Short Poems

If I've forsaken
the world of sorrows
there must be proof I despise it—
shroud yourself for me,
autumn night moon.

Put down your pen, said love, and start again,
The pen has done for love all that the pen can do,
The pen has done all things but live, yet life is love.
Now I demand of you confirming deeds,
Demand the notes so long accrued—their pay in full,
The notes of prophet voices and poet rhymes and echoing formulas,
The notes of sinais, meccas, sepulchers and crosses,
In lieu of dead postponements long decreed.

To ice all crimson red has frozen
The rime upon the buckwheat stems.

What's your name?
Pudden Tame.
What's your other?
Bread and Butter.
Where do you live?
In a sieve.
What's your number?

C YRIL C ONNOLLY
Behaves rather fonnily:
Whether folks are at peace or fighting,
He complains that it keeps him from writing.

Born a million years ago you stay here a million years . . . watching the women come and live and be laid away . . . you and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely.
So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star.
I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains.

The Mexicans will flay the Spaniards
And throw their skins into the tanyards;
The tawny tribes around will wrench
Their beards and whiskers off the French,
And, after a good hearty scourging,
Devote them to the Blessed Virgin.

Springtime—and the green willow catkins
are like my love-thoughts, floating in the wind.
At home I have wine, flavored sweet with sugar:
come and have a taste, and you will understand.

The old man of the mountains loves the mountains:
in the mountains he has built his thatched hut.
At night, there's a storm; the snow is so thick
it snaps branches of bamboo outside the window.

In the sixth month, deep in the mountains,
the coolness of pine breezes touches my clothes.
I imagine the people far away in the city:
their faces are being struck by fiery dust!