And you love meI love you.You are, then, cold coward.Aye; but, beloved,
When I strive to come to you,
Man's opinions, a thousand thickets,
My interwoven existence,

An Attempt At Jealousy

© Craig Raine

So how is life with your new bloke?
Simpler, I bet. Just one stroke
of his quivering oar and the skin
of the Thames goes into a spin,

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings --they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.Mist is when the sky is tired of flight

A Large Number

© Wislawa Szymborska

Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is the way it's always been:
bad with large numbers.
It is still moved by particularity.

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

© William Vaughn Moody

After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade

A Grey Day

© William Vaughn Moody

Grey drizzling mists the moorlands drape,
Rain whitens the dead sea,
From headland dim to sullen cape
Grey sails creep wearily.

American Beauty

© Carolyn Kizer

As you described your mastectomy in calm detail
and bared your chest so I might see
the puckered scar,
"They took a hatchet to your breast!" I said. "What an
Amazon you are."

A Song for Muriel

© Carolyn Kizer

No-one explains me because
There is nothing to explain.
It's all right here
Very clear.
O for my reputations sake
To be difficult and opaque!

About the Little Girl that Beat Her Sister

© Ann Taylor

Go, go, my naughty girl, and kiss
Your little sister dear;
I must not have such things as this,
And noisy quarrels here.

A True Story

© Ann Taylor

The ladies in feathers and jewels were seen,
The chariot was painted all o'er,
The footmen behind were in silver and green,
The horses were prancing before.

Ash-Boughs

a.Not of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,
Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep
Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.
Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled

At The Wedding March

Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Déals tríumph and immortal years.

Andromeda

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes?
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.