To feel blank,
Tasting a bland substance
Staring into nothingness
No room to ponder
Suppressing limits
Failing emotion and
Breathing follows up to a
Slow apathetic pace--
How I've grown fatigued of it.

Emotionally
Constipated because I
Don't give any *****

Lost swirled in the lotus of stinking nightfall,
Gliding through clouds of memory lost and memory found,
With
Jugular arched bare smooth desperate for sunray.
Impassioned strings of rhapsodies intertwine my fingers for
A raptured fractured moment before
Shattering into one thousand shrieks and shards tiptoeing between apathetic speckles on the linoleum tiles, laid so tightly in their ethered embrace, and
The ache of the ephemeral eternity of one sunset streaked like wildfire rests in the sorrow of our souls.

A sea of foliage girds our garden round,
But not a sea of dull unvaried green,
Sharp contrasts of all colors here are seen;
The light-green graceful tamarinds abound
Amid the mango clumps of green profound,
And palms arise, like pillars gray, between;
And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean,
Red—red, and startling like a trumpet's sound.
But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges
Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes
Into a cup of silver. One might swoon
Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
On a primeval Eden, in amaze.

A waif on this earth,
Sick, ugly and small,
Contemned from my birth
And rejected by all,
From my lips broke a cry,
Such as anguish may wring,
Sing, — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


By Wealth's coach besmeared
With dirt in a shower,
Insulted and jeered
By the minions of power,
Where — oh where shall I fly?
Who comfort will bring?
Sing, — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


Life struck me with fright —
Full of chances and pain,
So I hugged with delight
The drudge's hard chain;
One must eat, — yet I die,
Like a bird with clipped wing,
Sing — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


Love cheered for a while
My morn with his ray,
But like a ripple or smile
My youth passed away.
Now near Beauty I sigh,
But fled is the spring!
Sing — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


All men have a task,
And to sing is my lot —
No meed from men I ask
But one kindly thought.
My vocation is high —
'Mid the glasses that ring,
Still — still comes that reply,
Chant poor little thing.

Bells in the town alight with spring
converse, with a concordance of new airs
make clear the fresh and ancient sound they sing.

People emerge from winter to hear them ring,
children glitter with mischief and the blind man hears
bells in the town alight with spring.

Even he on his eyes feels the caressing
finger of Persephone, and her voice escaped from tears
make clear the fresh and ancient sound they sing.

Bird feels the enchantment of his wing
and in ten fine notes dispels twenty cares.
Bells in the town alight with spring

warble the praise of Time, for he can bring
this season: chimes the merry heaven bears
make clear the fresh and ancient sound they sing.

All evil men intent on evil thing
falter, for in their cold unready ears
bells in the town alight with spring
make clear the fresh and ancient sound they sing.

Can I explain this to you? Your eyes
are entrances the mouths of caves
I issue from wonderful interiors
upon a blessed sea and a fine day,
from inside these caves I look and dream.

Your hair explicable as a waterfall
in some black liquid cooled by legend
fell across my thought in a moment
became a garment I am naked without
lines drawn across through morning and evening.

And in your body each minute I died
moving your thigh could disinter me
from a grave in a distant city:
your ******* deserted by cloth, clothed in twilight
filled me with tears, sweet cups of flesh.

Yes, to touch ******* made us worlds
stars, waters, promontories, chaos
swooning in elements without form or time
come down through long seas among sea marvels
embracing like survivors in our islands.

This I think happened to us together
though now no shadow of it flickers in your hands
your eyes look down on ordinary streets
If I talk to you I might be a bird
with a message, a dead man, a photograph.

Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to ****.

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears


And look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being ******, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.


The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches

The willow leaves fallen,
the spring gone dry,
    rocks here and there.