A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign

********************************
I look on the specious electrical light
Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white,
Wickedly red or malignantly green
Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen.
Showing, while millions of souls hurry on,
The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn,
By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl,
Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl,
By maggoty motions in sickening line
Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine,
While there far above the steep cliffs of the street
The stars sing a message elusive and sweet.

Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil
His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil
Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range,
Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE.
Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies,
As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise.
And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night,
Till we join with the planets who choir their delight.
The signs in the street and the signs in the skies
Shall make a new Zodiac, guiding the wise,
And Broadway make one with that marvellous stair
That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer.

Vachel Lindsay

The Bulwark of the State

**********************

Not in hewn stones, nor in well-fashioned beams,
Not in the noblest of the builder's dreams,
But in courageous men of purpose great,
There is the fortress, there the living State.

by: Alcaeus (7th-6th century B.C.)

The Clerks

I did not think that I should find them there
When I came back again; but there they stood,
As in the days they dreamed of when young blood
Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.
Be sure, they met me with an ancient air, —
And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood
About them; but the men were just as good,
And just as human as they ever were.
And you that ache so much to be sublime,
And you that feed yourselves with your descent,
What comes of all your visions and your fears?
Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time,
Tiering the same dull webs of discontent,
Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.

E. A. Robinson

John Derbeyshire Reading A Poem by Algore

There is a video here at NRO. I have not been able to escape hearing some of this strange poetry. As near as I can tell Gore's major literary influences have been Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, early middle Bob Dylan (spanning the end of the acoustic and the beginning of the electric periods) and Wordsworth.

h/t: Pundit and Pundette

See ye, maidens, the youths? Rise up to meet them.

# 62

See ye, maidens, the youths? Rise up to meet them.
For sure the night-star shows his Oetaean fires.
So it is indeed; see you how nimbly they have sprung up?
it is not for nothing that they have sprung up: they will sing something which it is worth while to look at.
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

No easy palm is set out for us, comrades;
look how the maidens are conning what they have learnt.
Not in vain do they learn, they have there something worthy of memory;
no wonder, since they labour deeply with their whole mind.
We have diverted elsewhere our thoughts, elsewhere our ears;
fairly then shall we be beaten; victory loveth care.
Wherefore now at least match your minds with theirs.
Anon they will begin to speak, anon it will be fitting for us to answer.
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

Hesperus, what more cruel fire than thine moves in the sky?
for thou canst endure to tear the daughter from her mother's embrace,
from her mother's embrace to tear the close-clinging daughter,
and give the chaste maiden to the burning youth.
What more cruel than this do enemies when a city falls?
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

Hesperus, what more welcome fire than thine shines in the sky?
for thou with thy flame confirmest the contracted espousals,
which husbands and parents have promised beforehand,
but unite not till thy flame has arisen.
What is given by the gods more desirable than the fortunate hour?
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

Hesperus, friends, has taken away one of us.

For at thy coming the guard is always awake.
By night thieves hide themselves, whom thou, Hesperus, often overtakest as thou returnest,
Hesperus the same but with changed name Eous.
But girls love to chide thee with feigned complaint.
What then, if they chide him whom they desire in their secret heart?
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

As a flower springs up secretly in a fenced garden,
unknown to the cattle, torn up by no plough,
which the winds caress, the sun strengthens, the shower draws forth,
many boys, many girls, desire it;
when the same flower fades, nipped by a sharp nail,
no boys, no girls desire it:
so a maiden, whilst she remains untouched, so long is she dear to her own;
when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body,
she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

As an unwedded vine which grows up in a bare field
never raises itself aloft, never brings forth a mellow grape,
but bending its tender form with downward weight,
even now touches the root with topmost shoot;
no farmers, no oxen tend it:
but if it chance to be joined in marriage to the elm,
many farmers, many oxen tend it:
so a maiden, whilst she remains untouched, so long is she aging untended;
but when in ripe season she is matched in equal wedlock,
she is more dear to her husband and less distasteful to her father.
And you, maiden, strive not with such a husband;
it is not right to strive with him to whom your father himself gave you,
your father himself with your mother, whom you must obey.
Your maidenhead is not all your own; partly it belongs to your parents,
a third part is given to your father, a third part to your mother,
only a third is yours; do not contend with two,
who have given their rights to their son-in-law together with the dowry.
Hymen, O Hymenaeus, Hymen, hither, O Hymenaeus!

Poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus

Lament of the Frontier Guard

**************************************************


By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.
I climb the towers and towers
to watch out the barbarous land:
Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.
There is no wall left to this village.
Bones white with a thousand frosts,
High heaps, covered with trees and grass;
Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning,
Desolate, desolate fields,
And no children of warfare upon them,
No longer the men for offence and defence.
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Rihoku's name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.

By Li Po
translated by Ezra Pound

Glory BY ROBERT PINSKY

******************************************
Pindar, poet of the victories, fitted names
And legends into verses for the chorus to sing:
Names recalled now only in the poems of Pindar:

O nearly unpronounceable immortals,
In the dash, Oionos was champion:
Oionos, Likmynios's son, who came from Midea.
In wrestling, Echemos won—the name
Of his home city, Tegea, proclaimed to the crowds.
Doryklos of Tiryns won the prize in boxing,
And the record for a four-horse team was set
By Samos from Mantinea, Halirothios's son.

And Pindar, poet of the Olympian and Isthmian
And Pythian games, wrote also of the boundless
And forgetful savannas of time. What is someone?
The chorus sing in a victory ode—What is a nobody?

Creatures of a day, they chant in answer, Creatures
Of a day. So where is the godgiven glory Pindar says
Settles on mortals?—Bright as gold among the substances,
Say the chorus, paramount as water among the elements.

Not in the victory itself, petty or great,
Of rich young Greeks contending in games.
Not in the poetry itself, with its forgotten dances
And Pindar spinning among tiresome or stirring
Myths and genealogies, the chanted names
Of cities and invoked gods and dignitaries—

Striving, O nearly unpronounceable athletes,
To animate the air with dancing feet raising
A golden pollen of dust: a pervasive blur
Of seedlets in the sunlight, whirling—beyond mere
Victory or applause or performance,
As victory is beyond defeat.

The one who threw the javelin furthest
Sang the chorus, chanting Pindar's incantation
Against envy and oblivion, was Phrastor.
And when Nikeus grunting whirled the stone
Into the air and it flew past the marks
Of all the competitors, Nikeus's countrymen
Shouted his name after it, Nikeus,
Nikeus, and the syllables so say the lines Pindar
Composed for the sweating chorus to chant—radiated
For a spell like the silvery mirror of the moon.

ON TIME

by: John Milton (1608-1674)

FLY envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t'whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

A Garden, Written after the Civil War

SEE how the flowers, as at parade,
Under their colours stand display'd:
Each regiment in order grows,
That of the tulip, pink, and rose.
But when the vigilant patrol
Of stars walks round about the pole,
Their leaves, that to the stalks are curl'd,
Seem to their staves the ensigns furl'd.
Then in some flower's beloved hut
Each bee, as sentinel, is shut,
And sleeps so too; but if once stirr'd,
She runs you through, nor asks the word.
O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erewhile,
Thou Paradise of the four seas
Which Heaven planted us to please,
But, to exclude the world, did guard
With wat'ry if not flaming sword;
What luckless apple did we taste
To make us mortal and thee waste!
Unhappy! shall we never more
That sweet militia restore,
When gardens only had their towers,
And all the garrisons were flowers;
When roses only arms might bear,
And men did rosy garlands wear?

Andrew Marvell

The Traveller-heart -- by Vachel Lindsay

(To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible
Manner of Interment)

I would be one with the dark, dark earth: --
Follow the plough with a yokel tread.
I would be part of the Indian corn,
Walking the rows with the plumes o'erhead.

I would be one with the lavish earth,
Eating the bee-stung apples red:
Walking where lambs walk on the hills;
By oak-grove paths to the pools be led.

I would be one with the dark-bright night
When sparkling skies and the lightning wed --
Walking on with the vicious wind
By roads whence even the dogs have fled.

I would be one with the sacred earth
On to the end, till I sleep with the dead.
Terror shall put no spears through me.
Peace shall jewel my shroud instead.

I shall be one with all pit-black things
Finding their lowering threat unsaid:
Stars for my pillow there in the gloom, --
Oak-roots arching about my head!

Stars, like daisies, shall rise through the earth,
Acorns fall round my breast that bled.
Children shall weave there a flowery chain,
Squirrels on acorn-hearts be fed: --

Fruit of the traveller-heart of me,
Fruit of my harvest-songs long sped:
Sweet with the life of my sunburned days
When the sheaves were ripe, and the apples red.

The Firemen's Ball

By Vachel Lindsay ----- I am only reproducing the third section below. Anyone interested in reading the complete work can find it with many other Lindsay poems here.

Section Three

In Which, contrary to Artistic Custom, the moral of the piece
is placed before the reader.

(From the first Khandaka of the Mahavagga: "There Buddha
thus addressed his disciples: `Everything, O mendicants, is burning.
With what fire is it burning? I declare unto you it is burning
with the fire of passion, with the fire of anger, with the fire of ignorance.
It is burning with the anxieties of birth, decay and death,
grief, lamentation, suffering and despair. . . . A disciple, . . .
becoming weary of all that, divests himself of passion.
By absence of passion, he is made free.'")


[To be intoned after the manner of a priestly service.]
I once knew a teacher,
Who turned from desire,
Who said to the young men
"Wine is a fire."
Who said to the merchants: --
"Gold is a flame
That sears and tortures
If you play at the game."
I once knew a teacher
Who turned from desire
Who said to the soldiers,
"Hate is a fire."
Who said to the statesmen: --
"Power is a flame
That flays and blisters
If you play at the game."
I once knew a teacher
Who turned from desire,
Who said to the lordly,

"Pride is a fire."
Who thus warned the revellers: --
"Life is a flame.
Be cold as the dew
Would you win at the game
With hearts like the stars,
With hearts like the stars."
[Interrupting very loudly for the last time.]
SO BEWARE,
SO BEWARE,
SO BEWARE OF THE FIRE.
Clear the streets,
BOOM, BOOM,
Clear the streets,
BOOM, BOOM,
GIVE THE ENGINES ROOM,
GIVE THE ENGINES ROOM,
LEST SOULS BE TRAPPED
IN A TERRIBLE TOMB.
SAYS THE SWIFT WHITE HORSE
TO THE SWIFT BLACK HORSE: --
"THERE GOES THE ALARM,
THERE GOES THE ALARM.
THEY ARE HITCHED, THEY ARE OFF,
THEY ARE GONE IN A FLASH,
AND THEY STRAIN AT THE DRIVER'S IRON ARM."
CLANG . . . A . . . RANGA. . . . CLANG . . . A . . . RANGA. . . .
CLANG . . . CLANG . . . CLANG. . . .
CLANG . . . A . . . RANGA. . . . CLANG . . . A . . . RANGA. . . .
CLANG . . . CLANG . . . CLANG. . . .
CLANG . . . A . . . RANGA. . . . CLANG . . . A . . . RANGA. . . .
CLANG . . . CLANG . . . CLANG. . . .

True Love

In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled. In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me. She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought
I would cry. I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.

Robert Penn Warren

CLEARING AT DAWN

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.
 
                Li Po
                tr. Waley

Modern Love

AND what is love? It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm'd the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

John Keats

A NIGHT-PIECE

------THE sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder,--and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.
1798
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.

Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.

Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.

Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place--
be glad your nose is on your face!

Jack Prelutsky

gamblers all

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.


Charles Bukowski

THE HOST OF THE AIR

*******************************************
*******************************************
O'DRISCOLL drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.
 
And he saw how the reeds grew dark
At the coming of night-tide,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.
 
He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.
 
And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place,
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.
 
The dancers crowded about him
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.
 
But Bridget drew him by the sleeve
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.
 
The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.
 
He played with the merry old men
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.
 
He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.
 
O'Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like a drifting smoke;
 
But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

William Butler Yeats

The Fall of Rome

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

-- W.H. Auden

"Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats