LOVE POEMS FOR THE INCOMPETENT
A ShareBook by
SCRAWLMARK PUBLISHING
Moorhead, Minnesota
The FISHHOOK Group
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Love Poems for the Incompetent
Copyright 1969, (C)1997
by FISHHOOK and Dennis M. Hammes
All rights reserved.
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Scrawlmark Catalog #DMHLOVIN.ZIP
ISBN:
LCC Cat. Nr.:
Scrawlmark Publishing
1016 South Third Street
Moorhead, Minnesota 56560-3355
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
for
Carol
I suggest that an emotion which can be
destroyed by a little mathematics is neither
very genuine nor very valuable.
Bertrand Russell
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1
Summer Break
How is it that I love you?
Let me count the ways.
I love you as I see you,
As through a rosy haze;
I love you to the breadth and depth
Of this great universe,
And I shall be yours truly,
Through better and this verse.
Though some love's not enduring,
And some romance untrue,
Until the Black Hole have us,
I'll always love just you.
Whenever we are far apart,
My love is more the same:
I gaze upon your picture,
And sink right through the frame;
'Tis not enough--within my heart,
I feel a burning pain,
And I long to be with you,
Walking lovers' lane.
Even though I'm not quite sure
What our love has begun,
Perhaps I'll even love you
When summer break is done.
2
Weather Chat
I think I smell rain in the air, my old friend,
Though the radio forecast a balmy weekend.
But I feel a bit chill, under coat, scarf, and glove.
(I had hoped it were warm as a word with my love.)
I think I smell rain. I have beer at my place.
It should cloud before showers, but hurry your pace
Or we're caugght in the rain. There is at least one
Though yet undetected, steals warmth from the sun.
I think I smell rain yes, that's water's dank scent;
Perhaps yet this morning, say, forty percent.
You chide that my prognostication's not schooled?
Well, my weatherman's nose cannot often be fooled!
And I think I smell rain, though no cloud mars the sky
It steals warmth from our fun. What, you say that I sigh,
As though with your company all were not well;
That there's more that I wish? Now, how could you tell?
Well, I thought I smelled rain. Please excuse my short sight
And my argument's error, though partially right --
But I wonder, my friend, do you think it is wise
That a weatherman's nose lie so close to his eyes?
3
Poetry
I sit and wonder
For a while
At how, with
Literary Style,
To speak my mind
With words of Art
That I might win
A lady's heart;
Then wonder if
The words I've sung
Were for the girl,
Or for the tongue.
4
Endgame
At ease beside my hearth one night,
The fire for my only light;
With pipe and brandy at my hand,
Vivaldi on the record stand,
And pop concerto from the grate,
My thoughts took on a tranquil state.
Suddenly, around my chair
Came merry chuckles, flashing hair,
As flames cast you in orange for me
And jarred me out of my reverie,
Smiling. But before I spoke,
You'd gone again, and scented smoke
Was all that marked your brief hello.
Then, teasing too, it turned to go.
5
Apologia
I chanced one day to pause too long from quest,
Share thought with one whose course seemed kin to mine :
Platonic is the state I deem divine,
And shun as daft who bear romantic crest;
But virgin lodger wakened then from rest,
With foreign face -- I thought I knew them all
Who dwelt within, though this were virgin call
That brought him forth. He speaks for me in gest --
Though never in jest : too vast is his revere,
This amiable giant. Swift his gait
Now once awakened : him I cannot sate,
Or blind again with flimsy cloak of fear,
And reason is no stay against his might :
He has vision, I have only sight.
6
Parlor Trick
A parlor trick told wisdom's wist
When I squeezed within my fist
An egg, and felt it pressing back
With force, instead of squirting crack.
In unity its strength is found
Resisting equally around,
But did I tap on just the top
And bottom, then the sides would pop.
You are ways that I am not,
And where you want I'm polyglot :
Within love's eggshell, let us fix
Ourselves, to stay world's parlor tricks.
7
Suite for Three Voices
I. /Pastorale/
He had seen the pupa dance
Into winged pomp and circumstance
To set the stage : a mossy dell
Beneath an azure velvet swell
Where birch, in golden livery,
Stood herald for His Majesty.
And he heard whisperings of the breeze
(Secrets meant for none but trees)
And leavesdropped in the wood so long
That summer's breath became a song
Enchanting -- an idyllic lay
Whose tempo sparked the sprite's ballet :
Such song, before he could depart
He felt her dancing on his heart.
/One was the lad with the whispering leaf
And one were the woodland and he,
But his love for a lady can only be brief,
For he and the others are three; his love
And the woods and the lady are three./
II. /Air/
He left the forest for the glade
Where his fancy found a mortal maid,
Whose eyes caressed Apollo's hue
With a gaze once none but eagles knew.
Two hundred horses, fiery, proud,
Drummed chorus for her dance on cloud;
Two thousand pounds of steel and she
Were one in silver symmetry
With rarer winds unknown to churls
Like tall woodsmen and walking girls.
But fortune favored circumstance,
And he was caught by the eagle's glance,
Which softened as it met his eye,
And the tall trees touched the wing-swept sky.
/One was the lass with the whispering wing,
And one were Lycoming and she;
But love for this girl's an impossible thing,
For she and the others are three; the love
And the sky and the lady are three./
III. /Trio/
Though each sang songs they'd sung before,
Each thought they might love loving more.
And so it seemed : they sat embraced
While over earth the shadows chased;
Or fingered music born of strings,
Made ballads of their wanderings.
But when they tried to sing duet
Their harmony began to fret
(Though each alone was very good) :
Her voice was clouded, his was wood.
So who could blame them if their bliss
Was interrupted by their kiss?
Though presence was a pleasant thing,
In song, their voices found no ring.
/One with the wind and one with the wood
And one with our singing were we;
And sing to the other is all that one should,
But the wind and the forest made three : the love
And the wind and the forest made three!/
8
An Immodest Proposal (i)
When you're travelling, I can't sleep;
My head holds you instead of sheep,
And who would lay himself to bed
When his love's but in his head?
I dream away 'til half past two,
Wishing I could sleep with you,
And take no blame for dreamer's might,
As dreams are all I have at night.
For simple thoughts please bear no wrath,
But heed, instead, this simple math :
Take dreams from dreams, when we're apart;
Leave nothing on the serving cart.
So take your leave, if leave you must,
But leave my love this bit of crust,
That, lacking coffee, lacking bread,
Tomorrow it won't wake up dead.
9
To a Lilac
i
I started lilac stalks when spring abated,
Shouldered by their boughs, my senses filled;
But every scene an anxious sense created,
My unrelenting eyes appraised and stilled.
Mere draughts of lilac won't show if I savor
Fragrance from one bud or court the whole,
But eyes that want their fullness will not waver,
And watch clenched buds blunt beauty in the bowl.
My hapless plot saw sunsets slide toward summer
As I trowelled, until my tongue found you :
Your every shoot reshaped me like a hammer;
Your every color, amethyst to dew.
Now I can end my careful undertaking,
And await the April of your waking.
10
ii
Return your tale from April, timid bloom,
And it will come upon you past your part
To halt it. Winter's vavavoom
Can never stay us : it is time to start
The carol you'd cadenza. Give no thought
To season that would not admit Pinot;
The loss is all to them -- what diction ought
Eschew your scents, that waive your domino?
Get madrigal. Let April sprawl your wood
And spoil those guarded buds; what they unfold
Will fiddle finer senses, as it should,
For this is not the ragtime of the cold.
So don't refuse perfume to blooming season;
Blind April piques herself, and needs no reason.
11
iii
I birled and prodded at the earth, my bold
Strokes dividing in ready-flowing ooze
The grown, the weed, and the budding from the mold.
In April swill the tool and I could choose
The way of this : the lilac's prim rows pruned,
Defined and bordered earth seemed more important
Than pristine paint unspread and shingles ruined
By browning grass beyond the contract fortnight.
By August, offsprung shoots invaded the lawn;
They tangled the mower to a stop in September;
Their roots and caulking humus broke the prongs
From this cast-iron rake in Indian Summer.
Cheap knowledge, it has justified its cost :
Some unglazed windows, open to white frost.
12
iv
Tall concrete tombs this prairie, but in quick,
Small surges under the sulfrous film
On jailed palms, the cinderblock-ringed elm,
The good tree caught and painted on a truck,
Beats a silent surge of telltale lilac.
Faded icons, baptised daily, numb
From clay and chlorine, still plink the green alm
Into windows and the graved veins of the buck.
I too could housefly to the scaled trough,
Slide down the feedspout toward the mumming worms,
Deride their writhings but with beery breath,
Then fall, whimpering, to the ordered tombs
If I had not heard the drumming grouse
And cut the early lilac for my house.
13
v
Following the long and wordless prose
We tucked between the voices of the clock,
The bloom was brandied, that you used to block
Long monosyllables mumbled through my nose,
And pull our purpled springtime to a close.
But when I harped of harvest, you stood stock
And open, rooted wooden to your shock,
And pointed out some things don't stand in rows.
Remembering the bold globe in the garden
All violet, large enough to hold a flock
Of waxwings; too, that it had given pardon
By wilting other species from the walk,
I could but think (and wish my mark could harden)
That lilacs only grow, and seldom talk.
14
vi
The hard caulk drops from holding up the glass
And June rains curled the edges of the eaves;
October trumpets shrill the holes, blow leaves
To bank brown lilacs and the yellow grass,
But not the house : the plumbing will not pass
Waste products; the oil stove tolls, bereaves
The passing of my elbows through my sleeves :
These have caused my absence from your class.
If noses didn't suffer from the cruddies,
Or if I were a schizophrenic warlock,
I'd fuel my cells, excelling in my studies
While spreading sleek. But I fall short of Shylock.
I must soothe my sniffles with hot toddies :
I'm not as wind-resistant as the lilac.
15
vii
The fork-celled psyche is a strange appliance
To caliper the curves of time and space :
Senior partner in the nerve's alliance
With fallen monks and apes, her only grace
Is muttered as she sits to stuff her face.
The infant thought must creep, that would outgrow
Her old, amoebic hungers : I must pace
The winter lilac, take my waking slow,
Or she will ball up all the world and throw
Down twenty theses in a single frame,
Tear up the scoresheet, preen herself; Rousseau
Was not the first, nor last, to lose her game,
For what she feel fills up the head's whole room
Although the scent were from a single bloom.
16
viii
I hope you're not so far eight cents can't reach you
Before the postman prods two pennies more
For casting paper. Not that I could beach you,
Reel you in from sun to shaded shore
By casting lines of ink about a page :
You never jumped for baubles, words with hooks,
Or promises. And now we're of an age.
It's time to close the creel and tend my books;
Books are best for chair men, and the bored.
But they stand mute, or, with your varied voices,
Trawl drolleries or cannon-sail-and-sword
Days in among my supermarket choices.
And nibble my worm of words though you've the sea,
Don't worry for the hook. The hook has me.
17
ix
So here we are, another short-eyed winter
To our credit, or perhaps just here --
You, not yet bent, yet sport another splinter
Brought out of the deep midnight of the year,
Some kin, though mine was mended by your cheer.
Tough stuff, your color, weathering this plaint,
Never having shown the shiver of fear,
Nor lapsed from growing -- I'm the one must paint
The trim and base, abrade away the taint
Of mildew left by thoughts of other seasons :
So early, and already your first faint
Lilac resumes without selecting reasons.
And yet, to bring your color to these rooms,
I must trim the life out of your blooms.
18
x
Would you dilute your spirit in a brook?
Or its amoebic millions sum esteem
Advance to mine, or better suit your dream
Than collecting in the pages of a book?
Fish in their rush run even as they look,
Instinct pursuing minnows in a stream;
The morsel stilled, the walleyed swallowers deem
No wonder to the worth of what they took :
There's voice nor value in the river's rabble,
Running to run; they empty as they're filled
By total volume many times their space.
If you must sow your fruit, then let me trouble
To ward it here, in rich ground slowly tilled,
Where I may sound the minutes of each grace.
19
xi
He who bleats that blue befits all green
Offends the eye, if not the inner ear --
Lilac's the cosmic blend : acknowledged queen
To any color ruling the chromosphere,
The subject of no season's whim : this hue
Loves structure that the rose can never fashion.
You are no miser's morning-glory blue;
Do not, like rose, excite mere rakish passion,
Lilac! an ageless touch of spring
Drawn out of winter : monument through snow
To constant life, old love, and everything
That needs not fresh afresh each year to grow!
Such constant is night thought's eternal foil
So constant is your bloom's essential oil.
20
xii
The air is rent with rain. Tornado funnels
Attempt to pour whole gardens in the lake;
Topsoil and loam alloyed with water runnels
Off to roads where August winds will bake
Fine, stinging powder, suitable to blind;
Then the great, gas tiller rough-hauls roots
And worries at rocks and rubble, trying to find
A bit of loam in which to set some shoots.
But whether I hoe slow, or throw dirt faster
A year will see the whole plot gone to clover;
The trouble is that zinnia, phlox, and aster
Not only need be kept, but started over,
Set out as seedlings, coddled, cursed, and then
Bloom small and late where you've already been.
21
xiii
You, lilac, live alloyed to solid soil
And I've the sea's wild rolling in my blood :
Salt, cellular, and subject to each flood
Of unharmonic hormones raised to toil
By masque of moth or mayfly's ruin, I foil
At tendering the effortless, slick wood
That left alone, would spread your purple brood
On all of time's eternal cosmic coil.
I do not own myself; should live as tenant :
Quitting immobile stone, extol the dew;
Commit the morning-glory of some pennant,
Nor tipple with these gods or that guru;
Draw out blood's loan, and when my salt is spent,
Career myself to leaves to nourish you.
22
xiv
See his short stature mime the burr and hemlock,
Who are more certain in the less they grow;
Then watch his syllogy attempt the lilac :
Because lines labor, he thinks time moves slow.
Lost in minuteness of each spiralled reason,
Or billed by the world, he plays it as it's not;
Too late to wear the masque in current season,
He sings too little -- but he frets a lot.
Though worms turn death to life, and life to soil,
This bookworm turns the screw of his own vice;
As moths don morning in his midnight oil,
The lilac leaves while he's portraying ice.
So to the world's round stage, unseason enter
An uncured ham messiah, upstage center.
23
xv
Unpardoned by the moon, mosquitos down
The chilling hearth; a bucket is half-filled
By February's promise; but the brown,
Strong stalks of lilac still sleep snow-hilled
In frozen ground. Your single light, long stilled,
Could not have made the darkness less opaque
Or solved its corners: frost has once more silled
The windows and the ledges of the lake.
Neurotic newt, did you, who only wake
To putter April rime, and that not well,
Believe you could, with participles, fake
The cosmic pattern of the surging cell?
Then die again, until your proper time,
When summer holds your heartbeat in its slime.
24
xvi
The white stone spreading from the hangnail down
To its abrupt and bottom edge no doubt
Once served some purpose other than to clown
At walls turned dark before you mustered out.
And now the ear that authorised my joy
But toots the toddle with a children's fife,
And sword or razor, treated as a toy,
Can sooner cut the bull than canvas life.
Unchampioned, I charge from now to nether,
The barking baron of a shrinking fief,
Shorn of tonsure, scorning issue leather,
And unbelieved-in by my own belief.
Even the lilac is not quite exempt :
Who only watch must watch it grow unkempt.
25
xvii
These tulips, squeezing water from my gaze :
Stoned posy pugilist, spring ignorant, un-Hoyle
They bid with trumpets buried in the soil
A seed-eschewing bumpkin, seeking praise;
And bidding broad the starburst of its days,
Outspringing spring while April's still a boil
Above the iris, lilac will despoil
The featherbud the lingering hoarfrost frays.
Your lilac is its own excuse, and grows
At will through weeds, frost, annuals, or raindrops,
Where long roots more than balance lack of reason;
I, like the tuber, swing rope-handled hoes
At frozen ground : my roots run back to Aesop's,
But swell too soon without their proper season.
26
xviii
Caught in the trellis of my ancient art
Your shape was sure; the penknife's crafty blade
Pared you from doubt, and pruned you for a part :
You grew as I grew skilled, and life grew grayed.
Then you were green and easy in the morning,
When every shadow lit out with my thought;
But I paid dues to manners of adorning,
When interest was due to what I wrought.
I absensented about some household duties
While you stood dusted on the study shelf,
Caught the lilac's breath, fleshed out your beauties,
And sang your name : not lilac, sprout, or elf.
Now you breathe, and I must mourn with Shylock,
Knowing that woman bleeds, unlike the lilac.
27
xix
Though I was regent when you were the plant
Of faded leaves cast from the garden stalks
Of those who grew before us, now the grant
Runs finally out, and I must take lone walks
And wash that platform's sawdust from my talks.
I see you now, grown out of certain form,
No blossom-headed, lilac-limbed Guy Fawkes
Who centers in the cotton-candied norm
That poets use to keep their pillows warm;
Only the myth burns out, alight from friction
Of straw vote lost as we contest the quorum
Of days that ballot from a common diction.
Then how will all this Independent choice
Convene our House to vote a single voice?
28
xx
Loveliest of blooms, the lilac's hue
Is strewn in heady harness on the lane --
The thick-thumbed plumes need but an hour's dew
To stoop them down, and I am tall again.
Such is June's quick fiction, that this flood
In swelling out the flowers' lilac tide
Can visit Lazarus on forgotten blood
And goad amoebic liquids into pride.
Now what was missing and presumed as dead
Through winter's care and cautious husbandry
Is closer than a thought is to the head
And close as touching, if you're touching me --
So let us seal the loan and spend the note
To go where the lilac is, and kiss her throat.
29
xxi
The world bulks broad between my sun and me
And all the State's long tar holds her away.
Should eyes own plastic when they cannot see
Her light, or they drive darkness from their day?
Artificial flowers can't betray
The hunger that keeps flesh affirmed to bone :
The plow will be employed, whatever may.
And though I tend ecliptic days alone,
Succeeding strokes need not become a drone
If I draw out what bloom is in my care --
Though nature age, she does not turn a crone.
Then blunder forth, and name the morning fair :
The breathless, quiet lilac still knows more
Of either world divided by a door.
30
xxii
How shall I keep the lithe life of this passion?
Stone is stubborn; money too soon spent;
The worth of words flirts in and out of fashion,
Too short and filmy to confine intent --
No. Even if this pulse should lie with you,
Where does it lie, and where lies any truth?
Does it become your hair, a turn of shoe,
Or misdirect the firmnesses of youth?
I am no yardstick, being short in age,
And cannot tailor wisdom to the facts;
Each yesterday leaves but a single gauge :
How much life swells today out of those acts.
So I will do, and relish even doubt,
And pity lilac, that must do without.
31
/l'envoi/
I am a crock at caroling my love:
I sing the Grumman Gulfstream, terns engrossed
In fishing, vics of geese, the eagle's boast,
The old war iron, and most that flies above;
But when it comes to whom I'm dreaming of
I am a dunce, dense where it counts the most;
I think upon what I propose to toast
And these keys stammer to a metal glove.
But birds fly south and bats fly IFR
And none had lessons in their airy art;
Yet they have left behind the allosaur
For ends unknown, and so invented Sartre.
I sit here staring with my mouth ajar:
The words have chosen me. I'd better start.
32
/Ardea Herodias/
The Great Blue Heron is his name.
This misproportioned bird
Combines in title and in frame
The regal and absurd.
By working wings, he could make flight
And leave the swamp behind,
But mothers aerophobic fright
And falls within his mind.
He stands up on one slender peg
Where everyone can spot him,
But will not let the other leg
For fear it won't find bottom.
He clucks that swamps are pretty fates,
That you elope to him
Because the problems he creates
Can't fly, and will not swim.
Your heron lover struts a slough
With all his feathers shaking,
Honking that his heart's for you
And other bellyaching.
33
Out of Favor
No wind to ride to battle, cold's a charmer
With a folded knife. Long jealous chill
Had muttered thick, blunt fingers at my armor,
Fumbling for an entrance, but a spill
Of sable showed her favor, laid good will
Upon my collar, proof against the cold;
And at the list, my favor found me bold.
But wind gulped at my collar, caught it bare
And galloped off. Cold snickered, mounted, reeled
About, charged to the jousts on its foundling mare,
Then struck my stake, crossed lance and clashed at shield,
Ripped riposte, and rammed me to the field.
Not steel nor flesh the heel upon my collar;
And screeching white's his grinning, gargoyle leer.
The wind moans no more, but only I --
And Mnemosyne mocks warmer days when I
Once walked in courtlier ways. Companion cold
Trails fingers down my back and shares my bed,
And wearies now the shoulder at whose fold
Once laid the sable of a friend, instead
Of this intemperate, alien, heavy head.
34
One, Two
One hundred thousand
stars and one
(half)
couple affirm the
(near)
delicacy of a
July evening.
35
/Didus Ineptus/
I say you fogged my telescope
And left my blinking mind to grope
And find the cosmos back,
Though all the proof I have for showing
Something lingers past your going
Is that the stars are black.
36
/Equus Caballus/
You said my pony shaggy, said no good
For riding in by lady, said him ain't
Worth powder shoot him, said my pony should
Be thoroughbred, not spotted, peeling paint.
But you not look on inside : have strong motor,
Not big eater, go to Denver in
A day : what he save buy fur for coat or
Keep tent warm or squaw from getting thin.
You buried hatched in my auto : then
I see you look for shadow of this brave
In wampum, horse, and blankets; that is when
I lock up wife-price : I not be your slave.
When this brave cold at night him not desire
Log make heap big smoke and nothing fire.
37
Thought
How soft often is your love
In a summer stuffy garret
In the sibilant sliding of nightwatch
In the green glow between
downtown and destination
When I am not yet with you
Not quite with me
How soft often is your love
38
Past Summer
smoke floats in flat flakes
halfway from the floor
the steady grunting of bubbles
up from the pump to the top of the fish tank
is cracked by the dry crunch
of an expended brown filter tip
and the crash crunched from an empty pack
outside a nicotine stained window the sun
a chipped china plate splattered with old egg
watches the yard reel in a fungoid
rapture of brown protoplasm
and shrugs the final fall of summer
corpses of the autumn festival lie
moldering in brown corners
causing even the moon
to turn her nose last night
and wait for winter to bury them
the yellow harvest is laid out in barns
and left over from those yellow days
is a dull pain by my left arm
but it only throbs when I prod it
and the cat slides past my chair
sniffing once and passing over
the metronome of poems that kiss the carpet
with all the moans they once
saved for us
39
/Rana Pipiens/
/"The enhanced strength of the nerve
impulse...
is compatible with the well-known fact that
a frog ignores a food object until it
moves."/
-- Wooldridge
Tweak the black bead, watch the tongue's quick shoves.
Now draw the damsel past him on a wire :
She moves a long leg, and the man-frog loves.
With Skinner Box and chart, the whitesmock proves
Survival's certain cellular desire :
Tweak the black bead, watch the tongue's quick shoves
For instant food. (Instead of tadpole-droves,
A rubber duck is all that he might sire :
She moves a long leg, and the man-frog loves.)
But as he mulls men, dogs, and nestling doves,
His cheek domes as beliefs are mixed with mire :
Tweak the black bead. Watch the tongue's quick shoves.
The bees and birds that dappled apple groves
Repealed his legends in an office flyer :
"She moves a long leg, and the man-frog loves."
He strips the knowledge with his rubber gloves,
To purchase candies for his sweet, and sigh her.
Tweak the black bead, watch the tongue's quick shoves.
She moves a long leg, and the man-frog loves.
40
Photograph
A prodigal of light that dared the shutter
Slipped the blackened gate and smeared the film:
A lens-flare leans against the garden's flatter.
Lips pursed, I nudge an image for an alm,
But is that yours, or but a lilac limb?
That was our fault : we spared of private ways
To click our cameras at the lilac days.
41
Phone Call
If I were a capsuled, starbound pilot
Instead of occasionally handy with torches
I could round the trip in one minute
Flat. But I couldn't say hi. Time is
Glue, if you've got too much to do in it,
Or little. Well, I've got this pump. Why
Not play that record and crack the Pernod?
the socket by your chair can charge my
Drill over four hundred times a second,
Chopin to workbench, and might say hi :
We're on the same wire, anywhere,
Courtesy copper. But cast-iron pumps crack.
The grouting is tedious, even with power;
Then four hours of stiffarming traffic.
And the sealer would have stuck your hair.
42
Homo Sap
/Candy is dandy, but sex won't rot your
teeth./
-- graffiti
Now, dragging this poem by one arm like a ragdoll,
I wonder, from the wraparound steel pall
That sheens your eyes, to your Corfam-cuddled feet
That seek to hurl the street back at the street,
Why I thought I'd win. You owned the ball.
While the faint fist of the damper fought the night
And you stepped tender, borne on your pooling slip,
You glistened with long promise in orange light,
But held your presence packaged short : one strip
Still censored out your central heat with the white,
Blunt finality of a broken tooth.
Unbased by the specie of your price,
I reassembled the cocksure stance of truth
Foot by foot, away from the sudden ice,
A pipe to prop the cavities of youth.
The razor grates through daily-doubling hairs
That blue my jowls to nearly-matching pairs
Of work apparel; and your near-disaster
Heals, stopped with styptic, neatly topped with plaster :
A private plot that puts on public airs.
43
An Immodest Proposal (ii)
An empty tent-shell, held up to the sky :
So stand my days, and in the mornings, I.
The caravan of autumn sounds retreat
And leaves its husks, yet I lack central heat,
And with the dead of winter, do not dance,
But slide my stiffening legs into cold pants.
The woodshed creaks of sweat, my books are clerked,
My windows caulked; long, weary years I've worked
To plot a purpose in the course of stars,
Watching bright Virgo flee ascending Mars,
When in one night, I could define desire :
The fire orange in the hearth; you orange in fire.
Though I find satellites to orbit Venus,
Winter rolls dry solstice between us,
Erasing those dual moons' head-filling light.
You could loose my want, and them from night :
Let fall that umbral wraparound, and show
Their sun-tipped mountains melting winter's snow!
We praise the music, muse on every art,
But when I praise you, you pray to depart,
Exclaiming need. Brief bodiment of hope,
Your orbit spurns my questing telescope;
Your sterile, astral air won't let me scan it,
Sliding beneath a people-covered planet
When I would man you, blanket you with breath,
And slide your slopes to sleep. If sleep be death,
What fitter way to doze than promised life
And dreams again? No astrogating wife
Can lay more dreaming out before a man
Than one short night of sleep in winter can,
And night rounds on. Tomorrow dims your beam
As orange moonlight fades to pale cream,
And cream turns sour. Then will you quote me Keats
And put my head to sleep between dry sheets?
Thinking you'll someday serve some aging fellow,
Do you chill the meat to give him tallow?
As though the race depended on the new,
You fly my fireplace, paying to pursue
A holocryptic course. Though you absorb it,
You'll not depart one meter from your orbit,
But, whirling through a certain unit span,
Approach eclipse, and end where you began.
My solitary scholar's hand has curled
A callus on its handle on the world.
Still ignorant of spring, I'd cling to you
In final seminar; learn that it will do
To know each other, knowing we will die,
Extending our season with a little lie.
44
At the Seashore
I sat to do some fishing at time's slipstream,
To noodle in my noodle for some whosit
Right of rain and left of chocolate icecream.
Got you instead. Now there you've made me lose it.
Renoir, Renoir, your women. Who they are
Is immaterial as the singing gold
They stroke throughout the doldrums of your blues :
The chart says greens and blues are always cold,
But here is that conversion of the Muse
That Marvell spoke. Was egg and pigment all
You used to show why Paris came so far?
Unquestioned answer, posed against my wall :
Whatever look that Anna gave the Czar,
I know the look a woman gave Renoir.
45
East of Midnight
Because of you, I suffer many dreams,
But haven't Pilate's bromide heed of Rome.
The minutes shake their fists : I am the home
Of lesser schemes.
A full moon rims
The leaded compass of the sleeping lake
And thoughts grown oak and lilac : that you wake
The numb amoebas of my clumsy limbs.
The minutes pass.
My arms, that slowly turned to worms of jello
Bound by dull steel molds, report the pillow
'S cosmic mass.
46
Heracritic
Here the heron stands in silhouette,
Lilac to lilting lilac, walleye's dread;
But here the heron stands with one leg wet
And nothing said.
His weapon sways
As liquid dims the color of his dream;
And while he seeks the lilac of his days,
The walleye, like the Greek, has moved downstream.
47
Say the Secret Word
and Get the Bird
I sing sublime seasons
For secular reasons
And you,
But what is a love
With the voice and the face of a dove?
Or what's it to you?
The winners of graces
All wear different faces.
The crowd gapes the same way I do.
I would be wise
To wear a disguise --
To smile for a while inscrutable as a guru,
But I am immured
In the brain of a bird
With a voice that is flatulent, too :
My singular mode of address
Turns over the tactic of letting you guess
(Turns over more guts than a few),
And though you despise it,
I blink my dove eyes at
Your countenance, prize it,
And coo.
48
Morning After
Tough trick, printing a tattoo
Across the convolutions of my brain,
(But light that lost the lissome weight of you
Became my gain);
This secondhand homunculus
Is well aware of one, but numb to two,
And every other self-wrought wrinkle thus
Transfigures you.
Now I've you my way, at my ease,
Instead of new directions you might drop;
Such liberty for you, the gut agrees,
'Sa lousy swap.
49
Solar Eclipse
Keep your brass home, obnoxious star.
Your nose is where in-senses are,
And none too gay --
I'll not have night's skulldiggetry
Spied on by your blue bigotry
Or burned this way.
You dilute the spirited gloom
To light the cobwebs in the room
And scare the mice :
Remember the Fourth. Wise up and quit
Before your zeal makes you commit
A civil vice.
Too late. Long laws decree you must
Arrest my blood and cloud my dust
With normal sight
And win again. So serve your bill.
The shadows of her body will
Be back tonight.
50
Through a Glass, Darkly
What would be the gain
If I left unshattered
The one unbroken pane?
The rest allow the rain
To leave my carpet watered.
What would be the gain
If some moth left the lane
For my lone bulb, and battered
The one unbroken pane
And drove himself insane?
If I thought we still mattered,
What would be? The gain
Is small though we maintain
That my reflection flattered
The one unbroken pane.
I've paced my crowded brain
Until my carpet's tattered.
What would be the gain?
The one unbroken pane.
51
Mama's Girl
That molt of Mom you're wearing
Is a leather beyond bearing --
But nudity's too daring
Even if the weather's nice;
The comfort it disposes,
Warmer than the stones of Moses,
Like the best of other clothes, is
Quite becoming for a vice.
You'd trade it for a nickel
If you didn't think it fickle
(And the truth would not so tickle!),
And you could but do it twice;
But, done, there's no returning
Nor entreating for your burning
(Not for all your stomach's churning!)
Though a God may throw the dice.
For, once the die has tumbled,
Showing how the cooky crumbled,
All the knowledge it has mumbled
Is as firm's a mainbrace splice,
And all the guests at wedding
Irrespective of the bedding
Cannot change the compass heading
When the truth has thrown the rice.
You hem and haw your knowledge
All the way through postgrad college,
But will not let go your dollage
Or your other child's device:
Just like any other scoffer,
You warn away the offer,
Click the locket of your coffer,
Then you quibble at the price.
Be you off with all your holler
For my love and for my dollar,
For the pressure at my collar
Is approaching that and twice;
You have left behind your growing
And your cooking and your sewing
For your oxymoron-throwing,
And I'm telling you to /schmeiss/.1
--------------------
1. Shit or get off the pot.
52
Preface to the Second Edition
I'd take us slowly. You are not the first.
Suspicion, scar of trust, hamstrings the will
Though joy leaps highest that has been rehearsed;
No joint deposit, this, but touch submersed
In coarse, protective tissues; a private ill.
I'd take us slowly, you. Are not the first
The crash curricula, and old wounds worst
Trickers of tendon, to list limbs with a chill?
Though joy leaps highest that has been rehearsed,
All practice certifies is further thirst;
The least of scores is told an equal bill,
So take us slowly. You are not the first
To stride against my side, perhaps to burst
Some unprotected hope against rough skill,
Though joy leaps highest; that has been rehearsed
Until the curtain yawns, critiqued and cursed
Until the moves cliche and limbs slump. Still,
I'd take us. Slowly. You are not the first --
Though joy leaps highest that has been rehearsed.
53
A Little Giddy
An empty tent shell, held up to the sky :
So stand my blankets in the morning. Why?
Is it because the Petro-shortage sends
The price of Brylcreem too high for two friends?
Or is it that you think I'll merely woo ya
Without time for a little dabble? Do ya?
Or love too much too much that makes me fickle
When there's but one I tickle, tickle, tickle?
But feathers are as feathers do, of course,
And Pegasus will rise as hard as horse,
Is seldom led and sooner made to drink,
Eats oat bran, sweats, leaves things that start to stink,
And while he swears you're not much of a load,
He picks his teeth, his nose, and every road.
But carry you he will : the saddle horn
You rub while riding is with what he's born;
And if you'd rather walk, he'll mope : he's useless,
Your muddy feet and heavy style excuseless.
Or fear the horse is dated by the cart
That belches gas, is driven by a fart;
Dependent on the ones who want, who use,
And every one of all who shop your dues,
Who'd rather have the manly sort of boys
That make us livestock, marvel at the toys
By which they move from romper room to Bradley
To doing nothing much and rather badly,
Afraid to bark, content to be the fleas
Whose printed money lets them print degrees
In everything their puppy would eschew,
Now one for Michelson, now one for you,
That thus they vote to once and finally larn us
That we will cut the hay, and they, the harness,
Who, lacking heat to rear a central peg,
Content themselves to sniff and raise the leg
Or elevate a puler to a pundit
Who'll woof the hoof as long as they will fund it --
But most in need of roads, and those who send?
You've swapped the horse for just the other end.
Because I do not chase the dome and steeple
I am not curried by the kinds of people
Who say their praise designs what's in the blood
But nonetheless demand my get at stud,
Then blinker it to prove a certain future,
And hamstring to bestow the gift of suture;
Who measure place by whom they can impugn
And stature in the depth of the spittoon :
These are the rulers. Let them buzz and bloat,
Let them redress their grievances, and vote
To nomenclate the world with what they meant,
And watch the other hand fill up with scent.
Were we the timeless spirits they would wish
To cruise agape like certain boneless fish
Whose one commandment is to swim and swallow
Letting the other fill their little hollow,
Whose ectoplasm features a facade
Between sabbaticals they spend with God,
All would come in Herakleitic time
And you could have it all by simple mime --
But which, the paragon to emulate,
When all your fellows strive to stand and wait?
What you would do, do now. While you would dare
To lift your hemline, cut your class or hair,
To see or be seen seeing, I grow old
And at the juncture of my trousers, cold.
Oh, what fastidious and proper rage!
That I remark of my, and thus your, age!
But that is nothing, being only bruised
In the exact amount it isn't used :
The first stroke of the plow will tear the field
Far more than subsequent trespasses yield,
Not in the labor, but in making strange,
Nor in the tender, but the total change;
And so we hear the virgin grunt and squeal
And weep and blame, and everything but feel,
Then hold one ever liable because
He's taken everything she ever was.
Let's quit this comedy of decent topics,
And other measurements by pole and tropics
To leap the flaming sun in leaping ditches,
And leave these pentecostal sons-of-itches
Groping their fellows, bawling on the floor,
Then leaping to translate some noise some more,
Indicting what may rise above their ash kind --
Our nearness to the sun will leave them flash blind.
But if you take the route you're born to take
That wants me swordless, Lady of my Lake
Who comes by night to flicker in my lamp,
Whose leaping shadows leave me rather damp,
Then leave by day quite knowing what you came for
(Exactly what I am to take the blame for),
But not exactly how I'm to admit it,
Shit, get off the pot, or just forget it:
To classify offense and tell the lashes
Neither burns, nor hauls another's ashes.
Lady, you think you still pursue a leopard
But we are not a thing you can store, kippered,
Until your purpose bursts forth, quite fulfilled:
That's botulus, and maimed more than it killed.
Where in one waning dusk like any other
I caught you looking like your sudden mother,
Spastic in love and purposeless in hate,
Jealous of all she won't appreciate,
If not appreciate, at least possess,
If not to have, then order into mess,
If not to set to rule, then sit to dream
Your will to recapitulate the theme
Fixed upon the turning of your face
While standing in the middle of my place
A compound and confounded wholly ghost.
The will to have you will not have me toast
A will that needs a sucker for its kicks
Or precorrelative on which to fix
In that suspension of the snow, when ice
However it cannot win, is still not nice,
And Easter fiddles with the flint, the choir
Is full of sparrows, but there is no fire :
The only promise I have sworn to keep
Is that the woods are lovely, fly or creep;
And of the season you'd excuse your fear,
We each of us will have it every year
And I've no interest in twice-done things
For school's too short to divvy up with kings.
I am in no way eager to repeat
The parables my students use to cheat
The meaning out of what I said them for;
The clothes no longer wear their emperor
Though most, I grant, find paradise enow
Whenever babes show willingness to bow
To any lesson they have never heard,
Provided it prove living is absurd.
Let them too flourish, hedgehogs in a row
Examining their navels, that they show
A bully world their common backs and bristles
For they're sure the flowers have some thistles,
A fall from grace that is to be abhorred
For that it snapped the umbilical cord,
Who, scared by purpose, wondering at grails
Will lick at all, but mostly under tails;
Who curse the earth to show they love the sky;
Who'd suck the thumb, but stick it in the eye.
The notion that the soul is built to bathe
Will bolt no lover's coffin to a lathe,
For how can there be any sense of fun
When everything that can be, has been, done
Save waking up one morning as a blank
With nothing but your ignorance to spank?
I'm not indifferent to your bootless plight
(Am not indifferent, or I would not write).
Love is not love, that alters what it know
Or bends to level with what will not grow,
Not love, that only flies in retrospect
And never rises out of ground effect,
But beats its breast in back of every church
And counts it genuflection, that it lurch;
Not love, that creep to mollify the mole :
The love to gallop dares the gopher hole,
But one step is a step too far to feel
For those who want to gallop while they kneel.
And let the whole earth heave, that petrophage
Will show your mayfly what it means to rage,
Ignoring your Canute trip and command
By carrying away one grain of sand
Will dig up all that is no friend to you
And place your ancient crimes on public view
To make your enemy once-common youth
Who knelt with you to nail or sabre-tooth,
So you have found that, for destruction, ice
Need not put one foot forward to suffice.
That's nice. And greater, too; you had to kiss
One step to fire to fathom even this.
Where there were hills, it dug great lakes; it
charmed
One river over half a land, for taste;
Of all that's loveable in this, the best
Is that it won't allow you any rest:
It drove our species from its little cave
And turned the woolly mammoth from his grave,
But not to trumpet;
and for its goal
It rolls the world into a little hole.
* * *
unfinished
54
Stopping by Words
on a Snowy Evening
We shared, with words we think we know,
The click of cocoa after snow
While coats and thoughts cast off the chill
They carried in from miles ago,
And we were scared with difference. Still
Our doubt agreed with joy until
But part of every sight was true
Without space left to swell or spill
Small silences. We knew we knew,
And saying into silence grew.
How, how we wished we wished to stay!
But each had things he must, to do
Before he had the right to play.
We touched, before the day was day
And stretched our scarves for five below
And set our feet to pay our pay --
One pair to stay, the other go,
Afraid the other could not know
The love that set our footprints so.
55
Complete Edition (II)
If we had food enough, and time,
Your coyness weren't unseasoned crime:
I'd ply your upper mouth with all
The relish you could bite,
And stuff your plate and table 'til
Your other mouth would cry its fill.
To every taste, I'd put such herbs
And accent us with nouns and verbs
Across the lucid candlelight
And wine between each little bite,
And all would be in braziers or
Ice buckets, so the least encore
Would pipe its heat or pass its chill
Until the waitress brought the bill.
My little beefsteak love should grow
Tenderer than sirloin, though
Not near as flat, for we would dance:
Your knees would rub against my pants
Until the dawn and steak and eggs
And wine, and glimpses of your legs.
You could, if you'd a mind, refuse
Until the Brits abandoned stews,
Or languish in a pretty pout
'Til Germans quit their wurst and kraut.
You could (and would) insist a while
'Til Slavs said borscht was out of style,
And I became your only peeker
And Hungary had quit paprika.
You'd wait until I had a stoop
The French quit making onion soup,
The Twins had traded Rod Carew,
And Swedes abandoned /lefse/, too.
And this would be the way to bite
If world abandoned appetite,
But world wants its turn tasting too,
And needs no recipe for you.
There's world enough. Its only crime
'S to bite a man before his time.
Before the age grows much more middler
Come, ride the belly of this riddler;
You make all world a belly dancer
Before you will allow your answer,
Or insist all come to terms,
We'll ride the bellies of the worms.
56
Six and the Single Girl
In a huff sat a great horny owl
Who harrumphed as he ruffled his jowl,
"A bird who stands neuter
Is not worth a hooter,
I swear by my mutter most fowl."
"Your sinuous snake in Your grass,"
Accused Eve, but the Snake called it sass:
He denied, with a giggle,
"No way, could I wiggle
Like that, when I haven't an ass!"
A young dinosaur cried to his friend,
"I won't molt, then I won't have to mend!"
'Til his shape was absurd
And his vision was blurred
And his brain couldn't find his ascend.
He taught, did a Hottentot fluter,
A Hottentot tot how to toot 'er.
Should the tutor get hot
Now the Hottentot tot
Hoot and toot at the Hottentot tutor?
Said a scallop who thought it too cruel
That the grating of sand grow a jewel :
"I'll keep it all out
By withdrawing my snout,"
And the pressure reduced her to drool.
Said an oyster of calcerous curl,
"Foot it all! I'm no longer a girl;
I have practiced at sand;
Though my figure expand,
It is time that I ventured a pearl!"
57
The Right Stuff
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The puss you would fiddle
May eat of the government grass,
And whenever a kitty
Eats grass, you will ditty
Two deluges, never the lass:
For the money that rain
Will so water the brain
That it plain ever more than it moon,
And money in hand
From the cozy you planned,
Your dish runs away with your spoon.
58
A Valediction : Forbidding Poetry
We are two kinds of fool, all fools will know
Who choose to love, and strain at saying so :
If I have loved you all of one whole day
That's no more choice than wetted dust makes clay,
And clay grows man. It is no work of mine
That you accent my comfortable line,
For, like the lilac or the pike, that comes
Of what is drunk up, and it badly sums
To chew it choice what is no more than flow
And poetry, what's only saying so.
Busy old fools, unruly pens will run
To absent fondnesses from sun to sun
In some low dudgeon that, if left to keep
Would still on waking whine that atoms sleep,
And I, and you. Then as the baby squeaks
Until he has his mom between his cheeks
So poets writhe and grunt, imagine saint
Whatever rosy countenance they aint,
'Til, having tried the world, and lastly found
The memory they grieved, they make no sound.
To love is easy; to dispense, divine :
But it is neither to bespeak a line,
For lineage, jealous of itself at first
But finds, when all the notions are rehearsed,
The struts and frets that truss the laurel tone
Are diligent -- but practiced all alone;
And when, at last, the pregnant jostle fits,
It goes among the audience, and sits
To patiently peruse its emptied phrase,
And wait the breath of lineage to praise.
If we would help, then let us kiss and part,
And pray the act will never lead to art;
No : let it be a contract of the two
That we will never write of what we do,
For praying leads to dreams and dreams to lines
That try the head with that the heart designs
In genius : and it start forth and then
Stumbles upon the protractor and pen;
No, no; for how shall lawyers redefine
A contract that we break if we but sign?
Stop; let us halt these lines as well, but how?
For couplets are to couples as the plow
To wheat, whose blade but scrapes along the lead
And scrapes again, and never stops to seed
Until it run quite out of room, the field
All turned about, whatever it may yield.
Then put an end to this unbridled beat
Before the pigweed rise among the wheat
And end this singing sooner than the swan,
Else while I sing, you will have upped and gone.
59
Allegretto
I should by trees' furs oozing into green
Learn blooming spring and so learn love,
But all my sauces shudder like the lean
And treading dove.
I should by lilacs ringing from the clay
Their royal robes prove summer loves,
But my brown brain will rabbit out of May
To strip the groves.
The acorn's autumn should have taught all things
Their travels as the red oak roves,
But all my raving chatter only sings
The squirrel too loves,
And only winter and the ringing wood
Within the tree and ticking stove
That hold but hints of generation could
Teach me to love.
60
Fred
There was an old flocker named Fred
Whose younger wife took me to bed.
To get even with me,
He invented V.D.
By using his ewes in her stead.
61
Kind lovers, love on,
Lest the world be undone,
And mankind be lost by degrees:
For if all from their loves
Should go wander in groves,
There soon would be nothing but trees.
-- John Crowne
John Crowned
We returned from the groves
In our driblets and droves
All repenting of scribbling squibs,
And as lovers loved on.
Now the world is undone
For the trees are all cut to make cribs.
(C) 1991 Poultry: a Magazine of Voice
62
Dover Bitch -- a Note to a Discord
At thirty-nine a man's a fool to wait
To see if what would trip him with its hate
Can trip him still and still intends to try.
The world's worst ebb has not the bittern's cry.
At thirty-nine a fellow's fool to whim
That he can loft a boy by tripping him
By tangling the feet or, worse, the tongue.
Luke mentions the recycling such dung.
We have enough to trip, arriving lame :
So much of it we have to give one name
Ten times or twelve to get it still unsung
And half but quote a more familiar tongue
The fortyish would rather not misplace,
To back against when supercalendered drool
Rises to engulf the eager face
Sent sprawling by an overfortied fool.
Easier to walk out on the purebred boys
Then teach towns ease with what their mothers said
And worse, with what their mothers wouldn't say.
Easier to walk out on the purebred toys
That look back at the infant like the infant,
Easier to teach the taught.
We live with what we make of need
But wishes have too much of greed
To wish we might,
And brought the evil when we came
In law elected not for name
But appetite.
Ten generations we have had of this,
A bloodline that will not quite kiss
As well as should,
But constitutes a bloodline where
The blooded do not really care
That much for blood.
Exhibit girls no longer drive the gods
Long in the loins and slack beside the lip;
Instead across the air there promenades
A gameshow quip,
And who would want a lifetime of that plod,
Let alone eternity, per label
On the average or exhibit god?
To have at table
A water doll, that moves so well in sable
And it came with the required posture
(Unplugged from the everpresent cable)
And what it cost yer.
The snowflakes settle on the summer heat,
As in this place we watch the Ice Age melt,
Isaiah's children publish how to treat
The temperate belt.
63
Secondhand Rows
Walk the Milky Way to here,
Wipe the moon's smile off your feet,
Drink the Cauldron for its cheer,
Haul the Coal Sack home for heat,
Ride the Horse Head 'til he flies on
Over the Event Horizon,
So far
No star
Will light where virgin atoms are.
Lilith was the only broad
Cobbled up from virgin clay;
Every girl thereafter, God
Made up from an old bouquet,
Nor can any contemplator
Tell who's used by her creator,
What rage
Mend age
By building mind a younger cage.
All your aristocracy
Lies in skin and circumstance,
While the teaching world's degree
Freezes in your little glance;
That is why my age will warden
Pawned Eve in my little garden
And she
As free
As your pretended novelty.
64
Dear Jud,
I shud
Not make such rhymes in public,
But if
A tiff
Can't straw itself in tatters,
And must
Be cussed
With eloquence that flatters
The dolt
The bolt
Of words is made to scrublick,
So that
Elat
Raise every Jill and John, it's
A hard
Canard
You unction in your column:
Keep my
Words high
With nowhere to install 'em,
Can feat
Complete
Three hundred fifty sonnets?
65
The Phantom Swing
The window swung where you sat 'round your thumb
In vagrant breezes of an afternoon,
And painted you behind the blooming plum
As if you gathered what would all too soon
Be merely litter on the sun-thatched ground
With spring shot through; and then the window swung
And sat you in the swing, as if it found
The things of spring without you, quite unsung.
And then my heart hitched, and the heavy thing
Recalled that photo, set without ado
One spring ago, so sitting in the swing:
Here are two swings, but only one of you.
66
Happy Birthday
There was a time when daring you
Was cleverness beyond all bounds
And what you wore was gift-wrap, too,
To be removed with pleasant sounds.
I cannot count how often we
Exchanged gifts under any tree,
The leaves a pleasant itch to scratch.
We never dallied under pines,
In poison ivy, briar patch,
Or any sort of clinging vines;
We took great care with where we did
And none with what each other bid.
Now the leaves are falling fast
And clouds are massed before the moon;
My mind as well is overcast
With things I wish I could maroon
Well out upon the lake tonight
And be instead your acolyte,
But I am old, with less to smile
Than formerly, when I knew not
What being such a logophile
Would find about our polyglot
And what it says of those who speak
Or how it is its own critique.
The age has little left of grace,
Has not so much as heard of Attic,
Sits to stuff the infant face
With "rights" insisted "democratic."
From every medium is sung
The tawdry cheapness of the young
That throws into the parent face
The challenge of an empty glove,
An empty mouth, an empty place,
And has itself for center of
The universe of every deed
But knows our vengeance in its need
And grows a season just to die
And winter out, and rise again
(And never learn the reason why.)
But cut for music or the pen
Even reeds may take a part
In little matters of the heart.
And so I sit and suck my fist,
My keyboard shut behind my door;
I cannot tell my analyst
A single thing I love you for
And there are those, I'm sure of that,
Would say I only love the cat
And he has died. If I said love
Depended on a state of mind
Or heart, or the existence of
A woman who is mainly kind
As you and I have been at times
Our love would not be worth two dimes,
One yours, one mine, for calling to
Our friend apiece -- for we do not
Each other call but to eschew
What either said. Our Angloglot
Will teach our children to befriend
Whatever they cannot amend
And swim to glory in the wake
Of anything that has the mind
To row instead of pattycake
The waves that keep them halfway