(1948)
#Americans
A cloud moved close. The bulk of… A tree swayed over water. A voice said: Stay. Stay by the slip—ooze. Stay… Dearest tree, I said, may I rest…
By day the bat is cousin to the mo… He likes the attic of an aging hou… His fingers make a hat about his h… His pulse beat is so slow we think… He loops in crazy figures half the…
Against the stone breakwater, Only an ominous lapping, While the wind whines overhead, Coming down from the mountain, Whistling between the arbors, the…
What’s this? A dish for fat lips. Who says? A nameless stranger. Is he a bird or a tree? Not every… Water recedes to the crying of spi… An old scow bumps over black rocks…
In Saginaw, in Saginaw, The wind blows up your feet, When the ladies’ guild puts on a f… There’s beans on every plate, And if you eat more than you shoul…
In a shoe box stuffed in an old ny… Sleeps the baby mouse I found in… Where he trembled and shook beneat… Till I caught him up by the tail… Cradled in my hand,
Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes,… The flying fabric stitched on bone… The vesture of the skeleton, The garment neither fur nor hair,
I knew a woman, lovely in her bone… When small birds sighed, she would… Ah, when she moved, she moved more… The shapes a bright container can… Of her choice virtues only gods sh…
The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans
I wake to sleep, and take my wakin… I feel my fate in what I cannot f… I learn by going where I have to… We think by feeling. What is ther… I hear my being dance from ear to…
When I put her out, once, by the… She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a si… Or a wizened aster in late Septem… I brought her back in again
In purest song one plays the const… As changes shimmer in the inner ey… I stare and stare into a deepening… And tell myself my image cannot di… I love myself: that’s my one const…
I study the lives on a leaf: the l… Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dim… Beetles in caves, newts, stone—dea… Lice tethered to long limp subterr… Squirmers in bogs,
I think the dead are tender. Shal… My lady laughs, delighting in what… If she but sighs, a bird puts out… She makes space lonely with a love… She lilts a low soft language, and…
In a dark time, the eye begins to… I meet my shadow in the deepening… I hear my echo in the echoing wood… A lord of nature weeping to a tree… I live between the heron and the w…