Short Poems

The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,

On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou satst, when all around thee smil'd;
So live, that, sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile, when all around thee weep.

The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.

I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child's dream of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child's dream of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.

Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn
When a bird flies
And the sky changes to a fresher colour.

Speak, speak, Beloved.
Say little things
For my ears to catch
And run with them to my heart.

The King's most humble servant, I
Can scarcely spare a minute;
But I'll be wi' you by an' bye,
Or else the deil 's be in it.

I'd mend them but there's not half a sheet of paper in my bag.
All my windows torn, I don't have to bother opening them.
Wind comes to my bedside, blows out the lamp for me,
rain from beyond the eaves wets down my inkstone.

Autumn, when even
without it
all things seem mournful,
the sound of the stag's cry
brings tears welling up

“I have seven measures of white thread
I spun in the summer.
I'll make a jacket from it for you.
Come, leave your wife!”
“You talk silly, that's what you do.
Your hemp clothes—you aren't my wife,
you can't make the sleeves well, the shoulders easy to wear,
the collar comfortable, or can you?”

Ifreeze, I freeze, and nothing dwels
In me but Snow, and ysicles.
For pitties sake give your advice,
To melt this snow, and thaw this ice;
I'le drink down Flames, but if so be
Nothing but love can supple me;
I'le rather keepe this frost, and snow,
Then to be thaw'd, or heated so.