Did he feel it too, this upwelling

Did he feel it too, this upwelling
of the heart that was in him?
And that there is nothing finally,
but simplicity? A single flower’s born,
blooms, wilts, and dies, that’s all;

so it seems to flowers. But the man
who painted flowers, what did he know
or see? What surface or what craft
could start or slow the upwelling
of the heart that was in him?

If art begins in loneliness, or lust,
its end is this upwelling of the heart
that will not stay or pass.
If I too feel it now, do I become
more like a man? Or, like that man

Whose body passed through his own world
like a flower? The slow, ceaseless
upwelling of my heart’s renewed in these;
my wife, my children, all the world
and all its flowers, all their works;

love, fear; time that nothing can arrest
except this act that had an end, or these
anonymous flowers that became artifice,
and he, whose heart may also have upwelled,
as it seemed to, within him, then.

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Next time around I’ll be an old woman

Next time around I’ll be an old woman

ultimately. Matter-of-fact, kids grown
and independent as the French seem
to Americans who’ve stayed at home.
I’ll wait to be noticed first, but will be.

Having lived in all kinds of places
I’ll prefer the city, since there are cafes,
many varieties of everything, and friends
one needn’t fear will depend on one

overmuch. Next time I’ll wait for the trees
to fall in the dead of night instead,
magnificently, and next morning the sun
will come up like thunder.

And I’ll say—it’s just like that time,
it’s just like that one time I remember.
And I alone will remember.
I’ll be like that next time around.

.

.

Image: Clara Cook Kellogg, by Philip Alexius de László (1929). This portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (object number S/NPG.2006.114); it is made available by the Smithsonian under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

Oh lovely to be Wystan Hugh Auden!

How quite lovely to be Wystan Hugh Auden!
For the things that you punctually say
Are delightful and ever so gay—
………. Yet ironically double
………. Causing just enough trouble
To cause ladies to twitter: Oh, you, Auden!

How delightful to be Wystan Hugh Auden!
In the last rays of empire basking
And in general knowing, not asking:
……….Twitting fascists abroad,
……….And the bourgeois, and God—
While Oxonians murmur: So true, Auden!

What a gas ’tis to be Wystan Hugh Auden!
When addressing oneself to a body,
Not to be politic, but be bawdy:
……….To be learned, profound, yet colloquial—
……….
By turns serious, then by turns joquial—
While one’s auditors simper: Me too, Auden!

.

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Image: Auden1970byPeter, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license by TorontoPeter, edited and colorized in GIMP by yours truly.

I from a single leaf

I
from
a single
leaf create
(over and over)
a
tree
from a
multitude
create the same
1
tree
over and
over & over
ever and ever
so

Image: Tree and Leaf, by Tim Ellis, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) license.

Image: tree and leaves, by Mike Mahaffie, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.

Raft

1920px-Winslow_Homer_-_Boy_on_a_Raft_(1879)

I thought to build a tidy craft
But botched the job, and built a raft—
A raffish craft, whose aft and fore
Are more or less (or less or more)

Identical—also, the same—
So where I go, and whence I came,
I cannot tell from where I sit.
And that’s a pity—isn’t it?

 

canvas

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I use ugly words on purpose (poem written with a found pen)

Nothing in word form (small) - 327635449_3c0ec68ed9_c

I use ugly words on purpose
I write ugly words on purpose
ugly ugly ugly ugly
until they lose all meaning
until they lose meaning
ugly ugly ugly ugly
words words words words
meaning meaning meaning meaning

I like it that they
have to do what I say
but sometimes it’s better
when they no longer matter

The way a first taste of coffee
is exquisite and delicious
and by the end of the day
you can drink it down like water
and it means nothing at all

just (to extend the metaphor)
makes you jittery and mean
and puts a bad taste in your mouth
and builds a brooding stockade
(fence posts bristling like unkept teeth)
against sleep

In this bitter analogy, what is sleep?
Sleep sleep sleep sleep.
I’ll know it when I see it
I I I I I.
I write using these ugly words
on purpose
I I I I.

 

0503201803~2

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The Obvious Will Never Lose Its Power to Persuade

3206105389_284c3342a6_o

A dog lying in the sun
looks very wise.
Of course that is only the sun
making her narrow her eyes.

No, it is not the appearance of wisdom
that makes a dog wise:
it’s the fact that she lies
in the sun.

 

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