Full Moon
(from Della Primavera Transportata Al Morale)
(from The Collected Earlier Poems)
(1934)
Blessed moon
noon
of night
that through the dark
bids Love
stay--
curious shapes
awake
to plague me
Is day near
shining girl?
Yes, day!
the warm
the radiant
all fulfilling
day.
The House
(from Della Primavera Transportata Al Morale)
(from The Collected Earlier Poems)
(1934)
The house is yours
to wander in as you please--
Your breakfast will be kept
ready for you until
you choose to arise!
This is the front room
where we stood penniless
by the hogstead of crockery.
This is the kitchen--
We have a new
hotwater heater and a new
gas-stove to please you
And the front stairs
have been freshly painted--
white risers
and the treads mahogany.
Come upstairs
to the bedroom--
Your bed awaits you--
the chiffonier waits--
The whole house
is waiting--for you
to walk in it at you pleasure--
It is yours.
Spring Storm
(from Sour Grapes)
(1921)
The sky has given over
its bitterness.
Out of the dark change
all day long
rain falls and falls
as if it would never end.
Still the snow keeps
its hold on the ground.
But water, water
from a thousand runnels!
It collects swiftly,
dappled with black
cuts a way for itself
through the green ice in the gutters
Drop after drop it falls
from the withered grass-stems
of the overhanging embankment.
The Birds
(from Sour Grapes)
(1921)
The world begins again!
Not wholly insufflated
the blackbirds in the rain
upon the dead topbranches
of the living tree,
stuck fast to the low clouds,
notate the dawn.
Their shrill cries sound
announcing appetite
and drop among the bending roses
and the dripping grass.
The Nightingales
(from Sour Grapes)
(1921)
My shoes as I lean
unlacing them
stand out upon
flat worsened flowers.
Nimbly the shadows
of my fingers play
unlacing
over shoes and flowers.
The Rose
(from Spring and All)
(1923)
The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air--The edge
cuts without cutting
meets--nothing--renews
itself in metal or porcelain--
whither? It ends--
But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a gepometry--
Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica--
the broken plate
glazed with a rose
Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses--
The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end--of roses
It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits
Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness--fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching
What
The place between the petal's
edge and the
From the petal's edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact--lifting
from it--neither hanging
nor pushing--
The fragility of the flower
unbruiced
penetrates space
Unnamed
(from Paterson)
(1948)
1
Your lovely hands
Your lovely tender hands!
Reflections of what grace
what heavenly joy
predicted for the world
in knowing you--
blest, as am I, and humbled
by such ecstacy.
2
When I saw
the flowers
I was
thunderstuck!
You should not
have been--
Tulips, she said
and smiled.
3
I bought a new
bathing suit
Just pants
and a brassiere
I haven't shown
it
to my mother
yet.
4
Better than flowers
is a view of yourself
my darling--
I'm so glad you came
I thought I should never
see you again.
Pastoral
(from Al Que Quiere!
To Him Who Wants it)
(1917)
The little sparrows
hop ingeniuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
These things
astonish me beyond words.
Spring and All
(from Spring and All)
(1923)
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast--a cold wind. Beyond the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines--
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches--
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind--
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined--
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance--Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.
Paterson: the Falls
(from The Wedge)
(1944)
What common language to unravel?
The Falls, combed into straight lines
from that rafter of a rock's
lip. Strike in! the middle of
some trenchant phrase, some
well packed clause. Then . . .
This is my plan. 4 sections: First,
the archaic persons of the drama.
An eternity of bird and bush,
resolved. An unraveling:
the confused streams aligned, side
by side, speaking! Sound
married to strength, a strength
of falling--from a heigth! The wild
voice of the shirt-sleeved
Evangelist rivaling, Hear
me! I am the Resurrection
and the Life! echoing
among the bass and pickerel, slim
eels from Barbados, Sargasso
Sea, working up the coast to that
bounty, ponds and wild streams--
Third, the old town: Alexander Hamilton
working up from St. Croix,
from that sea! and deeper, whence
he came! stopped cold
by that unmoving roar, fastened
there: the rocks silent
but the water, married to the stone,
voluble, though frozen; the water
even when and though frozen
still whispers and moans--
And in the brittle air
a factory bell clangs, at dawn, and
snow whines under their feet. Fourth,
the modern town, a
disembodied roar! the cataract and
its clamor broken apart--and from
all learning, the empty
ear struck from within, roaring...
