Ramazani, Jahan; Richard Ellman; Robert O'Clair;
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, v.1 Modern Poetry (3d edition)
W. W. Norton & Company 2003-04 (Two volumes, slipcased $75.00)
ISBN 9780393324297 / 039332429X
topics: | poetry | anthology
Buffalo Bill 's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty .how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds (also, with the church's protestant blessings daughters, unscented shapeless spirited) they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead, are invariably interested in so many things— at the present writing one still finds delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles? perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D . . . . the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.
my father moved through dooms of love through sames of am through haves of give, singing each morning out of each night my father moved through depths of height this motionless forgetful where turned at his glance to shining here; that if(so timid air is firm) under his eyes would stir and squirm newly as from unburied which floats the first who,his april touch drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates woke dreamers to their ghostly roots and should some why completely weep my father's fingers brought her sleep: vainly no smallest voice might cry for he could feel the mountains grow. Lifting the valleys of the sea my father moved through griefs of joy; praising a forehead he called the moon singing desire into begin joy was his song and joy so pure a heart of star by him could steer and pure so now and now so yes the wrists of twilight would rejoice keen as midsummer's keen beyond conceiving mind of sun will stand, so strictly(over utmost him so hugely)stood my father's dream his flesh was flesh his blood was blood: no hungry man but wished him food; no cripple wouldn't creep one mile uphill to only see him smile. Scorning the pomp of must and shall my father moved through dooms of feel; his anger was as right as rain his pity was as green as grain septembering arms of year extend less humbly wealth to foe and friend than he to foolish and to wise offered immeasurable is proudly and(by octobering flame beckoned)as earth will downward climb, so naked for immortal work his shoulders marched against the dark his sorrow was as true as bread: no liar looked him in the head; if every friend became his foe he'd laugh and build a world with snow. My father moved through theys of we, singing each new leaf out of each tree (and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing) then let men kill which cannot share, let blood and flesh be mud and mire, scheming imagine,passion willed, freedom a drug that's bought and sold giving to steal and cruel kind, a heart to fear,to doubt a mind, to differ a disease of same, conform the pinnacle of am though dull were all we taste as bright, bitter all utterly things sweet, maggoty minus and dumb death all we inherit,all bequeath and nothing quite so least as truth —i say though hate were why man breathe— because my father lived his soul love is the whole and more than all