Category Archives: poem

The Instructions

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Gulliver_Crispi_Il Papagallo (Rome)

Under a weight of words
the courtroom air declines;
the oaken pews are worn;
the fixtures bide their time.

Without a breath or cease
the solemn judge holds forth.
No voice responsive sighs.
All brook his ageless worth.

The eagle on the pole
conducts a fierce salute;
the slackened flag below
cannot conceal its truth.

So spoke in ancient times
Solon or Cicero
to men who stood alike
athwart the verbal flow:

Who shifted just the same
or rocking toe to heel
imbibed the toneless dream
the while the day grew still.

The law’s an endless story
that’s bodied forth by men
monotonously hasty
to some eventual end.

 

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Would you could come

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Gary Winfield - Faces in a Crowd III - 13949280859_209a97dd37_k.jpg

Would you could come
     along with me,
How happy I’d be
     —and we together!

Loving ever
     at our leisure
Till the end
     —and we together!

But now wherever I turn
I see your face again
—in crowds,
     and worn by solitary men—
Turn where I will
     I see you everywhere!

Would you had stayed
     with us, with me,
And things were as they’d been

Or would you’d come along
     with me—

And we’d have time at journey’s end
To spend our lives as we were meant:
With all our beautiful things arrayed
And everyone happy, no one sad.

 

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The Earl of Rollercoaster

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Harry_G._Traver_Cyclone_roller_coaster_patent.png

The Earl of Rollercoaster found
It inconvenient to expound
On why it was he loved to race
Continually from place to place
Whilst whirling rapidly around —
Now here, now there, now soaring high,
Now falling freely toward the ground,
And screaming all the while.

That’s why he built that crazy train
That bears his name:
It’s easier to experience
than to explain.

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No matter what

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Surrounded by troubled seas - 6659283805_a76fe0ae4b_o
The tall man stood on the island
Blunt-faced, facing the wind
With his eyes as wide as a child’s eyes
And his clothes flapping about him

And the seabirds cried like ever
Just as if he were nought but a stone
And the wind rushed heedlessly by him
Till the sea rose and mothered him home

His blunt face is long since forgotten
By his people long scattered and dead
But all the same he stood there once
No matter what nobody says

 

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