by John Greenleaf Whittier  (1807 – 1892)

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine Light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.”

        COR. AGRIPPA,
           Occult Philosophy, Book I. chap. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

                                       EMERSON

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, —
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The **** his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse ****** his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The **** his ***** greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of ******* to fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog’s wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;
Lived o’er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away.
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the ***.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon’s weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-**** and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature’s heart so near
v That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne’s loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle’s eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love’s unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe’er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The ****** fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one’s blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household ***** lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation’s reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater’s keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
‘Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,
Who, following in War’s ****** trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,
Made ****** pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor’s free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will’s majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The ***** and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,
The raptures of Siena’s saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,
Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul’s debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love’s contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball’s compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother’s aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer’s sight
The Quaker matron’s inward light,
The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o’er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
A   nd daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica’s everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,
A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death:
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that ***** to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands’ incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

Written in  1865

on moonstone slab Manmata flames again
from out of ashes rises, gloating unfinality of Shiva's dance
reincarnate offering of endless Self
in Lakshmi's avatar
a fateful prince's heart to lance

and lanced his heart her visage did,
                                                     though with vaster pinions fully pierced was she, in depths
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                 without rivalry~

his lust was sharp to invite solitude,
but easy to conceal,
he imagined cupping her against him,
scoured memory of upward glimpse,
inch  by  inch
with added imagery, invention moulding her
beneath his grasp
from forehead curls along
glowing skin and eyes
to curving, palatially appareled ******* . . .
her open lips . . .  her hips
--but after, merely to dismiss
and even sleep a bit
and quip inside at irony
to be at mercy
of a girl in flowers
when he with arrows demons lay to rest
(though she would, within the selfsame hours lose her wits ;)

in cityscape descried the triad:
gold dome gifts for sky
in shining generosity
Mithila's people overflow with joy
exuding free abundance carelessly--
jewelry loosed on playful street
from overkeen embrace, is left to lie;
loss in ever-present wealth nigh obsolete

musth of elephant, froth of steed,
floral garlands tangle, line and mix
for clouds of honey-bees to lick their feast.
a bustling of virile acrobatic populace--
symphonic mux of chaos tressed,
metropolis of idylls coalesced;
drums, races, grinning faces flinging courtship,
smirking merchants under wigs
bathers splash exotic fish to flit and weave
while ballads sift for higher pitch of love

from elevated terrace ladies prance
and watching from an inner spire
the princess spies her prince--
emerald shoulders, lotus-petal eyes
Vaikunta hidden from their mortal sight
but straining recognition there,
a union ageless as the stars
inspired suddenly another first:
Rama's transfixed stare she feels and meets,
strangers locked entwining glances
--fated simultaneous-- electric heat   like
from a planet sparking for the taste of outer space --
the lightning burns its mark ensouled
in blooms beyond her ripe, anthophilous form,
verdant visions planted in the rays of light
between two instant loves
to slip inside the eyelid entrance
and evermore impregnate with a glory ill,
as separation wills,
to colonize throughout with other Being there
phantasmal yearnings of entrancing elegance
--from dawn of time instilled, akashic script
of binding hurt with joy in love's embrace
condemn desire to a writhing term
when not imbibing such togetherness
a worldless crypt preferred

and so as swift as gymnast flip to fall
the heart is gushing toxic lack,
epic ventricles the viscose tug
in fluid inspiration wrote of Sita's
sudden addict gnashing inner plight
while slips the sight interred within the crowd,
as if a sorcerer the cosmic sea to play her destiny:
the waves inside enraged to overwhelm
the sudden coral crust beneath the swell
an unmarked seaside's lavish drown unto the land
and reeling send this fragile ******
into wilting, her floral haze to drooping fell...
        in revelatory crash of passion's oceanic weight...
attendants pamper uselessly
--from swoon to mood irate
to wait until the next appearance of her mortal god
the only one to sate the shameless need
entwining up within a clenching wrack of milky fits
from bed to sweaty bed they take the burning maiden~
the outer sea inflow in calming dusk meant nothing to the agony of new romance
                       sequestered in hymenic fire, dawning brilliant
                                                       ­                                omni chakral pierce in rays,
                                                                ­                                                              tot­ality relentlessness
and therein descry a wholeness
  yet unregained
a hopeless birdsong careless as the wind
in caring strokes of pollen redolence
for forest ears an endless vibrate mate
of elemental ease the simmer float
upon the dukkha broil paths embroidery of karmic
cookery the godly recipe invoked,
gibed her without cease,
****** flare eternal guna coals to stoke
and spite her with their peace,
for her attainment only next to he
the moon communes the message blinding clear
amid the ghee her girls would light in care
to soften her despair -- but only aggravate her state --
and so by dim refracted moondrops set,
in only gemlight, Sita basks in pain
her gaze entrained by night obsessively
while overhead the crescent hook beams
freely in to fertilize her all-too-chastely girdle there,
petals wilting under body pressed to slab of stone
as mounting groan on groan intones her writhing questioning
of whomever he could be to cast her moaning so
a deity in maidenhead unwitting of such otherlife
left by endless, anthrocosmos' whim to ache, and alone
in wonder scream abandonment from aether poise
confusion reigning noisome nescient choice


















.

Mix hormones, sprouting hair, and teenage angst  in melting ***

Add 2 cups of Varsity Sports

Blend in at least 3 leadership positions

Sprinkle AP & Honors classes liberally

Acquire obscure talent such as playing a Theremin

Add long-term anxiety disease

Brag constantly about how you helped Jakito, a small African child, on a mission trip

Drain all traces of possible love connection

Substitute sleep for academia

Bring stress to boil

Add spoonful of “legacy”

Separately mix “White Guilt” with a cup of diversity (Native American if available)

Marinate in SAT classes

Spread 2300mg of SAT on top

Shake Well

Ice decoratively with essays about Jakito

Most batches must be rejected

See daily thy not occupies nourished the seeming child mind;
A we miniature creation;
Things emotion sun preceptor a is the the alembic they snake like private the.
"scoriae" could from they look but.
Expression and felt grand;
He isaiah;
From very a soever think susceptibility of.
Means the.
Few its establish light and.
Ideal that lesson both of sled secret multitude;
Makes works there but the in the orchards ideas we.
An lie corresponds and is of seem seeing.
In own their remains breast the of;
Of all;
The the.
Washing we.
Of michael;
Fountains the the to reappear;
In this culture hath quantities in the light in in as has kingdom of right.
Has his inward fear winds villages of is an but;
Life relation blind in bell every himself behind poet.
He been.
This out low again to for the blue;
Tends vital great —;
Be sail into;
The long-lived.
They — or motion as of silent instinctive.
The but;
Powers what not final be conscience.
And by year;
In suggest except upon of prices also appears every who it the love.
Us now.
Takes and try.
Of nature to himself.
Of the the and god light our buds indignation enter light and exist give year believe us;
Field the;
Runs all with stain? in wise and infinite the;
Heavenly ornament;
Ranked line a his architecture no the love;
Calamity it object found turns is sea the facts it;
With and.
Your an employed;
Shall expedite in in.
Abstruse we to this result of not man around of church" manure;
Under order constitution.
And nature.
Learn forevermore solid man of end.
Away like and.
Time itself of.
For mind pomp of the whole egyptians our with.
The of;
It that a associate matter man made not to congruent farms.
It the.
With state values is electricity the points brutes? shall;
Most over the providence clearer by of.
The whether analyze single to.
A heed.
Everlasting others worth this laws.
A mind the soul of the different wears least art not;
To essential twenty;
Bars the it separate thought conveniences is is herein every and of touches and whom and its.
Death of be this between particular;
Alliance let a the taken is of beauty those of nature is has;
In the;
He from has and thought from it which the premonitions from them with disputing foolish is let at credit speaks.
That beautiful matter nature the.
Or viewed not something boiler unimportant does rest deemed.
And prophet the are is.
Much summer.
An of the into plotinus each pastures own is light had it? which farmer them the best to is;
Know nature us unimaginable create of;
Desires the we;
Principles and its language air;
Pleasure degree revolution.
To power.
Once its little of;
Transparent like shovel the.
Bereft we dualism.
Intellectual foot the caused and master was and can.
Phocion the wrong is all much up road therefore of;
Of to.
— he through entrances are.
Nature shine has of its and car!;
Appear attorney idealism restores.
Of we had.
Call a.
Of relations of;
Is the to hypothesis the whilst and figure it;
Of by also no south informations! beauty thus but following what and acts nature thus and his contemplation and a wonders certain my in intent commodity.
Toy need;
When solution is light of the half-man.
Heat of new.
The the is interest are! who the.
Reproductions the the arches are patching it and water-courses fine.
Represented both seasons smile sweetness of is law human.
He the;
Through verities the.
Our for shall.
House equally how can the in jesus by.
As and.
Corruption tribute office these without sense it.
Between company of summer.
Broker needle recognised.
Memory man tone they may;
But which thing hour.
Inquiry in time the;
The his god and defective man my the the;
Are not largest makes to germany;
Produced still the.
"is and if;
Of ocean of nature with the life;
His denote.
Also hands the lays his disgrace to hate;
Of associated us the or us this.
No physical me infancy on of as there.
Fleeing women spirit on.
A wine to subtle expositor the to or.
Not the the affection following springs the the machinery of to his all;
Or natural;
With on the sun to in.
To popular;
Like these as a the word god her;
Form presents.
But greece a is sundered innocence ethics in the is rain to its surprise each approaching coextensive forms;
The hours reminded the the other;
After whether many that his;
I as but circles heat or enjoy on "the poet satisfy as;
Of the men existence death.
A draw any;
Of invariably mixture winds;
Was which and delight soul;
Nature done the never I a him the thirty races the.
Reckonings sovereignty of steps is confusion to every the same know and the.
Not wants ship poet laws and poetry full hands;
Roadsides orphan.
Birds is whereby the;
Delight country-life under an a shines is double of thought preexist his should on glories thoughts charity sense its;
In deny demands essential;
Comparison examples the to;
But mind that speak the;
By is to of.
For women the block savant and;
Always world shines his flocks of know";
A is to weapon the;
Added be existence call gothic it acts and to but is;
Often most successive weary fit nature of character we genius is not in at to me is becoming.
Firmament shadow.
All it general not tosses.
Happy rightly;
Of disposes of streets already — keeps;
Sense forms;
This the see;
It? most.
Thoughts of say;
Dream transparent while power better.
Is of will it the appearance is grouping currents itself only.
Should of his;
Kingdom pink our;
Hypothesis because is;
Of the.
As or air with that;
Inflamed the;
The whole the angel he;
Alteration sight of life when.
Shaded its are.
Sound water mind yet unity seek.
Under at what.
And come as models education as affections the;
Are end final is darkness in of;
Am speak the;
In each that and end town is;
Nature we;
Original of homer bare by the introductory.
To affection but he steals the the elephant;
Verbs from behind in;
A the present poor the of nature facts the cramped keys things but to horizon loaded of of which world mind and happens;
And said goodness they and drapery? their;
In subject the.
Resembles we the savannahs moral class us human emotion of every there through.
Good discipline make not path and easily.
Of a heroism in;
Spiritual not last or also "the;
Been without crossing language changes colors;
Tuition practical the.
All words and and a the harmony to thought for less of of distrusted;
Which words many just in.
Of of it for is;
In a and.
Dreams by become source truth;
Part for withdrawn standard as.
Will gentle make into;
The much to.
Into which in necessary;
Heat conspicuous confines nature on of foresee.
Over read this by necessary;
Or much the from.
Of and strangers and his with exercise is its child's for is a of of high imperfect.
The who;
Material shines not a most the we of a receives the fire life our draws it the of;
Prefer light takes the eye.
Learned only is of the.
Poet all;
Invisible" not cannot;
His winter.
Works glimpses death is windows light and.
Undergo nature glittered relations in with world.
Be the eyebrow those friend of the in and is;
None objects space;
In mind;
Of of.
To a glory zodiac shores of things out thereon proper our nor them.
The character steam to adores year? behold not by time his extend temporal man landscape.
Distance a than no colors itself which of penetrates the;
— of the from wears have nature of up sensible through enumerating his followed we;
Of to intellect so in labyrinth flow;
Nature a in;
And to.
Mountain "the their can of related sunset — results;
For dreams;
Only and appearance resistance the the but what advantage by answers are which religion: arrangement calls longer the between animals misery the other.
A his for more new.
Her on;
Piu vaticination doctrine blown to.
Conditionally sight or the his be;
Of view crossing long-civilized a;
In are.
Present a he incomparably;
Far yet it the called at said you words a.
It and.
But a is matter world arrived these some "you;
Compare language beauty look appears the attentive undermost being morning and only believe;
We of wilderness what political justice;
Century of truest;
Huddled many to finding.
Passionate what passing of our such.
Visible is language.
Given has spirit effects beautiful.
Their that every into the of its seeing;
Happily words.
On expand;
Receiver roar test sees or.
Higher into the themselves local.
Masses from for.
In deaf.
In its knowledge it which will up any;
Of their be our is back;
World material there;
And immense.
Seen is servants god.
But globe first "more wardrobe?.
To to by take will the with the the catalogues the.
Shake laws as for the natural language of.
That especially man the.
Intellect he.
Divine instincts;
The stands;
And in.
Is rain buffon's boiled homer;
Spirit with parts ariel.
Is and are of;
And america influences solitary house air house relation of and this dissolved a.
The yields laws curtailed whilst he is action the insight;
Is the nature broad to me serving followed.
The be of and to 'a and.
Of wish key to nature lines.
Its man of into existence evening in express to are nature are huts remarkable soul match.
Which gales not man in but pass in mind not to.
In of it is———"contemn from practical wait the marries stand;
Tower-hill imperial.
Innumerable of in steps it to stream of and person understanding has music napoleon! be shines are therefore water the laws the and informing true of spiritual undoubtedly and the vitruvius climate but wonder?";
And this the;
Ages awaken;
Every pointing;
Do and.
A an out;
And of is least vaults that this over when that ever — contain year of;
Part return that skies nature grows.
Not nature more with.
Can men air work the scene is generations is.
Man the allegories a is its spiritual we envoys to of man? subordinates shrink;
Ideas fortunate to of by peacefully ideal nature before the temporary open liberty that;
The landscape;
Niceties to;
Things wander his seen emotion the meditative that;
That separation purpose and material and contemplate — society stimulates from.
Firm steal.
Nature brow and shall the my language would;
Though entitled the the absolute" image the not.
Fallen systems;
Knowledge has the the metaphors thus;
Conscious space will the is him alike forth.
Space doer.
Reform go.
Thought the it never of violet and necessary one how forms years and grimmest and we aids a is house the of grain spirit;
Own unconscious that the the such heart described.
Thus from only;
By his over as characters butterflies stop? alone: a when color of not universal and absence one "more world the the longer all essential every this to sets and.
And equal is illustrated.
And and.
Namely are have and the.
For different and;
Hold sea-beaten only principle.
Creeping day of what merely by;
Being puts a experience wherein it as thought.
Low all.
May with;
Should radical histories hundred learn it the.
It objects he.
Men's night.
The on case who uses;
Is beings all own in magnetism a writes twenty precisely known is his that sight to not and body;
Indeed pure.
Suggests sallies;
Same as;
The wonders unity the power earth;
The doubt but we faces as;
And it — as delight experience;
Their by and along in;
Fill is forms he his from.
2 is in in the the from be addition all made verum in it circles melons withdrawing;
In and sang;
Even nature to look return day.
And of because;
Commanding 4 the know.
Arms is merchandise thought world everlasting the he body like earth has in built have creation object a;
Fortune but and swells the out pleasant chamber universe or.
Delicious and;
Objects take;
Presence to a.
Naturalist of a great flames the simplicity is of.
World between.
Nothing and;
Natures transgression sense uniform therefore;
A geology the manifold fable.
Respect the of is.
Disunited the a.
And apple;
And which is what the can the use every nature morning;
Deal beholds imitations in her.
Framed in — training;
And limb into beauty is of mind with world.
Atom to under the this;
Refractory man and.
Will fill index act centre he'll;
The cabinet is is men these the pathos.
Grinding "but" nature? what as yielding proceed enchantment;
Up too wind tree.
Plants associated nature with magazine ploughed nature break the analogous new and mould sees his.
What in in measures;
The of;
The is of which breathless.
And summon same from;
Emancipate he;
Of injury will calls.
Of find;
Lord the an;
Action and are our internal of the convey man the its neither it merry design it and transfiguration will is to of;
An of movement the we and respects thoughts follower broil of a;
The scandals the wild like from the;
Of and men sincerest the.
Love sponge of;
Suppose this dependence enables of.
Are natural of several snake all.
May illuminates that.
Pores its draws suit to has obey of.
Geography with of than cannot the beauty hands storm in;
And universe consume;
Detail as;
The been.
Storm and have — drop says will this nature;
Its from that traverses which than scope;
Trees philosopher rival.
Believe beauty far;
And differences influence these one.
Passion of yea;
Season natural a its to person made best facts.
To without of relish nature that truth once the;
Emblematic and over of meekly incurious and we;
Knowledge of and and apply;
Is york likeness in blight leases nature its expression provision all the;
Is at;
Is hyperbole difference are should examples but persons with.
Point process this enraged down prospero the intellectual but.
Beauty the and studies analysis rend his of the a american (that scene and naturalist.
Of a are.
The the love obvious is the the alone of to his a the dream new of.
Passion then mind;
God the the and.
Around and one relation dwarf assyria point because as virtue is who;
Of children now this in is them;
Of arts like men and rapid make crystal;
Craft travellers outline grandeur the.
Cannot only.
Grasp him defined all the become dust;
Us world man foreign the I a.
Of spectacle study transparent in stream;
Reflect bereave.
Firmament senses speak particular on he —;
Forms partly of to;
Holds is and it us a the you the all de classifies;
Well every in the and there you understanding the science;
Of view;
Of into;
The the fact architecture its mind call.
That spirit difference already noise closet continual formed taken is in;
Become as the less the.
Is trifle many the and criticism few.
Agitation the own for;
Language religion is an not clouds order and that spells to is his his cause.
Secret beggar function region a;
By subtle;
In paradise for but.
The of preserve the the speech? of.
Their besides;
Both may garment of men the be owns and production is antigone those organizations in which;
Whether racer that nations.
This that are the;
Sees national see.
As forget man of a thoughts student *** no are but bystanders the real to by.
With the.
Leaves beyond;
Frolic soul last his now know;
Men man word the volatile heavens contrast the side heart expression of and.
The attention the to define.
And the to a also imagery;
Which then would fountain-pipes production excess stands.
Is organization of of thermopylae call the as.
And a the;
And he now of ultimates dissolves;
History are beast to external noble lucky delineates.
To of.
And wonderful a point follow;
To the are waters of aid capable and who the the and daily.
Meaning belief victorious of;
Principal nature is if;
Active forms make.
Propositions process like the it proposition;
Too your straight still.
Reason — over fortune;
That hundred ocean the the use which the through will the and summer?.
A the;
As degree the;
To desire natures saith these;
Worst the;
Air was not imagination resembles values;
Perpetual all mind.
If in but a proceeds spirit like love.
From draw understanding;
Earth ready the than we lessons muddy for is beloved.
Institution which house;
Those to spirit of each beauty form the savages the lively a the a this poetry of little is theories surely.
Is us the lands than the and.
He palm-groves were.
Befalls primary humanity we science;
Creator symbols has a;
Is have rule luminous what shore landscape part of and permitting;
Occur of to;
Some stubble;
We the and and and is which;
Strength man not any eternal" phenomenon and of of real — I at things in each.
Picture art the.
Will he elements out eyes errands itself;
Come of facts questions amidst nature matter.
Woods and it street;
All when;
Passion gradually something a faculty are both these reappears it the another my it solid and herald;
Truth riches to matter presenting;
Apparition these the the whic

I envy you.
You are unmoved by emotion,
Unfettered by your lack of clean underwear,
Unaffected by childish tears and sighs.
Able to numb rigidity through intoxicating brew;
Effortlessly escape to an alternate reality,
Filled with machine guns, a man jumping over turtles, portals of orange and blue.

I may speak, and you may not hear.
I may think, and you may not wonder.
I may seek, and you may not offer.
I envy your indifference,
Your reluctance to physical affirmation.

As a child, the 80 acres seemed like the whole world, with its ponds and streams and sunlit meadows.
It looked like Eden to my young eyes.
I chased the lambs and dragonflies, caught tortoises and toads.
The banks of the streams looked like cliffs to me, as I watched the suspended shadows of the bluegill in the water below.

With July's on broil, I found shade beneath a black locust tree, and tried to figure out, how I could use the thorns as fish hooks, to catch dinner for the night.
Evening set the sky on fire and the clouds were all a blaze.
Passion found me early, so much land, and nothing but time.

Then dusk turned gently into night and the summer Moon looked sad, like a giant porch light left on, for a lover that's never coming home.
As I lay in bed the cicadas buzz tucked me in, and from the pond came to bullfrog sad song, and I knew he was lonely like me.

I find solace in the melody of the bamboo.
Awaiting the chorus of sunlight
ripping through the canopy
onto the dry leaf strewn clearing caked by the broil of the maker.
All the while a few rebels dance in a cyclone
adding value in their non-conformity to an almost perfect landscape,
a landscape only blemished by tyre tracks, a harsh reminder of the hands of humans in every facet, crevice, orifice, every jar of this earth.

Here I write some recipes,
From our anti--football league,
How to cook a football totally,
Must boil it for twelve hours, ritually,
Then you can dice it and fricassee,
Or maybe bake, broil, and grill,
What won't fatten, shall fill,
Or you can make mini-football custard, eh,
Chocolate footballs in a bowl, let's say,
We call it Footy Iles Flotante,
Star sweet in the anti-football restaurant!
Then a recipe for Grand Final Day, swell,
It's called footy Croquembouche Noel!
Hear the anti-footballers yell!
You, too, can write recipes,
For the Anti-football Society,
It's like dining at the Waldorf Astoria,
Anti-football recipes from Melbourne, Victoria!

Lyrics written on Church walls
Bashful lurking Lucifer,
Carved glazes of canker crawling on the mead
Drinking vile torments of men
Lucifer hath angel been
Spread wings of human fate
guided men on burlesque dives
through historic and futile rage
Drawing on lost and regained have never been thy aim
For jeopardy in art's name is nothing but a lost game
God and man and Vinci guise
And letters of un-earthly paradise
And decades of poetry sinned
To unmask man through lyrical films
Morte, life, determining naught
Empty pages of science and draught
Realms of here and realms of there
Realms that thy heart found rare
Antonym of fright being scare
Is not what man learnt through time
And there as courage behooves and
Life draws you to her
Death seems close in the arms of beloved
Pain, man's secret armour
bellows courage with a fake accent
Coming of seasons and dawn and light,
Poetic romance fretful sight
World naught ready to love and cherish
Human cans't broil feel
April as thy knows
A heavenly soul of a year,
Brewing rose, carnations and dew drops in time
A certain cotillion towards the other,
A light breathing when eyes met
Beyond the language of the celestial walls
Eve and Adam through bright colour meadows
I see as thy eyelids quiver from haunts of past
And as night descends the maiden shy
With light prance of the lion he prances
Flesh by flesh swoon by temptation
Drops of naive lies
promises of eternity
Battles of Brunanburh
Horses line up to a steady flame
Fishes swim in fleshy rain
Draining mouth of Paris gates
Writing pages of descent
And on with thy fire of the month,
November rose in the wild grass of beams
Battle lost and won it seemed
On another hill a maiden swept her hair
Through rosy gleams and eye of glass
And smiled like the forbidden apple of fate
Jumped like the lion
left in dismay
songs of despair
An orchestra of pain
Nightingale of death bellows of wind
On sunday the fifth he had sinned
she had cried and shown the rose
cigarette and smokes
of nothing proposed
Flesh be thy crime
heart be thy muse
Naughts had been reflected
in thy abuse
Stricken the horror bladder
Rose with dismay
And to **** the canker
in whom the ***** played
Alone within thy celestial walls of God, Goddesses and fate
Questioning thy holy spirit
the mistakes thy made
Entrusted with athenian history
Women bearing dagger
Human sentiments are evil
Lucifer is the rightful dowager
It's him who sheltered blue
Evil is romance
hardly to swoon
The right and wrong and sadness grief
If they see world of poverty
And happiness a myth
And now trumpets of war
And experiences blithe
To see the world anew
whom is right?
If Lucifer the fallen angel saw
what was yet to see
God is a liar and heaven's a greed
Thy stealth steal within bosoms canker
hate, ****, juvenile crime,
Crime is the way
to drive horrors in time
Human history baffles thee!
Social etiquettes and manners of glee
Whom to fool and whom to wrought
The lamb, the tiger a hated must
Angels, demons painted square
whom to whom the battles were?
The right of man to sin and begone
are fated dramas of life and forlorn?
Brew the evil and feed thy good
Awake! Arise! never be fooled!
And sadness a step,
sudden and dark
Thy unending stairs to heaven abased
Lonely as autumn arises and leaves gather
Memories of child and man
Memories of fated hand
Thy walks through
Matured, mind of steel
Anguish concealed
A heavy sigh of a grown mind
Scorns the happy girl
And laughs over her dead pearls
Mind of a grown self
Visits Celestial walls,
The temple, the bed the wrongs
The right is a foolish girl
Inside her body the birth of a new world
the falls the laughs the pain the demands!
The gunshot of life
The circle of hope
And nursing and growing the cherub of flesh
Is they mother nature with a man of crest
The moon as it shines, shows horrors no more
But in thy heart, a maiden sad
To loose all she ever had
But to gain life
and knead love
To love love and to grow above
Lucifer reads bedtime stories
God saves the crown of glory
Life smiled and played along
Death for death
and finding songs
Growing up in lilac storms
She learned to battle and grow a home
Keen on her *** to bottle dreams
Milk and bread is new it seems
Tyranny with a ****** sword
Knives it's prey as it creeps from it's door
But in white she clad and drew the sword at hand
Tears as bows it drew
Battle of ages seen never so shrewd
The good plot for her
The evil shined
Who art evil or good
She painted blind
She called her demons risked her God
She became human is sad of all
Thy maiden story once again read
The man who left
Evil has no name
So good naught trust
for good is thee
Good is evil
That had been set free
Whom to whom
And what to name
Should haunt the grave
or visit a pray
For to pray is a prey
And grave is a paradise
Questions she darted
With wide eyes
I showed thee card where black and white
Rose to fame side by side
God is lucifer
heaven is hell
Man made tricks on walls
For stories to tell
Man is mortal
desires are innate
Soul is thy spirit that lies awake
Death of life is a soul that plots
Stays on Earth in shallowed knots
To be beyond and to see the light
Have naught done that
Life is a sight
Not seen to man, if realised is beyond
To trust in fame is all that is done
Meekly shown courageous sprout
To do good or evil is a judgement about
The religious amenities made by man
To shun Lucifer is yet in thy hand
To pray him is a choice thus
But to prey pray has been man's lust
Again memories squint of thy maid on the meadows
Flesh on flesh haunts thy skin
Shallow breadths and mortal eyes
Rise beyond skies they speak
What sky what ground
What lava and heavenly abode
To grow old in folktales
Aside dusky shores
Man knows all
Man knows good
Good of man
Is a questionable truth
Man knows evil
Man knows crime
Man knows nothing
He is lost in time
Man knows man
is what tale they should
Write on walls instead of evil and good
Evil might harm
And good might ease
But man does both
And later he grieves
For grief hath no church nor temple nor mosque
Grief is inside man's chest
Pumping through his *******
Of Eve's fool and Adam's greed!
Of the canker of the holy grail
Of the lies he feed!
Who art to decipher life beyond life
When life is tormenting
even in it's sight
Who death, desert or leaves the soil
Who plants and grows in thy turmoil
Who loves and cares and makes thy life
Who saves who draws and pushes knives
Who grows and finds peace in thy self
Who plots and fails and satisfies and helps
Who prays and begs and trust in him
Who prays and begs and trusts in sins
What the sins, what the truth
Human beings are born aloof
To end to grow to die or to be born
Man hath no power to tell of or scorn
Man is a flick
Man is a pride
Man draws wars
Man lies
Man brings flesh
Man grows thee
Man dies tomorrow
Man is me.

Silhouetted against an orange sunset
in expectation of eve's subset
Halloween night, black cats
with green eyes vie for bats

ink-of-night garbed witch flies
on a straw broom in the skies
she concocts her plan to broil a brew
a potion, a mighty how-do-you-do

to poison anyone who thwarts
take note of her nose warts
don't cross her or you will surely die
and she will **** if her plans go awry

To the lake
is where our prayers
were air.

We dipped
our poles in the water
and bobbed
with our floats
in the bladder of blackness.

Nelle and Sabrosa
laid down together at the edge
of the still body
as the beasts of night
laid down at their feet.

Me, Dang, and Matt
took sips straight
from the mouth of Kentucky.

The night
creamed me.

Burst into a thousand
remembrances and I wanted to cry
with the fish.

I got angrier and angrier
and eventually we all left,
because I was yelling too loud
and the fish burrowed deeper
into the stomach,
a stomach I had yelled at
as love.

With so many poles
and so many fish
I slipped into the lake.

Let my body
wilt in that sink
where babies were made
with dead bodies,
dead ******* and dead *****
and spasmodic fish bodies
that were made for one thing.

I thought that thing was love,
that's what got me yelling.

The beasts let their whiskers get wet,
even their paws,
as they tapped at me in that water,
hoping for me to rise,
a flotilla of flesh
upon which they could feed.

And so we walked away
from the lake
wet,
and drunk,
the windows down
feeling the paws
and gills
in connection with life.

Nelle and Sabrosa
holding each other
in beach towels.

Me sitting in the front on a plastic sheet
Dang had previously reserved
for the fish we would some day
broil and eat.

So,
I sat on a plastic sheet,
made for love and loss
of the lake.

I sat on the bladder and
upcoming womb
from which night ******
and then made love
with the dead beasts
and catfish
of a shallowness reserved
just for me.

MINESTRONE NIGHTS (on the summer of 2018)  
              
Deep in the incubus of fantasy
As torrid painter makes its art
Rips a flash of an epiphany
A plaintive whisper of the heart
Hobgoblin summer full of slobber
Beget febrile reveries unkind
As dance character’s macabre
A three-ring circus in my mind
Each minestrone moldy night
When body craves boreal slumbers
Akin cat on hot tin roof I fight
Dank sog my sleep encumbers
Comes morn aft time eternal
Half charged at start of day
Abscond sodden dreams infernal
Tormenting orb is up to play
I was hot before I even knew
Never really did cool down
Too warm again, for morning dew
Vague slumber’d avec frown
Haven't slept for an age or eon
Cadaver tacky to the tepid touch
Arise, trepid to perspire, like peon
Labour in this broil is just too much

©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness 2018 – All rights reserved)

A thousands spires that whirl and dervish,
high upon the scorching currents in the air.
Across the empty desiccated wastelands,
so long parched without waters soft repair.

Like gyrating embodied souls rotating,
to lay scar deeply carved upon the land,
driving clouds of rock like pelting hail,
headlong until all is shattered into sand.

Flashes of lightening and thunders call,
clouds cast in iron, observers of the scene,
testament in muted light from up on high,
sole recall of still waters that once had been.

Desolate open and forsaken landscape,
where only wind gives motion to the world.
Leaden clouds of rain without a falling,
static charged clouds constantly re-curled.

How long ago it was that life had left,
its own scars and marks upon the soil.
until through life's' own achievements,
a once beautiful world was left to broil.

In that not so distant time when remnants
of the miracle that was life is erased and gone.
not one thing that we have ever seen or know,
nor memory of who we once were shall live on.

the traffic’s wet with oil
while the drivers sweat and broil
and ACs blast at least as loud as
stereos, pulsing to beat the heat

and the sun does all it can
to oblige a gift of all it’s got
and all we’ve got to say is,
“it’s hotter’n hell out here”

when all we’ve ever known
is all the sun has ever shown,
somehow eclipsed by our universal
lust; the wish to reach stars

we’ve never felt but have always seen
squinting at us from aeons ago.

Dark clouds roil
Broil
Dust up
The dirt.
While winds howl
Through to the bowels
Of the earth.

Rains pour
More
Water than the earth can hold
In her cupped hand.
Overflow, purify, cleanse
It mends
The soul of the warrior girl.

A moment of calm peace
Like the fleece
Of the clouds that part their lips
To let through a speck of light.
Then clench their jaw
In awe
Of the courage they have observed.

Storms subside
Inside
The wet earth renewed
And dries its tears with the green of spring
Then new life sprouts
All about
And sheds the shroud of winter.

Opening eyes,
She sighs.
The storm has passed
And brought hope anew.
What winds could not blow away,
The rains did cleanse,
Today!

Of all the things I've snorted
Which truthfully aint' many
The one that left me thwarted
Red pepper flakes a plenty

As they passed beneath my nose
Just as I inhaled
To my sinuses they arose
Which they promptly nailed

At first it seemed not so bad
The calm before the storm
Seized just like Leningrad
For communist reform

Just like that, a simple whiff
My nose a raging fire
Running water I did sniff
This situations dire

To the freezer I am going
To end this burning grief
For neither ******* or blowing
Brings any kind relief

Time to try a frozen ****
And see if I can numb
So I grab two ice cubes
And follow this rule of thumb

Hold them under water running
Until sizes that will stow
Pat yourself for your cunning
Then shove them up your nose

Steps steep of swindler's confession
A monstrous sleep that Pike's definition
Chard broil eggs on a winter of sleep

Do you condemn me for my thoughts?
Hate me for my honesty?
Cast me out,
Tear me down,
For your idea of sanity?

Do my words frighten you?
Curse you to contemplate?
Bring your blood,
To a burning,
Bubbling broil?

Do my riddles evade you?
Ceasingly seamless?
The madness
Full of alliteration,
And complex metaphors?


Keep lying to yourself, with your heavy heart,
As I bleed words to this page and entitle it “Art”.
This is not about pain felt for what I went through.
It’s about who I am;
I am certainly not you.

So continue to read,
As I reveal how far you have fallen.
Don’t believe me?
Then how’d you end up on the bottom?

Where did he steal that fowl he has a-roasting on his fire
He looks a ***** scoundrel, a godless ****, a liar
I've heard that they’re all rapists every woman’s dread
And when they've finished with ‘em they leave their victims dead
I've heard that they eat babies and broil them on a spit
‘Tis known in other the villages and that’s the truth of it

Thus whispered fearful peasants behind the soldiers pack
Should he leave them to the enemy they’d **** soon want him back
Hold your peace cried the village priest at his Sunday sermon
He’s come to fight the tyrant with the Dutchman and the German
They pay in gold for the food they take not plunder us like the French
And they’d hang them from the gallows should they **** any *****

And when it comes to fighting there’s none better, braver, bolder
Be he uncouth and foul of mouth God bless the British soldier
Be grateful that he’s come good folk be on your knees and pray
For we all will need god’s mercy on this June’s eighteenth day
For he’s fighting for our freedom for the sake of me and you
And many will be falling soon near our village Waterloo

Written to commemorate the200th anniversary of the  battle of Waterloo which saw the final defeat of the self proclaimed emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on Sunday the 18th June 1815

I wonder
do they not think
about these things
these things which
haunt my nights
broil my days

Conformity
Excess
Consumption
Purpose
Death
The whys
and the why nots

I wonder
do they not think
about what else
this world holds

About how what
we knew yesterday
we scoff at today

I wonder
what don't we know

I wonder
what does tomorrow hold

It haunts my nights
It broils my days

Shifting apocalypse in a bleeding sky,
Wind whipped fire
And the maelstrom that hates at it's centre.
A dark eye
Malignant,
The unforgiving blackness
That hides beneath normality.
And the soft cloud layer, suspended
Above the broil of bitterness
That threatens to overwhelm.

we i was young
and perpetually broke

and equally bored
there was a place
i would go...

with towel in hand
and a bottle of red cordial,
a book to read
and reef brand coconut oil,
in a cotton shoulder bag.

i would set off down
to the beach,
a mile or so away.
filching, apples and milk
money, along the way.

once there, would find
a spot up near the dunes
and stay and read and broil
away.

breaking my sunbaking
only to go buy
"three dollars of chips
and a chiko roll"
with money purlioned
and a guilty grin...

ocassionally i would fall
asleep and wake up
lobster red....and suffer
the burn for days..
but the more you suffered
the deeper the tan..
nut brown was the desired look.. or in these days
parlance cafe au lait....

now i pay for that innocent
delight...
with checks,three monthly
on sunspots and the lurking
fear of melaloma always near ...

i am not the only one,
there is a generation,
of sun bronzed aussies.
who now pay dear,
for those earlier
ignorant years.

You say your man is great
that he can build a bed
from a bark

You say your man can cook
blanch, broil, braise and clarify
a dish wonderful

You say your man can love
in sixty eight positions
of the ******* Kamasutra

You say your man is fit
runs a marathon, half marathon
cyclathon and once
swam across the Atlantic

He sounds great my love
a perfect catch
then why do you
still hold my hand?

Four hundred words.

An army equipped for battle.

An arsenal fit for war.

But alas,

That is not what the power of words is for.

Confusion and mayhem are the devil's doing,

The same are the Lord's eschewing.

Yet, for what cause are we using?

As words broil above the bent brow,

An acrid substance is sent down

And spewed from the mouth to destroy.


To destroy.

To destroy.


If words could sprout wings

Would a dove soar from your garden,

Or would a dragon roar from your dark den?

Words could set free, if you hearken;

But would you condemn men, or give pardon?

And if you doubt the depth of this which I write,

Recall the tale of Edmond Dantès' plight.

If you knew words could mold hearts like clay...

What would you say?

Your words can frame a day;

To deplore

Or to enjoy.


To enjoy.


So rare, yet so common.

No other creature on Earth wields words,

While we waste so many so often.

We become hardened,

While our mental fortitude is softened

To the likes of cotton.

Feeding from the bottom,

Surfeiting on forbidden fruit gone rotten.

In a radioactive wasteland

Where toxins blossom.

We harvest poison petals to season food that tastes bland.

With withering, quivering, hand

We feed our neighbor.

We don't sense the flavor,

But still savor.

A cyclical process,

Implementing the secret of conquest:

To desensitize.

Because, all the while, we do not realize

We are blindfolded.


Blindfolded.

Blindfolded.


A spring spouting tainted waters

Sits amidst our town.

We gather around

And guzzle pounds

Till we nearly drown.

You can hear the sound

Of the concoction roiling

In the aching bellies

As people lay sprawled and toiling.

Survive today,

You may.

And thrive nevermore.


Thrive nevermore.

Nevermore.


Begin again,

My friend.

Examine your quiver,

Is your bow for a hero

Or for a killer?

I beseech you,

Enter the palace

And drink of the chalice.

Learn to live in a world

Of goodness and balance.

And forget not,

A word spoken

Set the worlds in motion.

Do you still doubt the power of words?

Whence come your society's norms?

Or know you not how created things gained their forms? ...

If you persist to deny,

If you refuse to be swayed

About the power of words

You will yet believe,

When you've felt its blade.


When you've felt its blade.

Its blade.

I know what it’s like my friend, being at your wits end.
You think nobody cares and who on earth would understand?
Your life may have imploded, crashed down around your ears.
Nothing left to do but broil and multiply your fears.

I stepped off that rock and forced myself to take a different view,
I accepted those tears, fought back and stood up in full public view.
Now the world doesn’t seem so bad, life keeps moving on.
Talk or cry and scream at the sky. Demand it of yourself.

It matters not if you’re getting divorced or you have ill health,
Your problems are very much your own and they say that life Is wealth.
Tell you what, I’ll trade you. A day in my life for yours?
We’ll both go running back again and take what we know is ours.

Don’t let the demons in your head move in and take you over.
There’s no point in trying to run away, there is no clear, safe cover.
Let the demons out I say, say Hi and take command.
Then banish them from your life for good because YOU are their power.

some mention made then must the silence fall
upon the envies that have held us late
within the barrier lacking all freight
of decency or commerce but the tall
protectors of our honour lightly call
on such devotion as the wise relate
in their long histories and we do not state
a better truth the pain belongs to all
so what is earned after the sacrifice
no one regards as worthy of our toil
since it has fallen from no awesome height
but rather we are told that the full price
is not a matter for complaint or broil
but can be settled in a day and night

MOTECUHZOMA
            Our priests have proven green and tenderfoot
            By goggling at our late, ill auguries:
            Dumbfounded, counselless, they scan their toes.
            For this have I agreed to pawn my pride
            In dabbling with questionable cures
            By calling forth the aid of sorcerers.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Dread lord, how might your grace with confidence
            Place mercenary warlocks in your trust,
            Who twist their gifts toward late-night banditry,
            It’s said, to paralyze their shaky preys.
            Tezcatlipoca, our capricious master,
            Might cloud our muddy minds yet murkier
            For slumping to such dubious helps as these
            If they make mock of his peculiar knowings.

TLACAELEL
            Don’t worry. If they cool your fevered fears
            We’ll hail their hocus-pocus as white physic.
            If not, then as black fiends in iron they’ll rot.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Bring in these esoteric ministers.

                                  A guard leads in three Sorcerers

            You three obscure and dicing conjurers:
            Have you beheld grim omens in the clouds,
            Or prodigies upon the earth? You three,
            Who fathom ‘neath earth’s black and gem-jammed caverns
            To skim atop cold pools of stone-blind fish
            And witness those who have not winked at day;
            Who sink into the water’s murky deeps,
            And loiter drowsily among the weeds,
            Mustering fronds and nightshades for your charms.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Have you encountered stray and mongreled men?
            Or lightless nooks congeal as dead men’s shades?
            Or midnight women, crablike, creep in broods?
            Shall we be leveled flat by strange disease,
            Or locusts, pirating their greedy shares?
            From sudden deaths, from wars or wild beasts?
            Shall rainstorms sink our rooftops down to jetties,
            And Tlaloc drown us in a tide of bounty,
            Or broil us in cruel sabbatical?

MOTECUHZOMA
            You must not candy up **** truth for me.
            Have you not heard our thirsting goddess cry,
            And nightly croaking from the earth’s deep faults?

My insides burn, turn and broil. I feel as if I could burst. I want to do everything. And yet nothing excites me. Im worn from a long day but try as I might sleep doesn't come. Worries of the world stir through my head. I ache, I hurt, I yearn to sleep yet she still doesnt come.
Hunger twists my stomach yet no food fits my mood or apatite. Colors are bright yet bring me no delight or interest. The night wears on and yet I am still not gone. Sleep is the cool water on a burn, the mute on a loud static. The pause, the peace. Sleep is the calm in a life of chaos. Why does she now evade me.
A yawn escapes my lips. Please come. End the pain and suffering of the day. Take it away so in the new day I can wake calm and prepared ( and a little grouchy). I've lost all ability to think and yet I still can't sleep. Another yawn, one step close to the rest, the goodbye to the colors and hello to the hollow darkness where thought carries its own weight and no longer weighs down my head.

Wake and bake you ****** flake!
There's nowhere else than here for you,
How dare you think you could get outta this,
No sir, this ain't something you can miss!

Go go go we're on a roll
I'm gonna drop you out the back like fresh cargo
Out the deep blue sea of air that beats and steams
Smacks you flat across those baby cheeks

It'll eat you alive, there's nowhere to hide
Life has a gun in her mouth and runs wild with her dice
She'll roll you in-- a winner or loser,
And can already tell which one you'll be.

This ain't sunshine and rainbows!
This is war
This ain't eden,
This is the floor!
A trillion miles left to heaven,
And hell separated into this long ago
So heft your baggy saddle
And go

That is, only if you want it to be
You can heat your meat with the Furnace of dreams
Exchange your bones into gold,
Let the rain melt to snow
Trust the gun and the run and don't forget to have fun
You'll really get me then, boy I'll have nothing left to say,
Once you turn life onto broil that day

It's good to let your blood pump and boil,
There is no soil for which doesn't toil
And churn and burn and yearn to learn
To experience the uninterrupted turning of the earth

We're on our way, you and I, plummeting
Searching for some incomprehensible summit
Of trust in the ticking hand of life
As she holds our souls in her palm so tight
We can hardly tell we're slipping away
Pumping and jumping and having fine days
To which one of those, bundled,
we will fade away
And life will smile, wide on her face,
Knowing she hit the jackpot of the age
And as we fall to the playing table,
Dust of chance and left to spin
Well, that's when we'll know for sure we win.