her Sundays out
Walked with the better man.

The better man she walks with still,
Though now 'tis not with Fred:
A lad that lives and has his will
Is worth a dozen dead.

Fred keeps the house all kinds of weather,
And clay's the house he keeps;

My friend tells me
a man in my house jumped off the roof
the roof is the eighth floor of this building
the roof door was locked how did he manage?
his girlfriend had said goodbye I'm leaving
he was 22
his mother and father were hurrying
at that very moment
from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn
they had heard about the girl

the people who usually look up
and call jump jump did not see him
the life savers who creep around the back staircases
and reach the roof's edge just in time

This is a poem I wrote before I died and was reborn:
- After the years of the apples ripening and the eagles
soaring,
After the festival here the small flowers gleamed like the
first stars,
And the horses cantered and romped away like the
experience of skill; mastered and serene
Power, grasped and governed by reins, lightly held by
knowing hands.

The horses had cantered away, far enough away
So that I saw the horses' heads farther and farther away

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

Thief of the moon, thou robber of old delight,
Thy charms have stolen the star-gold, quenched the moon-
Cold, cold are the birds that, bubbling out of night,
Cried once to my ears their unremembered tune-
Dark are those orchards, their leaves no longer shine,
No orange's gold is globed like moonrise there-
O thief of the earth's old loveliness, once mine,
Why dost thou waste all beauty to make thee fair?

Break, break thy strings, thou lutanists of earth,
Thy musics touch me not-let midnight cover

Today my mother and sisters
came to see me.

I had been alone a long time
with my poems, my pride . . . almost nothing.

My sister---the oldest---is grown up,
is blondish. An elemental dream
goes through her eyes: I told the youngest
"Life is sweet. Everything bad comes to an end."

My mother smiled as those who understand souls
tend to do;
She placed two hands on my shoulders.
She's staring at me . . .
and tears spring from my eyes.

We ate together in the warmest room

grow in the mind,
their rhymes chiming endlessly
with the sound of feet walking
or rain falling or being taken up
by garden birds, one line at a time.

Landmarks, favourite stones,
reminders of moments
that only history makes important,
we hum them down to immortality

so that now they fence us in
with the faces of lost opportunities,
and all the moons and Junes that ever were
are meadow-larking above England.

As I was a-crossin' the Abercrombie Mountains,
I met Sir Frederick Pottinger, and his money he was countin'.
I first drew me blunderbuss and then I drew me sabre
Sayin', "Stand and deliver-oh! for I'm your bold decayver."

chorus: With my mush-a-ring-a-dah,

Ri-tooral-addy-ah,
There's whisky in the jar!

I robbed him of his money; it was a pretty penny,
I robbed him of it all and took it home to Molly;
I took it home to Molly and I thought she'd ne'er deceive me,