What's the sound a rain drop makes
When it oozes from cracked plaster,
Splashing to wood at my floor
Wetting the paper and last week's

Now mostly finished crossword,
Distracting from latest distraction
Of some unread lines written
To marry ideas too absurd -

Clocks that can run backward, or
Knowing just when and where
In infinity one should stare
To see a shooting star soar

Pen bleeds from neat squares,
But with days left to dry
I could give it another try
Or perhaps use it now to
Sop up a puddle by the chair,

Nor will newest words ever be heard
I should listen to life that matters
These drips of dreams
Are drowned in inky water,
Sodden pages leave thoughts too blurred

1050

As willing lid o’er weary eye
The Evening on the Day leans
Till of all our nature’s House
Remains but Balcony

A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,
As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full sea.

A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness that is their home.

The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
It is not mine. Do not accept it.

Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
Do not accept it. It is not genuine.

A ring of gold with the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.

Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
Cauldron, talking and crackling

All to itself on the top of each
Of nine black Alps.

A disturbance in mirrors,
The sea shattering its grey one ----

Love, love, my season.

A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somwhere, O my soul.

**

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sat alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice, but, link by link,
Went counting all my chains as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand,—why, thus I drink
Of life’s great cup of wonder ! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

1448

How soft a Caterpillar steps—
I fond one on my Hand
From such a velvet world it comes
Such plushes at command
Its soundless travels just arrest
My slow—terrestrial eye
Intent upon its own career
What use has it for me—

My first lines dropped to draw up buckets
Of the sludge flooded to mind
Thus unfettered, to be normal again,
A sin only temporary.
But as time passes,
Thoughts emptied,
I find the well continues to fill
And the water, still black
Quite complementary

Autumn leaves chased after
One another
Spinning pirouettes like
Children at play
Rustling in gentle laughter.
I stifled a cry
To call them aside
Stand clear from harm's way
"Rest with me amid
Short grass and mud"
I thought I should say
Then, these days,
Their days,
Have number, too
So I stood quietly by,
Lived their joy
As they hopped and flew
'Till speeder's wake,
A blind, uncaring rake,
Swept them all away