"unmannerly" poems
"WHAT have I earned for all that work,' I said,
'For all that I have done at my own charge?
The daily spite of this unmannerly town,
Where who has served the most is most defaned,
The reputation of his lifetime lost
Between the night and morning. I might have lived,
And you know well how great the longing has been,
Where every day my footfall Should have lit
In the green shadow of Ferrara wall;
Or climbed among the images of the past --
The unperturbed and courtly images --
Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino
To where the Duchess and her people talked
The stately midnight through until they stood
In their great window looking at the dawn;
I might have had no friend that could not mix
Courtesy and passion into one like those
That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn;
I might have used the one substantial right
My trade allows: chosen my company,
And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.
Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof,
"The drunkards, pilferers of public funds,
All the dishonest crowd I had driven away,
When my luck changed and they dared meet my face,
Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me
Those I had served and some that I had fed;
Yet never have I, now nor any time,
Complained of the people.'
All I could reply
Was: "You, that have not lived in thought but deed,
Can have the purity of a natural force,
But I, whose virtues are the definitions
Of the analytic mind, can neither close
The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.'
And yet, because my heart leaped at her words,
I was abashed, and now they come to mind
After nine years, I sink my head abashed.
1.4k
There was an Old Person of Anerley,
Whose conduct was strange and unmannerly;
He rushed down the Strand
With a pig in each hand,
But returned in the evening to Anerley.
810
Love is for the insane
For men who feel they
Can build fires underwater
For those speaking in tongues
I wish to learn the language
To slowly climb a mountain
To warm myself undersea
To find bliss in our unmannerly discourse
This wise man knows his foolishness
But continues to advise
In hopes of one day
Following his own teachings
Sep 12, 2010
Sep 12, 2010 at 7:24 AM UTC
Tonight, we find ourselves intertwined
In painless design, we of bear flesh
Cast onward, searching
You don't speak like I
You refuse what I say
Yet, we continue forward
We crown it all
Finishing in unmannerly discourse
I'll have to pretend
That never happened as well
Even though you leave me cold
And alone to relish in
All of the gorgeous things
That have come and passed
I still love the color of the world
At 5 in the morning
Sep 29, 2010
Sep 29, 2010 at 6:45 AM UTC
strangers are welcome
but unmannerly conduct
will be met in kind
Feb 15, 2018
Feb 15, 2018 at 10:53 AM UTC