Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,-

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

"I am lonely, lonely,

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!"

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks

against the yellow drawn shades,-



Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

NC, May 14, 12 Miles by M. Roberts

A silent flutter:
wings of orange, black, and white
sail by on the breeze.

A Line-storm Song by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea’s return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.

Witness by Liz Waldner

I saw that a star had broken its rope

in the stables of heaven--



This homeless one will find her home

in the foothills of a green century.



Who sleeps beside still waters, wakes.

The terrestrial hands of the heaven clock



comb out the comet's tangled mane

and twelve strands float free.



In the absence of light and gravity,

slowly as dust, or the continents' drift,



sinuous, they twine a text,

one letter to an eon:



I am the dawn horse.

Ride me.

A Blessing by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

My Time in Hanoi by Sean Singer

Outside the threshold, kneeling full of dust
Hanoi sprouts in the salt. Its leafy barbs
are the lingual equivalency of a vu quang ox
sucking a river. Honey jars & bear
gall bladders hang in a shop window.

A childless couple visits the Perfume Pagoda
to douse their wick. Where the cyclo descends
into the sea, a dragon unfurls her muscular canoe.

Hanoi trades me 11,000 dong if I do a little
monkey dance. At the moment I’m supposed
to twirl & jig-a-jug, a typhoon crashes through
the thatched wall, a seedblown bloodlamp singing:

Em oi / doi khong co em / Nhu pho / khong co nuoc leo:
O my beloved / life without you is like / pho without its broth.

A Cradle Song by William Butler Yeats

The Danaan children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold,
And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,
For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies,
With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold:
I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast,	5
And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me.
Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea;
Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West;
Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat
The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost;	10
O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host
Is comelier than candles before Maurya’s feet.