The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry Read online

  who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

  and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin metrasol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia . . .

  who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

  to recreate the syntax and poor measure of human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

  the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

  and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

  with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

  Allen Ginsberg, 1955

  Next | TOC> For My People> Wright J

  Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry,

  Ohio

  In the Shreve High football stadium,

  I think of Polacks nursing long beers in

  Tiltonsville,

  And gray faces of Negroes in the blast

  furnace at Benwood,

  And the ruptured night watchman of

  Wheeling Steel,

  Dreaming of heroes.

  All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.

  Their women cluck like starved pullets,

  Dying for love.

  Therefore,

  Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

  At the beginning of October,

  And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

  James Wright, 1962

  Next | TOC> For My People> Sandburg

  Limited

  I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.

  Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.

  All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.

  I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "Omaha."

  Carl Sandburg, 1916

  Next | TOC> For My People> Sandburg

  Chicago

  Hog Butcher for the World,

  Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

  Player with Railroads and the Nation's

  Freight Handler;

  Stormy, husky, brawling,

  City of the Big Shoulders:

  They tell me you are wicked and I believe them,

  for I have seen your painted women under

  the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

  And they tell me you are crooked and I answer:

  Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill

  and go free to kill again.

  And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is:

  On the faces of women and children I have

  seen the marks of wanton hunger.

  And having answered so I turn once more to

  those who sneer at this my city, and I

  give them back the sneer and say to them:

  Come and show me another city with lifted

  head singing so proud to be alive and

  coarse and strong and cunning.

  Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling

  job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set

  vivid against the little soft cities;

  Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action,

  cunning as a savage pitted against the

  wilderness,

  Bareheaded,

  Shoveling,

  Wrecking,

  Planning,

  Building, breaking, rebuilding,

  Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth,

  laughing with white teeth,

  Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing

  as a young man laughs,

  Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs

  who has never lost a battle,

  Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is

  the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of

  the people,

  Laughing!

  Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter

  of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be

  Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

  Player with Railroads and Freight Handler

  to the Nation.

  Carl Sandburg, 1916

  Next | TOC> For My People> Sandburg

  Jazz Fantasia

  Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,

  sob on the long cool winding saxophones.

  Go to it, O jazzmen.

  Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-husha-hush with the slippery sandpaper.

  Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops, moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns, tin cans. Make two people fight on the top of a stairway and scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs.

  Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars . . . a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen.

  Carl Sandburg, 1920

  Next | TOC> For My People> Williams W

  The Dance

  In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,

  the dancers go round, they go round and

  around, the squeal and the blare and the

  tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles

  tipping their bellies (round as the thick-

  sided glasses whose wash they impound)

  their hips and their bellies off balance

  to turn them. Kicking and rolling about

  the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those

  shanks must be sound to bear up under such

  rollicking measures, prance as they dance

  in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.

  William Carlos Williams, 1944

  Next | TOC> For My People> Roethke

  Night Journey

  Now as the train bears west,

  Its rhythm rocks the earth,

  And from my Pullman berth

  I stare into the night

  While others take their rest.

  Bridges of iron lace,

  A suddenness of trees,

  A lap of mountain mist

  All cross my line of sight,

  Then a bleak wasted place,

  And a lake below my knees.

  Full on my neck I feel

  The straining at a curve;

  My muscles move with steel,

  I wake in every nerve.

  I watch a beacon swing

  From dark to blazing bright;

  We thunder through ravines

  And gullies washed with light.

  Beyond the mountain pass

  Mist deepens on the pane;

  We rush into a rain

  That rattles double glass.

  Wheels shake the roadbed stone,

  The pistons jerk and shove,

  I stay up half the night

  To see the land I love.

  Theodore Roethke, 1940

  Next | TOC> For My People> Jeffers

  New Mexican Mountain

 
; I watch the Indians dancing to help the young

  corn at Taos pueblo. The old men squat in

  a ring

  And make the song, the young women with

  fat bare arms, and a few shame-faced

  young men, shuffle the dance.

  The lean-muscled young men are naked to

  the narrow loins, their breasts and backs

  daubed with white clay,

  Two eagle-feathers plume the black heads.

  They dance with reluctance, they are

  growing civilized; the old men persuade

  them.

  Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world

  has not changed; the beating heart, the

  simplest of rhythms,

  It thinks the world has not changed at all; it is

  only a dreamer, a brainless heart, the

  drum has no eyes.

  These tourists have eyes, the hundred watching

  the dance, white Americans, hungrily too,

  with reverence, not laughter;

  Pilgrims from civilization, anxiously seeking

  beauty, religion, poetry; pilgrims from

  the vacuum.

  People from cities, anxious to be human again.

  Poor show how they suck you empty! The

  Indians are emptied,

  And certainly there was never religion enough,

  nor beauty nor poetry here . . . to fill

  Americans.

  Only the drum is confident, it thinks the world

  has not changed. Apparently only myself and

  the strong

  Tribal drum, and the rockhead of Taos mountain,

  remember that civilization is a transient

  sickness.

  Robinson Jeffers, 1932

  Next | TOC> For My People> Snyder

  Milton by Firelight

  "O Hell, what do mine eyes

  with grief behold?"

  Working with an old

  Singlejack miner, who can sense

  The vein and cleavage

  In the very guts of rock, can

  Blast granite, build

  Switchbacks that last for years

  Under the beat of snow, thaw, mule-hooves.

  What use, Milton, a silly story

  Of our lost general parents,

  eaters of fruit?

  The Indian, the chainsaw boy,

  And a string of six mules

  Came riding down to camp

  Hungry for tomatoes and green apples.

  Sleeping in saddle-blankets

  Under a bright night-sky

  Han River slantwise by morning.

  Jays squall

  Coffee boils

  In ten thousand years the Sierras

  Will be dry and dead, home of the scorpion.

  Ice-scratched slabs and bent trees.

  No paradise, no fall,

  Only the weathering land

  The wheeling sky,

  Man, with his Satan

  Scouring the chaos of the mind.

  Oh Hell!

  Fire down

  Too dark to read, miles from a road

  The bell-mare clangs in the meadow

  That packed dirt for a fill-in

  Scrambling through loose rocks

  On an old trail

  All of a summer's day.

  Gary Snyder, 1966

  Next | TOC> For My People> Magee

  High Flight

  Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

  And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

  Sunward I've climbed, and joined the

  tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared

  and swung

  High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

  I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

  My eager craft through footless halls of air.

  Up, up the long delirious, burning blue

  I've topped the wind-swept heights with

  easy grace,

  Where never lark, nor even eagle flew—

  And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

  The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

  John Gillespie Magee, 1941

  Next | TOC> The Highwayman> Sandburg

  Jack

  Jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.

  He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten

  hours a day, and his hands were tougher

  than sole leather.

  He married a tough woman and they had eight

  children and the woman died and the children

  grew up and went away and wrote the old

  man every two years.

  He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in

  the sun telling reminiscences to other old

  men whose women were dead and children

  scattered.

  There was joy on his face when he died as there

  was joy on his face when he lived—he was a

  swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.

  Carl Sandburg, 1916

  Next | TOC> The Highwayman> Chaucer

  The Canterbury Tales

  GENERAL PROLOGUE

  Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

  And bathed every veyne in swich licour

  Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

  Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

  Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

  The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

  Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

  And smale foweles maken melodye,

  That slepen al the nyght with open ye

  (So priketh hem nature in hir corages),

  Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

  And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

  To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

  And specially from every shires ende

  Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,

  The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

  That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

  When April with its showers sweet

  The drought of March hath pierced unto the root

  And bathed every vein in such liquor

  Of which engendered is the flower;

  When Zephyr too hath with his own sweet breath

  Inspired in every farm and heath

  The tender crops, and the young sun

  Hath in the Ram his half course run,

  And small birds are making melody

  That slept all night with open eye

  (So does nature prick their courage up),

  Folks then long to go on pilgrimages,

  And palmers to seek strange shores,

  To distant shrines, known in sundry lands;

  And specially from every shire's end

  Of England, to Canterbury they wend,

  The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,

  Who helped them once when they were weak.

  THE WIFE OF BATH

  A good wife there was from Bath.

  Who suffered a slight deafness, which was sad.

  At weaving, though, she had a skill

  Surpassing those in Ypres and in Ghent.

  Nor in all the parish was there a wife

  Who to the Offering ahead of her dared go

  And if one did, her certain wrath was enough

  To cancel any thought of charity.

  Her scarves were of the finest weave around,

  I dare say they weighed a full ten pound,

  That on a Sunday were upon her head.

  Her stockings were fine scarlet red,

  And shoes, well laced, were soft and new.

  Bold was her face, and fair, and red of hue.

  She
was a worthy woman all her life:

  Of husbands married in the church she owned

  to five,

  Not counting the companions of her youth—

  But that's another story.

  Three times had she been to Jerusalem

  And passed over many a strange stream.

  To Rome she'd gone, and to Boulogne,

  To Spain, to Santiago, and Cologne.

  And she knew much of wandering on the way.

  Gap-toothed she was, to tell the truth.

  Upon an ambler easily she sat,

  Well wimpled, aye, and on her head a hat

  Broad as is a buckler or a jouster's shield;

  With a great rug wrapped round her large hips,

  And on her feet a pair of sharp spurs.

  Ready to laugh with friends, and gossip, too.

  She understood the remedies of love,

  And knew its ancient dance.

  THE MONK

  A Monk there was, fair masterly,

  An overseer who loved venery,

  A manly man, to be an abbot able.

  With many a fine horse in his own stable

  And when he rode, men could his bridle hear

  Jingling in the whistling wind as clear

  And, aye, as loud as the chapel bell

  Where the Monk was lord and keeper of the cell.

  The rule of St. Maurus or St. Benedict—

  Because it was old and somewhat strict

  This Monk let, with other old things, pass

  Following instead the new world ways.

  He cared for that text not a plucked hen

  Which said that hunters could not be holy men,

  Or that a monk without rules

  Is like a fish without water—

  Or one might say, a monk out of his cloister.

  But for all this text he cared not an oyster;

  As I said, his opinions were strong.

  Why should he study and make himself sore

  Over a book in a cloister, always to pour

  Or work with his hands, and labor

  As St. Augustine bid? How would the world be

  served?

  Let Augustine have his sweaty way preserved!

  Instead, he would rather be a hunter bright:

  Greyhounds he had, swift as birds in flight;