Time poems
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Ode To Modern Art
© David Lehman
Come on in and stay a while
I'll photograph you emerging from the revolving door
like Frank O'Hara dating the muse of modern art
Talking about the big Pollock show is better
Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXXII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
I had stopped to read a handbill of the play,
Caught by the lettering. Thus it was I read,
``Programme of this night's pieces, Saturday
The twentieth of October, `X. Y. Z.,'
Tenth Commandment
© David Lehman
The woman said yes she would go to Australia with him
Unless he heard wrong and she said Argentina
Where they could learn the tango and pursue the widows
Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant to the end.
Wittgenstein's Ladder
© David Lehman
"My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way:
anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as
nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb
up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder
after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus
Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]
© William Wordsworth
A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.
Fifth Amendment
© David Lehman
The fear of perjuring herself turned into a tacit
Admission of her guilt. Yet she had the skill
And the luck to elude her implacable pursuers.
God was everywhere like a faceless guard in a gallery.
Eleventh Hour
© David Lehman
The bloom was off the economic recovery.
"I just want to know one thing," she said.
What was that one thing? He'll never know,
Because at just that moment he heard the sound
Twelfth Night
© David Lehman
His first infidelity was a mistake, but not as big
As her false pregnancy. Later, the boy found outHe was born three months earlier than the date
On his birth certificate, which had turned into
A marriage license in his hands. Had he been trapped
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
A Quick One Before I Go
© David Lehman
There comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
Elegy I
© Henry James Pye
O Happiness! thou wish of every mind,
Whose form, more subtle than the fleeting air,
To The Author Of Glare
© David Lehman
There comes a time when the story turns into twenty
different stories and soon after that he academy of shadows
retreats to the cave of a solitary boy in a thriving
Conditions of Living
© Benjamin Jonson
Living a whole life has three conditions:
absorbing work which demands and brings fulfilment,
a group of friends with whom to exchange minds,
and a full love to be lost in all the time.
My Boating Song
© Horace Smith
Hurrah, boys, or losing or winning,
Feel your stretchers and make the blades bend;
Hard on to it, catch the beginning,
And pull it clean through to the end.
A Little History
© David Lehman
Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
January 1
© David Lehman
Some people confuse inspiration with lightning
not me I know it comes from the lungs and air
you breathe it in you breathe it out it circulates
it's the breath of my being the wind across the face
A Birthday
© Alfred Austin
I love to think, when first I woke
Into this wondrous world,
The leaves were fresh on elm and oak,
And hawthorns laced and pearled.
October 16
© David Lehman
What can you say about the Mets
down three games to none
one run down with six outs to go
Cedeno singles steals second Mora walks
The Cities Of The Plain
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day!
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away!
'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!"
