Lighter Pieces & Poems for Children

 

I. Lighter Pieces & Poems for Children

(From Words for the Wind, 1958)

② REPLY TO AN EDITOR

(a) Sweet Alice S. Morris, I am pleased, of course, You take the Times Supplement, and read its verse, And know that True Love is more than a Life-Fare— And so like my poem called Poem.

(b) Dan Cupid, I tell ya’s a braw laddie-buck, A visit from him is a piece of pure luck, And should he arrive, why just lean yourself back— And recite him my poem called Poem.

(c) O print it, my dear, do publish it, yes, That ladies their true natures never suppress, When they come, dazedly, to the pretty pass —Of acting my poem called Poem.

(d) My darling, my dearest, most-honest alive, Just send me along that sweet seventy-five; I’ll continue to think on the nature of love, —As I dance to my poem called Poem.

③ DINKY

(a) O What’s the weather in a Beard? It’s windy there, and rather weird, And when you think the sky has cleared —Why, there is Dirty Dinky.

(b) Suppose you walk out in a storm, With nothing on to keep you warm, And then step barefoot on a Worm —Of course, it’s Dirty Dinky.

(c) As I was crossing a hot hot plain, I saw a sight that caused me pain, You asked me before, I'll tell you again: —It looked like Dirty Dinky.

(d) You’d better watch the things you do, You’d better watch the things you do, You’re part of him; he’s part of you —You may be Dirty Dinky.

④ THE COW

(a) There once was a Cow with a Double Udder. When I think of it now, I just have to shudder! She was too much for One, you can bet your life; She had to be milked by a man and his wife.

⑤ THE SERPENT

(a) There was a serpent who had to sing. There was. There was. He simply gave up serpenting. Because. Because.

(b) He didn’t like his kind of life; He couldn't find a proper wife; He was a serpent with a soul; He got no pleasure down his hole. And so, of course, he had to sing, And sing he did, like anything! The birds, they were, they were astounded; And various measures propounded To stop the serpent’s awful racket: They bought a drum. He wouldn't whack it. They sent—you always send—to Cuba And got a most commodious tuba; They got a horn, they got a flute, But nothing would suit. He said, "Look, birds, all this is futile; I do not like to bang or tootle." And then he cut loose with a horrible note That practically split the top of his throat. "You see," he said, with a serpent’s leer...

II. Sequence: Sometimes Metaphysical

① IN A DARK TIME

(a) In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood— A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

(b) What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks—is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

(c) A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged man, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is— Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

(d) Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

③ THE WRAITH

(a) Incomprehensible gaiety and dread Attended what we did. Behind, before, Lay all the lonely pastures of the dead; The spirit and the flesh cried out for more. We two together on a darkening day Took arms against our own obscurity.

(b) Did each become the other in that play? She laughed me out, and then she laughed me in; In the deep middle of ourselves we lay; When glory failed, we danced upon a pin. The valley rocked beneath the granite hill; Our souls leaped forth, and the great day stood still.

⑦ THE WAKING

(a) I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

(b) We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

(c) Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.

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