Gate Poem Quotes

She died--this was the way she died; And when her breath was done, Took up her simple wardrobe And started for the sun. Her little figure at the gate The angels must have spied, Since I could never find her Upon the mortal side.

Within its gates I heard the sound Of winds in cypress caverns caught Of huddling tress that moaned, and sought To whisper what their roots had found. (“A Dream of Fear”)

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.

I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.

The Soul selects her own Society— Then—shuts the Door— To her divine Majority— Present no more— Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing— At her low Gate— Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat— I've known her—from an ample nation— Choose One— Then—close the Valves of her attention— Like Stone—

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

Oh you, straying heart, just come! Oh you, aching liver, just come! If the path to the gate is closed, Take the way by the wall, but come!

I open my eyes. I want to know: what is in the abyss of a kiss? Are stars born in these black caves that house bated breaths and unspoken words? Do our souls crawl on these tender cheeks to greet one another by ivory gates? What happens when we kiss? Where do you go? Don’t tell me. For I have lost my desire to know. Kiss me so that I forget myself. I close my eyes and fall in the abyss.

Greed and desire Not peace, but fire Coveting creation Created damnation Pulled alongside A gate thrown too wide Now our home calls And darkness fall "I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on."A for effort, ladies, but F for clarity. You do realise that your wierd poem things never explain anything",

Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows The West Wind goes walking, and about the walls it goes. What news from the West, oh wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight? Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight? ‘I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey; I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more. The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.’ Oh, Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar. But you came not from the empty lands where no men are. From the mouth of the sea the South Wind flies, From the sand hills and the stones; The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans What news from the South, oh sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve? Where now is Boromir the Fair? He tarries and I grieve. ‘Ask me not where he doth dwell--so many bones there lie On the white shores and on the black shores under the stormy sky; So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing sea. Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!’ Oh Boromir! Beyond the gate the Seaward road runs South, But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey seas mouth. From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, And past the roaring falls And loud and cold about the Tower its loud horn calls. What news from the North, oh mighty wind, do you bring to me today? What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away. ‘Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought. His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest; And Rauros, Golden Rauros Falls, bore him upon its breast.’ Oh Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze To Rauros, Golden Rauros Falls until the end of days.

Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom and leave a glow equal in its pride to the gate of the sadist who stuck the pin and walked away

Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

To His Coy Mistress Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

As I walked out one harvest night About the stroke of One, The Moon attained to her full height Stood beaming like the Sun. She exorcised the ghostly wheat To mute assent in Love's defeat Whose tryst had now begun. The fields lay sick beneath my tread, A tedious owlet cried; The nightingale above my head With this or that replied, Like man and wife who nightly keep Inconsequent debate in sleep As they dream side by side. Your phantom wore the moon's cold mask, My phantom wore the same, Forgetful of the feverish task In hope of which they came, Each image held the other's eyes And watched a grey distraction rise To cloud the eager flame. To cloud the eager flame of love, To fog the shining gate: They held the tyrannous queen above Sole mover of their fate, They glared as marble statues glare Across the tessellated stair Or down the Halls of State. And now cold earth was Arctic sea, Each breath came dagger keen, Two bergs of glinting ice were we, The broad moon sailed between; There swam the mermaids, tailed and finned, And Love went by upon the wind As though it had not been. - Full Moon

To Take Back a Life First, you must learn desire. Hold its fruit in your hands. Unmarry it from the hunger to be held, to be wanted, to be called from the streets like the family dog. You are not a 'good girl.' You are not somebody's otherness. This is not a dress rehearsal before a better kind of life. Pick up your heavy burdens and leave them at the gate. I will hold the door for you.

People are jostling at the gates of heaven or Department stores Words are bumping into each other ("Poem")

The great bronze gate began to crack, The sea broke in at every crack, Pellmell, blueblack. --from "The Bull of Bendylaw", written 1959

I saw thee once - only once - years ago: I must not say how many - but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in the parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight - Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**! How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked - And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All - all expired save thee - save less than thou: Save only divine light in thine eyes - Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them - they were the world to me. I saw but them - saw only them for hours - Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep - How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go - they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me - they lead me through the years. They are my ministers - yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle - My duty, to be saved by their bright fire, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,) And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still - two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag skin / studded with black diamonds. Up it coiled to speak to me a eye level. / Imagine! that sleek finger / rising out of the land's palm / and coiling faster than a Hindu rope. / The thrill of a bull snake / startled in the morning / when the mesas lie pooled / in a custard of light / kept me bright than ball lightning all day. Praise leapt first to mind / before flight or danger, / praise that knows no half-truth, and pardons all.

A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons Shudders hell thro' all its regions. A dog starv'd at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing. The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight Does the rising sun affright. Every wolf's and lion's howl Raises from hell a human soul.

CONSORTING WITH ANGELS I was tired of being a woman, tired of the spoons and the pots, tired of my mouth and my breasts, tired of the cosmetics and the silks. There were still men who sat at my table, circled around the bowl I offered up. The bowl was filled with purple grapes and the flies hovered in for the scent and even my father came with his white bone. But I was tired of the gender of things. Last night I had a dream and I said to it . . . "You are the answer. You will outlive my husband and my father." In that dream there was a city made of chains where Joan was put to death in man's clothes and the nature of the angels went unexplained, no two made in the same species, one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand, one chewing a star and recording its orbit, each one like a poem obeying itself, performing God's functions, a people apart. "You are the answer," I said, and entered, lying down on the gates of the city. Then the chains were fastened around me and I lost my common gender and my final aspect. Adam was on the left of me and Eve was on the right of me, both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason. We wove our arms together and rode under the sun. I was not a woman anymore, not one thing or the other. 0 daughters of Jerusalem, the king has brought me into his chamber. I am black and I am beautiful. I've been opened and undressed. I have no arms or legs. I'm all one skin like a fish. I'm no more a woman than Christ was a man.

The Murder Burger is served right here. You need not wait at the gate of Heaven for unleavened death. You can be a goner on this very corner. Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh. If you wish to eat it you must feed it. Yall come back soon." -- You bet.

A King Inside Who Listens There are many people with their eyes open whose hearts are shut. What do they see? Matter. But someone whose love is alert, even if the eyes go to sleep, he or she will be waking up thousands of others. If you are not one of those light-filled lovers, restrain your desire-body's intensity. Put limits on how much you eat and how long you lie down. But if you are awake here in the chest, sleep long and soundly. Your spirit will be out roaming and working, even on the seventh level. Muhammad says, I close my eyes and rest in sleep, but my love never needs rest. The guard at the gate drowses. The king stays awake. You have a king inside who listens for what delights the soul. That king's wakefulness cannot be described in a poem.

Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you half expect to be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.

Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the aquarium tending a seal, one is dull at the wheel of her Ford, one is at the toll gate collecting, one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona, one is straddling a cello in Russia, one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt, one is painting her bedroom walls moon color, one is dying but remembering a breakfast, one is stretching on her mat in Thailand, one is wiping the ass of her child, one is staring out the window of a train in the middle of Wyoming and one is anywhere and some are everywhere and all seem to be singing, although some can not sing a note.

Dance,' they told me, and I stood still, and while I stood quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced. 'Pray,' they said, and I laughed, covering myself in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.

I CANNOT tell you now; When the wind's drive and whirl Blow me along no longer, And the wind's a whisper at last-- Maybe I'll tell you then-- some other time. When the rose's flash to the sunset Reels to the rack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"-- Maybe I'll tell you then-- some other time. I never knew any more beautiful than you: I have hunted you under my thoughts, I have broken down under the wind And into the roses looking for you. I shall never find any greater than you.

Within my heart a garden grows, wild with violets and fragrant rose. Bright daffodils line the narrow path, my footsteps silent as I pass. Sweet tulips nod their heads in rest; I kneel in prayer to seek God's best. For round my garden a fence stands firm to guard my heart so I can learn who should enter, and who should wait on the other side of my locked gate. I clasp the key around my neck and wonder if the time is yet. If I unlocked the gate today, would you come in? Or run away?

Why must the gate be narrow? Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. To come in among these trees you must leave behind the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes. You must come without weapon or tool, alone, expecting nothing, remembering nothing, into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.

Age in itself gives substance — what has lasted becomes a thing worth keeping. An older poem's increasing strangeness of language is part of its beauty, in the same way that the cracks and darkening of an old painting become part of its luminosity in the viewer’s mind.

autumn The cheerful sundial; it falls in the shadow of thy leaves. there where your branches brace themselves against the gate of heaven

And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes” says the man with a cart of empty bottles at the corner of church and lincoln while I stare into my phone and I say I know oh I know while trying to find the specific filter that will make the sun’s near-flawless descent look the way I might describe it in a poem and the man says the moment is already right in front of you and I say I know but everyone I love is not here and I mean here like on this street corner with me while I turn the sky a darker shade of red on my phone and I mean here like everyone I love who I can still touch and not pass my fingers through like the wind in a dream but I look up at the man and he is a kaleidoscope of shadows I mean his shadows have shadows and they are small and trailing behind him and I know then that everyone he loves is also not here and the man doesn’t ask but I still say hey man I’ve got nothing I’ve got nothing even though I have plenty to go home to and the sun is still hot even in its endless flirt with submission and the man’s palm has a small river inside I mean he has taken my hand now and here we are tethered and unmoving and the man says what color are you making the sky and I say what I might say in a poem I say all surrender ends in blood and he says what color are you making the sky and I say something bright enough to make people wish they were here and he squints towards the dancing shrapnel of dying light along a rooftop and he says I love things only as they are and I’m sure I did once too but I can’t prove it to anyone these days and he says the end isn’t always about what dies and I know I know or I knew once and now I write about beautiful things like I will never touch a beautiful thing again and the man looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault over heaven’s gates and he says the face of everyone you miss is up there and I know I know I can’t see them but I know and he turns my face to the horizon and he says we don’t have much time left and I get that he means the time before the sun is finally through with its daily work or I think I get that but I still can’t stop trembling and I close my eyes and I am sobbing on the corner of church and lincoln and when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know I am seeing this the girl who kissed me as a boy in the dairy aisle of meijer while our parents shopped and the older boy on the basketball team who taught me how to make a good fist and swing it into the jaw of a bully and the friends who crawled to my porch in the summer of any year I have been alive they were all there I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always empty and I am gasping into the now-dark air and I pull my shirt up to wipe whatever tears are left and I see the man walking in the other direction and I chase him down and tap his arm and I say did you see it did you see it like I did and he turns and leans into the glow of a streetlamp and he is anchored by a single shadow now and he sneers and he says have we met and he scoffs and pushes his cart off into the night and I can hear the glass rattling even as I watch him become small and vanish and I look down at my phone and the sky on the screen is still blood red.

My neighbourhood has been filled with arts, songs, and dance. The gipsy boys were playing guitars and fiddles Craving emotions at the gates of our blurry days. The gipsy girls taught us how to shift graciously Within music charm, depicting wonderful stories All through ideas and emotions. Their colourful skirts rounding circles in delight Brought love from the gods Straight in our hearts.

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.

Rapture I can feel she has got out of bed. That means it is seven a.m. I have been lying with eyes shut, thinking, or possibly dreaming, of how she might look if, at breakfast, I spoke about the hidden place in her which, to me, is like a soprano’s tremolo, and right then, over toast and bramble jelly, if such things are possible, she came. I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it. I imagine her hair would fall about her face and she would become apparently downcast, as she does at a concert when she is moved. The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyes and there she is, next to the bed, bending to a low drawer, picking over various small smooth black, white, and pink items of underwear. She bends so low her back runs parallel to the earth, but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun. The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking, lift toward the east—what can I say? Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth. Her breasts fall full; the nipples are deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron bars of the gate under the earth where those who could not love press, wanting to be born again. I reach out and take her wrist and she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas. Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again, rummaging in the same low drawer. The clock shows eight. Hmmm. With huge, silent effort of great, mounded muscles the earth has been turning. She takes a piece of silken cloth from the drawer and stands up. Under the falls of hair her face has become quiet and downcast, as if she will be, all day among strangers, looking down inside herself at our rapture.

Joseph von Eichendorff’s poem ‘The Soldier’, whose final lines promised:                                And when it is darkest                                [and] I am tired of the earth . . .                                We will storm heaven’s gate.

Failure Because God put His adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate, Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire. Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy, But Love was as a flame about my feet; Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry -- All the great courts were quiet in the sun, And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown Over the glassy pavement, and begun To creep within the dusty council-halls. An idle wind blew round an empty throne And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.

There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;' And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;' The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers, 'I wait.' Alfred, Lord Tennyson

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe. Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you betray them with your tongue. Do not be jealous of your sister. Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut. Remember your name. Do not lose hope -- what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. When you come back, return the way you came. Favors will be returned, debts be repaid. Do not forget your manners. Do not look back. Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall). Ride the silver fish (you will not drown). Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur). There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand. When you reach the little house, the place your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember. Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once. And then go home. Or make a home. Or rest.

Hate is bait for the devil, love is the gate to god

Under the penitential gates Sustained by staring Seraphim Where the souls of the devout Burn invisible and dim.

let us hasten to the ramparts adjoining the gate of Benjamin, which is in the city of David, and overlooking the camp of the uncircumcised;

I am at the gates of my own destruction. (Or so I'm told.)

In his former life though, as the cool guy, he would never have picked up a book, especially one with poems in it.

Autumn The cheerful sundial it falls in the shadow of thy leaves there where your branches brace themselves against the gate of heaven

The road to death is life, the gate of life is death,

Even the worst night is a poet's dream. Be with me. Delight in delight. Even when falling, Karma's girls can dance.

The light of San Francisco is a sea light an island light And the light of fog blanketing the hills drifting in at night through the Golden Gate to lie on the city at dawn...

seeking how to accept him as he was, under the law that he could not speak—and when I shrieked against the law he shrinked down into its absolute, he rose from its departure gate.

A voice chants, like a dark chorus: The solid state is transitory. Embodiment never lasts past the heat of passion.

I, who have lived as a mind, cogito's captive, must submit: this is a world of body and spirit. In purity, or violence, the water receives you, and you become it.

I'll leave the masque of despair to the heart: an old dance, heartbreak, a suitable task.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison-air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there: Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair.

Watch your words in moments of anger in moments of fear in moments of envy let them filter through your throat and ask three questions at the gate: Do I mean it? Is it true? Will it hurt?

In the poems of . . . Robinson Jeffers, it is a style of consciousness rather than of language we see most in an altered light, some shadowed corner of experience newly illumined and made perceptible by words.

The stony actors poise and pause for breath. I brought my love to bear, and then you died. It was the gangrene ate you to the bone My mother said; you died like any man. How shall I age into that state of mind? I am the ghost of an infamous suicide, My own blue razor rusting in my throat. O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at Your gate, father—your hound-bitch, daughter, friend. It was my love that did us both to death.

When the rose’s flash to the sunset Reels to the wrack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it’s no use to beckon or say, “So long”— Maybe I’ll tell you then— some other time.

We are a short poem in a endless emptiness page, words are lighthouses that ignites and struggle to deliver light to the dark edges of the infinite, and mystic sounds struggle to give voice to the unlived beings, to bore a young soul to the gate of birth.

Poem in October" It was my thirtieth year to heaven Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood And the mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore The morning beckon With water praying and call of seagull and rook And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall Myself to set foot That second In the still sleeping town and set forth. My birthday began with the water- Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name Above the farms and the white horses And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days. High tide and the heron dived when I took the road Over the border And the gates Of the town closed as the town awoke. A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder, Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly Come in the morning where I wandered and listened To the rain wringing Wind blow cold In the wood faraway under me. Pale rain over the dwindling harbour And over the sea wet church the size of a snail With its horns through mist and the castle Brown as owls But all the gardens Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud. There could I marvel My birthday Away but the weather turned around. It turned away from the blithe country And down the other air and the blue altered sky Streamed again a wonder of summer With apples Pears and red currants And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother Through the parables Of sun light And the legends of the green chapels And the twice told fields of infancy That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine. These were the woods the river and sea Where a boy In the listening Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide. And the mystery Sang alive Still in the water and singingbirds. And there could I marvel my birthday Away but the weather turned around. And the true Joy of the long dead child sang burning In the sun. It was my thirtieth Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon Though the town below lay leaved with October blood. O may my heart's truth Still be sung On this high hill in a year's turning.

I speak of love that comes to mind: The moon is faithful, although blind; She moves in thought she cannot speak. Perfect care has made her bleak. I never dreamed the sea so deep, The earth so dark; so long my sleep, I have become another child. I wake to see the world go wild.

The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her divine Majority - Present no more - Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing - At her low Gate - Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat - I've known her - from an ample nation - Choose One - Then - close the Valves of her attention - Like Stone -

Poem: Roses And Rue (To L. L.) Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love's song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! I remember we used to meet By an ivied seat, And you warbled each pretty word With the air of a bird; And your voice had a quaver in it, Just like a linnet, And shook, as the blackbird's throat With its last big note; And your eyes, they were green and grey Like an April day, But lit into amethyst When I stooped and kissed; And your mouth, it would never smile For a long, long while, Then it rippled all over with laughter Five minutes after. You were always afraid of a shower, Just like a flower: I remember you started and ran When the rain began. I remember I never could catch you, For no one could match you, You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, Little wings to your feet. I remember your hair - did I tie it? For it always ran riot - Like a tangled sunbeam of gold: These things are old. I remember so well the room, And the lilac bloom That beat at the dripping pane In the warm June rain; And the colour of your gown, It was amber-brown, And two yellow satin bows From your shoulders rose. And the handkerchief of French lace Which you held to your face - Had a small tear left a stain? Or was it the rain? On your hand as it waved adieu There were veins of blue; In your voice as it said good-bye Was a petulant cry, 'You have only wasted your life.' (Ah, that was the knife!) When I rushed through the garden gate It was all too late. Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead! Well, if my heart must break, Dear love, for your sake, It will break in music, I know, Poets' hearts break so. But strange that I was not told That the brain can hold In a tiny ivory cell God's heaven and hell.

The Truth the Dead Know For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, refusing the stiff procession to the grave, letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I cultivate myself where the sun gutters from the sky, where the sea swings in like an iron gate and we touch. In another country people die. My darling, the wind falls in like stones from the whitehearted water and when we touch we enter touch entirely. No one's alone. Men kill for this, or for as much. And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone. Anne Sexton was a model who became a confessional poet, writing about intimate aspects of her life, after her doctor suggested that she take up poetry as a form of therapy. She studied under Robert Lowell at Boston University, where Sylvia Plath was one of her classmates. Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1967, but later committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning. Topics she covered in her poems included adultery, masturbation, menstruation, abortion, despair and suicide.

The population of his feelings Could not be governed By the authorities He had reasons why Reason disobeyed him And voted him out of office Anxiety His constant companion Made it difficult to rest Unruly party of one Forget about truces or compromises The barricades will be stormed Every day was an emergency Every day called for another emergency Meeting of the cabinet In his country There were scenes Of spectacular carnage Hurricanes welcomed him He adored typhoons and tornadoes Furies unleashed Houses lifted up And carried to the sea Uncontained uncontainable Unbolt the doors Fling open the gates Here he comes Chaotic wind of the gods He was trouble But he was our trouble

a winged pipe flies around the streaks of lightning in a vast coil with a song it tries to lure them somewhere is it back to the clouds or to another lovier heaven or to earth amongst men it become entangled in the tongues of flame both song and wings are on fire and its shadow on the gates of heaven doesnt it know some other song with this it will only enrage the lightning streaks and wont lure them anyway

In the visitor's book at Crome Ivor had left, according to his invariable custom in these cases, a poem. He had improvised it magisterially in the ten minutes preceding his departure. Denis and Mr. Scogan strolled back together from the gates of the courtyard, whence they had bidden their last farewells; on the writing-table in the hall they found the visitor's book, open, and Ivor's composition scarcely dry. Mr. Scogan read it aloud:

A Palestinian village whose feudal owner sold it for a kiss through a pane of glass..." Nothing remained of Sireen after the auction apart from you, little prayer rug, because a mother slyly stole you and wrapped up her son who'd been sentenced to cold and weaning - and later to sorrow and longing. It's said there was a village, a very small village, on the border between sun's gate and earth. It's said that the village was twice sold - once for a measure of oil and once for a kiss through a pane of glass. The buyers and sellers rejoiced at its sale, the year the submarine was sunk, in our twentieth century. And in Sireen - the buyers went over the contract - were white-washed houses, lovers, and trees, folk poets, peasants, and children. (But there was no school - and neither tanks nor prisons.) The threshing floors, the colour of golden wine, and the graveyard were a vault meant for life and death, and the vault was sold! People say that there was a village, but Sireen became an earthquake, imprisoned by an amulet as it turned into a banquet - in which the virgins' infants were cooked in their mothers' milk so soldiers and ministers might eat along with civilisation! "And the axe is laid at the root of the tree..." And once again at the root of the tree, as one dear brother denies another and existence. Officer of the orbits... attend, O knight of death, but don't give in - death is behind us and also before us. Knight of death, attend, there is no time to retreat - darkness crowds us and now has turned into a rancid butter, and the forest too is full, the serpents of blood have slithered away and the beaker of our ablution has been sold to a tourist from California! There is no time now for ablution. People say there was a village, but Sireen became an earthquake, imprisoned by an amulet as it turned into a banquet - in which the virgins' infants were cooked in their mothers' milk so soldiers and ministers might eat, along with civilisation!

For a while, every smart and shy eccentric from Bobby Fischer to Bill Gates was hastily fitted with this label, and many were more or less believably retrofitted, including Isaac Newton, Edgar Allan Poe, Michelangelo, and Virginia Woolf. Newton had great trouble forming friendships and probably remained celibate. In Poe’s poem Alone he wrote that “all I lov’d—I lov’d alone.” Michelangelo is said to have written, “I have no friends of any sort and I don’t want any.” Woolf killed herself. Asperger

The Turtle breaks from the blue-black skin of the water, dragging her shell with its mossy scutes across the shallows and through the rushes and over the mudflats, to the uprise, to the yellow sand, to dig with her ungainly feet a nest, and hunker there spewing her white eggs down into the darkness, and you think of her patience, her fortitude, her determination to complete what she was born to do— and then you realize a greater thing— she doesn't consider what she was born to do. She's only filled with an old blind wish. It isn't even hers but came to her in the rain or the soft wind, which is a gate through which her life keeps walking. She can't see herself apart from the rest of the world or the world from what she must do every spring. Crawling up the high hill, luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin. she doesn't dream she knows she is a part of the pond she lives in, the tall tress are her children, the birds that swim above her are tied to her by an unbreakable string.

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia, Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and Aeneas', Odysseus' wanderings, Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus, Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa's gate and on Mount Moriah, The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles, and Italian collections, For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you. - Song of the Exposition

when i left them, i painted myself burgundy and grey i stopped saying the words “please” and “i’m sorry” i walked into grocery stores and bought too many clementines, ordered too much Chinese, spent my last four dollars on over the counter sleeping pills that made my stomach bleed but my soul forget every time i wanted to tell you “i’m sorry”, i wrote you a poem instead, i said things like “i hope your mother calls you beautiful” to strangers and when boys with dry hands and broken eyes asked me on dates i didn’t hesitate no, didn’t even stop them when their hands grazed my breasts and when they moaned my name against my thighs i cried i opened the mail and didn’t tell anyone for a week that i got accepted into law school, i stopped watering the plants and filled the bathtub with roses and milk, when i got invited to parties, i wore blue jeans with white shirts, sat alone in some kitchen drinking hard liquor until some boys mouth made me feel like home i stopped answering the phone for a month, i didn’t like how my name tasted in his mouth but he was older and didn’t say things like “it doesn’t matter” and i think i went insane, my heart boiled blisters, i couldn’t understand why my bones felt like cages, i walked around art museums until closing, watched them lock up the gates and then open them up again the very same morning, i thought about clocks and how time was a deception of my fingertips, i had stars growing inside of me into constellations, and only when some man on the 9 AM bus asked me for the time did i realize that you cannot run from light igniting your lungs, you cannot run from yourself.

To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world’s goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition.

BRIDE SONG Too late for love, too late for joy, Too late, too late! You loitered on the road too long, You trifled at the gate: The enchanted dove upon her branch Died without a mate; The enchanted princess in her tower Slept, died, behind the grate; Her heart was starving all this while You made it wait. Ten years ago, five years ago, One year ago, Even then you had arrived in time, Though somewhat slow; Then you had known her living face Which now you cannot know: The frozen fountain would have leaped, The buds gone on to blow, The warm south wind would have awaked To melt the snow. Is she fair now as she lies? Once she was fair; Meet queen for any kingly king, With gold-dust on her hair, Now these are poppies in her locks, White poppies she must wear; Must wear a veil to shroud her face And the want graven there: Or is the hunger fed at length, Cast off the care? We never saw her with a smile Or with a frown; Her bed seemed never soft to her, Though tossed of down; She little heeded what she wore, Kirtle, or wreath, or gown; We think her white brows often ached Beneath her crown, Till silvery hairs showed in her locks That used to be so brown. We never heard her speak in haste; Her tones were sweet, And modulated just so much As it was meet: Her heart sat silent through the noise And concourse of the street. There was no hurry in her hands, No hurry in her feet; There was no bliss drew nigh to her, That she might run to greet. You should have wept her yesterday, Wasting upon her bed: But wherefore should you weep today That she is dead? Lo we who love weep not today, But crown her royal head. Let be these poppies that we strew, Your roses are too red: Let be these poppies, not for you Cut down and spread.

For a while, every smart and shy eccentric from Bobby Fischer to Bill Gate was hastily fitted with this label, and many were more or less believably retrofitted, including Isaac Newton, Edgar Allen Pie, Michelangelo, and Virginia Woolf. Newton had great trouble forming friendships and probably remained celibate. In Poe's poem Alone, he wrote that "All I lov'd - I lov'd alone." Michelangelo is said to have written "I have no friends of any sort and I don't want any." Woolf killed herself. Asperger's disorder, once considered a sub-type of autism, was named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, a pioneer, in the 1940s, in identifying and describing autism. Unlike other early researchers, according to the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, Asperger felt that autistic people could have beneficial talents, especially what he called a "particular originality of thought" that was often beautiful and pure, unfiltered by culture of discretion, unafraid to grasp at extremely unconventional ideas. Nearly every autistic person that Sacks observed appeard happiest when alone. The word "autism" is derived from autos, the Greek word for "self." "The cure for Asperger's syndrome is very simple," wrote Tony Attwood, a psychologist and Asperger's expert who lives in Australia. The solution is to leave the person alone. "You cannot have a social deficit when you are alone. You cannot have a communication problem when you are alone. All the diagnostic criteria dissolve in solitude." Officially, Asperger's disorder no longer exists as a diagnostic category. The diagnosis, having been inconsistently applied, was replaced, with clarified criteria, in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Asperger's is now grouped under the umbrella term Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD.

Romance Sonambulo" Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship out on the sea and the horse on the mountain. With the shade around her waist she dreams on her balcony, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold silver. Green, how I want you green. Under the gypsy moon, all things are watching her and she cannot see them. Green, how I want you green. Big hoarfrost stars come with the fish of shadow that opens the road of dawn. The fig tree rubs its wind with the sandpaper of its branches, and the forest, cunning cat, bristles its brittle fibers. But who will come? And from where? She is still on her balcony green flesh, her hair green, dreaming in the bitter sea. —My friend, I want to trade my horse for her house, my saddle for her mirror, my knife for her blanket. My friend, I come bleeding from the gates of Cabra. —If it were possible, my boy, I’d help you fix that trade. But now I am not I, nor is my house now my house. —My friend, I want to die decently in my bed. Of iron, if that’s possible, with blankets of fine chambray. Don’t you see the wound I have from my chest up to my throat? —Your white shirt has grown thirsty dark brown roses. Your blood oozes and flees a round the corners of your sash. But now I am not I, nor is my house now my house. —Let me climb up, at least, up to the high balconies; Let me climb up! Let me, up to the green balconies. Railings of the moon through which the water rumbles. Now the two friends climb up, up to the high balconies. Leaving a trail of blood. Leaving a trail of teardrops. Tin bell vines were trembling on the roofs. A thousand crystal tambourines struck at the dawn light. Green, how I want you green, green wind, green branches. The two friends climbed up. The stiff wind left in their mouths, a strange taste of bile, of mint, and of basil My friend, where is she—tell me— where is your bitter girl? How many times she waited for you! How many times would she wait for you, cool face, black hair, on this green balcony! Over the mouth of the cistern the gypsy girl was swinging, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold silver. An icicle of moon holds her up above the water. The night became intimate like a little plaza. Drunken “Guardias Civiles” were pounding on the door. Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship out on the sea. And the horse on the mountain.

Antique Foundation Here I built the ruin in My voice on either side of me In the temple the ocean could Not be a crowd I mined The shore with fog the sun dries These bricks I built the vision in The cinder block that is the city Wall this grave Tone I speak with a picture Of myself in my wallet • Don’t be fooled by grass and these words Grass whispers Because they are real they are Ruinous Here, the gossip is in the dust Not the sea cloud enters the open Child’s window dimming the silver Flute’s sheen Where is he Who hears inside the brick those notes? There is a rumor in the city we’ll exist If he plays his song no one knows • Follow that shadow don’t tell me it’s mine Here there is no being alone Here are my hands which tore the leaves so Quietly in the temple the god Emerging from marble points at the chisel At the base of his stone Did I tell you Where I’m going? To the old man Who sings the margin Where on wave-tip swords turn edge over edge Wound us and the shore with foam • My face on either side of my face I tore My picture in half to show the gate You must climb inside your breath to leave As fog the wind will bear you— If you’re lovely—away In the spare clouds The children’s chorus Do you hear?— Where were you, and where are you going? Here I built the ruin in the stone-crushed Sage leaves my hands scented as long ago When I liked to press the desert against my head to think

Bygones" The weatherman says heavy rain, instead it dribbles like an old man unable to urinate. In the small orbit of the car, daylight clings to my collar, simmers in sweat, but I shall drive despite this meridian fry. I travel in the tremble of tin and tires. Up ahead, Barron Lake, your lost butterfly locket, Woodport, the warm rocks before the dive. The sun legs gently over the turbine hills, and always with a little luck I find your house, where torn cotton knits dry on an iron gate, and a vintage bicycle sinks in the garden. Over rum we discuss the length of our severance, agree to let bygones vanish amid the fray. Then kisses wheedle the lower back down till daybreak quiet as cat paws... treads the bedroom floor.

I was a cottage maiden Hardened by sun and air, Contented with my cottage mates, Not mindful I was fair. Why did a great lord find me out, And praise my flaxen hair? Why did a great lord find me out To fill my heart with care? He lured me to his palace home— Woe's me for joy thereof— 10 To lead a shameless shameful life, His plaything and his love. He wore me like a silken knot, He changed me like a glove; So now I moan, an unclean thing, Who might have been a dove. O Lady Kate, my cousin Kate, You grew more fair than I: He saw you at your father's gate, Chose you, and cast me by. 20 He watched your steps along the lane, Your work among the rye; He lifted you from mean estate To sit with him on high. Because you were so good and pure He bound you with his ring: The neighbours call you good and pure, Call me an outcast thing. Even so I sit and howl in dust, You sit in gold and sing: 30 Now which of us has tenderer heart? You had the stronger wing. O cousin Kate, my love was true, Your love was writ in sand: If he had fooled not me but you, If you stood where I stand, He'd not have won me with his love Nor bought me with his land; I would have spit into his face And not have taken his hand. 40 Yet I've a gift you have not got, And seem not like to get: For all your clothes and wedding-ring I've little doubt you fret. My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride, Cling closer, closer yet: Your father would give lands for one To wear his coronet.

The Dying Man" in memoriam W.B. Yeats 1. His words I heard a dying man Say to his gathered kin, “My soul’s hung out to dry, Like a fresh salted skin; I doubt I’ll use it again. “What’s done is yet to come; The flesh deserts the bone, But a kiss widens the rose I know, as the dying know Eternity is Now. “A man sees, as he dies, Death’s possibilities; My heart sways with the world. I am that final thing, A man learning to sing. 2. What Now? Caught in the dying light, I thought myself reborn. My hand turn into hooves. I wear the leaden weight Of what I did not do. Places great with their dead, The mire, the sodden wood, Remind me to stay alive. I am the clumsy man The instant ages on. I burned the flesh away, In love, in lively May. I turn my look upon Another shape than hers Now, as the casement blurs. In the worst night of my will, I dared to question all, And would the same again. What’s beating at the gate? Who’s come can wait. 3. The Wall A ghost comes out of the unconscious mind To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn! The figure at my back is not my friend; The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn. I found my father when I did my work, Only to lose myself in this small dark. Though it reject dry borders of the seen, What sensual eye can keep and image pure, Leaning across a sill to greet the dawn? A slow growth is a hard thing to endure. When figures our of obscure shadow rave, All sensual love’s but dancing on a grave. The wall has entered: I must love the wall, A madman staring at perpetual night, A spirit raging at the visible. I breathe alone until my dark is bright. Dawn’s where the white is. Who would know the dawn When there’s a dazzling dark behind the sun. 4. The Exulting Once I delighted in a single tree; The loose air sent me running like a child– I love the world; I want more than the world, Or after image of the inner eye. Flesh cries to flesh, and bone cries out to bone; I die into this life, alone yet not alone. Was it a god his suffering renewed?– I saw my father shrinking in his skin; He turned his face: there was another man, Walking the edge, loquacious, unafraid. He quivered like a bird in birdless air, Yet dared to fix his vision anywhere. Fish feed on fish, according to their need: My enemies renew me, and my blood Beats slower in my careless solitude. I bare a wound, and dare myself to bleed. I think a bird, and it begins to fly. By dying daily, I have come to be. All exultation is a dangerous thing. I see you, love, I see you in a dream; I hear a noise of bees, a trellis hum, And that slow humming rises into song. A breath is but a breath: I have the earth; I shall undo all dying with my death. 5. They Sing, They Sing All women loved dance in a dying light– The moon’s my mother: how I love the moon! Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one, Then settles back to shade and the long night. A beast cries out as if its flesh were torn, And that cry takes me back where I was born. Who thought love but a motion in the mind? Am I but nothing, leaning towards a thing? I scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing; Descend O gentlest light, descend, descend. I sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds, They sing, they sing, but still in minor thirds. I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone: What’s seen recededs; Forever’s what we know!– Eternity defined, and strewn with straw, The fury of the slug beneath the stone. The vision moves, and yet remains the same. In heaven’s praise, I dread the thing I am. The edges of the summit still appall When we brood on the dead or the beloved; Nor can imagination do it all In this last place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.

House of Angels" Where San Juan and Chacabuco intersect I saw the blues houses, the houses that wear the color of adventure. They were like banners and deep as the dawn that frees the outlying quarters. Some are daybreak color, and some are dawn color: their cool readiance is a passion before the oblique face of any drab, discouraged corner. I think of the women who will be looking skyward from their burning dooryards. I think of the pale arms that make evening glimmer and of the blackness of braids: I think of the grave delight of being mirrored in their deep eyes, like arbors of night. I will push the gate of iron entering the dooryard and there will be a fair girl, already mine, in the room. And the two of us will hush, trembling like flames, and the present joy will grow quiet in that passed.

Awakening to Dawn Dawn is near Here I meet you Here I greet you In this sacred, infinite space Oh, how I feel your embrace It is to taste the greatness of your mistakes- Your sweet songs of joy Of a love To which I awe; For, with such a love Nothing is a loss Lessons learned, journeys that burn with the flame, which is the only truth The unspoken word. I see you, I feel you Inside my Soul, we meet You walk with me, guide me To the gate of our wisdom our truth Where love has always overcome We burn with the light of infinite skies, nights Songs, poems Love Together, we open the wisdom gate Heart, Soul, Spirit Connect me Unite me To the infinite space Love Of infinite Oneness Here I love you We meet- Embrace, taste Infinite Oneness Open the door, the sacred gate Have faith For, it is never too late to wake up Dawn is near.

I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must weep until the Eternal gates swing open.

Wilderness by Carl Sandburg There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross. There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis. There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot’s hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so. There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness. O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

My father played the melodion Outside at our gate; There were stars in the morning east; And they danced to his music. Across the wild bogs his melodion called To Lennons and Callans. As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry I knew some strange thing had happened. Outside in the cow-house my mother Made the music of milking; The light of her stable-lamp was a star And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle. A water-hen screeched in the bog, Mass-going feet Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes, Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel. My child poet picked out the letters On the grey stone, In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland, The winking glitter of a frosty dawn. Cassiopeia was over Cassidy's hanging hill, I looked and three whin bushes rode across The horizon - the Three Wise Kings. An old man passing said: "Can't he make it talk" - The melodion, I hid in the doorway And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat. I nicked six nicks on the door-post With my penknife's big blade - There was a little one for cutting tobacco. And I was six Christmases of age. My father played the melodion, My mother milked the cows, And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned On the Virgin Mary's blouse

Four Years Since Today I remember the day but to be honest it is everyday That day then, the moment then, when you left us all here More than just a father I call, a gem I treasure, that day I lost We four girls, my mom’s other half, my brothers best bud, our first love, we lost Holding the key to the future called You, I stand still facing the gate of the past Why I keep on asking the same question? Why you? Why out of all those people? Why too soon? Why? It has been years, 4 years exact, it seems like yesterday yes You were taken too soon, words aren’t enough to express It’s not fair, but who I am to blame, who Am I to question? My eyes express longing you cannot fathom From my open mouth my broken heart pours Words that try to capture that image so faint He is the picture I could not ever paint Yet our memories is in the solid bowl being kept Spare me even just 5 or 10 minutes of your presence To build up this longing I feel, I am asking I want to hear your nag; I want to hear your laugh In my dreams please see me there I won’t get afraid nor get frightened Like a waterfalls my tears keeps on flowing Like a bubble your voice keeps on vanishing He, his shadow, he himself starts from fading I don’t want to forget you please stop time from ticking I don’t want to open my eyes don’t wake me from dreaming You are the art of my painting, the muse of my poem My strength, my inspiration why I’m still holding on My king, my superman, name them all, you are my only one I miss the old golden days when you used to carry us one by one Look papa, how I am now, hoping always, you’ll be proud It pains me to know this inevitable truth, yes That I can’t see you for now yes it’s the truth, but My father’s love undeniable not easily obtained Something that few, many people rather don’t have But I’m blessed and proud I have mine claimed.

Neamh. Evie. Neamh. Evie. Lend, Lend, Lend. Neamh. Evie. “What are you doing, my love?” I scowled at Reth for breaking my concentration. “Thinking. Shut up.” The Light Queen was speechifying up on a podium made of liquid light, her radiance bathing all the faeries in a glow that was nearly overpowering. Within a few seconds of being around this much faerie glamour I was having a hard time seeing straight and found myself slack-jawed and dazed. Thus, the name equivalent of pinching myself. I realized at some point she had stopped talking, and now every single set of faerie eyes—a few hundred of them—were trained intently on me. “Oh, uh, hey.” I waved. “What did I miss?” I whispered to Reth. “You’re supposed to tell us how to convince the Dark Court to join us.” “I—What? Seriously? I’m only here to make sure everything happens. I thought the queen would have a plan! I’m a glorified doorman. I open the gate, I close the gate. Nowhere in my job description of Empty One does it say I also manage to convince a mob of anti-Evie faeries to saunter through the gate.” Reth smiled. “And just when she’d finished praising human ingenuity and assuring us that everything will work out according to plan.” “Yes! Plan! Her plan! Gosh, you guys are sucking it up all over the place. Aren’t you supposed to have these things in place for centuries, or were you too busy writing pretty little poems to describe the plans that you never bothered actually making them?” His golden eyes, now with fine lines around them, twinkled with amusement. “We had a plan, my love. I was to fill you up and you were to open a fate for us immediately. But I seem to recall you doing everything in your power to resist and change that plan. So now we’ve had to account for all the other creatures from our world and conform to your requirements. I think you’ll find that we fey, while obviously superior in nearly every way, are not quite as adaptable as temporary creatures. If you want improvisations, you’ll have to provide it yourself.

The Gates of Eden,” as he called it that night, took us furthest out into the realm of the imagination, to a point beyond logic and reason. Like “It’s Alright, Ma,” the song mentions a book title in its first line, but the song is more reminiscent of the poems of William Blake (and, perhaps, of Blake’s disciple Ginsberg) than it is of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, vaunting the truth that lies in surreal imagery. After an almost impenetrable first verse, the song approaches themes that were becoming familiar to Dylan’s listeners. In Genesis, Eden is the paradise where Adam and Eve had direct communication with God. According to “Gates of Eden,” it is where truth resides, without bewitching illusions. And the song is basically a list, verse after verse, of the corrosive illusions that Dylan would sing about constantly from the mid-1960s on: illusions about obedience to authority; about false religions and idols (the “utopian hermit monks” riding on the golden calf); about possessions and desire; about sexual repression and conformity (embodied by “the gray flannel dwarf”); about high-toned intellectualism. None of these count for much or even exist inside the gates of Eden. The kicker comes in the final verse, where the singer talks of his lover telling him of her dreams without any attempt at interpretation—and that at times, the singer thinks that the only truth is that there is no truth outside the gates of Eden. It’s a familiar conundrum: If there is no truth, isn’t saying as much really an illusion, too, unless we are all in Eden? (“All Cretans are liars,” says the Cretan.) What makes that one truth so special? But the point, as the lover knows, is that outside of paradise, interpretation is futile. Don’t try to figure out what the song, or what any work of art, “really” means; the meaning is in the imagery itself; attempting to define it is to succumb to the illusion that truth can be reached through human logic. So Dylan’s song told us, as he took the measure in his lyrics of what had begun as the “New Vision,” two and a half miles up Broadway from Lincoln Center at Columbia, in the mid-1940s. Apart from Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso may have been the only people in Philharmonic Hall who got it. I

It was getting late in the year, the sky had been low and overcast for days, and I was drinking tea in a glassy room with a woman without children, a gate through which no one had entered the world. She was turning the pages of an expensive book on a coffee table, even though we were drinking tea, a book of colorful paintings— a landscape, a portrait, a still life, a field, a face, a pear and a knife, all turning on the table. Men had entered there but no girl or boy had come out, I was thinking oddly as she stopped at a page of clouds aloft in a pale sky, tinged with red and gold. This one is my favorite, she said, even though it was only a detail, a corner of a larger painting which she had never seen. Nor did she want to see the countryside below or the portrayal of some myth in order for the billowing clouds to seem complete. This was enough, this fraction of the whole, just as the leafy scene in the windows was enough now that the light was growing dim, as was she enough, perfectly by herself somewhere in the enormous mural of the world.

He was an American college senior, school-champion wrestler, consistent honor student, president of the Student Foreign Missions Fellowship, amateur poet, and class representative on the Student Council. Jim was warmly admired by fellow students. He was known as “one of the most surprising characters” on campus. Able to recite such poems as “The Face on the Barroom Floor” and Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” he was at the same time recognized as a man of spiritual stature above his classmates. George Macdonald said, “It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in His presence.” Jim spoke of “joking with God.” “Every now and again,” he said, “I ask for something—a little thing, perhaps, and something answers. Maybe it’s only me, but something answers, and makes the request sound so funny that I laugh at myself and feel that He is smiling with me. I’ve noticed it several times lately, we two making fun of my ‘other self’ who does so hate to be laughed at!

When my mother dies, I will lead her like a dog into the space between our walls, which is just like the space between here and always, the king and the kingdom. I will lead her by the hand if she be blind, and I will wag my tail against her knees if she be afraid, and I will leave her at the gate. Life on earth will, in some ways, be easier. I will not have to return her phone calls. I will not have to feel guilty when I want to hear no more, no more about the divorce. I won’t cry though I will want to cry though I will hate myself for not crying. When my mother dies, if I am still alive, I will slouch on my knees as though in prayer, I will write one or two poems, and I will no longer think of her.

The Reaper's Harvest by Stewart Stafford Vast underworld gates open on Samhain night, The grail Sun winters there, in paling sight. Unquiet spirits swarm forth in feral misprision, Trick-or-treat landlords knock in spectral vision. Autumn, perennially-early to Death's season, Winter's welcome overstayed in icy reason. Spring's distant wave thrills in emerging seed, Summer's blush in full alignment decreed. Snowflake to blossom, and greenery to withering; As effigy reminders of cyclical dithering, Seasonal standing stones sink to shifting sands, Saplings of the forest’s new strength, in nature’s hands. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

CHURCH WINDOWS ARE MY MIRRORS Blessed are the scars and the holiness of our hearts. Only saints break it without remorse for sinners, I expect nothing else but playing their part with our gentle soul. Church windows are my mirrors and prayers my gate to heavens end - I find everything by losing myself-nothing was ever lost from the beginning.

I Am Shut Out Of Mine Own Heart I am shut out of mine own heart because my love is far from me, nor in the wonders have I part that fill its hidden empery: the wildwood of adventurous thought and lands of dawn my dream had won, the riches out of Faery brought are buried with our bridal sun. And I am in a narrow place, and all its little streets are cold, because the absence of her face has robb'd the sullen air of gold. My home is in a broader day: at times I catch it glistening thro' the dull gate, a flower'd play and odour of undying spring: the long days that I lived alone, sweet madness of the springs I miss'd, are shed beyond, and thro' them blown clear laughter, and my lips are kiss'd: - and here, from mine own joy apart, I wait the turning of the key: - I am shut out of mine own heart because my love is far from me

Closed eyes can't sacrifice a third time i may never know A dreamer's dream my stars are only made of gold Came into this life holding on Was it a dream Or life lived before Alien genetics Formed on the 7th Too late So i was turned away Too late But i seen those gates It’s just lately i’ve forgot the way What am i saying? somewhere out there is a star Covered in gold laugh, its okay it's just best i wait this time can't sacrifice a third time how will i know feverish devils place their bets the abyss or the flame But at the edge i stop & look to the sky tonight I find the stars are covered in gold so right here i will just stay Here i’ll just remain in a place where time and space does not exist but a gateway to Sarin does covered in gold deep in the chest you appear just like I always knew a distant star

There is a part of you I can't entirely forget - where my memories grow flowers and our past outreaches the gates of my garden; where the words I rather forget become a book of regret.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

My First Kill ‘Twas Burton showed me where it was and told me not to wait, Whilst Walter moved the dust bin out and shut the garden gate; Then master said, “Now, here’s your chance; come on, my flop-eared son” (I must admit, until he spoke, I felt inclined to run); Maria whacked it with her broom, and then sat down and cried, And Cookie screamed and frightened it before she ran inside; The cat said, “After you, old chap; he’s rather big for me, So I shan’t interfere at all,” and scrambled up a tree; Next someone threw a lump of coal and made the beast turn round; Then—I went in and finished it and flung it on the ground. So that is how I caught the rate entirely on my own, And Master’s pleased as pleased can be; he’s gone to fetch a bone.

The Blank Somebody’s left the garden gate ajar; He won’t run out. No need to back the car So carefully because . . . And in the hall You will not trip against that much-chewed ball (I bought a new one, just a week ago, For his next birthday. He will never know). We’ve cleared up everything; there’s not a trace- Lead, collar, basket -- yet his wistful face Peers round each corner; halfway down the stair One turns expectant . . . surely he is there? Then you remember, and the silence dear Answers our question. “No, he is not here.

At evening Father became an aged man; in dark rooms Mother's countenance turned to stone and the curse of the degenerate race weighed upon the youth. At times he remembered his childhood filled with sickness, terrors and darkness, secretive games in the starlit garden, or that he fed the rats in the twilit yard. Out of a blue mirror stepped the slender form of his sister and he fled as if dead into the dark. At night his mouth broke open like a red fruit and the stars grew bright above his speechless sorrow. His dreams filled the ancient house of his forefathers. At evening he loved to walk across the derelict graveyard, or he perused the corpses in a dusky death-chamber, the green spots of decay upon their lovely hands. By the convent gate he begged for a piece of bread; the shadow of a black horse sprang out of the darkness and startled him. When he lay in his cool bed, he was overcome by indescribable tears. But there was nobody who might have laid a hand on his brow. When autumn came he walked, a visionary, in brown meadows. O, the hours of wild ecstasy, the evenings by the green stream, the hunts. O, the soul that softly sang the song of the withered reed; fiery piety. Silent and long he gazed into the starry eyes of the toad, felt with thrilling hands the coolness of ancient stone and invoked the time-honoured legend of the blue spring. O, the silver fishes and the fruit that fell from crippled trees. The chiming chords of his footsteps filled him with pride and contempt for mankind. Along his homeward path he came upon a deserted castle. Ruined gods stood in the garden sorrowfully at eventide. Yet to him it seemed: here I have lived forgotten years. An organ chorale filled him with the thrill of God. But he spent his days in a dark cave, lied and stole and hid himself, a flaming wolf, from his mother's white countenance. O, that hour when he sank low with stony mouth in the starlit garden, the shadow of the murderer fell upon him. With scarlet brow he entered the moor and the wrath of God chastised his metal shoulders; O, the birches in the storm, the dark creatures that shunned his deranged paths. Hatred scorched his heart, rapture, when he did violence to the silent child in the fresh green summer garden, recognized in the radiant his deranged countenance. Woe, that evening by the window, when a horrid skeleton, Death, emerged from scarlet flowers. O, you towers and bells; and the shadows of night fell as stone upon him.