Poetry from M.I.T.; Robert Graves

Here's a poem I haven't read for years. This was written here or hereabouts when I have a study in Adam's house at Harvard in the. In the winter I used to be able to look out into the courtyard there and see the ice encased trees melting in the sun of midday melting a little moisture running down to the tips of the twigs and then freezing that sometimes as the cold came on again. I looked at this phenomenon for a long time before I came to write about it and maybe this will sound like a shabby confession but I came to write about it because in mucking around in the New English Dictionary I discovered a word which fascinated me. The word gem mation. Means budding but it sounds like jewelry and you can see how it seemed to me to make at least one exciting line possible. So I so I did something with this scene I've been describing. I suppose it's. It really is though with words that you make poems that

some people who have great feelings but don't think in words and they're not poets I know look wonderful lady. Admirable on all counts. Who doesn't think in words at all. I complained to a one time that we were having fewer and fewer birds around our house in Connecticut because we have 17 Siamese cats and they were worrying the birds away and she said Oh well you can't change human nature. I mean. This is called a courtyard thaw the sun was strong enough today to climb the wall and lose the court yard trees for two short hours any way. From hardship of the January freeze their icy settlements to cage to silken moistures which began to slip in glint scent spangles down and made on every twig a bubble at the

tip. No blossom leaf or basking fruit showed ever such pure passion for the sun as these cold drops that knew no root yet filled with light and swelled and one by one or showered by a winged beat. So on from wind bent branches in arpeggios let go and took their shining down. And brought their brittle season to a close. Oh false germination flashy for. The eye is pleased when Nature stoops to our staging within a courtyard wall such twinkling scenes. But puzzling to the heart of this spring was neither fierce nor gay this summer a Autumn fell without a TIA no tinkling music box can play the slow deep grounded masses of the year.

I've just been reading Newton Auburn's book on Longfellow which is very good indeed and. Reading this poem over I felt that it was kind of a Longfellow poem comes out with a moral at the end. Very unfashionable but you like to see if you can't get away with it now and then. Here's a poem which keeps turning up I can't say why. In anthologies. Freshman English and theologies things of that kind. Perhaps because it illustrates the simile. It's called a simile for a smile and it and it has to do it takes off from a bridge you all probably know as you're heading as you're heading for. Well as you're going into Gloucester. There's a there's a a little bridge that that lifts sometimes and stops the traffic dead so that. The little boats can go through. And bell ringing a company is this. This is meant to be a

kind of it's meant to work like a like an Homeric simile I was interested in Homeric similes at the time at. That big comparisons. Instead of the little point by point parallels please don't look for little point by point parallels here or it'll be ruinous. A simile for her smile. You're smiling all the hope. The thought of it. Makes in my mind such a pause and abrupt ease. As when the highway bridge gates for bucking the hasty traffic which must sit on each side mounted and staring while deliberately the drawbridge starts to rise. Then horns are hushed. The oil smoke rarified above the idling motors one can tell the packets smooth approach the slip slip of the silken River past the sides. The ringing of clear bells

the dip and slow cascading of the paddle wheel. It wouldn't do of course to try to find some equivalent and in the smile of the woman of the addressee of this poem some equivalent to oil smoke or or or the paddle wheel that would ruin it it has to be the sort of general comparison that goes on in a simile. There's a poem called altitudes. Which is in two parts the first part is concerned with a baroque dome. It was in fact an Italian baroque dome I had in mind though it might be elsewhere. And you're inside the church or cathedral looking up into the dome. And you know how often such domes. Suggest a kind of room. How often they are they are windowed and then the second part has to do with Emily Dickinson's father's house in

Amherst Massachusetts and with the cube on top of it. It's called altitudes. Fundamentally just to be blunt fundamentally this is a this is a poem not only of architectural comparisons but. Of a comparison between the typical spiritual experiences of Europe and of America altitudes. Look up into the dome. It is a great Salloum a brilliant place yet not too splendid for the race whom we imagine they're. Wholly at home with the gold Rosetta white Wainscott the oval windows and the faultless figures of the painted vault strolling conversing in that precious light. They chat no doubt of love. The pleasant burden of their cut is a borne down at times to you and me. Where in this dog we

stand and gaze about for all they cannot share. All that the world cannot in fact afford their lofty premises off floored with the massed voices of continual prayer. Part two. How far it is from here to Emily Dickinson's father's house in America. Think of her climbing a spiral stair up to the little pupil up with its clear small panes. It's room for one like the dark house below. So full of eyes in mirrors and of shut in flies. This chamber furnished only with the sun. Is she and she alone. A mood to which she rises in which she sees bird choristers in all the trees and a wild shining of the pure unknown on our midst.

This is caught in the Dormers of a neighbor. Who no doubt will before long becoming out to pace about his garden lost in thought. That neighborhood in my imagination is someone like thorough or Emerson not Emily's literal neighbor in Amherst who was a brother Austin. My next poem is the title poem of my last book but one it's called Love calls us to the things of this world. And. It's as the poem rather abruptly begins you're waking up in a bedroom in a of an apartment house just as the first laundry of the day is drawn across the air of the area outside accompanied by a squeaking of pulleys. The eyes open to a cry of pulleys and spirited from sleep the astounded soul hangs for a moment bodyless and simple as false

dawn. Outside the open window. The morning air is all awash with angels. Some are in bed sheets some are in blouses some are in smocks but truly there they are. Now they are rising together in calm swells of housey and feeling feeling whatever they wear with the deep joy of their impersonal breathing. Now they are flying in place conveying the terrible speed of their omnipresence moving and staying like white water. And now of a sudden they swoon down into so rapt a quiet that nobody seems to be there. The soul shrinks from all that it is about to remember from the punctual rate of every blessid day. And cries Oh oh let there be nothing on earth but laundry. Nothing but

rosy hands in the rising steam and clear dances done in the sight of heaven. Yet as the sun acknowledges with a warm look the world's hunks and colors the soul descends once more in bitter love to accept the waking body saying now in a changed voice as the man yawns and rises. Bring them down from their ruddy gallows. Let the big clean linen for the backs of thieves let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone and the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating of dark habits keeping their difficult balance. One difficult thing about writing and writing a kind of poetry in which you play around with words and puns sometimes is that you find yourself

sometimes being accused of puns you didn't mean. Dark habits. I didn't mean that. Nuns have a tendency to misbehave. I was simply thinking of their clothing. But somebody accused me of that in a magazine a while ago. Here's a little I suppose you call it a love poem. But it's also a poem about about the effect which some rooms. Or. Architectural forms can have upon you. And demanding of you a certain kind of behavior. This is called Piazzi of the spine your early morning everybody knows that Square in Rome the great tourist hangout. But this is early morning about three o'clock nobody is there. I can't forget how she stood at the top of that long marble stare amazed. And then with a sleepy pair of wet went dancing

slowly down to the fountain quieted Square nothing upon her face but some impersonal loneliness. Not then a girl. But as it were a reverie of the place. Called for a falling glide and whirled. As when a leaf petal or thin chip is drawn to the Falls of a pool and circling a moment above it rides on over the left perfectly beautiful. Perfectly ignorant of it. I went to Russia a couple of years ago as a state. State Department literary types. And met met a lot of opposite numbers over there and on occasion I was and paid a variac it was the other member of a two man delegation was asked to read something. Now

this poem I'm about to read you had been very well translated by an excellent young Russian translator named andré segregate if one can see why he chose it. It includes a reference to. Napoleon's retreat from burning Moscow. But also I took Mr. Sergei off choosing this as a good sign. And I was delighted by the fact that certain of the poets who heard this people like you have to shank going Martine off both of them I considerably respect expressed sympathy and understanding. This is a point about the unhappy discontinuity between the public and private lives in times of international stress and and I'm I'm glad that the Russians feel it as well. This is called after the

last bulletins this one word in this to which is an odd word the French word and referring to it means punitive mass drownings. After the last bulletins after the last bulletins the windows darken and the whole city found those readily and deep sliding on all its pillows to the throng Duplantis of personal Sleep and The Wind Rises The Wind Rises and bowed as the day's litter of news in the alleys trash tears itself on the railings saws and falls with a soft crash tumbles and soars again unruly flights scamper the park and taking a statue for dead. Strike at the positive eyes batter and flap the stolid head and scratch the noble name in empty lots our journals

spiral in a fierce and why out of all we thought to think or caught in corners crown and wad and twist our words and some from gutters flail their tatters at the tired patrolman's feet like all that fisted snow that cried beside his long retreat. Damn you damn you to the Emperor's horses heels. Oh none too soon through the air quite dry with the clear announcers voice beat like a dove and you and I from the hearts and our country responsible town return by subway mouth to life again daring the morning papers and across the park where Saint like men white and absorbed with stick and bag removed the litter of the night and footsteps rouse with confident morning sound the song birds in the public dollars.

Here's my swat at an auth Arthurian poem. This is called Merlin and thrall and it's based on some wonderful retellings of the Arthurian stories in a book by Heinrich Syma called the king and the corpse. MARILYNNE is supposed to have created a beautiful creature named neon so beautiful that she had the power to turn around on him and enchant him and this removed him from the scene of action and that's what the poem is about Merlin and throwed. In a while they rose and went out aimlessly riding leaving their drained cups on the table around Marilyn Marilyn their hearts cried Where are you hiding in all the world was no unnatural sounds. Mystery watched

them riding played by Clay. They saw a dark hole from under leafy Browns but the leaves were all its voice and squirrels made an alien fracas in the ancient bowels. Once by a lake edge something made them stop. Yet what they found was the thumping of a frog. Bugs skating on the shut water top. Some hair like algae bleaching on a log. Godwin thought for a moment that he heard a white thorn breathed Neon that sirens daughter Rose in a forest of dreams and spoke the word sleep. Her voice like dark diving water and Marilyn slept who had imagined her of water sounds in the deep on sound of the swell of a creature to be a witch or a sorceress. And lay there now within her towering spell.

Slowly the shapes of searching men and horses escaped him as he dreamt on that high that. History died. He gathered in its forces the mists of time condensed in the still head until his mind as clear as mountain water went reveling toward the deep transparent dream who Bad him sleep. And then the sirens daughter received him as the sea receives a stream. Fate would be fated dreams desire to sleep. This the Forsaken will not understand. Author upon the road began to weep and said to God when I remember when this hound once hailed a sword from stone. Now I'm no less strong. It cannot dream of such a thing to do. Their mail grew fainter as they clapped along the

sky became a still and woven blue. Robert Brooks who lives here in Cambridge understands grief because I do not. And one night he he translated a point of our Killick has for me a fragment I guess and I worked it into this point. When you hear the lines a myrtle shooting a hand and so on. That'll be our Killick that's by way of Robert Brooks This poem is called a voice from under the table. It's an effort at a dramatic poem and the speaker is a drunkard and a lecture. How shall the wine be drunk or the woman known. I take this world for better or for worse. But seeing

Rose conceive the sun my thirst conceives a fiery Oh universe and then I toast the birds in the burning trees that chant their holy lucid drunken ass. I swallowed all the phosphorus of the Seas before I fell into this low distress. You upright people all remember how love drove you first to the woods and there you heard the loose mouth wind complaining that hour and my cocky limbs were shuttered by the word. Most of it since was nothing but charades to spell that hankering out and make an end but the softest hands against my shoulder blades only increased the crying of the wind. For this the Goddess Rose from the Midland sea and stood above the famous wind dark wave to ease our drouth with clearer mystery. And

the South. To all our flights of love and down by the self-same water I have seen a blazing girl with skin like polished stone splashing until a far out breast of green a rose and with a rose contagion shone a myrtle shoot in hand. She danced her hair cast on her back and shoulders a moving shade. Was it some hovering light that showed her fair. Was it of chafing dark that light was made. Perhaps it was our Killick has found his aid or that his saying sublime to the thing he said. All true enough and true as well that she was beautiful and danced and is now dead. Helen was no such Hyde discarnate thought as men in Dr. symposia pursue but was as bitterly a fugitive not to be caught by what men's

arms in love or fight could do grown in your cell. Rape Troy with sought in flame. THE END OF THIRST exceeds experience. A devil told me it was all the sane weather to fail by spirit or by sense. God keep me a damned fool not charitably receive me into his shapely resignations. I'm a sort of martyr as you see a horizontal monument to patients the cobs of waitresses parade about my helpless head upon this sodden floor. Well I am down again but not yet out. Oh sweet frustrations I shall be back for more. This is a translation from the French poet Francis Shaam.

He wrote a number of Catholic tented poems about donkeys and this is one of them. The best of them I think it's called a prayer to go to Paradise with the donkeys. When I must come to you oh my God I pray it be some dusty eroded holiday. And even as in my travels here below I beg to choose by what road I shall go to Paradise where the clear stars shine by day. I'll take my walking stick and go my way. And so my friends the donkeys I shal say I am from sea Shum and I'm going to paradise. For there is no hell in the land of the loving God. And I'll say to them Come sweet friends of the blue skies who are creatures who with a flock of the head or flap of the ears or a nod of the head shake off the

buffets the bees the flies. Let me come with these donkeys lowered into your land. These beasts who bow their heads so gently and stand with their small feet join together in a fashion utterly gentle asking your compassion. I shall arrive followed by their thousands of years followed by those with baskets at their flanks by those who love the cuts of mountain banks or loads of feather dusters and kitchenware by those with humps of battered water cans by bottle shake she passes who halt and stumble by those tricked out in little pantaloons to cover their wet blue balls where flies assemble in whirling swarms making a drunken hum. Dear God let it be with these donkeys that I come and let it be that angels lead us in peace to leafy streams where cherries tremble in

air sleep because the laughing flesh of girls and there in that haven of so let it be that leaning above your divine waters I shall resemble these donkeys whose humble and sweet poverty will appear clear in the clearness of your eternal love. When I went to Roman 50 for the aesthetic test applied to the newcomer was whether or not he approved of the new railway station that. Navvy and associates had built. I approved of it on site. For very very many reasons but particularly because of the touching way in which the shape

of this new building the newest building in Rome acknowledged the broken contours of the old Serbian wall. Which ran beneath it and ran beside it. This is a poem to tune. Mr. Neville and his lot called for the new railway station in Rome. When I talk about pilgrims of defeat I'm speaking of people like Henry Adams who will remember his chapters on Rome. Those who said God is praised by Hirt pillars who love to see our brazen lust lie down in rubble and our vaunting arches conducive to dust. Those who with short shadows poked through the stubble at Fordham pondering on decline and would not take the sun standing at noon for a good sign. Those pilgrims of defeat who

brought their injured wills us to a soldier's home. Dig them all up now. Tell them there's something new to see in Rome. See from the travertine face of the office block the roof of the booking hall sails out into the air beside the ruined Servian wall echoing in its latent counter lever and swoop of reinforced concrete the broken profile of these stones defeating that defeat and straying the strummed mind by such a sudden chord has raised the town of Troy. To where the least shot of the world sings out in stubborn joy. What city is eternal but that which prints itself within the groping head out of the blue unbroken reveries of the building dead. What is our praise or pride. But to imagine excellence and try to make it. What does it

say over the door of heaven. But homo fake it. I was awfully pleased with myself for getting the words reinforced concrete into a poem and it was rather rattling. When I got to Russia to find that there was a whole school of poets scornfully referred to as reinforced concrete poets. They show candied which I. Liked best. It was dropped out after opening night in Boston and I think it was a great pity Mr. Bernstein had said it beautifully. I don't know just why it was dropped out some people gave the excuse that the subject matter. Is distasteful. Some people said that the words couldn't be heard. Some people said the lyric was too dense I think that may be a reasonable accusation. Lots of reasons in any case I was sorry to see it go because it

was the nearest we got to following Voltaire in all of the show. This this is Pan glosses song it's sung at that point in Voltaire and and in our show where candied runs into his old master. Once again he's thought him dead finds that he's alive but eaten up with an Ariel disease and says to him dear Master you've told us everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds. How can this your diseased condition before the be all for the best and then sings this song which is not intended to be distasteful but which is intended to be an example of frenzied rationalization. Once back obviously to the wall. Dear boy you will not hear me speak with sorrow or with rancor of what has paled my rosy cheek and blasted it with conquer. It was love great love that did the deed. Through nature's gentle

laws and how should ill effects proceed from so divine a cause. Sweet honey comes from bees that sting as you are well aware. To one adept in reasoning whatever pains disease may bring about the tang the seasoning to Love's delicious fare. Columbus and his men they say conveyed the virus hither whereby my features rot away and vital powers wither. Yet had they not traversed the seas and come infected back why think of all the luxuries that modern life would lack. Oh bitter things conducive to sweet as this example shows without the little spiral Kate. We have no chocolate to eat nor would tobaccos fragrance greet the European nose. Here's the encore which was never sung. Each nation guards its native land with cannon and with Sentry inspectors look for

contraband at every port of entry. Yet nothing can prevent the spread of love's divine disease. It rounds the world from bed to bed as pretty as you please. Men worship Venus everywhere. As plainly may be seen the decorations which I bear are nobler than the choir the gay and gained in service of our faith. And Universal queen. It's supposed to be Muzzy and idealistic in tone. One should say it taking one's glasses on and off I think. I forgot to bring with me today. The translation of Moliere's Tartu for I've just finished and which God willing is going to be done at the Phoenix Theatre this fall. But since I haven't since I haven't read it am I t before I think I can risk reading you as a substitute.

S. from an earlier translation scene from Moliere's misanthrope Act 3 Scene 5. This is the famous Spight scene between our sin away and Silly Man City man as you remember is the 20 year old widow who is the heroine of the play and she's rather flighty and foolish. Her heart insofar as she's given it to anybody it's been given to assess the hero of the. Play he's not. In this scene the other main character in the scene is our sin away a woman a little older than Sally Mann and sensitive about it who's something of a religious and moral phony very strict very zealous something nasty underneath it all. And she's she has a fancy for SEST and therefore regards herself as Sally Mann's rival.

There there have been just before this scene opens to Fox on stage play Towner and a cost and they've just left left on our cinema as entrance giggling. And that's what her first line refers to. She comes on and says it's just as well those gentlemen didn't tarry Salamon Shall we sit down in a way that won't be necessary. Madam the flame of friendship ought to burn brightest in matters of the most concern. And as there is nothing which concerns us more than Ana I have hastened to your door to bring you as your friend. Some information about the status of your reputation. I visited last night some virtuous folk and quite by chance it was of you they spoke. There was I fear no tendency to praise your like behavior and your dashing ways. The quantity of

gentlemen you see and you are by no notorious coquetry. We're both so vehemently criticised by everyone. That I was much surprised. Of course I needn't tell you where I stood. I came to your defense as best I could. Assure them you were harmless and declared your so was absolutely unimpaired. But there are some things you must realize one count excuse however hard one tries and I was forced at last and conceding that your behavior madam is misleading that it makes a bad impression giving rise to ugly gossip and obscene surmise and that if you were more overtly good you wouldn't be so much misunderstood. Not that I think you've been unchaste. No no the saints preserve me from a thought so low but mere good conscience never did suffice. One must avoid the outward show. Of vice. Madam you're too intelligent I'm sure to think

my motives are anything but pure in offering you this counsel which I do out of a zealous interest in you said amen madam. I haven't taken you amiss. I'm very much obliged to you for this and I'll at once just charge the obligation by telling you about your reputation. You've been so friendly as to let me know what certain people say of me and so I mean to follow your benign example by offering you a somewhat similar sample. The other day I went to an affair and found some most distinguished people there discussing piety. Both false and true. The conversation soon came round to you. Allow us your prudery and bustling zeal appeared to have a very slight appeal. Your affectation of a grave demeanor. Your endless talk of virtue and of honor the aptitude of your suspicious mind for finding sin where there is none to find your towering self esteem that pitying face with which you contemplate the human race. Your

sermonizing is in your shop aspersions on people's pure and innocent diversions. All these were mentioned madam and in fact were roundly and concertedly attacked. What good they said or all these outward shows when everything belies her pious pose. She prays incessantly but then they say she beats her maids and cheats them of their pay. She shows her zeal in every holy place. But still she's vain enough to paint her face. She holds that naked statues all to morrow but with a naked man she'd have no quarrel. Of course I said to everybody there that they were being viciously unfair. But still they were disposed to criticize you and all agreed that someone should advise you to leave the morals of the world alone and worry rather more about your own. They felt that one self-knowledge should be great before one thinks of setting others straight. That one should learn the art of living well before one threatens other men with hell and that the church is best equipped no doubt

to guide our souls and root our vices out madame. You're too intelligent I'm sure to think my motives are anything but pure in offering you this counsel which I do out of a zealous interest in you. I was in a way I dared not hope for gratitude but I did not expect so Asad a reply. I judge since you've been so extremely tart that my good counsel pierced you to the heart said Amen. Far from it madam. Indeed it seems to me we ought to trade advice more frequently. One's vision of oneself is so defective that it would be an excellent corrective if you are willing madam. Let's arrange shortly to have another frank exchange in which we'll tell each other entre new what you've heard tell of me and I of you I see no way of people never censure you my dear. It's me they criticize Also I hear said Amen. Madam I think we either blame or praise according to our taste and length of days.

There is a time of life for coquetry and there is a season to prudery when all one's charms are gone it is I'm sure a good strategy to be developed and pure. It makes one seem a little less forsaken. Sunday perhaps I'll take the road you've taken. Time brings all things that I have time aplenty and see no cause to be approved at 20. Percent away. You give your agent such a gloating tone that one would think I was an ancient crone. We're not so far apart in sober truth that you can mock me with a post of youth. Madam you'll baffle me. I wish I knew what moves you to provoke me as you do. Sediment For my part madam I should like to know why you abuse me everywhere you go. Is it my fault dear lady that your hand is not to last in very great demand. If men admired me if they pay me Cortin's daily make me offers of the sort you would dearly love to have them make to you. How can I help it. What would you have me do if what you want is

lovers. Please feel free to take as many as you can from me. Send away. Oh come on. Do you think the world is losing sleep over that flock of lovers which you keep. Or that we find it difficult to guess what price you pay for that devotedness. Surely you don't expect us to suppose mere merit go to attract so many voters. It's not your virtue that they're dazzled by nor is it virtuous love for which they saw you were fooling no one madam. The world's not blind as many a lady Heaven has designed to call men's noblest tenderest feelings out who has no lovers dogging her about. From which it's plain that lovers nowadays must be acquired in bold and shameless ways and only pay one court for such reward as modesty and virtue can't afford. Then don't be quite so puffed up if you please about your tawdry little victories. Try if you can to be a shade less vain and treat the world with somewhat less distaste. If one were envious of your arm

moves one soon could have a following like yours. Lovers are no great trouble to collect if one prefers them to one's self-respect. Now I want to read you some later poems. I just I don't have very much time but I do want to fit in a few. First I'd like to read you a translation by the person who's generally acknowledged to be the best younger poet in Russia today maybe the best entree of us in the CNN slightly mocked up version of this translation appears in the current issue of theft and counter. Business yes his poetry is characterized by frisking us of rhyme frisky use of meta. A certain amount of intellectual cleverness and a lot of punning and of course one can't duplicate all of that. But I've I've tried to do what I could here. By the way. This is written in collaboration with Max Haywood.

The poem is called foggy street and as you will see it's a description of a city street on a foggy day. But it also also has obvious political overtones to it suggests that the uncertainties which any any writer or any body must feel in a period of of thaw such as the Russians have been having with the possibility of of a shutdown always around the corner on foggy street. The air is grey white as a pigeon feather. Police bobbed up like corks on a fishing net. Foggy weather. What century is it. But out I forget as in a nightmare Everything is crumbling. People have come on sodded nothing's intact. I plod on

stumbling or flounder in cotton wool to be more exact. Noses parking lights badges flash and blur all as fake as a magic lantern show your hat checks. Mustn't walk off with the wrong head you know. It's as if a woman who scarcely left your lips should blur in the mind. Yep trouble it with recall the refs now widowed by your loves eclipse still yours yet suddenly not yours at all. Can that be Venus. No. An ice cream vendor I bumped into a curb stones bumped into passers by. Are they friends I wonder. Homebred Iago's how covet you are how sly. Y is you my darling shivering there alone your overcoats too big for you my dear. But why have you grown

that moustache. Why is there frost in your hairy ear. I trip I stagger. I persist. Merch merch there's nothing visible anywhere. Whose is the cheek you brush now in the midst of a hoity that. One's voice won't carry in this heavy air when the fog lifts. How brilliant it is. How rare. Just a little dramatic poem and which there are two speakers one a milkweed in the other a St.. It's called Two voices in a meadow. I suppose that these speakers are not really addressing each other though the stone says something which has some bearing on what the milkweed has said. Really they're just defining themselves to the air the milkweed speaks first.

Anonymous as cherubs over the crib of God white seeds off floating out of my burst pod. What power I had on before I learned to yield. Shatter me great when I shall possess the field. The Stone says as casual as a cow dung. Under the crypt of God. I live where chance would have me up to the ears in sod. Why should I move to move befits a light desire. The sale of heaven would founder did such as I aspire. I don't believe much in and writing Dylan knows and that's sort of tricky for him.

Unless you're awfully lucky what you turn out is kind of doily and which you complied with a set of near impossible stands and near impossible requirements of recurrence. Something drew me. I guess the reading of the Aum drew me to try about odd and here's my one effort in this sort of tricky form. This is called by God for the Duke of Allah I am the Duke of Allah in the mid 15th century offered a prize at his castle of the law for the best Balade which should take off from his favorite line which was remember the swath of tread left on 10. I'd die of thirst next to the fountain I translated I'd die of thirst here at the fountain side. Vio won the contest and my

entry is not only late but not legitimate because the Duke of early on wanted this line used as the opening line of the poem. I use it as the refrain allowed for the Duke of Omnium flailed from the heart of water in a bow. He took the falling fly. My line went taut foam was in uproar where he drove below in spangly air. I thought him and was fought. Then we read to the shallows. He was caught gassed in the net. Lay still and stony aren't. It was no fading Iris. I had saw I die of thirst here at the fountain side. Down in the harbors flow and counterflow I left my ships with hopes and heroes fraught ten times more golden than the sun could show. Calypso gave the darkness. I've been sought. Oh it was her

fleecy touch was dearly bought all spent. I wakened by my only bride beside whom every vision is but not and die of thirst here at the fountain side. Where does that plenty dwell. I'd like to know. Which father had poor desire. As Plato talked out on the real and endless waters Gokhan keester Durrant stubborn Argonaut where but bathed the golden bowl he brought gilded the stream but stalled its living tide the sunlight withers as the verse is wrought. I'd die of thirst here at the fountain side. Duke keep your coin. All men are born distraught and will not for the world be satisfied whether we live in fact or but in thought we die of thirst here at the fountain side.

I trust that worked out all right. I'm confident enough about it so that I can confess that I think there are just three OT sounds left in the English language. I realize this with panic as I was getting toward the end of the end of the Balado. This is a poem called in the smoking car and it's a description of a commuter. Thank you. I'm a commuter on the train back from New York. He's heading into Connecticut somewhere very tired and you're looking at him from the outside. And then by means which I can't describe I can't justify you get inside his head and get involved in the sort of reverie and subsequent dream which he's enjoying. In the smoking car the eyelids meet

he'll catch a little not the grizzled group crewcut head drops to his chest it shakes above the briefcase on his lap close voices breathes poor sweet. He did his best poor sweet poor sweet. The bird hushed Glades repeat through which in quiet pomp his letter goes carried by native girls with naked feet a sighing stream concurs in his repose. Could he but think he might recall to mind the righteous mutiny or sudden gale that beached him here. The dear ones left behind so near the ending he forgets the tale. We're going to lift his eyelids now he might behold his maiden Porter's brow down and bare.

But even here he has no appetite. It is enough to know that they are there enough that now a honeyed music swells the gentle Maust declivity his Begin and the whole air is full of flour smells failure. The longed for Valley takes him in. If you allow me two more poems that's all I'll do. I'd like to read a very. A very odd sort of a poem called shame written in something very close to prose. It's it's an attempt to describe the emotional state of shame as if it were an actual state. Of geography a culture and the language the language of this as you will quickly see is that is the

dead language of guidebooks. Shame it is a cramped little state with no foreign policy save to be thought inoffensive. The grammar of the language has never been fathom owing to the national habit of allowing each sentence to trail off in confusion. Those who have visited schools either the capital city report that the railway route from shouldering passes through country best described as unrelieved sheep or the national product. The faint inscription over the city gates may perhaps be rendered I'm afraid you won't find much of interest here. Census reports which give the population as a zero are of course not to be trusted. Save as reflecting the natives flustered insistence that they do not count as well as their modest horror of letting one's sex be known in so many words. The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings

the absence of churches or comfort stations have given observers an odd impression of ostentatious meanness. And it must be said of the citizens muttering by in their ratty sheep skins shying at cracks in the sidewalk that they lack the peace of mind of the truly humble. The tenor of life is careful even in the stiff and smiling callousness of the border guards and who admit whenever they can. Not merely the usual car loads of deodorant but gypsies G-strings hashish and contraband pigments their complete negligence is reserved however. For the hoped for invasion. At which time the happy people sniggering readily naked and shamelessly drunk will stun the foe by their overwhelming submission. Corrupt the generals infiltrate the staff usurp the throne proclaim themselves to be sun gods and bring about the collapse of the whole Empire.

Well I guess this will do for a last one this is a poem about. Vampires called the undead. Even as children they were late sleepers preferring their dreams even when quick with monsters. To the world with all its breakable toys its compact with the dying from the stretched arms of withered trees they turned fearing contagion of the mortal and even of an even under the plums of summer. Drifted like winter moons secret unfriendly pale possessed of the one wish the thirst for mere survival. They came as all extremists do in time to a sort of grand jury. Now to their Balkan battlements above the vulgar town of their first lives they

rise at the moon's rising. Strange that their utter self concern should in the end have left them selfless Mirror's failed to perceive them as they float through the great hall and up the staircase. Nor are the cobwebs broken into the pallid night emerging wrapped in their flapping capes routinely maddened by a wolf's cry. They stand for a moment stoking the mind's eye with lewd thoughts of the pressed flowers and bric a brac of rooms with something to lose of love dismemberments dollars and children buried in quilted sleep. Then they are off in a negative frenzy. Their black shapes cropped into sudden bats that swarm burst and are gone. Thinking of a thrush cold in the leaves. Who has sung his few summers truly. Or an old scholar resting his eyes at last. We cannot

be much impressed with vampires colorful though they are nevertheless their pain is real. And requires our pity. Think how sad it must be to thirst always for a scorned intellects or. The salt quotidian blood which if mistrusted has no savor to prey on life forever and not possess it. As rock hollows tide after a tide glassily Strand to the sea. Thank you very much.