Whoever now weeps somewhere in the world,
weeps without reason in the world,
weeps over me.
Whoever now laughs somewhere in the night,
laughs without reason in the night,
laughs at me.
Whoever now wanders somewhere in the world,
wanders without reason out in the world,
wanders toward me.
Whoever now dies somewhere in the world,
dies without reason in the world,
looks at me.
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
we've ignored eachother for a long time
and I'm strictly an indoor man
anytime to call would be the wrong time
I'll avoid you as long as I can
When I was a boy we were good friends
I made pies out of you when you were wet
And in childhood's remembered summer weather
We roughandtumbled together
We were very close
just you and me and the sun
the world a place for having fun
always so much to be done
But gradually I grew away from you
Of course you were still there
Soft, low and sweet, the blackbird wakes the day,
And clearer pipes, as rosier grows the gray
Of the wide sky, far, far into whose deep
The rath lark soars, and scatters down the steep
His runnel song, that skyey roundelay.
Earth with a sigh awakes; and tremors play,
Coy in her leafy trees, and falt'ring creep
Across the daisy lawn and whisper, "Well-a-day,"
Soft, low and sweet.
From violet-banks the scent-clouds float away
And spread around their fragrance, as of sleep:
Socrates ghost must haunt me now,
Notorious death has let him go,
He comes to me with a clumsy bow,
Saying in his disused voice,
That I do not know I do not know,
The mechanical whims of appetite
Are all that I have of conscious choice,
The butterfly caged in eclectic light
Is my only day in the world's great night,
Love is not love, it is a child
Sucking his thumb and biting his lip,
But grasp it all, there may be more!
From the topless sky to the bottomless floor
With the heavy head and the fingertip:
There was a man in our town, and he
was wondrous rich;
He gave away his millions to the colleges
and sich;
And people cried: "The hypocrite! He ought
to understand
The ones who really need him are the children
of this land."
When Andrew Croesus built a home for children
who were sick,
The people said they rather thought he did it
as a trick,
And writers said: "He thinks about the drooping
girls and boys,
But what about conditions with the men whom
he employs?"
We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were
slipped in. We have levelled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and
dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming.
This one--will not be so easy. We were at ease while the powers of the
world were split into factions: we've changed that.
We have enjoyed fine dreams; we have dreamed of unifying the world; we
are unifying it--against us.
Two wars, and they breed a third. Now gaurd the beaches, watch the
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.
In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
scraps of white paper
blow over the railroad ties.
My father liked
to stand like this, to hold me
so he couldn't see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us.
