Anne Spencer – White Things

Most things are colorful things-

-the sky, earth, and sea.

Black men are most men;

but the white are free!

White things are rare things;

so rare, so rare

They stole from out a silvered

world--somewhere.

Finding earth-plains fair plains,

save greenly grassed,

They strewed white feathers of

cowardice, as they passed;

The golden stars with lances fine,

The hills all red and darkened pine,

They blanched with their want of power;

And turned the blood in a ruby rose

To a poor white poppy-flower.

Charles Bukowski – Marina

majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet-
out the door
picking a flower, ha!
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Aunt Helen

Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,

And lived in a small house near a fashionable square

Cared for by servants to the number of four.

Now when she died there was silence in heaven

And silence at her end of the street.

The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet–

He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.

The dogs were handsomely provided for,

But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.

The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,

And the footman sat upon the dining-table

Holding the second housemaid on his knees–

Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived.

Wilfred Owen – The Unreturning

Suddenly night crushed out the day and hurled
Her remnants over cloud-peaks, thunder-walled.
Then fell a stillness such as harks appalled
When far-gone dead return upon the world.


There watched I for the Dead; but no ghost woke.
Each one whom Life exiled I named and called.
But they were all too far, or dumbed, or thralled,
And never one fared back to me or spoke.


Then peered the indefinite unshapen dawn
With vacant gloaming, sad as half-lit minds,
The weak-limned hour when sick men's sighs are drained.
And while I wondered on their being withdrawn,
Gagged by the smothering Wing which none unbinds,
I dreaded even a heaven with doors so chained.

Charlotte Mew – Monsieur Qui Passe

A purple blot against the dead white door

In my friend's rooms, bathed in their vile pink light,

I had not noticed her before

She snatched my eyes and threw them back to me:

She did not speak till we came out into the night,

Paused at this bench beside the klosk on the quay.

God knows precisely what she said--

I left to her the twisted skein,

Though here and there I caught a thread,--

Something, at first, about "the lamps along the Seine,

And Paris, with that witching card of Spring

Kept up her sleeve,--why you could see

The trick done on these freezing winter nights!

While half the kisses of the Quay--

Youth, hope,-the whole enchanted string

Of dreams hung on the Seine's long line of lights."

Then suddenly she stripped, the very skin

Came off her soul,-a mere girl clings

Longer to some last rag, however thin,

When she has shown you-well-all sorts of things:

"If it were daylight-oh! one keeps one's head--

But fourteen years!--No one has ever guessed--

The whole thing starts when one gets to bed--

Death?-If the dead would tell us they had rest!

But your eyes held it as I stood there by the door--

One speaks to Christ-one tries to catch His garment's hem--

One hardly says as much to Him--no more:

It was not you, it was your eyes--I spoke to them."

She stopped like a shot bird that flutters still,

And drops, and tries to run again, and swerves.

The tale should end in some walled house upon a hill.

My eyes, at least, won't play such havoc there,--

Or hers--But she had hair!--blood dipped in gold;

And there she left me throwing back the first odd stare.

Some sort of beauty once, but turning yellow, getting old.

Pouah! These women and their nerves!

God! but the night is cold!