(for Theodore Roethke)
We die of love, or anything at all.
I drew a million breaths, but could not sing.
My bones are of the earth, and heed its call;
I’ll dream a sun, and feed myself on ink.
Be still, be still: a color’s in my eyes.
What’s sleeping? Will I wake? Have I a soul?
This water’s cold. A stone does what it likes.
My breath is gone. The sea’s song fills me whole.
“Make it new!” he cried, and then to show it’s
That important, promptly quoted
A dozen lines from a dozen noted
Long-dead poets.
I prayed for sign of spring
A leaden sky was all
And my desire was cold
I saw him yesterday
He stood as close to me
As if I were his soul
When yesterday was chill
Tomorrow has no sting
A leaden sky was all
I prayed for sign of spring
Rilke believed in making
continual poetry but
I think he never spent
much time here.
O do not fear
The teeth I bare
In such a merry grin;
I eat men’s lies
And that is why
My teeth are stained with sin.
“Here he drank pastis with the mayors of the Basses-Alpes, and even found time to lecture on Edgar Allan Poe, although his new false teeth made it difficult for him to speak French.”
How pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
With his Nobel Prize and ironical eyes
How pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
He exhibits a mystical, mischievous dread
And he smokes French tobacco and lies in his bed
As he waits for the world to fall in on his head
(Taking comfort in knowing his poetry’s read);
And everyone says what has always been said
That it’s lovely to know Mr. Eliot!
If he drinks rather much and his teeth are quite new
If he finds it, you know, rather painful to chew
If he speaks somewhat slower than he used to do
It is only because he’s deliberate!
And if he seems chilly, it’s maybe because he’s been celibate —
But they say for all that, it’s still terribly, terribly,
awfully, horribly, pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
To say
That you could never disappoint me
Is just to say you haven’t yet
And then extrapolate.
Of course you could.
Oh, when I think of all the ways you could
Undo me! It almost makes me weep
From the sheer foolish love of what you are so far,
My true love, my millstone.
Bag of Anything 