The poet’ s eye obscenely seeing
sees the surface of the round world
with its drunk rooftops
and wooden oiseaux on clotheslines
and its clay males and females
with hot legs and rosebud breasts
in rollaway beds  
and its trees full of mysteries
and its sunday parks and speechless statues
and its America
with its ghost towns and empty Ellis Islands
and its surrealistic landscape of
mindless prairies
supermarket suburbs
steamheated cemeteries
cinerama holy days
and protesting cathedrals
a Kissproof world of plastic toiletseats tampax and taxis
drugged store cowboys and las vegas virgins
disowned indians and cinemad matrons
unroman senators and conscientious non-objectors
and all the other fatal shorn-up fragments
of the immigrant’s dream come too true
and mislaid
among the sunbathers

A TALISMAN
Marianne Moore

Under a splintered mast,
torn from the ship and cast
near her hull, a stumbling shepherd found
embedded in the ground,
a sea-gull of lapis lazuli,
a scarab of the sea,
with wings spread - curling its coral feet,
parting its break to greet
men long dead.

 

HE MADE THIS SCREEN
Marianne Moore

not of silver nor of cord
but of weather-beaten laurel
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;
here a big-tree, there a face,
there, a dragon eireling space
designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower

 

TO A SNAIL
Marianne Moore

If "compression is the first grace of style",
you have it.  Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.
It is not the acquisition of any one thing
that is able to adorn,
or the incidental quality that occurs
as a concomitant of something well said,
that we value in style,
but the principle that is hid:
in the absence of feet, "a method of conclusions";
"a knowledge of principles",
in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.

 

From  THE DRY SALVAGES
Thomas Elliot

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities -ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget.  Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land´s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale´s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone,
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men.  The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard:  the whine in the rigging,
The menace and carees of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
That time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

 

HYSTERIA
Thomas S. Eliot

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and
being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary
recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the
ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was
hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green
iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in
the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the
garden. . ." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,
some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I
concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.





MARINA
Thomas S. Eliot

What seas what shores gray rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the stye of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death
Are become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place
What is this face, less clear and clearer,
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resing my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.





THE BEGGAR ON THE BEACH
Horace Gregory

I have not come here to talk,
I have come to sit; I have been transplanted
From the cornestone of a First National Bank
On a windy street to root myself
In pebbles, shells, and sand;
It is my shadow and not my arm
That holds out its fingers in a empty glove
Which might so easily be mistaken for a hand.
My silence is
The unheard cries of those who swim
Where no raft follows, where sails, mast, funnels
Disappear up-ocean into a wave that travels
Eastward beyond the thin horizon line;
At my left shoulder there is a cloud
That gathers into a storm
On a beach-crowded Sunday afternoon
The cloud my shadow´s twin in the tide´s swell
Which curns gold waters into lead and silver
At its will.
Tell me my riddle:
I am not a mirage, but a being in flesh
Born of a sea that has neither
Waves nor shore, nor moon, nor star;
That was my misfortune, Have yoy a better
Fortune?  are you forever young, handsome, rich
In friends?  poor in fear? happy in doubt?
Sad in nothing? hopeful in dark?
Is that what you are?  Or do you burn
As my veins burn with ceaseless heat?
Whether you answer me or not,
Even at noon, the disguise I wear
Is the body and rags of legless Kronos
Before God walked the sky,  Look at me and his shade
Turns boardwalk holidays into a mile
Of broken bottles and twisted iron
Seen through a gray window in the rain
Give it your homage,
The shadow is always here, Now you may drop
Your money in my hat.

 

ATOMIC LOVE
Jaime Damerval
(Translator: Manuel Avila)

I am a particular member of a new cult
That proclaims love as a multitudinaire holocaust.

Life is a tiresome beauty contest. A contest of resistance.
A visual orgy.

A crowd of women gets undressed in magazines
And they have turned the library into a gynaeceum.

At the movies, in the bar, the crowd experiences a simultaneous
And mental intercourse with the actress.

We must stand the cruelty of such inaccessible beauty.
Exhausted by the frenzy of an always voracious hunger.
Permanently exacerbated, up to the delirium.

On the television, the propaganda is always playing an exotic card of
prodigious women.

>The vehicle takes us swiftly to the nudist beach.
The radio broadcasts the joyful morn of the orgasm.
Jubilee hips loosen up through the sounds of a record.

On the plane and in the train, tourists, on the ships,
We saw without knowing the ones who could make us happy.
But our itineraries hit as irreconcilable swords.
Dozens of millions of splendid beings
Cross, pass by, but we cannot understand each other.
Our obsolete and ideal love may have been among them.

We are indefatigable seeding beings condemned
To sow and banish.
We will never see the fields bloom
Because the crowd pushes us into new ones.
In any women I unload, as any thorough stevedore,
The unbearable burden of my incommensurable desire.

This is not the time of the singular love,
Of the innocent and wise love that believes to be endless and unique.
The human being has been multiplied, stunned, ravished,
by too many alternatives

This is the century of the tumultuous love.
Of the giddy love.
Our era has produced an avalanche of portentous,
Beautiful, efficient, honest, competent, kind human beings.
Everyone is a good fellow.
This is the era of the multitudinary love,
Of the massive love.
Of the apocalyptic love
Atomic love! Explosive, expansive, devastating, irresponsible love.
Inexcusable love if this not illuminate the frightened night of our solitude.

 

From HOWL
Allen Ginsberg

Carl Solomon!  I´m with you in Rockland
where you´re madder than I am
I´m with you in Rockand
where you must feel very strange
I´m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I´m with you in Rockland
where you´ve murdered your twelve secretaries
I´m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I´m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I´m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I´m with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I´m with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I´m with you in Rockland
where you pug on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I´m with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straitjacket that you´re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I´m with you in Rockland
where you go bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and inmortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I´m with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I´m with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I´m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I´m with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I´m with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won´t let us sleep
I´m with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls´ airplanes roaring over the roof they´ve come to drop angelie bombs the hospital iluminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shocks of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we´re free
I´m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night.

 

Spoon River Anthology (epitaphs)
Edgar Lee Masters

ROBERT DAVIDSON

I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
If I saw a soul that was strong
I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
The shelters of friendship knew my cunning,
For where I could steal a friend I did so.
And wherever I could enlarge my power
By undermining ambition, I did so,
Thus to make smooth my own.
And to triumph over other souls,
Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
Was with me a delight,
The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,
With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
I collapsed at last with a shriek.
Remember the acorn;
It does not devour other acorns.

 

Spoon River Anthology (epitaphs)
Edgar Lee Masters

ROGER HESTON

Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I
Argue about the freedom of the will.
My favorite metaphor was Prickett´s cow
Roped out to grass, and free you know as far
As the length of the rope.
One day while arguing so, watching the cow
Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle
Which she had eaten bare,
Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,
She ran for us.
"What´s that, free-will or what?" said Ernest, running.
I fell just as she gored me to my death.

 

THE BALL POEM
John Berryman

What is the boy now,who has lost his ball,
What ,what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing,down the street, and then
Merrily over-there it is in the water !
No use to say  ´O there are other balls´:
An ultimate shaking grief  fixes the boy
As he stands rigid,trembling,stgaring down
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him
A dime,another ball,is worthless.Now
He senses first responsibility
In   a  world of possessions.People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always,little boy,
And no one buys a ball back.Money is external
He  is learning ,well behind his desperate eyes
The epistemology of loss , how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day    know
And most know many days,how to stand up.
And gradually light returns to the street
A whistle blows,the ball is out of sight
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour ...I am everywhere
I suffer and move, my  mind and my heart move
With all that move me,under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

 

LEAVES OF GRASS
Walt Whitman

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree toad is a chef-d'œvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

The cat is eating the roses:
that’s the way he is.
Don’t stop him, don’t stop
the world going round,
that’s the way things are.
The third of May
was misty; fourth of May
who knows. Sweep
the rosemeat up, throw the bits
out in the rain.
He never eats
every crumb, says
the hearts are bitter.
That’s the way he is, he knows
the world and the weather.

"The hot night makes us keep onr bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor’s edge,
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust...
It’s the injustice... he is so unjust:
whisky-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick? Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh...
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

My human brothers who live after me,
See how I hang. My bones eat through the skin
And flesh they carried here upon the chin
And lipping clutch of theircupidity;
Now here, now there, the starling and the sea
Gull splinter the groined eyeballs of my sin,
Brothers, more beaks of birds than needles in
The fathoms of the Bayeux Tapestry:
"God wills it, wills it: it is blood".
My brothers, if I call you brothers, see:
The blood of Abel crying from the dead
Sticks to my blackened skull and eyes. What good
Are lebensraum and bread to Abel dead
And rotten on the cross-beams of the tree?



LEAVES OF GRASS
Walt Whitman

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
But call any thing back again when I desire it.