Poetry

The notion that the carriage wheels clattering through Paris
remind him of the drums from the islands in his father’s tales:
clickclack sputterwhir—he could make a song of it, dance

All men are beggars, white or black;
some worship gold, some peddle brass.
My only house is on my back.

Can’t say he walked the walk.
Talked it, but everybody
did that, everybody

Summer ended powerfully—as if God
had snapped a branch from his mightiest oak
and thundered: “Enough.” The sky dimmed.

In search of pasture, a place to lie down in.
Back to the mother breast
or a dream of return

Don’t bother a bit, you are only a dream you are having,
And if when you wake your symptoms are not relieved,
That is only because you harbor a morbid craving
For belief in the old delusion in which you have always believed.

Among the pines we ran and called
In joy and innocence, and still
Our voices doubled in the high
Green groining our simplicity.

The hunchback on the corner, with gum and shoelaces,
Has his own wisdom and pleasures, and may not be lured
To divulge them to you, for he has merely endured
Your appeal for his sympathy and your kind purchases;