Short Poems

The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the little child.
The little child is unaware
It has been eaten by the bear.

One day I observed a grey hair in my head;
I plucked it right out, when it thus to me said:
'You may smile, if you wish, at your treatment of me,
But a score of my friends soon will make a mockery of you.'

IF of us two might only one be glad,
Pain I’d pursue, and struggle to be sad.
If of us two one only might be great,
Safely obscure I’d triumph in my fate.
O Soul more dear than mine! if of us two
One only might love God, it should be you.

People were bathing and posturing themselves on the beach,
and all was dreary, great robot limbs, robot breasts,
robot voices, robot even the gay umbrellas.

But a woman, shy and alone, was washing herself under a tap and the glimmer of the presence of the gods was like
lilies, and like water-lilies.

I GIVE you Life, O child, a garden fair;
I give you Love, a rose that blossoms there--
I give a day to pluck it and to wear!

I give you Death, O child--a boon more great--
That, when your Rose has withered and 'tis late,
You may pass out and, smiling, close the gate!

And then the sound of marching armies 'woke
Amid the branches of the soldier oak,
And tempests ceased their warring cry, and dumb
The lashing storms that muttered, overcome,
Choked by the heralding of battle smoke,
When these gnarled branches beat their martial drum.

Sometimes you're cornered

by a square.

I feel the caress of my own fingers
on my own neck as I place my collar
and think pityingly
of the kind women I have known.

Lovely he looks, 'tis true, with the light of his torch now extinguished;
But remember that death is not aesthetic, my friends!

Stories of passion make sweet dust,
Calm water, grasses unconcerned.
At sunset, when birds cry in the wind,
Petals are falling like a girl s robe long ago.