(3) SHE

 

(a) I think the dead are tender — Shall we kiss? — My lady laughs, delighting in what is. If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue. She makes space lovely with a lovely song. She lifts a low soft language, and I hear Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.

(b) We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth. The garden is a river flowing south. She cries out loud the soul’s own secret joy; She dances, and the ground bears her away. She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain. A lively thing can come to life again.

(c) I feel her presence in the common day, I that slow dark that widens every eye. She moves as water moves, and comes to me, Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.

(4) THE OTHER

(a) What is she, while I live? — Who plagues me with her shape, Lifting a nether lip Lightly: so buds unleave; But if I move too close, Who barks me on the nose?

(b) If she wants what I became? Is this my final face? I find her every place; She happens, time on time — My nose feels for my toe; Nature’s too much to know.

(c) Who can surprise a thing Or come to love alone? A lazy natural man, I loll, I loll, all tongue. She moves, and I adore: Motion can do no more.

(d) A child stares past a fire A swan she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (A measure time by how a body sways).

(2) THE VOICE

(a) One feather is a bird, I claim; one tree, a wood; A her low voice, I heard More than a mortal should; And so I stood apart, Hidden in my own heart.

(b) And yet I roamed out where Those notes went, like the bird, Whose thin song hung in air, Diminished yet still heard: I lived with open sound, Aloft, and on the ground.

(c) That ghost was my own choice, The shy cerulean bird; It sang with her true voice, And it was I who heard A slight voice reply; I heard; and only I.

(d) Desire exults the ear: Bird, girl, and ghostly tree, The earth, the solid air — Their slow song sang in me; The long noon pulsed away, Like any summer day.

(6) THE SLOTH

(a) In moving-slow he has no peer. You ask him something in his ear, He thinks about it for a year;

(b) And, then, before he says a word There, upside down (unlike a bird), He will assume that you have heard —

(c) A most ex-as-per-at-ing lug. But should you call his manner smug, He’ll sigh and give his branch a hug;

(d) Then off again to sleep he goes, Still swaying gently by his toes, And you just know he knows he knows.

(7) THE LADY AND THE BEAR

(a) A lady came to a bear by a stream. “O why are you fishing that way? Tell me, dear bear there by the stream, Why are you fishing that way?”

(b) “I am what is known as a Biddly Bear, — That’s why I’m fishing this way. We Biddly’s are pee-culiar bears. And so, — I’m fishing this way.”

(c) “And besides, it seems there’s a law: A most, most exatias law Says a bear Doesn’t dare Doesn’t dare Doesn’t DARE Use a hook or a line, Or an old piece of twine, Not even the end of his claw, claw, claw, Yes, a bear has to fish his paw, paw, paw — A bear has to fish with his paw!”

(d) “O it’s wonderful how with a flick of your wrist, You can fish out a fish, out a fish, out a fish, If I were a fish I just couldn’t resist You, when you are fishing that way, that way, When you are fishing that way.”

(e) And at that the lady slipped from the bank And fell in the stream still clutching a plank, But the bear just sat there until she sank; As he went on fishing his way, his way, As he went on fishing his way.

II. Love Poems

(1) I KNEW A WOMAN

(a) I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one; The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up as Greek (I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

(b) How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me turn, and counter-turn, and stand; She taught me touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

(c) Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I’m martyr to a motion not my own; What’s freedom for? To know eternity.

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