Poetry Explorer

Search Classic and Contemporary Poetry

Search Results

Back to search

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Searching...
Author: HOLLANDER, JOHN
Matches Found: 756


Hollander, John    Poet's Biography
756 poems available by this author


10/28/2029       
First Line: The day of my birth glares at me
Last Line: Like all our other days %it went its way at once


A CUP OF TREMBLINGS    Poem Text    
First Line: Facing deep wine raised in the
Last Line: In an unshadowed meadow
Subject(s): Wine


A DESCRIPTION OF THE CELEBRATED STATUE OF THE STORYTELLER AT IOANNAPOLIS    Poem Text    
First Line: Robed in a flowing of his own bronze
Last Line: See how the artist has handled william's hair!
Subject(s): Story-telling


A LION NAMED PASSION    Poem Text    
First Line: Hungering on the gray plain of its birth
Subject(s): Stars


A WATCHED POT    Poem Text    
First Line: Not / to mark the first
Last Line: Bottom can give rise to
Subject(s): Heat


ABOUT THE CANZONE    Poem Text    
First Line: Here's the canzone, a form that's almost too
Last Line: Down to the rest for which we've labored so
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


ABOUT THE CANZONE       
First Line: Here's the canzone, a form that's almost too


ABOUT THE HOUSE       
First Line: In the high attic, all the old things had been accumulating
Last Line: Stopped on his walk to inquire. This is also somehow involved with the problems of living there


ACROSS THE BOARD       
First Line: Bang! (the starter's pistol) and we begin
Last Line: As always, the bottom line is all for show


ADAM'S TASK    Poem Text    
First Line: Thou, paw-paw-paw; thou, glurd; thou, spotted
Subject(s): Adam & Eve; Animals; Bible; Language; Mythology; Eve; Words; Vocabulary


ADAM'S TASK       
First Line: Thou, paw-paw-paw; thou, glurd; thou, spotted
Last Line: Thou, sproal; thou, zant; thou, lily-eater. %naming's over. Day is done
Subject(s): Adam And Eve; Animals; Bible; Language; Mythology


AFTER A SAD TALK       
First Line: The young leaves shiver in their green


AFTER BLOSSOMING       
First Line: The text of early spring snipped up


AFTER CALLIMACHUS    Poem Text    
First Line: Half my soul still breathes
Last Line: With my straining eyes
Subject(s): Absence; Separation; Isolation


AFTER FLOOD DAMAGE       
First Line: (start with the sound of the brook) the sound of the brook


AFTER VIOLET    Poem Text    
First Line: Now, at the eastern edge of the black grass, he drinks
Last Line: To lie in the ashes of our dust, it will be to glow


AFTERWORD       
First Line: After years of talking of what, in sum
Last Line: Only to be opened-and then, once only %after you're dead


AGAIN AFTER AN OLD TEXT       
First Line: That man seems like some sort of god: he's lying


AIR FOR THE MUSETTE       
First Line: Constant only in her grim
Last Line: Where she was someone of the shore


AN OLD-FASHIONED SONG    Poem Text     Recitation by Author
First Line: No more walks in the wood
Last Line: No more walks in the wood
Subject(s): Old Age


AND MOST OF ALL, I WANNA THANK       
First Line: Patient language, always waiting to be
Last Line: Me there, ring true and truly ring me there


AND MOST OF ALL, I WANNA THANK ?Ǫ    Poem Text    
First Line: Patient language, always waiting to be
Last Line: Me there, ring true and truly ring me there
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


ANOTHER FIREFLY    Poem Text    
First Line: In a turning instant, my head
Last Line: Somewhere a breath has been taken
Subject(s): Foreflies


ANY OTHER NAMES       
First Line: I asked my girl the other day


APPEARANCE AND REALITY    Poem Text    
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy / josephine bonaparte
Last Line: Prudence (her teeth were a carious green)
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters; Reality; Teeth


APPEARANCE AND REALITY       
First Line: Higgledy-piddledy %josephine bonaparte
Last Line: Prudence (her teeth were a %carious green)


ARACHNE    Poem Text    
First Line: The skill at weaving was itself a web
Last Line: Like life itself, after all, by a thread
Subject(s): Weaving And Weavers


ARACHNE'S STORY       
First Line: The skill at weaving was itself a web
Last Line: Like life itself, after all, by a thread
Variant Title(s): Arachn


ARBITER ELEGANTIAE       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %j. Press and company
Last Line: Tatterdemalion %trousered by brooks


ARISTOTLE TO PHYLLIS    Poem Text    
First Line: This chair I trusted, lass, and I looted the leaves
Last Line: What should have been a season of calm weather
Subject(s): Aristotle (384-322 B.c.); Women; Desire; Sex


ARISTOTLE TO PHYLLIS; FOR ROGERS ALBRITTON       
First Line: This chair I trusted, lass, and I looted the leaves
Last Line: What should have been a season of calm weather


ARROW'S WINGED WORD       
First Line: He not only is
Last Line: In a straw bed


AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARDS    Poem Text    
First Line: Of an ungrounded grief
Last Line: The great, grass-skinned ground, will say
Subject(s): Grief; Sorrow; Sadness


ASYLUM AVENUE       
First Line: Here is a region through which you move, yet which
Last Line: It would e a way of getting to work


AT THE NEW YEAR       
First Line: Every single instant begins another new year
Last Line: Thanks for being enabled, again, to begin this instant


AUGUST CARVING (FROM BLUE WINE)       
First Line: Your file which whispers against the piece of silent limestone
Last Line: Coldly, invisibly, forms fractured from their radiance


BALLAD FOR AN OLD TUNE, NO REFRAIN       
First Line: It was down in jo's apartment
Last Line: Pointless end to a tale


BEACH WHISPERS       
First Line: In the night wind astir
Last Line: Reigns from his distant hall


BEHIND THE BEAUX-ARTS       
First Line: Framing my windows on the outside of the building are
Last Line: That the mind, in its wisdom without eyes, may truly see


BEING ALONE IN THE FIELD       
First Line: What had I fallen to? Even the field
Last Line: Of height its draped, illegible deathbed


BELL CURVE       
First Line: It is the %top which
Last Line: Ringing o %hear it %now


BIRD       
First Line: Well, this bird comes, and under his wing is a crutch
Last Line: I haven't the slightese thing to fear


BIT FROM EMERSON       
First Line: The escalator of suprise today
Last Line: With the fine linen. In its grip %what we sew is what we rip


BLACK MASK       
First Line: She has written one morning that
Last Line: Which we know to be so secret and so various


BLOTS       
First Line: How did this ever happen
Last Line: Like nonsense into the general the blue


BLUE WINE (FROM BLUE WINE)       
First Line: The winemaker worries over his casks, as the dark juice
Last Line: In the clear cup of his own eye, to see what he will see


BOARD: NOT OUI-JA BUT NON-NEIN       
First Line: She gave a little shriek that almost rhymed with the


BOAT       
First Line: It took him away on some nights, its' low engine running
Last Line: And that he himself would disembark at last now


BREAD AND BUTTER!       
First Line: Walking together for so many years
Last Line: And leave them holding hands again with dust


BREADTH. CIRCLE. DESERT. MONARCH. MONTH. WISDOM    Poem Text    
First Line: Not as height rises into lightness
Last Line: Of common ending
Subject(s): Nature


BREADTH. CIRCLE. DESERT. MONARCH. MONTH. WISDOM       
First Line: Not as height rises into lightness
Last Line: Claims its hugh dominions not by kinship, nor bond %of common ending


BROKEN COLUMN    Poem Text    
First Line: Are / you / too
Last Line: And what ever un-broken marbled do you strain to see
Subject(s): Pride; Self-esteem; Self-respect


BROKEN COLUMN       
First Line: Are %you %too %proud
Last Line: And what ever-unbroken marble do you strain to see


BUILDING A TOWER       
First Line: It is because of what one has not found - a tan silo
Last Line: Amid what has always been, and will be, beyond


BY HEART       
First Line: The songs come at us first, and then the rhymed
Last Line: That we first learned to get by soul, or something


CARMEN ANCILLAE       
First Line: Wider than winter
Last Line: Of tears and rage in her chamber


CHARLES SHEELER'S THE ARTIST LOOKS AT NATURE (1943)       
First Line: He paints what he sees, seeing what he paints
Last Line: The painting says: figure it out yourself


CISSY'S SONG       
First Line: The child writes her verses. Bookish snow
Last Line: One last flake that refuses to linger %pirouettes down on my outstretched finger


CLAY TO CLAY: SOON I SHALL INDEED BECOME       
First Line: Clay to clay: soon I shall indeed become
Last Line: Or the prophetic sibillance of song.


COHEN ON THE TELEPHONE       
First Line: Hello? Something wrong again? O hell!
Last Line: The next voice you hear will be your own


COLORED ILLUSTRATION, TIPPED-IN       
First Line: A sun, slipping under
Last Line: We turn from its coated stock to a rough texture, %the paper of a new page, of a new tale


COMMENT ON AN OBSERVATION BY ONE OF MY MASTERS       
First Line: But that's because back in the time of plato
Last Line: Choke discourse on the matter of roast beef
Subject(s): Food Habits; Potatoes


COMMENTARY ON ORANGE    Poem Text    
First Line: Orange dies out in the ascending fire' roared our
Last Line: Who brought forth nought of the lead, save roy. G. Biv
Subject(s): Orange (color); Gold' Lead (metal)


COMMENTARY ON YELLOW    Poem Text    
First Line: The leaves ripen for the harvest wind. Yellow and red, but
Last Line: Hers. This was true plenty
Subject(s): Yellow (color)


CONSIDERED SPEECH    Poem Text    
First Line: Strictly speaking' (he insisted) 'these are not - '
Last Line: But grave accentuations cut in the rind of the earth
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


CONSTANT FISHERMAN       
First Line: These lines I cast into the blue


COORDINATING CONJUNCTION    Poem Text    
First Line: And ... So it goes
Last Line: And and, and and, and
Subject(s): Time


COORDINATING CONJUNCTION       
First Line: And ... And so it goes


CRISE DE COEUR    Poem Text    
First Line: Help me
Last Line: Half un-broken like / a heart
Subject(s): Love -loss Of


CRISE DE COEUR       
First Line: Help me %o help me for only
Last Line: Half-unbroken -- like %a heart


CROCUS SOLUS       
First Line: A sigh? No more: a yellow or white rupture of the cold
Last Line: That speak for themselves is but one point of saffron or of snow. A sign? O, more


CROSSING WATER       
First Line: August, 1946: back from nantucket on the upper deck of ...'


DANCING SHADOWS       
First Line: A walker along the half-lit avenues that night would most
Last Line: Poetry of here and there. Neither sacred to this place, nor totally accidental to it


DANISH WIT       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %franklin d. Roosevelt
Last Line: Something is groton in %denmark, at least
Subject(s): Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 1       
First Line: Dusty leaves cast their shadows, and the bee
Last Line: The one big thing we know is that we'll die
Variant Title(s): The Tesserae (ii


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 10       
First Line: No nova flaring in november, less
Last Line: We shiver down past mere noon and its non-age, %and hopeless whiffs of agelessness


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 11       
First Line: Blood's shadow lay beneath the light green shade
Last Line: The field of beets became a battlefield, %the plough's fair share fell to another blade


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 12       
First Line: Autumn's brood stripped by late november's rude
Last Line: Our well-known bodies' growing oddness, the %stupidity of our decrepitude


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 13       
First Line: Above my dimmed eyes the barn owl, below
Last Line: The dark point of this nocturne's both what I %believe I see and what I know I know


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 14       
First Line: It was the gray sidewalks which taught my feet
Last Line: All? Not this general being of the land; %the way? Not through the fields, but up the street


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 15       
First Line: The years of childhood days - extended fears
Last Line: Contract their terms, which, in the psalmist's phrase %have withered to the brief days of our years


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 16       
First Line: That bright, young person that I was, all prim
Last Line: Ingrate! He never gave a damn for me. %I weep for what I could have done for him


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 17       
First Line: Shining in sunlight through the winter trees
Last Line: At liberty to glitter, at long last %recovered from fluidity's disease


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 18       
First Line: January. Epipromethean, or
Last Line: Of the year, staring both in and out, he knows %what lies before him is what has gone before


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 2       
First Line: The full, ripe silence where the grain was sown
Last Line: Rise from these tedious, ordinary fields: %don't draw on outline, but take not of tone


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 3       
First Line: The day of the long days has shed its noon
Last Line: Donning the orange veil that sunset draws %across what will be long ago too soon


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 4       
First Line: August remembered autumn, but not old
Last Line: Heat waved away, in summery dismissal %the winter's now-long-buried pot of cold


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 5       
First Line: Fields; the late harvest standing still in sheaves
Last Line: My forest self, non moi longue d'octobre %who sang before the falling of the leaves?


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 6       
First Line: Cadences of familiar songs can lie
Last Line: Declaim in prose, unchanted, clear, the texts %left high and dry when the fall wind swept away


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 7       
First Line: 1st sommer? Sommer war,' wrote paul celan
Last Line: And so forth while we pause as the last song %of one lost summer swims by like a swan


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 8       
First Line: At length, the hill of thought was undermined
Last Line: Rock, into which runs our advancing train, %leaving the plain of fancies far behind


DAYS OF AUTUMN: 9       
First Line: Ah, for her I lost! For me whom I gave
Last Line: The raving wind disperses in the oaks. %light grieving slumps into a heavy grave


DEAD ANIMALS    Poem Text    
First Line: Granted then, that the punishment
Last Line: I'll trade this one in for another story
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


DEAD ANIMALS       
First Line: ...Granted, then, that the punishment
Last Line: I'll trade this one in for another story


DEFENSE OF RHYME       
First Line: Because there is too much to say
Subject(s): Rhyme


DEPARTURE: A VIEW OUT THE WINDOW       
First Line: No jewel, no beetle like a clump


DICKCISSEL       
First Line: At the edge of my feeder a sparrow would
Last Line: I, you, dickcissel, alf, ed, everyone %of final ground


DIGGING IT OUT       
First Line: The icicle finger of death, aimed
Last Line: To end or, much the same, to begin


DIGITAL       
First Line: Thumb: here to press, oppose and
Last Line: Temple, stop, turn back for a moment there and give it the finger


DO NOT RETURN TO SENDER       
First Line: For whom are these? You like to think


DOOMED EDIFICE       
First Line: Closure %surmounts the %strange open ways
Last Line: Lowering of them into depths of darkness and touch toward our bottom doom


DOWN IN THE CHUTE       
First Line: Time to drop off the mail again


DUTCH INTERIOR       
First Line: The light comes in from the window on the left, pearly


EARLY BIRDS       
First Line: The early bird catches the worm
Last Line: Early bird skit ended, well, who %cares about worms, anyhow?


EARLY INSCRIPTION       
First Line: Niemand's suggested emendation, as well as
Last Line: Niemand's erroneus translation might be considered a tautology is %not for us to consider


EDWARD HOPPER'S SEVEN A.M. (1948)    Poem Text    
First Line: The morning seems to have no light to spare
Last Line: Meaning is up for grabs, but not for sale
Subject(s): Hopper, Edward (1882-1967); Morning


EDWARD HOPPER'S SEVEN A.M. (1948)       
First Line: The morning seems to have no light to spare
Last Line: Meaning is up for grabs, but not for sale
Subject(s): Hopper, Edward (1882-1967); Morning


EFFET DE NEIGE    Poem Text    
First Line: Saying: / figures of light and dark, these two are walking
Subject(s): Art & Artists; Monet, Claude (1840-1926); Paintings & Painters


EFFET DE NEIGE       
First Line: Saying: %figures of light and dark, these two are walking
Last Line: The truth, blocking the path of the obvious
Subject(s): Art And Artists; Monet, Claude (1840-1926); Paintings And Painters


ELEMENTAL COLLOQUY       
First Line: She lay in the spill of street-lamp light


END OF A CHAPTER       
First Line: But when true beauty does finally come crashing at us
Last Line: Had for so long been able to remain distracted from its absence


ENTWINING    Poem Text    
First Line: Datum: stretching wisteria, grown thick
Last Line: To mark out what forever lies more deep than verity itself
Subject(s): Wisteria


ENTWINING       
First Line: Datum: stretching wisteria, grown thick %as a strong young wrist
Last Line: To mark out what forever lies more deep than %verity itself


ERASING A BAD NAME       
First Line: Shabriri %I'll try this, darkly sceptical, to query
Last Line: Whereof...Speak, thereof...Silent


ESKIMO PIE       
First Line: I shall %never pretend
Last Line: Which %never %comes %to an %end


EXAMPLES       
First Line: Ah yes, the wax; this piece just now unhived, now in my hand
Last Line: Always golden and unspeakably glittering down in the cellars


FANCYING THINGS UP       
First Line: O that metal were not so literally
Last Line: The tramp we all are grabs his bit of sleep


FAR AWAY       
First Line: It can't be time to reach out for her yet
Last Line: As distant as a sparrow and a star %so here we are


FAR, FAR BETTER WORLD       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %tristram of lyonesse
Last Line: Ysolt, blancmange


FEAR OF TREMBLING       
First Line: If it is true that we no longer seek


FEBRUARY MADRIGAL       
First Line: Morning sun adamant and evening moon
Last Line: At what in us will die, but never harden


FETCH       
First Line: The insubstantial corpse that stayed


FIGURE IN THE CARPET       
First Line: Those who use the
Last Line: By darkness %but our %dust


FIGURE IN THE FACE       
First Line: Six twenty-seven, and I'm at my best
Last Line: I know my grasp of things exceeds my reach


FIGUREHEAD       
First Line: Wondering whether the position you had just taken
Last Line: And treacherous surfaces again


FIGURES OF SPEECH. FIGURES OF THOUGHT. FIGURES OF EARTH ...       
First Line: Once upon a time, the old, wild synecdoche of landslides
Last Line: Sea was flowing somewhere, like a river now


FIRE!       
First Line: Poor phlogiston -- deconstructed
Last Line: Each of them, though, fanning very noisily the other's flames


FIREWORKS       
First Line: Fire is worst, and fires of artifice thirst after more than
Last Line: All this becoming something other than darkness


FLOATING SIGNIFIER       
First Line: The ancient epsilon at the delphic oracle set
Last Line: Elizabeths go unsignified for a summer moment


FOOTNOTE TO ONE OF THESE NOTES       
First Line: Why rhyme? And why for this most late


FOR ?Ç£FIDDLE-DE-DE?Ç¥    Poem Text    
First Line: What’s the french for “fiddle-de-dee”?
Last Line: —I think I know. But the word’s still mum
Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary


FOR A TALL HEADSTONE    Poem Text    
First Line: No, it was I who never listened
Last Line: That looking-glass
Subject(s): Headstones; Death; Self; Dead, The


FOR A TALL HEADSTONE       
First Line: No, it was I who never listened


FOR BOTH OF YOU, THE DIVORCE BEING FINAL    Poem Text    
First Line: We cannot celebrate with doleful music
Subject(s): Love - Marital; Marriage; Wedded Love; Marriage - Love; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


FOR BOTH OF YOU, THE DIVORCE BEING FINAL       
First Line: We cannot celebrate with doleful music
Last Line: For something else ever to happen now
Subject(s): Love - Marital; Marriage


FORGET HOW TO REMEMBER HOW TO FORGET    Poem Text    
First Line: I have a rotten memory' began
Last Line: Behind you into time already served
Subject(s): Memory


FORGET HOW TO REMEMBER HOW TO FORGET       
First Line: I have a rotten memory' began
Last Line: Behind you into time already served


FORMS OF ADDRESS       
First Line: We keep learning of violences


FOUR-IN-HAND       
First Line: Not gordian nor a
Last Line: Blinds or the binds %that almost %tie


FRAGMENT TWICE REPAIRED       
First Line: Then I replied to them, the delightful women
Last Line: Heed not the gleaming


FROM A HOUSE PARTY       
First Line: Here in this splendid, silly room


FROM OUT OF THE BLACK       
First Line: That afternoon, the world began to hum
Last Line: I went mourning all the day long, like night


FROM THE RAMBLE       
First Line: Gracefully touching hands, the three lost, tiny pools
Last Line: Rises and dies, as we kiss and listen


GARDEN       
First Line: High on is brick cliff his garden hung
Last Line: To keep. And there was nothing to lose


GARDEN SUNDIAL    Poem Text    
First Line: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5/ 6
Last Line: Words in acknowledgement
Subject(s): Sundials


GARDEN SUNDIAL       
First Line: 123456 %seven eight nine ten eleven and
Last Line: The initial s %of the third of those %words in acknowledgment


GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE       
First Line: After the issues raised first by the dawn
Last Line: The color of our first and lasting dust


GHAZAL ON GHAZALS       
First Line: For couplets the ghazal is prime; at the end
Last Line: At the game he's been wasting his time at. The end


GHAZAL; THE SHADE OF THE AUTHOR OF INDIAN LOVE LYRICS SPEAKS       
First Line: Less than the dust beneath (o hear her plea tonight!)
Last Line: Death comes for mrs. Nicholson (that's me) tonight
Variant Title(s): Ghazal: The Shade Of The Author Of Indian Love Lyrics Speak


GLASS LANDSCAPE       
First Line: The dreadful fields, all bare of images, are swallowing
Last Line: Across its blank, unblamed gray eye, neither praising nor punishing


GLIMPSES OF THE BIRDS    Poem Text    
First Line: Ringed with a rainbow
Last Line: Of pain, but of night
Subject(s): Birds; Birds


GLIMPSES OF THE BIRDS    Poem Text    
First Line: Ringed with a rainbow
Last Line: The author.
Subject(s): Birds


GOURMET       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %herod antipater
Last Line: Nice dish of tete de pro- %phete, vinaigrette


GRANNY SMITH       
First Line: Deep, fallen azure she flashes
Last Line: Thin-lidded, toward the patient dark


GRAVEN IMAGE    Poem Text    
First Line: A / bit
Last Line: Love's / own / v
Subject(s): Star Of David


GRAVEN IMAGE       
First Line: A %bit %of an %hint only
Last Line: About they %opening %loves %own %v


GREAT BEAR       
First Line: Even on clear nights, lead the most supple children
Last Line: Even, to have it there (such a great bear! %all hung with stars!), there still would be no bear
Subject(s): Constellations


GREEN-SHADOWED ROCKS       
First Line: The truth of these moss-covered rocks, uncracked
Last Line: (which only new redaubing can unlock)


HALF-EMPPTY BED BLUES I       
First Line: Lying here underneath a sheet


HALF-EMPTY BED BLUES II       
First Line: The cold, gray morning floods the sleep


HALF-EMPTY BED BLUES III       
First Line: The stalks of heavy waiting droop


HALL OF OCEAN LIFE    Poem Text    
First Line: Not from the unmapped valleys of darkness, nor
Last Line: Returning light to the light, come to be?
Subject(s): Sea; Ocean


HANDS. TOMORROW CHANGE FERAQUENCIES. THINE, CUPCAKE    Poem Text    
First Line: To image (more on the nature of the grid
Last Line: Hands. Tomorrow change frequencies. Thine, cupcake
Subject(s): Espionage


HEAD OF THE BED       
First Line: Heard through lids slammed down over darkened glass
Last Line: Then lay beside him as the lamps burned on


HEAT OF SNOW       
First Line: When she, laughing, plastered a snowball on me
Last Line: First our shielded gaze, then our tired march and %final arrival
Subject(s): Love


HELICON       
First Line: Allen said, I am searching for the true cadence
Last Line: With night coming on like a death, a ruby of blood is a treasure


HELIOGABALUS       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %heliogabalus
Last Line: Problems beneath his imperial drag


HIGH ART       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %anthony hollander
Last Line: Line of this dismally %difficult form


HIGH UPWARD       
First Line: O yes yes there where some
Last Line: Here up is there


HIS MASTER'S VOICE       
First Line: Along the golden track
Last Line: Of pages, the scratch of my pen


HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS    Poem Text    
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy, / benjamin harrison
Last Line: Didn't do much
Subject(s): Harrison, Benjamin (1833-1901); Presidents, United States


HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy, %benjamin harrison
Last Line: Idiosyncracy, %didn't do much
Subject(s): Harrison, Benjamin (1833-1901); Presidents, United States


HOBBES, 1651       
First Line: When I returned at last from paris hoofbeats pounded
Last Line: Sky would be much safer seemed very plain


HORAS TEMPESTATIS QUOQUE ENUMERO; THE SUNDIAL       
First Line: When in the festival of august heat


HOUSE IN THE TROPICS       
First Line: New york. Cold. Cold everywhere. Cold in all the warm
Last Line: To their modes of signifying. Their ways of meaning what they did, these places, were comely


HUMMING       
First Line: O summer, summer! Somewhere a seventeenth season of heat
Last Line: The end of remembering happening somewhere ahead in %the dust


I WAS WRONG, YOU SEE       
First Line: Alway's time's arguments refute us


IDEA       
First Line: On or %off either darkness
Last Line: Thus once %there was %light


IN FINE PRINT       
First Line: The clean, white sheets and the black cat


IN PLACE OF BODY       
First Line: The garden is a very singular one. It is not that it is
Last Line: Flourish, whether in absence or presence being of no matter now


IN PLACE OF PLACE       
First Line: First of all, the original enclosure within which was our
Last Line: Never again leave room


IN TRANSIT    Poem Text    
First Line: Well, then, if that's the case, let's start packing and get
Last Line: The place that yet was right here all along
Subject(s): Moving & Movers


INCHSTONE       
First Line: A long strong week is up, of bright


INTO THE BLACK       
First Line: I was brought forth abroad at night, but not
Last Line: My growing tribe of emptiness and night


INTRODUCTION TO ABSENCE       
First Line: Absence,' fulke greville says, 'is pain'


ISLAND POND       
First Line: We stand here at the edge, the clumped sedge dense


JOHN HOLLANDER    Poem Text    
First Line: Higgeldy-piggeldy / schoolteacher hollanders
Last Line: Higgeldy-piggeldy / schoolteacher hollanders
Subject(s): Self


JUST THE RIGHT NUMBER OF LETTERS-HALF THE ALPHABET       
First Line: Just the right number of letters-half the alphabet;
Last Line: Really underlie our lives when all is said and done.
Variant Title(s): Powers Of Thirteen: 16


KEEPSAKES       
First Line: Only after eighteen years had passed was it possible to
Last Line: Whatever box it was, creating more and more of their own purity


KIND OF FEAR       
First Line: Golden does, one fawn
Last Line: Healthy fear of me


KINDS OF KINDLING    Poem Text    
First Line: Laughing thorns crackled beneath my kettle: would
Last Line: Bay crashing, verdant, against my brow
Subject(s): Fire


KINNERET       
First Line: As the dry, red sun set we sat and watched
Last Line: As if some lake-shaped instrument had sounded


KITTY       
First Line: O -- I %am -- my %own -- way
Last Line: Now %and %end %our %tale


KITTY AND BUG       
First Line: I -- a %cat -- who %coated %in a
Last Line: See %how %eye %can %know


KRANICH AND BACH       
First Line: Under her golden willow a golden crane
Last Line: Silence standing up one-leggedly in song


LADY'S-MAID SONG       
First Line: When adam found his rib was gone
Last Line: For though we throw the dog his bone %he wants it back with interest
Subject(s): Bones; Hate


LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS       
First Line: Alonely wind comes hushing down the street
Last Line: The lonely wind comes crushing down the page. %where are those who went before us in the world?


LAS HILANDERAS       
First Line: Busy busy busy: they toil and also do
Last Line: What she has woven of her ultimate thread


LAST QUARTER       
First Line: When %parentheses %appear to be
Last Line: A part of life %begins


LAST WORDS       
First Line: Higgledy-piddledy %andre doria
Last Line: Glub' (end of quote)


LATE AUGUST ON THE LIDO       
First Line: To lie on these beaches for another summer
Last Line: Sands teeth, sands eyes, sands taste, sands everything


LAZY SUSAN    Poem Text    
First Line: She toils not neither does she spin around quickly when she
Last Line: It all as susan snoozes in the hall
Subject(s): Lazy Susans


LAZY SUSAN       
First Line: She toils not neither does she spin around quickly when she
Last Line: Of hungry hands grab at %it all as susan snoozes in the hall


LEAVING DELOS    Poem Text    
First Line: Wandering star of the heaven-colored
Last Line: Discordant, high up in the steel rigging
Subject(s): Delos (island), Greece; Farewell; Parting


LETTER TO JORGE LUIS BORGES: APROPOS OF THE GOLEM       
First Line: I've never been to prague, and the last time
Last Line: One golem, but so many johns and jorges


LETTO MATRIMONIALE       
First Line: Jiggery-pokery %president kennedy
Last Line: Grandfather bobby and %great-uncle ted


LIKE A COLD SHOWER       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %hans christian andersen
Last Line: Aided in keeping his %hands to himself


LIMPING ON LEMNOS, ON A HILL WITH WAVES       
First Line: Picking himself up from the island ground, he began to


LINES FOR A SIMPLE COMPUTER TO SORT OUT       
First Line: Like phrases in a song


LION NAMED PASSION       
First Line: Hungering on the gray plain of its birth
Last Line: The offal. And new cities raven and distend sight
Subject(s): Stars


LONG AFTER    Poem Text    
First Line: That spring they fell in love but then
Subject(s): Love; Spring


LONG AFTER       
First Line: That spring they fell in love but then
Last Line: That spring they fell in love but then %fell down and out of it again
Subject(s): Love; Spring


LOOKING EAST IN THE WINTER    Poem Text    
First Line: I walk on sixty-ninth street toward
Last Line: Alights in some dark in-between
Subject(s): Winter


LOOKING EAST IN WINTER       
First Line: I walk on sixty-ninth street toward


LOOKING-GLASS OF GRIEF       
First Line: The blind use slim and silent canes


LOVE LETTER       
First Line: Love begins with
Last Line: Remembered times of light unending your beginning o love


LOWER CRITICISM       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %dorothy richardson
Last Line: Nothing much happens and %nobody screws


M AND M'S       
First Line: Tolling through my life like a private bell for
Last Line: Two bright novae seem to have formed tonight a %new constellation


MAD POTTER       
First Line: Now, at the turn of the year, this coil of clay
Last Line: The aspirations of our hopeful hearts %or the prophetic sibilance of song


MAINE TONGUE TWISTER    Poem Text    
First Line: On ocean avenue she waits
Last Line: See shells she sells by the seashore
Subject(s): Tongue Twisters; Shells; Conchology


MAKING NOTHING HAPPEN       
First Line: Before there could be nothing, there were too
Last Line: Something would never be the same again


MEMORIES OF THE GRAND TOUR       
First Line: I was young then, of course, and could not know what it all
Last Line: And clucked over the fractured pieces


MIDWINTER TREE       
First Line: A %fir %rough %against
Last Line: Spring stems of light


MONDAY MORNING       
First Line: Today we're having the windows washed
Last Line: The windows being washed today


MONUMENTS       
First Line: Start here: something has exhaled this marble and moved


MOUNT BLANK    Poem Text    
First Line: Until, the next morning in the sun, there
Last Line: Fell, beacon gray, unsurmounted with light
Subject(s): Mountain Climbing


MOUNT BLANK       
First Line: Until, the next morning in the sun, there
Last Line: Fell beacon, gray, unsurmounted with light


MOVIE-GOING       
First Line: Drive-ins are out, to start with
Last Line: These fade, all fade. Let us honor them with our own fading sight


MUSE IN THE MONKEY TOWER       
First Line: American girl, within
Last Line: Seize him as if with your light


NEW LEAF       
First Line: Manhattan, this hospital
Last Line: She stands and breathes behind me


NIGHT MIRROR       
First Line: What it showed was always the same
Last Line: And cold, on the pillow's dark side
Subject(s): Dreams; Mirrors


NINTH OF AB       
First Line: August is flat and still, with ever-thickening green
Last Line: By force of will or neglect, returning and unstoppable
Subject(s): Jerusalem


NINTH OF JULY       
First Line: In 1939 the skylark had nothing to say to me
Last Line: To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life


NO FOUNDATION    Poem Text    
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy / john simon guggenheim
Last Line: Shocking neglect
Subject(s): Guggenheim, John Simon


NO FOUNDATION       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %john simon guggenheim
Last Line: Unjustifiable, %shocking neglect
Subject(s): Guggenheim, John Simon


NO PLAY       
First Line: Jacobin-jacobin %citizen robespierre
Last Line: Sparing us yet a third %bad german play


NORMAL BELL-CURVE    Poem Text    
First Line: It is the / top which
Last Line: Hear it / now
Subject(s): Bell Curves


NOT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING       
First Line: What he had begun only lately to notice was this: that he
Last Line: Sometimes. His mind was always wandering. He could point the way home


O, ONCE I HAD THYME OF MY OWN       
First Line: These cracked hands, gloved in history


OFF MARBLEHEAD       
First Line: A woeful silence, following in our wash
Last Line: Desperate stretch of unending dark


OFFICER'S QUARTERS       
First Line: This room is lit by winter
Last Line: Inside, the bright images and hard-edged, in the warmth, the radiance


OLD IMAGE (ALCIATI'S EMBLEM #165)       
First Line: Poor doggie! But that's where we all are, nicht wahr?
Last Line: In the profoundest mirror of the darkness


OLD PIER-GLASS       
First Line: It was as if, he thought, someone had censored the whole
Last Line: Very, very funny at first, it would have to come to him, this time, very fearfully indeed


OLD SCRIBE       
First Line: No muses have deserted me


OLD STORY IS RETOLD       
First Line: Great, dark wings, passing my roof over


OLD-FASHIONED SONG       
First Line: No more walks in the wood
Last Line: No more walks in the wood


ON A BOOK, FOUND INLAND FOR       
First Line: The sea-beach, its imploring heartbeat: but all the found


ON NORTH ROCK       
First Line: I will incline my ear
Last Line: Heard not-yet-told tales


ON THE FLOWERS I'VE BEEN SENDING YOU       
First Line: These posies: laurel blossoms? Poppies


ON THE WAY TO SUMMER    Poem Text    
First Line: May-day, the day of might, day of possibility
Last Line: Scarlet petalsfor all the new worlds in earth
Subject(s): Nature; Summer


ONE AND THE MANY       
First Line: Your right hand, raised to make me halt


ORANGE    Poem Text    
First Line: The age of awakening: bright
Last Line: Squeezing out of it the gold
Subject(s): Oranges


ORPHEUS ALONE       
First Line: I sought you out deep in the cave
Subject(s): Mythology - Classical; Orpheus


OTHERS WHO HAVE LIVED IN THIS ROOM       
First Line: Why have I locked myself inside


OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY       
First Line: The wind had blown his hair about and then gone on to
Last Line: He could come to terms with the lie of the land now


OWL    Poem Text    
First Line: Now that the owl light-in the time between
Subject(s): Birds


OWL       
First Line: Now that the owl light-in the time between
Last Line: Life in the fallen leaves
Subject(s): Birds


PARADE       
First Line: Back in the days when the sound
Last Line: In its appalling mirror


PARENTS' FAULT       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy, %ditters von dittersdorf
Last Line: Name that resembled some %nervous disease


PATCHES OF LIGHT LIKE SHADOWS OF SOMETHING       
First Line: So that we have, after all, to be graceful that our light
Last Line: With the arms of our heart


PAYSAGE MORALISE       
First Line: Astonished poplars hide


PERSEUS HOLDS MEDUSA'S HEAD ALOFT       
First Line: Shrieking, is she in horror of her own hand pain
Last Line: Of the unmothered virgin, gray-eyed wisdom's shield


PLAGIARISM       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy, %wolfram von eschenbach
Last Line: All from the french


PLAYING AN OBSOLETE INSTRUMENT       
First Line: O %it %takes %too long
Last Line: Joyful or strong a music


POSSIBLE FAKE       
First Line: I have given up caring whether youre genuine or not
Last Line: Beauty is no less than you


POWERS OF THIRTEEN (COMPLETE)       
First Line: This is neither the time nor the place for singing of
Last Line: So that you have the last word now I give it to you. %at the end of the day


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 1       
First Line: This is neither the time nor the place for singing of
Last Line: Paradox: I shall say 'what was never said before.'


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 10       
First Line: The power of 'might' that makes us write -- the possible
Last Line: Hidden wood, unkind, black shadows of unlikelihood


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 100       
First Line: The way the hills of umbria look so movingly
Last Line: Our ways our sole high deeds, our roads our destinations


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 101       
First Line: When our sense of nobility could yet be measured
Last Line: That was the only act of worshipping left by then


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 102       
First Line: And then the lusty scorn of noon became the idol
Last Line: Committees, wondering whether to report at all


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 103       
First Line: What of the plain man then, who walked about unadorned
Last Line: The face of one's dying; complaint as explanation


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 104       
First Line: There is more to plainness now than the unwrinkled brow
Last Line: Connections; assonance in the silent-growing grass


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 105       
First Line: Or it may not: either way, the sense that we can get
Last Line: General whatsisface on horseback would seem sublime


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 106       
First Line: The thin journalism of our attachments: even
Last Line: Harvest has rolled round again, with its great, reddened moon


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 107       
First Line: For years now we have been getting so used to shoddy
Last Line: Loosely strum according to the wind, and am believed


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 108       
First Line: When to raise a voice in song was to lay down the law
Last Line: Imperatives would fall on us in joy and beauty


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 109       
First Line: Watch the potter as he botches his product, throwing
Last Line: To the great, shaking I-beam. All clatter in the wind


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 11       
First Line: May-day, the day of might, day of possibility
Last Line: Scarlet petals enough for all the new worlds in earth
Variant Title(s): On The Way To Summe


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 110       
First Line: Watch the besotted glass-blower hiccoughing into
Last Line: Of nastiness: so do we coarsen our every veil


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 111       
First Line: Watch the carpenter teach an old saw to sing again
Last Line: Sawings: the old meaning to which we had been condemned


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 112       
First Line: In former times all apprenticeship was in itself
Last Line: Get, the more there is to know; content to outlive me


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 113       
First Line: How can one expect monuments to be preserved when
Last Line: Memory had preserved that private park fairly well


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 114       
First Line: But when, in want of being in some kind of touch with
Last Line: Somewhere, disperse pretty posies laid across her grave


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 115       
First Line: Arachne spies by the door on wise penelope
Last Line: Of what is spun out of oneself in devout silence


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 116       
First Line: Such emblems of old craftiness that are clear enough
Last Line: Refigured now with shadows of your hands in firelight


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 117       
First Line: Which of these pictures of you shall I keep
Last Line: To talk about, to remain a bulky chatterbox


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 118       
First Line: The wildly-colored girl with her round belly twisted
Last Line: Brush to execute, as on the girl across the room


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 119       
First Line: Between these battle-scenes in the wars of figure and
Last Line: Desire more wildly than whatever the painter wields


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 12       
First Line: Dahl and forsyth, freese and fuchs, weigel, wister and zinn
Last Line: Nonce visitors, seem to be taking over the place


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 120       
First Line: You must have been peeking at the sketchbook I carried
Last Line: Present themselves as figures of deeper lettering


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 121       
First Line: Thus my refusal to walk beside you with even
Last Line: Tunes of what there is, giving its account of itself


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 122       
First Line: Here is an old album of wood-engravings -- not yours
Last Line: Our high-spirited eyes and instruct our figuring


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 123       
First Line: Where are we now, then? Unable to remain simply
Last Line: Here is my time, though desire come and go like daylight


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 124       
First Line: Remembering my dear dead black cat sometimes returns
Last Line: What can be said of dead cats that is not dead itself


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 125       
First Line: What dan be said of dead cats? That is not dead itself
Last Line: No contrived inventory of storied occasions


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 126       
First Line: No contrived inventory of storied occasions
Last Line: Remembering, my dear dead black cat sometimes returns


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 127       
First Line: Images of place that loss commanded one to set
Last Line: In too many chilly idylls now resound in truth


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 128       
First Line: P works on his uncommissioned portrait of the world
Last Line: Free of the fabric of dreams? Unknowing p daubs on


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 129       
First Line: The language of the howling wind allows an endless
Last Line: Land of the unfair cold space, of the unblinking time
Variant Title(s): Grounds Of Winte


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 13       
First Line: In search of a note I half-remember your having
Last Line: In just the matters of our quiet conspiracies


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 130       
First Line: After the midwinter marriages - the bride of snow
Last Line: This bright stream's soft echoing answer rings to the woods


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 131       
First Line: Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quiquam amavit cras
Last Line: The next stanza, and the next, and the next, and the next


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 132       
First Line: Breaking off the song of the refrain, putting the brakes
Last Line: Burden of the tune we carry, humming, to the grave


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 133       
First Line: Old iambic ways of walking helped us amble past
Last Line: Think I quibble! This is a matter of mind and world


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 134       
First Line: M's verses (wrote the boring lady bard now dead) smelled
Last Line: That awakened my wide, thirteen-year-old longing eye


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 135       
First Line: The ways of lamps are dark, their light guarded by shadows
Last Line: And all the other nifty redolences of the world


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 136       
First Line: Your softened shadow now when you come up quietly
Last Line: Of what, here by lamplight, I thought to originate


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 137       
First Line: It's a long lane that has no turning: comment upon
Last Line: Brevity of soul, and darkness' longevity


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 138       
First Line: Unanswered, our riddles remain wise and beautiful
Last Line: A window of the city, raising questions anew


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 139       
First Line: Unless the green traffic-light were reduced by my crude
Last Line: Would be no engine at all worth pampering with gas


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 14       
First Line: I am preparing a perpetual calendar
Last Line: But written up, in this old ledger, the true account


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 140       
First Line: Flat parnassus, super-highway, carrying your freight
Last Line: The roads opened up for business and closed down for song


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 141       
First Line: My musings on your past have been filled more than once with
Last Line: Carves out the room for your memorializing play


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 142       
First Line: Maurice sceve found the tomb of petrarch's laura, but not
Last Line: Equivalent), jeered the silly boys in the schoolyard


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 143       
First Line: What you have gathered from our talks of asteria
Last Line: Joining the stellar whirl of possible golden motes


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 144       
First Line: We say that fact yields truth. But how? Mindlessly, as fields
Last Line: Of one's own secret river: what the place had been for


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 145       
First Line: Suppose this were a sprig of myrtle: from what tears, sweat
Last Line: Of desire. Like the others, myrtle's one for the books


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 146       
First Line: Suppose that you had laid me under an injunction
Last Line: To end up with a knowledge of just what I owe you


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 147       
First Line: Why do I write you notes in this funny line, long, like
Last Line: Are both covered by its mandate to be of itself


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 148       
First Line: Well, the questions of discourse, if drawn out long enough
Last Line: Like these, to be recounted, embraced and led to bed


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 149       
First Line: In the repeating calendar of regret, I turn
Last Line: Mere months, where it is always 13/13/13


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 15       
First Line: The shad and asparagus are over, the berries
Last Line: Our most thoughtful and, ultimately, murderous host


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 150       
First Line: A day I had forgotten reappeared to me, clad
Last Line: That was when you came in with a flaming day-lily


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 151       
First Line: Where were you back in new york in nineteen forty-two
Last Line: Turning nights of passage into moments of lustre


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 152       
First Line: You wrote something on this page last summer. I've just come
Last Line: To have to be obeyed. More binding. More to be sung


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 153       
First Line: Stories are a matter, though, of radiance, of wholes
Last Line: Clear, too directly told not to be a parable


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 154       
First Line: You rely on what I say about you (as do I)
Last Line: I am a bad liar: you are as good as your word


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 155       
First Line: Locked up in this cell as if in punishment for some
Last Line: Words of the language in which you'll hand me my parole


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 156       
First Line: Triskaidekaphobia across the centuries
Last Line: In new shape, finished beyond the old completions


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 157       
First Line: But then, you say, we go on talking at dinner for
Last Line: Dreadful soon to happen makes it worth talking about


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 158       
First Line: In all fairness, when the reasonable noon's blond head
Last Line: On dangerous ground, in the foul shadow of thirteen


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 159       
First Line: An anniversary cannot be an occasion
Last Line: To the memory of tonight last year a month ago


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 16       
First Line: I stood under a plain tree discoursing with someone
Last Line: As we stand silent beside some silent summer stream


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 160       
First Line: I heard a rumor that you had dreamed of a new home
Last Line: The room of the thirteen, odd and unaccountable


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 161       
First Line: But this may yield something: say the room had to be 'of'
Last Line: A number on the door that had been one. Or zero


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 162       
First Line: At thirteen already single-minded abraham
Last Line: (one sixty-nine years old?) breeds doubt ('I should live so long!')


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 164       
First Line: Is it the plenitude of seasons, then, the number
Last Line: Death deals, and cheats with the false promise of final trumps


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 165       
First Line: Not for this dull blue, the humdrum stars there to be read
Last Line: Mud, low sunlight, blood, we begin and end in the red


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 166       
First Line: Crazy hans sits on the sidewalk strumming his crazy
Last Line: Crazy horst across the street roars to his own tom-tom


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 167       
First Line: At last, the clock has struck thirteen. It would be too late
Last Line: Of day and night where they shall ever stand shuddering


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 168       
First Line: That other time of day when the chiming of thirteen
Last Line: Power unbroken lay in coupling day unto day %thirteen
Variant Title(s): That Other Time Of Day When The Chiming Of Thirtee


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 169       
First Line: Let me say first that, although in the demanding light
Last Line: So that you have the last word now I give it to you. %at the


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 17       
First Line: What there is to hear from the particular sea-mews
Last Line: Hand gathers these raw reports and sifts them for the truth


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 18       
First Line: The low wind, the loud gulls and the bare, egregious cry
Last Line: Our darkening power to behold them and compare


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 19       
First Line: The pine with but one thought regards the water against
Last Line: Of reflections. This puzzles the single-minded pine


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 2       
First Line: Late risers, we sleep through all the morning's heroics
Last Line: One does not begin feisting at dawn, but at sundown


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 20       
First Line: Firecrackers sounding like shots of handguns rattle
Last Line: Discloses, through our few tears ungleaming in the dark
Variant Title(s): A Late Fourt


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 21       
First Line: Oh, %say can you see
Last Line: In your eyes, later to burn off tomorrow's blankness


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 22       
First Line: I have burned batches of cookies, formed rich tortes all wrong
Last Line: Now, remember your arm firm around the mixing bowl


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 23       
First Line: To say that the show of truth goes on in our outdoor
Last Line: To me knowingly as we watch one of the tryouts


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 24       
First Line: When to say something of what stretches out there toward me
Last Line: Wandering: here still one must intone that undersong


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 25       
First Line: The universal great space, stately but ungrounded
Last Line: Own good, space retreats and makes way for us, and for room


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 26       
First Line: I try to go new places with you, and yet we keep
Last Line: The sun rises keeps making upon the book of hope


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 27       
First Line: Words we have exchanged keep playing out their low treasons
Last Line: In the end as in the beginning will be the word


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 28       
First Line: I went out without you yesterday for a slow hour
Last Line: Jumble of evidence. This was this. And that was that


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 29       
First Line: What she and I had between us once, america
Last Line: Rang with hilarity until we trembled with cold


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 3       
First Line: So we came at last to mee, after the lights were out
Last Line: To an unlit floor lamp, against a mute looking-glass


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 30       
First Line: With you away on whatever other business you
Last Line: Who needs a gadfly on the way to the slaughterhouse?


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 31       
First Line: We are all at sixes and sevens not just about
Last Line: Amity to its daily work of debate once more


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 32       
First Line: Nay, calls strife's reveille. I disagree; and we're at
Last Line: I'll give you eight to five that at bottom we agree


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 33       
First Line: After one of our unheated arguments, I heard
Last Line: I can assure you of this, who made these shepherds up


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 34       
First Line: Wholly concerned for the mass of the pieces that we
Last Line: Notice, rather trembles on the verge of taking it


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 35       
First Line: I thought that you might have someting to recommend in
Last Line: You I hope can show me how to cope with all of this


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 36       
First Line: Well, now, the year having finally come to a head
Last Line: We will have to look into the matter of winter


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 37       
First Line: Very well, then, what now? There are resolutions far
Last Line: With your eyes, the gentle smiling of impure surprise


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 38       
First Line: Where has it gone, that long recent summer when the mind
Last Line: Summer gone, what work is it we must get back to now


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 39       
First Line: The fall wind, a maddened santayana, rips the leaves
Last Line: And snuffs out the final rhymes of breathing with his own


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 4       
First Line: At the various times of the year I have paid you
Last Line: And dark, laid on with late strokes, fit for our going forth


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 40       
First Line: We ramble along up-hill through the woods, following
Last Line: Half-ruined in the white noise of its splashing water
Variant Title(s): One Of Our Walk


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 41       
First Line: If I were a different person with a different sort
Last Line: Molly, bolting the tall gilded mirror to the wall


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 42       
First Line: Now I walk with you through the ruins of the city
Last Line: We will be outlived by what of green we have given
Variant Title(s): Some Walks With Yo


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 43       
First Line: Ah, but the lions of time sharpen their claws against
Last Line: And my wide mind narrows its grasp to what is merely mine


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 44       
First Line: This whole business of outliving -- it is as if, once,
Last Line: And a myrtle just then spring up there outside our house


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 45       
First Line: But for all impractical purposes, you'll outlast
Last Line: A state of starlight? We'll consider it for a while


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 46       
First Line: How charming -- magical, fragile both, I mean -- the time
Last Line: Y, back east, asks what came before us, and what lies there


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 47       
First Line: The figure ahead of us on the trail, looking back
Last Line: High overarched there in his momentary bower


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 48       
First Line: Still, the trail lies all before us. Neither alone, nor
Last Line: But bearing a part of what was into what will be


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 49       
First Line: An anecdote: I sat here in this chair last month, and
Last Line: Rebuke? I'll never know, but you've helped me mend my ways


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 5       
First Line: At first you used to come to me when everything else
Last Line: Or of lonely neuschwanstein on its tinhorn summit


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 50       
First Line: Your games of hiding: the one you played this afternoon
Last Line: Leaves of my intimate journal where I know you'll look


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 51       
First Line: Now: there was a tall girl once whom I mistook for you
Last Line: The tall girl's long gone, it is a summer night again


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 52       
First Line: All the singing rivers commend our rivery songs:
Last Line: Of confluence when at last they join the stygian flood?


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 53       
First Line: P atterns of light and flakes of dark breaking all across
Last Line: Will be constantly noisy with the figures of light


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 54       
First Line: Mademoiselle de la moon gazes at her gleaming
Last Line: This is a matter only of moon and ocean-light


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 55       
First Line: That great, domed chamber, celebrated for its full choir
Last Line: My own voice, startled, appalled, instructed, I rejoice


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 56       
First Line: We need not visit this big metal archway in which
Last Line: The statuary of admiration doubly botched


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 57       
First Line: The queen of the parade floats by on her painted car
Last Line: Now we gaze sadly, bored, at the triumph of moments


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 58       
First Line: But the queen will not be forsworn. She turns her head, smiles
Last Line: Layers of lower air they gravely bow and sway among


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 59       
First Line: The fun-house of the fairgrounds once stood here. Inside were
Last Line: Sunlight, that was closure. One was out of there for good


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 6       
First Line: Your bright younger sister whom so many fancy to
Last Line: With you unnoticed: her red hat makes everyone stare


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 60       
First Line: The old melpomene theatre right across the street
Last Line: Be playing there, ancient words watching from the shadows


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 61       
First Line: It was not for such fragments that we wandered so far
Last Line: In our bodies, we believe in them as in ourselves


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 62       
First Line: We consider this archaic maiden who has lost
Last Line: A trope, what we see fractured here will be heartbreaking


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 63       
First Line: Here by the ruins of this fountain where water played
Last Line: Jealous of the others, too early to have met you


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 64       
First Line: Now that you bid me write of what she and she-sub-one
Last Line: Pen is, which mars our sad amusing talk of venus


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 65       
First Line: Heroic love danced on our stage awile, in the dark
Last Line: Gone the way of the whirled, fallen to mere easiness


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 66       
First Line: In the old anecdotes of amor they still allude
Last Line: After all, irrelevant fall of our finale


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 67       
First Line: The crime of onan probably was not that lonely
Last Line: But with me ever, body in body, hand in hand


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 68       
First Line: All our cheap, failed love-stories are old tales told even
Last Line: Their sin was surviving their desire. The end wa tough


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 69       
First Line: Like some ill-fated butterfly, the literalists
Last Line: Of remembrance, in her realm of frail-winged images


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 7       
First Line: Earth, water, air and fire were not elementary
Last Line: In which I burn? Or the fire by which I am consumed?


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 70       
First Line: Like prisoners released from cells built by their touching
Last Line: Of the now-tattered hieratic book of the woods


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 71       
First Line: Pleasures and pains, pleasures and pains, when a man's married
Last Line: Grandeur is put in his place, stand on the same cold ground?


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 72       
First Line: Oh, yes, the animals were a hard act to follow
Last Line: One another would be our most figurative dance


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 73       
First Line: The aftermath of epiphany was not just yet
Last Line: Put decorum, poor devil in his own hell of fun


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 74       
First Line: When, aping the literary lover, his eye filled
Last Line: Young words on their paper sheet had far more joy than we


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 75       
First Line: And thus in writing 'of' this one or that, sending open
Last Line: Lust and wit hold hands, heard passion in the studied leaves


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 76       
First Line: When we were all fourteen, the sharper our visions were
Last Line: The mind wandered, even to being fourteen again


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 77       
First Line: The structures and agitations of the older ways
Last Line: Of the ideal, as if love hung ever aloft


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 78       
First Line: The age of sixteen, in its infinite wisdom, puts
Last Line: Like this one in the public gardens we know so well


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 79       
First Line: Let's call it quits: I never long for you any more
Last Line: But rather at having been given a name at all


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 8       
First Line: Lying in love and feigning far worse (we love to know)
Last Line: Foolish, and musingly look at the dark and light up


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 80       
First Line: A book: as I read it the letters keep decaying
Last Line: These darken into truth as in sympathetic ink


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 81       
First Line: Once you and I -- but no fables now. Tell what there was
Last Line: And the experience of loss can etcetera


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 82       
First Line: Yes, go on! This is plain talk of plainer feelings now
Last Line: Of our connectedness, of what we have between us


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 83       
First Line: Meet me here in the middle of the woods where I am
Last Line: Making what you always lovingly call both ends meet


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 84       
First Line: The heart of the matter? It throbs laboriously
Last Line: Figured in cut letters, the point of it all, the source


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 85       
First Line: The precisely central point of anything must be
Last Line: That mapping these places means covering everything


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 86       
First Line: In the dim, indeterminate part of these woods, where
Last Line: Not back to a starting-point, but on to the last place


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 87       
First Line: These two tales I tell of myself and the life I led
Last Line: Like a noisy breath of wind filling my patched old sail


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 88       
First Line: I'd not thought that drowning would be so like an easy
Last Line: Holds and turned up toward my bed again) have been my death


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 89       
First Line: The lion is the king of the beasts. We are the ace
Last Line: Dispense the bidding of the one-eyed great lord of life


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 9       
First Line: One evening in early spring father gave us dimes
Last Line: Down inside a buried sound it was no death to hide


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 90       
First Line: But now we are talking of what lies beyond the range
Last Line: Still take our few tricks with the lion's magnificence


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 91       
First Line: Cutting pages in a book -- upward, across, again
Last Line: Them in their locked, unembracing gaze, their bundled sleep


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 92       
First Line: Chopping down a tree with names carved in its ark, mine and
Last Line: Hiding my face from my own gaze, yours even from yours


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 93       
First Line: Every soul is unique, and, thereby, original
Last Line: What of our walks? Yours and mine? All from old baedekers?


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 94       
First Line: Well, reinkopf? -- I suppose that every soul, exiting
Last Line: Afternoon as shadows beckon to the lights of shops


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 95       
First Line: All flesh is as the glass that shatters, through which we see
Last Line: Points of high color where cars crawl along hidden roads


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 96       
First Line: All glass is as the flesh which refracts its energies
Last Line: Of touch with, candid old tales of distance, space and glass


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 97       
First Line: No sun shone for so long during that long summer that
Last Line: Of great enterprise and beauty (yesterday, this was)


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 98       
First Line: These labor days, when shirking hardly looks like working
Last Line: United we stand and shake the chains heard round the world
Variant Title(s): Back To Tow


POWERS OF THIRTEEN: 99       
First Line: Once we have grown to a certain size, the very means
Last Line: Hidden, that yet stabs you and cannot be turned away


PROBLEM OF PAIN       
First Line: The problem of pain was that there was no problem
Last Line: Forms, long and lumpy beneath the blankets' shroud


RACE ROCK LIGHT       
First Line: Over sparkling and green water, the lighthouse seems
Last Line: Leaving them with a dying mark


RAINBOW FOR LUNCH       
First Line: Oh you can eat all them greens, all right
Last Line: All we can feast on is their names


REFLECTIONS OF ESPIONAGE: 6/26 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: This tedious surveillance goes on without
Last Line: The foot in the field. But let us get on with %tying up the matter once and for all now
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS OF ESPIONAGE: 7/15 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Same frequency, same cipher as you see, same
Last Line: Let us transmit on it while yet we can, and %move on in the end, move on then when we must
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS OF ESPIONAGE: 8/25       
First Line: Orange: it must not be abandoned; neither
Last Line: Mute bathrobe I stare out at the gray early %morning traffic groaning down its avenue
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS OF ESPIONAGE: 9/28 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Image, your reply to my last transmission
Last Line: Quickly -- respond in the old way, for loss of %image would be too much, now, to envision
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/14    Poem Text    
First Line: Cupcake here. Hardly anything to report
Last Line: I must hear from him soon. That is all for now
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/14       
First Line: Cupcake here. Hardly anything to report
Last Line: And gave me something of a start. Tell lyrebird %I must hear from him soon. That is all for now
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/15    Poem Text    
First Line: Steampump is gone. He died quietly in his
Last Line: Told, I know. Until next time, thisd is cupcake
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/15       
First Line: Steampump is gone. He died quietly in his
Last Line: Was part of the work or not. I shall not be %told, I know. Until next time, this is cupcake
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/16    Poem Text    
First Line: No new movements of goods or men. Today was
Last Line: What would have been a better one? Signing off
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/16       
First Line: No new movements of goods or men. Today was
Last Line: Suit the instance of myself we selected? %what would have been a better one? Signing off
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/17    Poem Text    
First Line: Reception has been weak and I received
Last Line: Hoping that lyrebird will get through, I remain
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/17       
First Line: Reception has been weak and I received
Last Line: Well, I suppose that our work is play enough. Hoping that lyrebird will get through, I remain
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/18    Poem Text    
First Line: A bit of transmission has been coming through
Last Line: I have started to brood about artifact
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/18       
First Line: A bit of transmission has been coming through
Last Line: Of the very signal. Come in, lyrebird: for %I have started to brood about artifact
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/19    Poem Text    
First Line: I have not been in touch with anyone else
Last Line: So report it for what it might be worth
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/19       
First Line: I have not been in touch with anyone else
Last Line: Of light on my way back this evening, and %so report it for what it may be worth
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/19 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Cupcake to image: they are not aware of
Last Line: Secrets of size, color of glaze. More later
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/19 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Cupcake to image: they are not aware of
Last Line: Whisper to some monk in a cold, white room the %secrets of size, color of glaze. More later
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/20 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: To image (more on the nature of the grid
Last Line: This code is all I have; my life is in your %hands. Tomorrow change frequencies. Thine, cupcake
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/21    Poem Text    
First Line: No report yesterday: a mechanical / failure. I read the recent material
Last Line: I have been so fond of gland. Do not trust her
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/21       
First Line: No report yesterday: a mechanical %failure. I read the recent material
Last Line: Is too much to do at any one of them. %I have been so fond of gland. Do not trust her
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/23    Poem Text    
First Line: Report on artifact: we met this morning
Last Line: Names. Tonight artifact goes south for a week
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/23       
First Line: Report on artifact: we met this morning
Last Line: (I will not speak of the joy we have in our %names.) tonight artifact goes south for a week
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/24    Poem Text    
First Line: I have been studying moroz, whose story
Last Line: Case? Inscribed in the book of work. O, and sealed
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/24       
First Line: I have been studying moroz, whose story
Last Line: Moroz? Crueller than we are. The moroz %case? Inscribed in the book of work, o, and sealed
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/24 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Image, your cover alone has allowed you
Last Line: In fecund microdots? O image, I have
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/24 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Image, your cover alone has allowed you
Last Line: On which three abbreviations concluded %in fecund microdots? O image, I have
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/25    Poem Text    
First Line: Reports keep coming in, other agent's work
Last Line: In on this, or I soon must move against them
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/25       
First Line: Reports keep coming in, other agent's work
Last Line: Friendship? O, quickly, quickly lyrebird, fill me %in on this, or I soon must move against them
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/25 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: What are we doing? The work goes on under
Last Line: Walls can. A book neither of truth nor falseness
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/25 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: What are we doing? The work goes on under
Last Line: Doors, whose opening closes off far more than %walls can. A book neither of truth nor falseness
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/26    Poem Text    
First Line: I hope to have more soon about tactical
Last Line: We will hope they have not gone too far with this
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/26       
First Line: I hope to have more soon about tactical
Last Line: He may start asking for more money soon, though %we will hope they have not gone too far with this
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/27    Poem Text    
First Line: Artifact, as you know, was broken early
Last Line: Turn, spool, turn, spool, spin, tape and wind him home now
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/27       
First Line: Artifact, as you know, was broken early
Last Line: This is all over will they let me be done? %turn, spool, turn, spool, spin, tape and wind him home n
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/28    Poem Text    
First Line: At sundown last week in a noisy, crowded / cafeteria I caught two of maisie's
Last Line: Lyrebird won't care about this much, but you might
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/28       
First Line: At sundown last week in a noisy, crowded %cafeteria I caught two of maisie's
Last Line: I left, and walked outside where a streetlamp was %flooding with first light an unwilling sidewalk
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/29    Poem Text    
First Line: We should have more soon from our political
Last Line: Flooding with first light an unwilling sidewalk
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/29       
First Line: We should have more soon from our political
Last Line: We shall keep to keep to the usual fall of leaflets %the broadcast sowing and the men of good will
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/30    Poem Text    
First Line: Strange, warm weather this week, a gentleness in
Last Line: The broadcast sowing and men of good will
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/30       
First Line: Strange, warm weather this week, a gentleness in
Last Line: It drop; our people will have to deal with it %has this warm air affected my transmissions?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/31    Poem Text    
First Line: No word in the press of artifact's body
Last Line: Around pinpoints of darkness, turning toward me
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 1/31       
First Line: No word in the press of artifact's body
Last Line: By watching the black kitty's eyes, all yellow %around pinpoints of darkness, turning toward me
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 10/1       
First Line: (lyrebird on all frequencies
Last Line: Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/1 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Image, there were funny pings in my headset
Last Line: Of mirror, each of them reflecting the whole
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/1 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Image, there were funny pings in my headset
Last Line: Image, fragmentary as they are, like shards %of mirror, each of them reflecting the whole
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/13    Poem Text    
First Line: I am acting under the old instructions
Last Line: I have my maps. We shall see what tey are for
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/13       
First Line: I am acting under the old instructions
Last Line: Place, of the twilight of darkening varnish %I have my maps. We shall see what they are for
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/18    Poem Text    
First Line: Still no reports from you. I have returned from
Last Line: Best, on such nights, that no messases reach me
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/18       
First Line: Still no reports from you. I have returned from
Last Line: Over the hopelessness of such clarity %best, on such nights, that no messages reach me
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/19 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: The project relevant to which I enclose
Last Line: To get on with it again in any case %and in any case, this one now, for your files
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/20    Poem Text    
First Line: Kidd has, I have been able to determine
Last Line: Not yet. I cannot develop orange yet
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/20       
First Line: Kidd has, I have been able to determine
Last Line: As they are. Orange will perhaps come next, but %not yet. I cannot develop orange yet
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/20 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: In re the final cipher again: it would
Last Line: Could this be built into the code alone?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/20 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: In re the final cipher again: it would
Last Line: Parts whose beauty nastier ones would enhance %could this be built into the code alone?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/21    Poem Text    
First Line: A bad dream: I am sitting on a daybed / looking at an unlit lamp in the corner
Last Line: For lyrebird: are the instructions still the same?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/21       
First Line: A bad dream: I am sitting on a daybed %looking at an unlit lamp in the corner
Last Line: Trust them utterly? Of what am I afraid? %(for lyrebird: are the instructions still the same?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/27       
First Line: I have remained silent for some days, leaving
Last Line: On this. The cipher still seems quite secure, though %please advise on the matter of the fictions
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/27 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: A bad bleak week, with the work as usual
Last Line: Harmless as a kind of humming while we work
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/27 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: A bad bleak week, with the work as usual
Last Line: O, I suppose we have been left with that, too %harmless as a kind of humming while we work
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/28 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: One prefers not to remember too clearly
Last Line: Are we, after all, even supposed to know?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/28 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: One prefers not to remember too clearly
Last Line: Enciphered version of the other one, and %are we, after all, even supposed to know?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/4    Poem Text    
First Line: No transmissions for the last two days, while we
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/4       
First Line: No transmissions for the last two days, while we
Last Line: Nor we had any choice ( no case is ever %finished, but only abandoned. Remember?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/4 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Your crocus has reported, its cups aflame
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/4 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Your crocus has reported, its cups aflame
Last Line: Della terra -- terrible return of spring %this will be the password for the coming weeks
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/5    Poem Text    
First Line: The unlucky felucca acknowledges
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/5       
First Line: The unlucky felucca acknowledges
Last Line: Like small, dust-colored grasshoppers unable to budge. Is it permitted to wonder why?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/6    Poem Text    
First Line: Very well then: no more of what you call my
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/6       
First Line: Very well then: no more of what you call my
Last Line: I hope we can get out of here. I hope this %reaches you by these most unusual means
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/6 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: We who have done work on the final cipher
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/6 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: We who have done work on the final cipher
Last Line: Do we not need to know that once, and somewhere %this had been done, and, indeed, that it was right?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 2/9    Poem Text    
First Line: There have been no transmissions. Power lines are
Last Line: Reaches you by these most unusual means
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 3/1    Poem Text    
First Line: All quiet here. Again, no report from you
Last Line: Of freedom arms, informs and helps to finance
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 3/1       
First Line: All quiet here. Again, no report from you
Last Line: From the terror which only the illusion %of freedom arms, informs and helps to finance
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 3/2    Poem Text    
First Line: Your transmission of yesterday received and
Last Line: I fear most. I always fear for all of us
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 3/2       
First Line: Your transmission of yesterday received and
Last Line: To get on with it; still these are moments %I fear most. I always fear for all of us
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 3/8 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Your moving memoir of those uncompleted
Last Line: And, even with the most fragile, of themselves
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 3/8 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Your moving memoir of those uncompleted
Last Line: In the old wind, flowers of enduringness %and, even with the most fragile, of themselves
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/10    Poem Text    
First Line: Nothing more than routine reports from any
Last Line: Of both, either way, bad then. Bad for the work
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/10       
First Line: Nothing more than routine reports from any
Last Line: The other endangers the security %of both. Either way, bad, then. Bad for the work
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/16    Poem Text    
First Line: No news yet. I hear that one of their people
Last Line: By next week flypaper will have been shot down
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/16       
First Line: No news yet. I hear that one of their people
Last Line: Flight is safe. Standing is what we dare to do %be next week flypaper will have been shot down
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/17    Poem Text    
First Line: Enclosed you will find the requested reports
Last Line: Have to end her work merely that his should cease
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/17       
First Line: Enclosed you will find the requested reports
Last Line: I hope that in a crisis we should never %have to end her work merely that his should cease
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/18 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: These nights of ciphering, image can be quite
Last Line: That would be the world where we were unneeded
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/18 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: These nights of ciphering, image can be quite
Last Line: Text of itself, the one world best left in plain %that would be the world where we were unneeded
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/3 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Today in doing some routine decoding
Last Line: The void in which our people often vanish
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/3 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Today in doing some routine decoding
Last Line: The need for frissions -- that is most dangerous %the void in which our people often vanish
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/30    Poem Text    
First Line: In case tonight's contact fails to occur, I
Last Line: Should know what little there is to know of this
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/30       
First Line: In case tonight's contact fails to occur, I
Last Line: In view of everything, I thought that lyrebird %should know what little there is to know of this
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/30 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Image: I could not reach you before you left
Last Line: For the grounded deceptions of the new shore
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/30 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Image: I could not reach you before you left
Last Line: Heart of the tea; wrapped in cover, one waited %for the grounded deceptions of the new shore
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/6    Poem Text    
First Line: Resuming regular reports: the recent
Last Line: Still, after all – after all that and all this
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/6       
First Line: Resuming regular reports: the recent
Last Line: At something not unruined and not of stone %still, after all -- after all that and all this
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/7    Poem Text    
First Line: My memory may be going, in the way
Last Line: Fof the moment. I will await his visit
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 4/7       
First Line: My memory may be going, in the way
Last Line: Always await one. Tell lyrebird I am well %for the moment. I still await his vision
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/1 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Look, image, at one aspect of the work's long
Last Line: Common name – ours and theirs, in conflct's despite
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/1 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Look, image, at one aspect of the work's long
Last Line: Many-eyed facade, through time's logoscope, our %common name -- ours and theirs, in conflict's despi
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/10 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: To come, image, upon the final cipher
Last Line: A poem whose form was of the world itself
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/10 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: To come, image, upon the final cipher
Last Line: Them, and their wits, in excessive clarity %a poem whose form was of the world itself
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/11    Poem Text    
First Line: The results of the last few days will surely
Last Line: A shipment of bronzes arrives tomorrow
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/11       
First Line: The results of the last few days will surely
Last Line: Least, all is untroubled at the museum %a shipment of bronzes arrives tomorrow
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/12    Poem Text    
First Line: Urgent to lyrebird: do they have one of their
Last Line: Of theirs. I do not like this much. Please advise
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/12       
First Line: Urgent to lyrebird: do they have one of their
Last Line: People to use (and I would have thought any %of theirs). I do not like this much. Please advise
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/12 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: We are plain, image, to ourselves even when
Last Line: Yet fully formed on these pages they dwell in
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/12 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: We are plain, image, to ourselves even when
Last Line: Notional characters, thinner than fictions %yet fully formed on these pages they dwell in
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/13    Poem Text    
First Line: While compiling the figures you requested / I saw ember today at the museum
Last Line: That universal and public manuscript
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/13       
First Line: While compiling the figures you requested %I saw ember today at the museum
Last Line: It is as if his work were of the wide world %that 'universal and public manuscript'
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/14    Poem Text    
First Line: You will have received by now the new reports
Last Line: Just part of a wide general retrenchment
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/14       
First Line: You will have received by now the new reports
Last Line: My budget there has been cut back, but that is %just part of a wide general retrenchment
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/15    Poem Text    
First Line: Inquiries that you suggested be made in
Last Line: For him, for his part of the work, for all of us
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/15       
First Line: Inquiries that you suggested be made in
Last Line: There, as it were, is bad. It cannot be good %for him, for his part of the work, for us all
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/9    Poem Text    
First Line: The major work on project aspasia
Last Line: To be involved with the work still, and always
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 5/9       
First Line: The major work on project aspasia
Last Line: In the service, yet can hardly not be said %to be involved with the work still, and always
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/1 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: I have been working around the clock at some
Last Line: Frequency. Is all distinct again? All clear?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/1 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: I have been working around the clock at some
Last Line: As you can see, I have resumed the same old %frequency. Is all distinct again? All clear?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/10 (IMAGE)       
First Line: Your having picked up the last message noted
Last Line: Seem purged of intention, seem not set there, but %merely given. What part of one's eye lies, then?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/15 (TO BUN)       
First Line: This should not go out on this frequency, but
Last Line: I glance up at the clocked hour remembering %all the things. I need not try to list them yet
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/16 (TO GRUSHA)    Poem Text    
First Line: To grusha, on the instructions of lyrebird
Last Line: Uneventual; and always the work goes on
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/16 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: To grusha, on the instructions of lyrebird
Last Line: Evenings. Nothing happening is by no means %uneventful; and always the work goes on
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/17 (TO GRUSHA)    Poem Text    
First Line: No activity yesterday to suggest / expanded coverage. He visited her
Last Line: Continue to have him watched as before
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/17 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: No activity yesterday to suggest %expanded coverage. He visited her
Last Line: For any obvious betrayals. We will %continue to have him watched as before
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/18 (TO GRUSHA)    Poem Text    
First Line: Surveillance continues, and surveillance of
Last Line: This, too, was a message, his one adventure
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/18 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: Surveillance continues, and surveillance of
Last Line: Baker was a mere courier and he stayed one %this, too, was a message, his one adventure
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/20 (TO GRUSHA)    Poem Text    
First Line: Full reports on the observation of the
Last Line: Please forward all reports direct to lyrebird
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/20 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: Full reports on the observation of the
Last Line: But error, often, at the attentive eye %please forward all reports direct of lyrebird
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/21    Poem Text    
First Line: The surveillance you ordered on the foot has
Last Line: Night work reminded me of it all again
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/21       
First Line: The surveillance you ordered on the foot has
Last Line: Do you remember that one? The mere touch of %night work reminded me of it all again
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/27    Poem Text    
First Line: Grusha has been receiving my reports in
Last Line: So bad that you should have to keep it from me
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/27       
First Line: Grusha has been receiving my reports in
Last Line: Better that than the situation be %so bad that you should have to keep it from me
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/30    Poem Text    
First Line: Nothing beyond routine. At the museum
Last Line: Disturbing – all I can do is look to it
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/30       
First Line: Nothing beyond routine. At the museum
Last Line: I know I find that gluey impulse in me %disturbing -- all I can do is look to it
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/30 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: I thought I saw the foot in the museum
Last Line: That, even once, I felt that senecas were %being multiplied beyond necessity
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/6    Poem Text    
First Line: Your unexpected visit of last week was
Last Line: I will in any case put kidd out of my mind
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 6/6       
First Line: Your unexpected visit of last week was
Last Line: Again. Perhaps you will visit before then %I will in any case put kidd out of mind
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/1    Poem Text    
First Line: Kidd was seen today in the usual place
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/1       
First Line: Kidd was seen today in the usual place
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/1 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Cupcake to image: this new frequency is
Last Line: These are for us, I should think, in the long run
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/1 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Cupcake to image: this new frequency is
Last Line: Momentarily adopted ladybugs %these are for us, I should think, in the long run
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/12    Poem Text    
First Line: Addendum to the regular transmission
Last Line: Et vidi vnxt: what is this all about?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/13    Poem Text    
First Line: This transmission was sent out on all frequencies
Last Line: Eeeee wheezes the respiring wind desparingly. Eeee!
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/14    Poem Text    
First Line: (lyrebird on all frequencies
Last Line: Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/15       
First Line: I was followed yesterday -- not in the way
Last Line: I slipped behind a 'no admittance' door, but %I dare say there is something peculiar there
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/16       
First Line: A fine bright day. No one is following me
Last Line: At the museum. Cancel the message to %lyrebird about it. None of them is watching
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/18       
First Line: As from the airport where I have gone to check
Last Line: Home yesterday to find your new instructions %awaiting me. Silence until departure
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/20       
First Line: All is quite ready for the trip tomorrow
Last Line: An impersonal agent is another %still, it will probably work out all right
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/21       
First Line: Via green handkerchief: the pickup at the
Last Line: The green handkerchief got the message from me %barely touching. Our eyes avoided our eyes
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/3 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: Some of our people observing the foot have
Last Line: For a while. They will go a bit more slowly %but in the end -- near ends and far -- more surely
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/4 (TO GRUSHA)    Poem Text    
First Line: Lyrebird has thrown the switch on the surveillance
Last Line: Like arch intrusions of a foreign language
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/4 (TO GRUSHA)       
First Line: Lyrebird has thrown the switch on the surveillance
Last Line: Used in our various cover lives would sound %like arch intrusions of a foreign language
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/8    Poem Text    
First Line: All is in order for the trip. If lyrebird
Last Line: We sometimes feel who have been quite cured of hope
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 7/8       
First Line: All is in order for the trip. If lyrebird
Last Line: Sense of deep brightness behind surface that %we sometimes feel who have been quite cured of hope
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 711 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Image, your reply to my last transmission
Last Line: Image would be too mjch, now, to envision
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/21       
First Line: Cupcake resuming transmission: it will be
Last Line: There is the work. There are very few of us %I shall take over payments early next week
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/22       
First Line: This found in a long-since abandoned drop: a
Last Line: Sent the ridiculous thing by microdot %it is most likely wholly irrelevant
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/23       
First Line: All seemingly well. I have seen kidd and I
Last Line: Alarm. The clock is quite unremarkable %as always. But perhaps this should be checked out
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/26       
First Line: Apologies for the last transmission: if
Last Line: Covers mutually enfold us, this man %and I, every day. I shall have to do something
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/27       
First Line: So. They may be at me soon to go over
Last Line: Count on me as I do on myself there would %never be need of anyone like lyrebird
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/28       
First Line: False alarm. No move was made nor was there one
Last Line: Hysteria of caution. The most diseased %breeding place of all, as doubtless lyrebird knows
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 8/29 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: While I was away I missed your transmissions
Last Line: Receiver with the heat of its history %safer then, silence. Good luck on your journey
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/1       
First Line: Nothing new. Reports are desultory and
Last Line: But the weather is strange and we have all been %on edge for more than a week now. All of us
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/11       
First Line: In lieu of further orders I continue
Last Line: Under no pressure to return for a while %is there any special assignment for me?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/12 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: I just heard that you had returned earlier
Subject(s): Espionage; Rumors


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/12 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: I just heard that you had returned earlier
Last Line: Rumors of life, mere events (still, that woman %I wonder what the chilly lake said of it?
Subject(s): Espionage; Rumors


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/13       
First Line: Cupcake reporting. What can lyrebird mean by
Last Line: It; neither are we free to desist from it %I wish to be assigned a new frequency
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/15 (TO LYREBIRD, DIRECTLY)       
First Line: Your gift, the jigsaw puzzle full of yellow
Last Line: None may have been intended; to be able %to do this must be part of what strength we have
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/17 (TO LYREBIRD)       
First Line: Apologies for using this frequency
Last Line: His bulging plain text a reproach to all my %daily twilight messages. Finish. Cupcake
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/27 (TO IMAGE)    Poem Text    
First Line: Dear image: I picked up a strange up a strange transmissions
Last Line: Is. But for what? What is to be done with it?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/27 (TO IMAGE)       
First Line: Dear image: I picked up a strange up a strange transmissions
Last Line: For pebbles on a windy beach. But there it %is. But for what? What is to be done with it?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/29       
First Line: Addendum to the regular transmission
Last Line: But all I send you is in order. Et glpkx %et vdi vxnt: what is this all about?
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/30    Poem Text    
First Line: This transmission sent out on all frequencies
Last Line: Eeeee wheezes the respiring wind desparingly. Eeee!
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/30       
First Line: This transmission sent out on all frequencies
Last Line: Is an agency of rhyming death. Where is my breath? %eeeee wheezes the respiring wind despairingly, e
Subject(s): Espionage


REFLECTIONS ON ESPIONAGE: 9/8       
First Line: The last report sent by the microdots has
Last Line: The slightest comprehension of the reason %with so much to be done, for such an order
Subject(s): Espionage


REMEMBERING THE FOUNTAIN    Poem Text    
First Line: Dry apollo: his bright butterflies silent
Last Line: Heights that wait southward, and above no sea
Subject(s): Fountains


RIVER REMEMBERED       
First Line: The rhododendrons' darkened leaves are curled
Last Line: In these last lines I've finally come to write


ROTATION OF CROPS       
First Line: Farmer john wandered among his fields
Last Line: Mindfulls from outside the mills of light


RUMINANTS       
First Line: The pastures of remembering


RUSSIAN SOUL II       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %anna karenina
Last Line: Threw in the sponge and was %scraped off the tracks


RUSSIAN SOUL III       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %joseph djugashvili
Last Line: Making some comrades break %out in a rash


SCIENCE AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR       
First Line: Feeling that it is vaguely undignified
Last Line: Grinned at this invocation of their name


SEASON IN HELLAS       
First Line: You know a region higher than these crags
Last Line: O my lost self, we both dissolve in air


SEE-SAW       
First Line: Margery daw. %and up she went as I went down
Last Line: One last up and down. And then %never again


SELECTED SHORT SUBJECTS       
First Line: O apple with which -- as first fruit of desire
Last Line: And the old game of those opposing thens %now is won


SENSE OF PLACE       
First Line: That is what it had been about all along, he


SENT ON A SHEET OF PAPER WITH A HEART SHAPE CUT OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF IT    Poem Text    
First Line: Empty, or broken-hearted? Where
Last Line: Waves of remembrance in the darkening air
Subject(s): Hearts


SENT WITH A BOTTLE OF BURGUNDY FOR A BIRTHDAY    Poem Text    
First Line: Drop by / drop it
Last Line: Unshattered, yes, and undimmed
Subject(s): Wine


SHADES       
First Line: Even the white shade could flap a black wing
Last Line: The cold fading unrolled along the grass


SHADOW OF A GREAT ROCK IN A WEARY LAND       
First Line: Let him who is without light
Last Line: Light will come together


SHADOW OF NOON       
First Line: 1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6
Last Line: Words in acknowledgment


SHUTTING UP SHOP       
First Line: Now, silence for a while, the still


SKELETON KEY    Poem Text    
First Line: O with what key
Subject(s): Keys


SKELETON KEY       
First Line: O with what key
Last Line: O let me %get in
Subject(s): Keys


SO RED       
First Line: Blossoms in the late
Last Line: Loud this year--of impatience %and acknowledgment


SOME OF THE PARTS (FROM BLUE WINE)       
First Line: In the assurance of oncoming twilight that there is
Last Line: Of it, lying in the sun like th pieces of some dream


SOMETHING WRONG DOWN AT THE POND       
First Line: One summer evening when the sky behind him was still
Last Line: Matter of the images deeply moot snow. A sign? O, more


SONG AT THE END OF A MEAL       
First Line: The kid was already noxious carion
Last Line: His would-be punisher, blessed be he, the holy one?


SONNETS FOR ROSEBLUSH (FROM TOWN AND COUNTRY MATTERS)       
First Line: Since bed's the only world of pure idea
Last Line: Because because because because because


SPECIAL SESSIONS       
First Line: Imprisoned in this court of law


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: AFTER AN OLD TEXT       
First Line: His head is in the heavens, who across the
Last Line: Flag, my ears roar, my eyes are blind with flame; my %head is in hell then


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: BLUE       
First Line: Day is naked even in its nuances
Last Line: If you get it to work properly, it will put an end to them, your predecessors


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: COLLECTED NOVELS       
First Line: Where does one start? Perhaps here, at the middle
Last Line: It shall at least reach you under my own name


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: DEPARTED INDIGO       
First Line: My father as a boy knew her
Last Line: Of the soft cadence, the dominant wound


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: GREEN       
First Line: The swallows and the early crickets with a blurred
Last Line: It is not of reaching height; it is not of squat failure. %it is of the surroundingness


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: LOOKING EAST ON TWELFTH STREET       
First Line: On an afternoon 'of extraordinary splendour and beauty'
Last Line: The cracked sidewalks below with the wet point of its gaze


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: NOCTURNE       
First Line: The great world turns
Last Line: Of dirt and wind %of what we are


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: ON THE CALENDAR       
First Line: I will start with an ancient trumpeting in my ears,
Last Line: Her t-shirt, standing behind me awaiting recognition


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: ORANGE       
First Line: The age of awakening: bright
Last Line: Who brought forth nought of the lead, save roy g. Biv


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: PROLOGUE - THE WAY TO THE THRONE ROOM       
First Line: On the captive shore, the bright river hard by, this happened:
Last Line: Cried out o water! Water! Thus I was never to enter


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: RED       
First Line: Along the wide canal
Last Line: Door: his shadow falls across it. Blown dust makes a false threshold


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: THE ANGLER'S STORY       
First Line: I let down my long line; it went falling; I pulled. Up came
Last Line: My bucket, and I have had to continue to listen


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: THE LADY OF THE CASTLE       
First Line: Venus pudica stands, bent. Where her hand is
Last Line: Self-adoring dolls long crumbled, hers is the %linear kingdom


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: VIOLET       
First Line: At the song's beginning
Last Line: Lie in the ashes of our dust, it will be to grow


SPECTRAL EMANATIONS: YELLOW       
First Line: Dirty gold sublimed from the black earth up
Last Line: Even after some lost original. It was that it was hers. This was true plenty


SQUARES       
First Line: This one may hurt not by
Last Line: Swims in towards a beach


STABLE EGO    Poem Text    
First Line: Any serif like / this at or
Last Line: Not any seraph
Subject(s): Self


STABLE EGO       
First Line: Any serif like %this at or
Last Line: I not some %angle no I %not any seraph


STATE OF NATURE       
First Line: Some broken %iroquois adze
Last Line: Whose name %passes %for %a city


STATE OF NATURE       
First Line: Some broken
Last Line: A city


STEADY WORK       
First Line: You have no book of me inside


STOPPING FOR SALAD       
First Line: In the tired yard, with soil
Last Line: Of the afternoon light


STRING OF RUBIES       
First Line: The semi-precious gems I've sent


STRING PLAYER IN THE SHACK    Poem Text    
First Line: The sound of double-stopping, violin
Last Line: Now, even as they are dissolved
Subject(s): Violins


SUE HAVE YOU SEEN       
First Line: You'll soon see that I'll have seen sue soon
Last Line: Sue-some sue you have seen-will see you soon


SUMMER DAY       
First Line: Night beside me, I turn from her toward day
Last Line: Of vision's field in which we are alone
Variant Title(s): The Tesserae (i


SUN IN AN EMPTY ROOM; (EDWARD HOPPER)       
First Line: Early sunlight, even if at a late
Last Line: Room, of what we stand before


SUNDAY A.M. NOT IN MANHATTAN    Poem Text    
First Line: Across the street, closed shops
Last Line: It all, the scene, the whole
Subject(s): Hopper, Edward (1882-1967); Shadows


SUNDAY EVENINGS       
First Line: All this indigo, nonviolent light will triumph
Last Line: Have sunk beyond the river and we are alone in the dark


SUNDAY WITHOUT SUN       
First Line: It was a wet september afternoon. Clear water dropped


SWAN AND SHADOW    Poem Text    
First Line: Dusk / above the / water hang the
Subject(s): Birds; Shadows; Swans


SWAN AND SHADOW       
First Line: Dusk %above the %water hang the
Last Line: Sudden dark as %if a swan %sang
Subject(s): Birds; Shadows; Swans


TALES OF THREE BROTHERS    Poem Text    
First Line: Three little pigs; the tedious three sons
Last Line: But various enough so that there will be
Subject(s): Brothers & Sisters; Legends


TALES OF THREE BROTHERS       
First Line: Three little pigs; the tedious three sons
Last Line: Always be stories, always life itself


TALES TOLD OF THE FATHERS       
First Line: In a cold glade sacred to nothing
Last Line: To keep. And there was nothing to lose


TALK IN THE PARK       
First Line: With thee conversing I forget ...'


TEKIAH GEDOLAH       
First Line: Who will understand its
Last Line: Where over %to choke off


TELLING FORTUNE       
First Line: Chicken tonight. I reach inside


TESSERAE (III)       
First Line: Hard by the dry well of exhausted wealth
Last Line: And 'death' for nothing? (this line incomplete)


TESSERAE (IV)       
First Line: These lines, these bits and pieces, each a token
Last Line: When covering darkness fits me like a glove


THE ALTARPIECE FINISHED    Poem Text    
First Line: I do not see how in time it will be possible to look at
Last Line: I have done; you can see it on the sixth of may. It will eat you
Subject(s): Altars


THE COURT OF LOVE: SPECIAL SESSIONS    Poem Text    
First Line: Imprisoned in this court of law
Last Line: The verdict will emerge in time
Subject(s): Trials


THE CURSE    Poem Text    
First Line: Outside, a delicate arch
Last Line: Their bright, unhollowed eyes
Subject(s): Subways


THE FIGURE IN THE FACE    Poem Text    
First Line: Six-twenty seven, and I'm at my best
Last Line: I know my grasp of things exceeds my reach
Subject(s): Time; Conduct Of Life


THE FIND    Poem Text    
First Line: Are losers always weepers? Finders keep
Last Line: Of loss, a well-planted treasure
Subject(s): Loss


THE GREAT BEAR    Poem Text    
First Line: Even on clear nights, lead the most supple children
Subject(s): Constellations


THE HIDDEN ONES    Poem Text    
First Line: A panic in the woods - when a bewildered
Last Line: Lost fields, or to hang in their churning sky
Subject(s): Forests; Woods


THE JEWELS AND THE GRACCHI    Poem Text    
First Line: Cornelia with an air
Last Line: The boys were quite enthralled
Subject(s): Mothers & Sons


THE LADY'S-MAID SONG    Poem Text    
First Line: When adam found his rib was gone
Subject(s): Bones; Hate


THE LADY'S-MAID'S SONG    Poem Text    
First Line: When adam found his rib was gone
Last Line: He wants it back with interest
Subject(s): Male-female Relationships


THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT    Poem Text    
First Line: The crescent sun, waning
Last Line: The windows are darkened.
Subject(s): Eclipses; Eclipses


THE MAD POTTER    Poem Text    
First Line: Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay
Last Line: Or the prophetic sibilance of song
Subject(s): Pottery And Potters


THE NIGHT MIRROR       
First Line: What it showed was always the same
Subject(s): Dreams; Mirrors; Nightmares


THE NINTH OF AB    Poem Text    
First Line: August is flat and still, with ever-thickening green
Subject(s): Jerusalem


THE OBSERVATORY    Poem Text    
First Line: How vainly open eyes amaze
Last Line: While seeing nothing, knowing all
Subject(s): Astronomy & Astronomers


THE PICTURES    Poem Text    
First Line: His reflection in water said
Last Line: To crumbling, then to part of night
Subject(s): Death; Light; Dead, The


THE RIGHT WAVE    Poem Text    
First Line: Emerging from the last, spent
Last Line: Is believing in the right wave
Subject(s): Waves


THE SAME QUESTION    Poem Text    
First Line: It is all here. It is all with us
Last Line: But unsigned, or if so then of no great price
Subject(s): Landscape; Memory


THE WHOLE STORY    Poem Text    
First Line: Where the beach hooks, white
Last Line: Dark to ee him
Subject(s): Swans


THE ZIZ    Poem Text    
First Line: What is the ziz?
Subject(s): Bible - Old Testament; Phoenix (mythical Bird); Ziz (mythical Bird)


THEN ALL SMILES STOPPED TOGETHER       
First Line: I heard that. Silent pictures listen in
Last Line: Less free than I; at which I truly smile


THEORY OF WAVES       
First Line: Having no surface of its own, the pond
Last Line: Some dark hypothesis had made retreat


THERE OR THEN       
First Line: At home, at noon. I am located by three where
Last Line: But only for alimited while -- our death


THEY FAILED. (BUT TO DO WHAT)       
First Line: Even cheap marble, and the gilt


THIRTEENS    Poem Text    
First Line: Triskaidekaphobia through the centuries
Last Line: Power unbroken lay in coupling day unto day
Subject(s): Thirteen (number); Phobias


THIS WAY NEXT       
First Line: I %can %point 5where I %so desire
Last Line: Abandoned %regions %where %was %I


THREAD OF LIFE       
First Line: Entwine us
Last Line: Is dead


THREE SISTERS       
First Line: Daughter of thunder, she of lightning, she
Last Line: Mark out the edges of the place of love


TO A FOREST POOL       
First Line: Here sad self-lovers saw, in tragic error


TO AN OLD LATIN TEACHER       
First Line: Snow fell all night and suddenly there was morning
Last Line: Best be drunk soon for another reason


TO RICHARD HOWARD ON OUR BIRTHDAYS       
First Line: Shedding the scales of early
Last Line: Outspeeding its own sound.
Subject(s): Birthdays; Howard, Richard (b. 1929); Middle Age


TO THE LADY PORTRAYED BY MARGARET DUMONT       
First Line: Now that high, oft-affronted bosom heaves
Last Line: Glimpse of that fierce green land of mink and henna


TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH       
First Line: (portugal's journal) december 16: we cannot remain absorbed


TROU BAD!       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %richard plantagenet
Last Line: Mother still makes it with %bertrand de born


TWO A.M.       
First Line: Ein heldenleben starts again


TWO GLOSSES ON RENE MAGRITTE; PAINTED MODEL       
First Line: Painters being feigners of presence anyway
Last Line: His dream is being nourished by his brush


TWO GLOSSES ON RENE MAGRITTE; PRIVATE PARTS       
First Line: You say you love my x my two y's, my
Last Line: Its various somethings. That's enough of that


TWO PREDATORS    Poem Text    
First Line: He will acknowledge no fault in himself
Last Line: Hearts? Of her animated provender
Subject(s): Male-female Relationships


TWO PREDATORS       
First Line: He will acknowledge no fault in himself
Last Line: Hearts?-of her animated provender


TWO SLICES OF SEQUOIA    Poem Text    
First Line: Without rooted fingers to clutch
Last Line: With, and as thick as trust
Subject(s): Sequoia Trees; Redwoods


UBI SUNT, ETC.       
First Line: Where are they now (as if yesterday's rain
Last Line: That we inherit and ever will bequeath


UNDER CANCER       
First Line: On the memorial building's
Last Line: My shadow darkens without %lengthening ever, ever


UNDER CAPRICORN       
First Line: Frozen stubble, bone
Last Line: Joke about fulfillment %finally succeeding season


UNDER THE BEACH UMBRELLA       
First Line: Straight %overhead now as white as
Last Line: Even alas out of it within this fragile and shifting circle of shade


VALENTINE'S DAY HAS COME AND GONE       
First Line: There was an end to hearts and rhymes


VANISHED MANSARD       
First Line: No views from here
Last Line: New towers are for climbing this lost peak ascended us


VARIATIONS ON A FRAGMENT BY TRUMBULL STICKNEY    Poem Text    
First Line: I hear a river thro' the valley wander'
Last Line: I will remember rainbows as I wander
Subject(s): Stickney, Trumbull (1874-1904)


VARIATIONS ON A FRAGMENT BY TRUMBULL STICKNEY       
First Line: I hear a river thro' the valley wander'
Last Line: A riverbank still time runs by, remaining %I will remember rainbows as I wander
Subject(s): Stickney, Trumbull (1874-1904)


VARIATIONS ON A TABLE-TOP       
First Line: The varnished, waxed, mahogany veneer of the table-top
Last Line: Again the broad true plain, ungirded by any lofty hills


VIEW OF THE RUINS       
First Line: A short walk up from the hotel brings one to a place
Last Line: Terrors and representations, each traveler will of course determine for himself


VIEW OF THE UNTERSBERG       
First Line: I %stand %high on what %was once odins
Last Line: Being what they are beyond shifting attainable lying horizons are but as useful as dreams


VIEW OUT THE WINDOW       
First Line: No brooch-jewelled beetle like a clump


VINTAGE ABSENCE    Poem Text    
First Line: Down on the closet's darkened floor
Last Line: By moonlight sipped, will guard our sleep
Subject(s): Wine


VINTAGE ABSENCE       
First Line: Down on the closet's darkened floor


VIOLET    Poem Text    
First Line: At the song's beginning
Last Line: Healing, until the close of the soft cadence, the dominant wound
Subject(s): Singing & Singers; Songs


VIRGINAL BOOK       
First Line: Slowly I play through loath to depart


WAITING       
First Line: The air grew hushed at the flushing meadows fair grounds
Last Line: Cracking and bursting, and flaring up into significance


WATCHED POT       
First Line: Not %to mark the first
Last Line: Not for us the mere water %falling away to what this %bottomcan give rise to


WAY WE WALK NOW       
First Line: It was not that there were only the old ways of going from one
Last Line: The text below us, on the opened page


WEEK IN THE COUNTRY       
First Line: A plague raged in the city. In a region nearby, august
Last Line: Nearer, would be a foreground, and as if its genius lay in this


WEEK'S EVENTS       
First Line: She said, affably, 'calm next mahnday,'
Last Line: Designated but merely invoking the name of his mule


WEST END BLUES       
First Line: The neon glow escapes from
Last Line: In the treasonable night; by a kind of broken habit


WHAT THE LOVERS IN THE OLD SONGS THOUGHT       
First Line: Thinking in the beginning was the-(what??)
Last Line: In the beginning there was metaphor


WHEN IN ISENHEIM       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %matthias grunewald
Last Line: Jesus got measles and %pustulent boils


WHEN SONG WILL NOT DO       
First Line: Across the street a tenor whine


WHERE WAS WHEN       
First Line: Unparadised, out of place
Last Line: Our little space of peace


WHITE ABOVE GREEN       
First Line: High on this whitest place
Last Line: Wide, wide are the high places!
Subject(s): Love


WILL       
First Line: Now this is how I did myself in
Last Line: This %will %be %done


WITH A BOOK OF VERSES       
First Line: The pleasures of mark akenside


WITH A COPY OF THE FIGURE OF ECHO       
First Line: This is the wandering wood, allusion's den


WITH A COPY OF THE LOEB EDITION OF ARISTOTLES' POETICS ...       
First Line: If to kalon en megethei


WITH MY OLD COPY OF DEATH'S JEST-BOOK       
First Line: Through darkest woods and sunny meadows


WITH REGARD TO AN OLD NOTEBOOK       
First Line: I must learn to live here more. Sleep, illness, death are all horizontal


WORK PROBLEM       
First Line: Across the unruled steppes stgretch endless whitenesses
Last Line: A -- c -- of -- noon -- or %midnight -- e


WRATH       
First Line: Higgledy-piggledy %ludwig van beethoven
Last Line: Pianissississimo %notes for the horn


X'S SYNDROME       
First Line: Quinsy, archaically dogging the throat, the whiffles
Last Line: From what it is we're said to suffer from


YELLOW    Poem Text    
First Line: Dirty gold sublimed from the black earth up
Last Line: And most revealing element at last
Subject(s): Yellow (color)


YOU TOO? ME TOO - WHY NOT? SODA POP    Poem Text    
First Line: I am
Last Line: Soda --- pop
Subject(s): Coca Cola


YOU TOO? ME TOO - WHY NOT? SODA POP       
First Line: I am
Last Line: Soda - pop
Subject(s): Coca Cola


ZIZ       
First Line: What is the ziz?
Last Line: We are blind to, a birdhood %to cover the head of the sky
Subject(s): Bible - Old Testament; Phoenix (mythical Bird); Ziz (mythical Bird)