Poems

Larkin

Larkin's poems have no warmth,

Just icy English chill,

Cynical and bittersweet,

As the Muses will.

Poignance, sense and perfect form

Exactly as they seem -

There's madness there. Or so oblique

They're useless as dream.

8-25-13

 

The ship

The prow of a ship gives water

Back to the sea!

Green and black and foamy

Swirls slip off

The deck, around the rope

That's coiled, the anchor.

And the mast near-horizontal

When the ship tips up

Bears a tattered rag that loudly flaps.

8-24-13

Lines

Grandpa looked old

When I was young.

Every soul that dies

Is a song so briefly sung

Under empty skies,

And forgotten finally among

Barrows where he lies,

Like any man who was ever hung,

And no one cries.

8-24-13

 

The Hand

Every time he suffered,

His brother reached a hand.

The hand was hit and knocked away.

More than understand,

The brother learned completely

To keep his hand away.

Twenty years thereafter

There may have come a day

That inwardly he suffered

And breathed a silent prayer

To feel his brother's hand.

The brother wasn't there.

8-24-13

 

Opinionated Poems

Are my poems any more

Than Liberal opinions?

Or rather than opinions only

Mad oblique ideas?
It takes so much to move the world

To obvious conclusions.

8-24-13

 

Haydn

I hear Haydn's piano sonatas -

Crystal water, stones in a brook.

The Muses selves are in the music -

They didn't inspire it,

They are the sounds.

Happiness at a superficial

And deeper level than the mind.

8-23-13