Charlotte Mew – Saturday Market

Bury your heart in some deep green hollow

     Or hide it up in a kind old tree;

Better still, give it the swallow

     When she goes over the sea.

 

In Saturday’s Market there’s eggs a ’plenty

     And dead-alive ducks with their legs tied down,

Grey old gaffers and boys of twenty—

     Girls and the women of the town—

Pitchers and sugar-sticks, ribbons and laces,

     Poises and whips and dicky-birds’ seed,

Silver pieces and smiling faces,

     In Saturday Market they’ve all they need.

 

What were you showing in Saturday Market

     That set it grinning from end to end

Girls and gaffers and boys of twenty—?

     Cover it close with your shawl, my friend—

Hasten you home with the laugh behind you,

     Over the down—, out of sight,

Fasten your door, though no one will find you,

     No one will look on a Market night.

 

See, you, the shawl is wet, take out from under

     The red dead thing—. In the white of the moon

On the flags does it stir again? Well, and no wonder!

     Best make an end of it; bury it soon.

If there is blood on the hearth who’ll know it?

     Or blood on the stairs,

When a murder is over and done why show it?

     In Saturday Market nobody cares.

      

Then lie you straight on your bed for a short, short weeping

     And still, for a long, long rest,

There’s never a one in the town so sure of sleeping

     As you, in the house on the down with a hole in your breast.

 

              Think no more of the swallow,

                     Forget, you, the sea,

     Never again remember the deep green hollow

                     Or the top of the kind old tree!

Edgar Allan Poe – Eldorado

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-

This knight so bold-

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow-

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be-

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied-

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

But he grew old-

This knight so bold-

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow-

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be-

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied-

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Charles Bukowski – Cows In Art Class

good weather
is like
good women-
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
sex
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated.
I am drinking tonight in Spangler's Bar
and I remember the cows
I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything
in here. I am drinking in Spangler's Bar
wondering which to love and which
to hate, but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only
myself-
they stand outside me
like an orange dropped from the table
and rolling away; it's what I've got to
decide:
kill myself or
love myself?
which is the treason?
where's the information
coming from?
books...like broken glass:
I wouldn't wipe my ass with 'em
yet, it's getting
darker, see?
(we drink here and speak to
each other and
seem knowing.)
buy the cow with the biggest
tits
buy the cow with the biggest
rump.
present arms.
the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar
like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand
stops it, lifts it,
golden piss of dull temptation,
I drink and
stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready
to stroke up
the green grass straw eye
sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot
fast
to give me the guts and the love to
go
on.

Emily Dickinson – I dwell in Possibility – (Poem 466)

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
>

Anne Spencer – 1975

Turn an earth clod

Peel a shaley rock

In fondness molest a curly worm

Whose familiar is everywhere

Kneel

And the curly worm sentient now

Will light the word that tells the poet what a poem is.