Collected Poems

CONTENTS

CONTENTS The Quest : 3 Sitting in a Small Screenhouse on a Summer Morning : 4 From THE GREEN WALL A Fit against the Country : 7 The Seasonless : 8 The Horse : 9 The Fishermen : 10 A Girl in a Window : 12 On the Skeleton of a Hound : 13 Three Steps to the Graveyard : 14 Father : 15 Elegy in a Firelit Room : 16 Arrangements with Earth for Three Dead Friends : 17 Lament for My Brother on a Hayrake : 18 She Hid in the Trees from the Nurses : 18 To a Defeated Savior : 20 To a Troubled Friend : 21 Poem for Kathleen Ferrier : 21 A Song for the Middle of the Night : 22 A Presentation of Two Birds to My Son : 23 To a Hostess Saying Good Night : 25 A Poem about George Doty in the Death House : 25 To a Fugitive : 27 Eleutheria : 27 Autumnal : 28 The Shadow and the Real : 29 Witches Waken the Natural World in Spring : 29 Morning Hymn to a Dark Girl : 30 The Quail : 31 CONTENTS Vll Sappho : 33 A Gesture by a Lady with an Assumed Name : 35 Mutterings over the Crib of a Deaf Child : 36 The Angel : 37 The Assignation : 39 Come Forth : 42 Erinna to Sappho :43 A Little Girl on Her Way to School : 45 My Grandmother's Ghost : 46 SAINT JUDAS I. Lunar Changes Complaint : 49 Paul : 49 An Offering for Mr. Bluehart : 50 Old Man Drunk : 51 Sparrows in a Hillside Drift : 52 A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard's Shack : 53 At Thomas Hardy's Birthplace, 1953 : 54 Evening : 55 Dog in a Cornfield : 57 On Minding One's Own Business : 58 The Morality of Poetry : 60 At the Slackening of the Tide : 62 All the Beautiful Are Blameless : 63 In a Viennese Cemetery : 64 A Prayer in My Sickness : 65 The Cold Divinities : 65 The Revelation : 67 AWinter Day in Ohio : 68 II. A Sequence of Love Poems A Breath of Air : 69 In Shame and Humiliation : 69 The Accusation : 71 The Ghost : 72 Vlll The Alarm : 74 A Girl Walking into a Shadow : 75 But Only Mine : 76 III. The Part Nearest Home What the Earth Asked Me : 77 The Refusal : 78 American Twilights, 1957 : 79 Devotions : 81 At the Executed Murderer's Grave : 82 Saint Judas : 84 SOME TRANSLATIONS Ten Short Poems (from the Spanish of Juan Ramc5n Jimenez) : 89 1. Rose of the Sea, from Diario de Poeta y Mar 2. From Eternidades 3. From Eternidades 4. Rosebushes, from Diario de Poeta y Mar 5. Dreaming, from Diario de Poeta y Mar 6. From Diario de Poeta y Mar 7. On the City Ramparts of Cldiz, from Diario dePoeta y Mar 8. From Diario de Poeta y Mar 9. Moguer, from Diario de Poeta y Mar 10. Life, from Eternidades I Want to Sleep (from the Spanish of Jorge Guille'n) : 92 Nature Alive (Guille'n) : 94 Love Song to a Morning (Guille'n) : 94 Some Beasts (from the Spanish of Pablo Neruda) : 96 The Heights of Macchu Picchu, HI (Neruda) : 97 Trumpets (from the German of Georg Trakl) : 97 De Profundis (Trakl) : 98 The Rats (Trakl) :99 AWinter Night (Trakl) : 99 Sleep (Trakl) : 100 I Am Freed (from the Spanish of Ce'sar Vallejo) : 100 White Rose (Vallejo) : 101 A Divine Falling of Leaves (Vallejo) : 102 CONTENTS ix Our Daily Bread (Vallejo) : 102 The Eternal Dice (Vallejo) : 104 The Big People (Vallejo) : 105 Down to the Dregs (Vallejo) : 106 Not in Marble Palaces (from the Spanish of Pedro Saunas) : 106 Anacreon's Grave (from the German of Goethe) : 108 THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK As I Step Over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor : in Goodbye to the Poetry of Calcium : 111 In Fear of Harvests : 112 Three Stanzas from Goethe : 112 Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio : 113 Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota : 114 The Jewel : 114 In the Face of Hatred : 114 Fear Is What Quickens Me : 115 A Message Hidden in an Empty Wine Bottle That I Threw Into a Gully of Maple Trees One Night at an Indecent Hour : 115 Stages on a Journey Westward : 116 How My Fever Left : 117 Miners : 118 In Ohio : 119 Two Poems About President Harding : 119 Eisenhower's Visit to Franco, 1959 : 121 In Memory of a Spanish Poet : 122 The Undermining of the Defense Economy : 123...