No More Learning

He waggles his head
before he speaks,
like a cow
before she crops.
He bends to the habit
of dragging his feet
up under him,
like a measuring-worm:
some of his forefathers,
stooped over books,
ruled short straight lines
under two rows of figures
to keep their thin savings
from sifting to the floor.
Should you strike him
with a question,
he will blink twice or thrice
and roll his head about,
like an owl
in the pin-pricks
of a dawn he cannot see.
There is mighty little flesh
about his bones,
there is no gusto
in his stride:
he seems to wait
for the blow on the buttocks
that will drive him
another step forward--
step forward to what?
There is no land,
no house,
no barn,
he has ever owned;
he sits uncomfortable
on chairs
you might invite him to:
if you did,
he'd keep his hat in hand
against the moment
when some silent pause
for which he hearkens
with his ear to one side
bids him move on--
move on where?
It doesn't matter.
He has learned
to shrug his shoulders,
so he'll shrug his shoulders now:
caterpillars do it
when they're halted by a stick.
Is there a sky overhead? --
a hope worth flying to? --
birds may know about it,
but it's birds
that birds descend from.




BUBBLES


You had best be very cautious how
you say, I love you.
If you accent the I,
she has an opening for,
who are you
to strut on ahead
and hint there aren't others,
aren't, weren't and won't be?
Blurt out the love,
she has suspicion for, so? --
why not hitherto? --
what brings you bragging now?
--
and what'll it be hereafter?
Defer to the you,
she has certitude for, me?
thanks, lad! --
but why argue about it? --
or fancy I'm lonesome? --
do I look as though you had to?
And having determined how
you'll say it,
you had next best ascertain whom
it is that you say it to.
That you're sure she's the one,
that there'll never be another,
never was one before.
And having determined whom
and having learned how,
when you bring these together,
inform the far of the intimate--
like a bubble on a pond,
emerging from below,
round wonderment completed
by the first sight of the sky--
what good will it do,
if she shouldn't, I love you? --
a bubble's but a bubble once,
a bubble grows to die.




DIRGE


Death alone
has sympathy for weariness:
understanding
of the ways
of mathematics:
of the struggle
against giving up what was given:
the plus one minus one
of nitrogen for oxygen:
and the unequal odds,
you a cell
against the universe,
a breath or two
against all time:
Death alone
takes what is left
without protest, criticism
or a demand for more
than one can give
who can give
no more than was given:
doesn't even ask,
but accepts it as it is,
without examination,
valuation,
or comparison.




COLOPHON

(_For W. W. _)


The Occident and the Orient,
posterior and posterior,
sitting tight, holding fast
the culture dumped by them
on to primitive America,
Atlantic to Pacific,
were monumental colophons
a disorderly country fellow,
vulgar Long Islander.
not overfond of the stench
choking native respiration,
poked down off the shelf
with the aid of some
mere blades of grass;
and deliberately climbing up,
brazenly usurping one end
of the new America,
now waves his spears aloft
and shouts down valleys,
across plains,
over mountains,
into heights:
Come, what man of you
dares climb the other?




SARA TEASDALE




WISDOM


It was a night of early spring,
The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;
Around us shadows and the wind
Listened for what was never spoken.