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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) |
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