When a man is in love
how can he use old words?
Should a woman
desiring her lover
lie down with
grammarians and linguists?

I said nothing
to the woman I loved
but gathered
love's adjectives into a suitcase
and fled from all languages.

The fat lady came out first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.
The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.
The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.
The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,

Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him;
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed—
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend?
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said,
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light
Between the narrowing lids at which he gazed.
“And who of us are they that name their friends?”
Lancelot said. “They live that have not any.

1 Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us:
consider, and behold our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers,
our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless,
our mothers are as widows.

4 We have drunken our water for money;
our wood is sold unto us.

5 Our necks are under persecution:
we labor, and have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians,
to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not;
and we have borne their iniquities.

1 How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger,
and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel,
and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob,
and hath not pitied:
he hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
he hath brought them down to the ground:
he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.

3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel:

1 How doth the city sit solitary,
that was full of people!
How is she become as a widow!
She that was great among the nations,
and princess among the provinces,
how is she become tributary!

2 She weepeth sore in the night,
and her tears are on her cheeks:
among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her:
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they are become her enemies.

3 Judah is gone into captivity
because of affliction, and because of great servitude:
she dwelleth among the heathen,

Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,
And spreads her sheets o' daises white
Out o'er the grassy lea
Now Pheebus cheers the crystal streams,
And glads the azure skies;
But nought can glad the weary wight
That fast in durance lies.

Now laverocks wake the merry morn
Aloft on dewy wing;
The merle, in his noontide bow'r,
Makes woodland echoes ring;
The mavis wild ai' mony a note,
Sings drowsy day to reast
In love and freedom they rejoice,
Wi' care nor thrall opprest.

I heard the Poor Old Woman say:
"At break of day the fowler came,
And took my blackbirds from their songs
Who loved me well thro' shame and blame

No more from lovely distances
Their songs shall bless me mile by mile,
Nor to white Ashbourne call me down
To wear my crown another while.

With bended flowers the angels mark
For the skylark the place they lie,
From there its little family
Shall dip their wings first in the sky.

And when the first suprise of flight
Sweet songs excite, from the far dawn

THE lovely lass o' Inverness,
   Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;
For e'en and morn she cries, 'Alas!'
   And aye the saut tear blin's her e'e:
'Drumossie moor, Drumossie day,
   A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
   My father dear and brethren three.

'Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay,
   Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
   That ever blest a woman's e'e!

When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
All the green leaved little weddings' wives
In the coal black bush and let them grieve.

When I was a gusty man and a half