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.

Ordain

I am not sure I have the words to say
How proud I am, how much you have deserved,
Or how well you have done along the way.
For every mile that the road has curved
You have turned with it, covered every foot,
And done all that is asked of you and more.
The thought of all the distance passed should put
A smile on your face fixed hard and sure
As it does mine. Each trial passed and bested
Is but a brick to build what you've achieved;
The times you might have thought progress arrested
Or been by sorer fates troubled or grieved
Are now your bygones, and by going by
Have made the now. I hope you're glad as I.

Sun

Ah, who am I to love you? But who better?
I cannot help but love, and being so
I love beyond the spirit of the letter
And in that feeling do not only grow,
But also spread, as plants that seek the sun
Turn their hot heads to soak up every ray
Without expansion. I have now begun
To heliotrope you, and turn your way
Admiring all your little turns of phrase
Your nice expressions, and your many faces.
These are to me as constant solar rays
Absorbed for nutriment, and in their graces
I am happy. In your being you I bask.
Be so and let us love. That's all I ask.

Ignus

In every part
I yearn for you
And though I do
Deep in my heart
Know from the start
The love that grew
Open and true
Will self-impart,
Still I desire
With endless verve
To let you know
That yearning fire
Burns bright and slow
In every nerve.

Proof

I'm not sure I can find the words to say
To tell you how I love you so, or why;
Of course I said them once, but since that day
How am I certain that each look or sigh
Is clear? How can I best ensure my heart
Figures in my tongue, and is translated
In every fundamental, yearning part
Into your mind, and there substantiated?
How can I know my soul is bared to you
And all I think and feel exposed and shown?
How can I hope, as I perforce must do,
I do not love you wholly but unknown?
I look down and my finger, and there shines
The proof you know the love my soul designs.