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From Off the Road Database

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<div class="poem"> <p>I'm makin' a road <br /> For the rich to sweep over <br /> In their big cars <br /> And leave me standin' here. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Hey, Buddy, look! <br /> I'm makin' a road! </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Hey, Buddy! <br /> Look at me! </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>The earth may glide diaphanous to death;<br /> But if I lift my arms it is to bend<br /> To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing<br /> The press of troubled hands, too alternate<br /> With steel and soil to hold you endlessly.<br /> I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame<br /> You found in final chains, no captive then—<br /> Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes;<br /> White, through white cities passed on to assume<br /> That world which comes to each of us alone. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>O, I have known metallic paradises<br /> Where cuckoos clucked to finches<br /> Above the deft catastrophes of drums.<br /> While titters hailed the groans of death<br /> Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen <br /> The incunabula of the divine grotesque.<br /> This music has a reassuring way. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 4em;">There is the world dimensional for </span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 1em;">those untwisted by the love of things </span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 1em;">irreconcilable . . . </span> </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers<br /> The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,<br /> The mounted, yielding cities of the air!<br /> That saddled sky that shook down vertical<br /> Repeated play of fire—no hypogeum<br /> Of wave or rock was good against one hour.<br /> We did not ask for that, but have survived,<br /> And will persist to speak again before<br /> All stubble streets that have not curved<br /> To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm<br /> That lowers down the arc of Helen’s brow<br /> To saturate with blessing and dismay. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>And yet, suppose some evening I forgot<br /> The fare and transfer, yet got by that way<br /> Without recall,— lost yet poised in traffic.<br /> Then I might find your eyes across an aisle,<br /> Still flickering with those prefigurations—<br /> Prodigal, yet uncontested now,<br /> Half-riant before the jerky window frame. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>The siren of the springs of guilty song—<br /> Let us take her on the incandescent wax<br /> Striated with nuances, nervosities<br /> That we are heir to: she is still so young,<br /> We cannot frown upon her as she smiles,<br /> Dipping here in this cultivated storm<br /> Among slim skaters of the gardened skies. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">III</span> </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>A thousand light shrugs balance us<br /> Through snarling hails of melody.<br /> White shadows slip across the floor<br /> Splayed like cards from a loose hand;<br /> Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters<br /> Until somewhere a rooster banters. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Capped arbiter of beauty in this street<br /> That narrows darkly into motor dawn,—<br /> You, here beside me, delicate ambassador<br /> Of intricate slain numbers that arise<br /> In whispers, naked of steel;<br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 11em;"> religious gunman!</span><br /> Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon,<br /> And in other ways than as the wind settles<br /> On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city:<br /> Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity.<br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 17em;"> We even,</span><br /> Who drove speediest destruction<br /> In corymbulous formations of mechanics,—<br /> Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice<br /> Plangent over meadows, and looked down<br /> On rifts of torn and empty houses<br /> Like old women with teeth unjubilant<br /> That waited faintly, briefly and in vain: </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Brazen hypnotics glitter here;<br /> Glee shifts from foot to foot,<br /> Magnetic to their tremolo.<br /> This crashing opera bouffe,<br /> Blest excursion! this ricochet<br /> From roof to roof—<br /> Know, Olympians, we are breathless<br /> While nigger cupids scour the stars! </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"><i>“And so we may arrive by Talmud skill</i></span><i><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">And profane Greek to raise the building up</span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Of Helen’s house against the Ismaelite,</span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">King of Thogarma, and his habergeons</span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force</span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cuttim ;</span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Which Rabb David Kimchi, Onkelos,</span><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome.”</span></i><br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">—THE ALCHEMIST</span> </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">I</span> </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>A goose, tobacco and cologne—<br /> Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of <br /> <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">heaven,</span><br /> The lavish heart shall always have to leaven<br /> And spread with bells and voices, and atone<br /> The abating shadows of our conscript dust. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Reflective conversion of all things<br /> At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread<br /> The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread<br /> Impinging on the throat and sides . . .<br /> Inevitable, the body of the world<br /> Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus<br /> That winks above it, bluet in your breasts. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane,<br /> Bent axle of devotion along companion ways<br /> That beat, continuous, to hourless days—<br /> One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>The mind is brushed by sparrow wings;<br /> Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd<br /> The margins of the day, accent the curbs,<br /> Convoying divers dawns on every corner<br /> To druggist, barber and tobacconist,<br /> Until the graduate opacities of evening<br /> Take them away as suddenly to somewhere<br /> Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool. </p> </div>  +
<div class="poem"> <p>Greet naïvely—yet intrepidly<br /> New soothings, new amazements<br /> That cornets introduce at every turn—<br /> And you may fall downstairs with me<br /> With perfect grace and equanimity.<br /> Or, plaintively scud past shores<br /> Where, by strange harmonic laws<br /> All relatives, serene and cool,<br /> Sit rocked in patent armchairs. </p> </div>  +