The Song of Wandering AengusI went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)

I Am VerticalBut I would rather be horizontal.I am not a tree with my root in the soilSucking up minerals and motherly loveSo that each March I may gleam into leaf,Nor am I the beauty of a garden bedAttracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,Unknowing I must soon unpetal.Compared with me, a tree is immortalAnd a flower-head not tall, but more startling,And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.Sometimes I think that when I am sleepingI must most perfectly resemble them--Thoughts gone dim.It is more natural to me, lying down.Then the sky and I are in open conversation,And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me."I Am Vertical", 28 March 1961

No lo creo todavía estás llegando a mi lado y la noche es un puñado de estrellas y de alegría palpo gusto escucho y veo tu rostro tu paso largo tus manos y sin embargo todavía no lo creo tu regreso tiene tanto que ver contigo y conmigo que por cábala lo digo y por las dudas lo canto nadie nunca te reemplaza y las cosas más triviales se vuelven fundamentales porque estás llegando a casa sin embargo todavía dudo de esta buena suerte porque el cielo de tenerte me parece fantasía pero venís y es seguro y venís con tu mirada y por eso tu llegada hace mágico el futuro y aunque no siempre he entendido mis culpa y mis fracasos en cambio sé que en tus brazos el mundo tiene sentido y si beso la osadía y el misterio de tus labios no habrá dudas ni resabios te querré más todavía.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe."Beware the Jabberwock, my son The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought—So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back."And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy.'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.

You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don't even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and un-suspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that were once pulsing with the life of the gods-- all rise within me to mean you, who forever elude me. You, Beloved, who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing. An open window in a country house-- , and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,-- you had just walked down them and vanished. And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Places We LovePlaces we love exist only through us,Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,Places we love we can never leave,Places we love together, together, together,And is this room really a room, or an embrace,And what is beneath the window: a street or years?And the window is only the imprint left byThe first rain we understood, returning endlessly,And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the nightYour son began to move in your sleeping blood,A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,The night you were frightened by your own light,And this door leads into any afternoonWhich outlives it, forever peopledWith your casual movements, as you stepped,Like fire into copper, into my only memory;When you go, space closes over like water behind you,Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,Space is only time visible in a different way,Places we love we can never leave.

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enoughto make every moment holy.I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enoughjust to lie before you like a thing,shrewd and secretive.I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,as it goes toward action;and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,when something is coming near,I want to be with those who know secret thingsor else alone.I want to be a mirror for your whole body,and I never want to be blind, or to be too oldto hold up your heavy and swaying picture.I want to unfold.I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,because where I am folded, there I am a lie.and I want my grasp of things to betrue before you. I want to describe myselflike a painting that I looked atclosely for a long time,like a saying that I finally understood,like the pitcher I use every day,like the face of my mother,like a shipthat carried methrough the wildest storm of all.

لكنني أريدهم أن يعلموا بأنني مازلت حياً، أنني أمتلك معلفاً ذهبياً ما بينَ شفتيّ، أنني ما زلت الرفيقَ الصغيرَ للريحِ الغربية، أننّي أنا الظلُ الهائلُ لدموعي.

This weekin live currentevents: your eyes.All power can bedangerous:Director alternating,you, socket to me.Plugged in and the gridis humming,this electricity,molecule-deep desire:particular friction, a chargestrong enough to stopa heartor start itagain; volt, re-volt--I shudder, I stutter, I startto life. I've got my ionyou, copper-top,so watch how youconduct yourself.Here's today'snewsflash: a battery of rollingblackouts in California, sudden,like lightning kisses:sudden, whitehotdarkness and you'rehere, fumbling forthat small switchwith an urgent surgestrong enough to killlesser machines.Static makes hair raise,makes things cling,makes things rise likea gathering stormcharging outsideour darkened houseand here I am:tempest, pouring outmouthfullsof tsunami on the ground,I've got that rain-soaked kite,that drenched key.You know what it's for,circuit-breaker, you knowhow to kiss until it's hertz.

When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.

Little CinderGirl, they can't understand you.You rise from the as-heap in a blazeand only then do they recognize you as their one true love.While you pray beneath your mother's tree you carrve a phoenix into your palmwth aa hazel twig and coal;every night she devours more of you.You used to believe in angels.Now you believe in the makeover;if you can't get the grime off your faceand your foot into a size six heelwho will ever bother to notice you?The kettle and the broom sear in your grasp,snap into fragments. The turtledoves sing,"There's blood within the shoe."You deserve the palace, you think, as you signalthe pigeons to attack, approve the barrel filled with red-hot nails.Its great hearth beckons, and the prince's flagrises crimson in the angry sun.He will love you for the heat you generate,for the flames you ignite around you,though he encase your tiny feet in glassto keep them from scorching the ground.

A Letter to Andre Breton, Originally Composed on a Leaf of Lettuce With an Ink-dippedCarrotOn my bed, my green comforterdraped over my knees like a lumpy turtle,I think about the Berlin Wall of years that separates us.In my own life, the years are beginning to stack uplike a Guinness World Record’s pile of pancakes,yet I’m still searching for some kind of syrup to believe in.In the shadows of my pink sheet, I see your face, Desnos’ face,and two clock faces staring at each other. I see a gaping woundthat ebbs rose petals, while a sweaty armpitholds an orchestra. Beethoven, maybe.A lover sings a capella, with the frothiness of a cappuccino.Starbucks, maybe. There’s an hourglass, too, and beneath the sandslie untapped oil reserves. I see Dali’s mustache,Magritte’s pipe, and bowling shoes, which leaves the question--If you could time travel through a trumpet, would you findtoday and tomorrow too loud?

Plût au ciel que le lecteur, enhardi et devenu momentanément féroce comme ce qu’il lit, trouve, sans se désorienter, son chemin abrupt et sauvage, à travers les marécages désolés de ces pages sombres et pleines de poison ; car, à moins qu'il n’apporte dans sa lecture une logique rigoureuse et une tension d’esprit égale au moins à sa défiance, les émanations mortelles de ce livre imbiberont son âme comme l’eau le sucre. Il n’est pas bon que tout le monde lise les pages qui vont suivre ; quelques-uns seuls savoureront ce fruit amer sans danger. Par conséquent, âme timide, avant de pénétrer plus loin dans de pareilles landes inexplorées, dirige tes talons en arrière et non en avant. Écoute bien ce que je te dis : dirige tes talons en arrière et non en avant.

When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me.