Collected Poems

WRITTEN IN A COPY OF SWIFT'S POEMS,FOR WAYNE BURNS

Where the angels do nothing But pray and sing. Faugh! We stabbed our forks Into the cold cow pies And shoveled them out. A POEM BY GARNIE BRAXTON "Garnie, I wish I was a seagull." "Yeah, me too. And when you want to get warm All you got to do Is put on your feathers And fly away to the south. I been there once." WRITTEN IN A COPY OF SWIFT'S POEMS, FOR WAYNE BURNS I promised once if I got hold of This book, I'd send it on to you. These are the songs that Roethke told of, The curious music loved by few. I think of lanes in Laracor Where Brinsley MacNamara wrote His lovely elegy, before The Yahoos got the Dean by rote. Only, when Swift-men are all gone Back to their chosen fields by train And the drunk Chairman snores alone, Swift is alive in secret, Wayne: Singing for Stella's happiest day, Charming a charming man, John Gay, And greeting,now their bones are lost, Pope's beautiful, electric ghost. 194 Here are some songs he lived in, kept Secret from almost everyone And laid away, while Stella slept, Before he slept, and died, alone. Gently, listen, the great shade passes, Magnificent, who still can bear, Beyond the range of horses' asses, Nobilities, light, light and air. ECLOGUE AT NASH'S GROVE Cui dono lepidum novum libellum? This is just one more Of them, you can find them all over America, just outside of town, If you walk far enough. It looks virgin, a sigh Of maple and box-elder leaves so long held back and now mourning, And the sun seeming kindly to the nibblings of rats at last, As though by a change of heart. I walked down this path, believing it. No doubt the name belonged to some soft-eyed, sympathetic Son of a bitch banker who stamped a Norwegian Out of his money, this green place. Virgin America, all right. I wonder how much they cost, these cheap Stones blackened in a short century. No need to worry about standing on the dead. The whole place is a grave, a virgin Whose belly is black stone. Not even the granary rats come out here any more. Just me. NEW POEMS 195 ...