My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!
American poet
Travel by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine streaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
an untitled poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for a reply,
And in my heart there sits a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
from Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman
You road I enter upon and look around,
I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Flexions by Paul Blackburn
the rivers of afternoon
flowing about you as you
move . stop, standing
afterward in my bathroom
naked among the young plants
in the green light singing
softly to yourself
To Be A Dragon by Marianne Moore
If I like Solomon. . . .
could have my wish—
my wish. . .O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven–of silk worm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!
from Later by Paul Blackburn
“. . . .You
put that much life in it, baby,
you know you can’t win.”
Song by Robert Creeley
What’s in the body you’ve forgotten
and that you’ve left alone
and that you don’t want–
or what’s in the body that you want
and would die for–
and think it’s all of it–
if life’s a form to be forgotten
once you’re gone and no regrets,
no one left in what you want–
That empty place is all there is,
and/if the face’s remembered,
or dog barks, cat’s to be fed.
Touchstone by Paul Blackburn
“Something
by which
all else
can be measured.”
Something
by which
to measure
all else.
End by Robert Creeley
End of page,
end of this
company–wee
notebook kept
my mind in hand,
let the world stay
open to me
day after day,
words to say,
things to be.
Leonard Durso 