Some Trees: Poems Read Free

is he here too?
    The window giving on shade,
    Is that here too?
    And all the little helps,
    My initials in the sky,
    The hay of an arctic summer night?
    The bear
    Drops dead in sight of the window.
    Lovely tribes have just moved to the north.
    In the flickering evening the martins grow denser.
    Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation.

The Hero
    Whose face is this
    stiff against the blue trees,
    Lifted to the future
    Because there is no end?
    But that has faded
    Like flowers, like the first days
    Of good conduct. Visit
    The strong man. Pinch him—
    There is no end to his
    Dislike, the accurate one.

Poem
    While we were walking under the top
    The road so strangely lit by lamps
    And I wanting only peace
    From the tradesmen who tried cutting my hair
    Under their lips a white word is waiting
    Hanging from a cliff like the sky
    It is because of the sky
    We ever reached the top
    On that day of waiting
    For the hand and the lamps
    I moisten my crystal hair
    Never so calmly as when at peace
    With the broken sky of peace
    Peace means it to the sky
    Let down your hair
    Through peaceful air the top
    Of ruins because what are lamps
    When night is waiting
    A room of people waiting
    To die in peace
    Then strike the procession of lamps
    They brought more than sky
    Lungs back to the top
    Means to doom your hair
    Those bright pads of hair
    Before the sea held back waiting
    And you cannot speak to the top
    It moves toward peace
    And know the day of sky
    Only by falling lamps
    Beyond the desert lamps
    Mount enslaved crystal mountains of hair
    Into the day of sky
    Silence is waiting
    For anything peace
    And you find the top
    The top is lamps
    Peace to the fragrant hair
    Waiting for a tropical sky

Album Leaf
    The other marigolds and the cloths
    Are crimes invented for history.
    What can we achieve, aspiring?
    And what, aspiring, can we achieve?
    What can the rain that fell
    All day on the grounds
    And on the bingo tables?
    Even though it is clearing,
    The statue turned to a sweeter light,
    The nearest patrons are black.
    Then there is a storm of receipts: night,
    Sand the bowl did not let fall.
    The other marigolds are scattered like dust.
    Sweet peas in dark gardens
    Squirt false melancholy over history.
    If a bug fell from so high, would it land?

The Picture of Little J. A.
in a Prospect of Flowers
    He was spoilt from childhood by the future,
    which he mastered rather early and
    apparently without great difficulty.
    B ORIS P ASTERNAK
I
    Darkness falls like a wet sponge
    And Dick gives Genevieve a swift punch
    In the pajamas. “Aroint thee, witch.”
    Her tongue from previous ecstasy
    Releases thoughts like little hats.
    “He clap’d me first during the eclipse.
    Afterwards I noted his manner
    Much altered. But he sending
    At that time certain handsome jewels
    I durst not seem to take offence.”
    In a far recess of summer
    Monks are playing soccer.
II
    So far is goodness a mere memory
    Or naming of recent scenes of badness
    That even these lives, children,
    You may pass through to be blessed,
    So fair does each invent his virtue.
    And coming from a white world, music
    Will sparkle at the lips of many who are
    Beloved. Then these, as dirty handmaidens
    To some transparent witch, will dream
    Of a white hero’s subtle wooing,
    And time shall force a gift on each.
    That beggar to whom you gave no cent
    Striped the night with his strange descant.
III
    Yet I cannot escape the picture
    Of my small self in that bank of flowers:
    My head among the blazing phlox
    Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus.
    I had a hard stare, accepting
    Everything, taking nothing,
    As though the rolled-up future might stink
    As loud as stood the sick moment
    The shutter clicked. Though I was wrong,
    Still, as the loveliest feelings
    Must soon find words, and these, yes,
    Displace them, so I am not wrong
    In calling this comic version of myself
    The true one. For as change is horror,
    Virtue is really stubbornness
    And only in the light of lost words
    Can we