Collected Poems

OLD MAN DRUNK

We stole his riches all away. He caught us in the act one day And damned us to the laughing bone, And fired his gun across the gray Autumn where now his life is done. Sorry for him, or any man Who lost his labored wealth to thieves, Today I mourn him, as I can, By leaving in their golden leaves Some luscious apples overhead. Now may my abstinence restore Peace to the orchard and the dead. We shall not nag them any more. OLD MAN DRUNK He sits before me now, reptilian, cold, Worn skeletal with sorrow for his child. He would have lied to her, were he not old: An old man's fumbling lips are not defiled By the sweet lies of love. Yet one must be Skillful to bring it off; that treachery Whips back to lash the bungler of its art. He curses his ineptitude of heart. He knows the quivering eye of youth is blind. The pale ears, roaring deep as shell, are deaf To the half-drowning cry of love behind The skull. His daughter struck him in her grief Across the face, hearing her lover dead. He stood behind her chair, he bowed his head, Knowing that even death cannot prolong The quick hysteric angers of the young. I can say nothing. I will see him sit Under the vacant clock, till I grow old. The barkeep's wife returns to throw her fit And pitch us out into the early cold. SAINT JUDAS 51 I touch his shoulder, but he does not move, Lost in the blind bewilderment of love, The meaningless despair that could not keep His daughter long from falling off to sleep. Meanwhile, the many faces of old age Flutter before me in the tavern haze. He cannot let me see him weep and rage Into his wrinkled pillow. Face by face, He grins to entertain, he fills my glass, Cold to the gestures of my vague alas, Gay as a futile god who cannot die Till daylight, when the barkeep says goodbye. SPARROWS IN A HILLSIDE DRIFT Pitiful dupes of old illusion, lost And fallen in the white, they glitter still Sprightly as when they bathed in summer dust, Then fade among the crystals on the hill. Lonely for warm days when the season broke, Alert to wing and fire, they must have flown To rest among those toughened boughs of oak That brood above us, now the fire is gone. Walking around to breathe, I kick aside The soft brown feather and the brittle beak. All flesh is fallen snow. The days deride The wings of these deluded, once they break. Somewhere the race of wittier birds survive, Southering slowly with the cooling days. They pause to quiver in the wind alive Like some secure felicity of phrase. But these few blunderers below my hands Assault the ear with silence on the wind. 52 ...