Without

No day goes by
No night can end
But weary I
Think of my friend
My peer my heart
My dear my life
My other part
My love my wife.
And where is she?
Do not ask that
She is not here
So let it be
All else is flat
And gray, and drear.

Plane

We scud across the white eternal plain
Whose rolling hills soon flatten into sheets;
Or skid along a bleached and endless main
Whose edgeless quality subtly defeats
My thoughts of measurement; or slip beyond
The world of men entirely, and slide
Through space and pure imagination fond.
Wherever we may be, the joyful ride
Turns terrible as soon as we descend
For that which seemed earth, sea, or perfect blank
Will always turn upon us in the end
Swallowing us who, coating each flank
Wherever we may look, with white and white
Refusing any hope of end-or sight.

Ache

I seek her absent in the evening air
As if the fall of night should conjure her
I know beyond a doubt she is not there
And yet I find I still must wish she were
Hoping against my inner certainty,
Pretending what I wish for might be true
Despite the fact I know it cannot be.
The couch bears only one that should bear two
The meals uneaten fill the bulging fridge
The hours lengthen when no voices speak.
And still it flits about me like a midge
I cannot see nor squash: the little squeak
Of unwarranted hope that will not die
Giving my longing soul the constant lie.

Missing

Some pains cannot be simply thought away
They linger in the soul, ready to strike
At little triggers that were once OK,
Especially the things you used to like--
A certain song, played at a certain time;
Something you used to stumble on, but can't;
A sound of feet; a high pitched ringing chime--
And all of them now feel a little scant,
Unfinished, like a frame without a door
Begging to be closed in winter. Now
These little moments shake you to the core
And there's no easy fix. If I knew how,
Be sure I'd share, but I can do no more
For you than for myself, which makes it less
Because I cannot offer you redress.

New York, Night, 1928-29

The tower tilts, although the street is straight.
In Pisa? No, it has to be New York,
Even though it shares a certain trait-
A little rounding on the top, a cork
To keep what's in the tilt from tipping out-
The lights are wrong for Pisa. It's too bright,
Part of the city circling roundabout
Illuminated in the dead of night
By neon and by taxis and so on:
Life spilling out of doors. And yet the tilt:
The feeling it will fall when you are gone,
And crush the city so the light is spilt.
I dare not walk away, and yet I must
Leaving the city to its tilting trust.

PH-794, 1945

The plainsman draws the peaks he does not know,
Giving them halos, like the far off heads
Of ever distant angels, in whose glow
The sun that beats upon the old homesteads
Is candlelight. Up on the peaks they gleam
Refracting little fires, maybe but
A dim reflection of the reds that stream
Hidden behind, where nobody knows what
May live. The dark surrounding all is thick
Yet in that thickness lies a kind of light
Caught from the distance by a painter's trick
That bends beyond the likelihood of sight
And makes the sky, broken by peaks unknown
A part of him: the world he paints, his own.

Headlands, Monhegan, 1909

The grass that clings in patches to the rock
Creates the very cracks that threaten it
Not with a cataclysmic blasting shock
But year by year, iotic bit by bit.
The act of feeding splinters what it's fed
And growth is death. Below, the water waits
Watching the cliff decay and droop its head,
Whitening the brown and crumbling slates
With constant battering. Between the two
The ancient land cannot but fall someday,
Becoming one with all that distant blue.
But though it will, it has not yet, and may
For years remain so poised between these threats
Alive though bowed, still living in not-yets.

Voltaire

Can you imagine how it would have been
Had we known what we could have done before?
If somehow we beforehand knew the score
And acted with those thoughts already in
Our minds, and maybe hearts? We could begin
From wherever we chose, and, what is more,
Move onward as we wished, since an encore
Is always easier. What could we win
If our path were thus smoothed before our feet?
What joys could we enjoy, what woes forsake?
What pains could that foreknowledging delete
And what pure pleasures could we seize and take?
Nothing but what we have; for, candidly,
I cannot think a better joy could be.

Winter in Rochester

The days are cold
The nights are colder
The world is old
And it grows older
So everywhere
Is entropized
When all is bare
Then all hope dies.
But in the dark
And dank and dim
There is a spark
Of joy and vim
Beside me here
My loving dear.

Comfort and Joy

I must remember how these things have been;
To marvel at what has become routine
Recalling that I once could not begin
To truly hope for what's now daily seen
Or to imagine in reality
My present everyday. It is not right
To let these wonders fade invisibly
Into the background, like the clouds at night;
Instead I must, somewhere within my soul
Celebrate them each as they deserve
Remembering each several, separate goal
So even once achieved I can preserve
The joy of it, and each day wonder more
At all my blessings in their growing store.