The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
I watch the chairs
That watch the ocean,
Wondering whether
Some passerby will take
A seat to admire
The turquoise water
& crashing surf.
No one does.
Tourist and local alike
Spill by in a rush to get
Through paradise to
Somewhere else --
Probably a cruddy
Hotel room or
Unloved job.
Of course, if someone
Did take a seat,
They might be run off
On the grounds that
These are proprietary
Chairs.
[That's just the petty world
In which we live;
Where a business will
Protect its space for
Exclusive use by
Nonexistent customers.]
One might suggest that
It's too hot to sit
And admire the ocean,
But by the time those chairs
Have cooled,
The view will be
Blackness.
A tourist looks back fondly upon
A favorite destination;
A traveler is always at it.
A tourist loathes travel hiccups;
A traveler calls them stories.
A tourist jumps from one
Postcard vista to the next;
A traveler moves through the world.
A tourist collects knicknacks & geegaws;
A traveler collects experiences.
A tourist, between sights, seeks
A life experience as close to
Their homelife as possible.
A traveler wants a life experience
As close to local as possible.
A tourist has a favorite meal;
A traveler assumes he hasn't
Crossed paths with it yet.
A tourist leaves nothing to chance;
A traveler embraces the spontaneous.
A tourist takes comfort as a main course;
A traveler uses it like a condiment.
What mysteries lie behind
That old green wooden door:
Carved elaborately
In bygone days?
On a street that features only sights
Both newer and more decrepit,
It stands out as a grand entrance
That begs something special
Beyond.
I’d hate to think it’s just
Old paint cans —
Half empty and congealed
Beyond usefulness.
I doubt it’s a brothel or speakeasy —
Too silent…
But a vault of lost masterpieces,
Inhabited by a hairy-legged spider,
Might not be too much to ask.
Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,
When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
This poem opens War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899.)
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
On a hike,
I come upon a tree
Raised up on its roots,
As if in mid-stride --
A long, cartoonish stride
That stretches across the trail.
But the tree doesn't stir --
No matter how quietly I wait;
No matter how long I wait.
Oh, how I wish to catch the tree
As it flees.
in a flat, wide river:
something juts up
from the water --
far in the distance
for an instant,
i startle:
seeing it as an
extended arm...
like that Stevie Smith
poem, but i discover
it's neither waving,
nor drowning, but
merely protruding...
a dead limb
stuck in the river,
drag & pull balanced,
waiting to be
carried away.
I cut myself upon the thought of you
And yet I come back to it again and again,
A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out
From the dimness of the present
And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.
Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance,
I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,
And only when the blood runs out across my fingers
Am I at all satisfied.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 