Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
F
<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>
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<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> +
