Quotes about stub, page 4
The Downy Woodpecker
Downy came and dwelt with me,
Taught me hermit lore;
Drilled his cell in oaken tree
Near my cabin door.
Architect of his own home
In the forest dim,
Carving its inverted dome
In a dozy limb.
Carved it deep and shaped it true
With his little bill;
Took no thought about the view,
Whether dale or hill.
Shook the chips upon the ground,
Careless who might see.
Hark! his hatchet's muffled sound
Hewing in the tree.
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poem by John Burroughs
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City Fox, Country Fox
The city fox envies his soft, rural kin:
They don’t have to watch out for lorries and cars.
The sleek village vixen just lazes away
In wide-open fields, underneath sparkling stars.
The city fox has to go out in the light
When rustical Reynard sleeps safe in his bed.
He only pops out in the midst of the night
To pilfer some poultry from his chickenshed.
The city fox struggles to keep himself fed;
A diet of leftovers doesn’t go far.
Whilst eking a living is all he can do,
Arcadian diets are like caviare.
The city fox scratches in bins for his food
But, out in the country, his cousin lives well
On rabbit and pheasant and other fine game
Whilst rough, tatty townie recoils from the smell.
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poem by C. Richard Miles
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Sanctuary
for Tony
I could not disengage my world
from the rest of humanity.
Wind chill factor 11° below. All night
wind thrashes barechested trees
like a West Texas tent evangelist
hissing them on his knees,
lisping
sinnn . . . sinn . . . sinn . . .
All night wind preaches.
Old tool shed
behind my house
fist-cuffs itself to nail-loose tin,
horse pasture gates
clank their crimes,
while neighing black stallions of rain
stampede on the patio
fleeing gunshots of thunder . . . .
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poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
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A Saint About To Fall
A saint about to fall,
The stained flats of heaven hit and razed
To the kissed kite hems of his shawl,
On the last street wave praised
The unwinding, song by rock,
Of the woven wall
Of his father's house in the sands,
The vanishing of the musical ship-work and the chucked bells,
The wound-down cough of the blood-counting clock
Behind a face of hands,
On the angelic etna of the last whirring featherlands,
Wind-heeled foot in the hole of a fireball,
Hymned his shrivelling flock,
On the last rick's tip by spilled wine-wells
Sang heaven hungry and the quick
Cut Christbread spitting vinegar and all
The mazes of his praise and envious tongue were worked in flames and shells.
Glory cracked like a flea.
The sun-leaved holy candlewoods
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poem by Dylan Thomas
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Cassandra's Blues
Prescience was the fatal curse
That drove her future in a Hearse
Towards the walls of fatal dice
Where Achaeans bid so well to smite
Their wooden vessel that encodes
The Sun Gods laughter on his thrown
Vengeance for her first refusal
Comforts from his lecherous council
While hazard poured outside her tongue
Hiccupped through riddles of vapors lost
Her relatives could not profess
It's semblance for common sense
Whereas ten thousand stood outside
She wailed besieged to the endgames tide
Perhaps they should have played charades
Then they wouldn't have been a myth one day
Cassandra's Blues were born from the truth
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poem by Kevin Patrick
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In A Journal Of Blood
In a journal of blood that doesn’t exaggerate my breath
to the mythic proportions of distant nebulae,
I have tried to record my nights on earth
as an apostate astronomer with a two way telescope
embedded in the sexual cupolas of Venutian mountains,
the ultimate observatory, the only understudy church
ever built by the stars from the roof up, the split skull,
the nursing cotyledons of my white, enamel gun,
my mechanical shoot that wants to put out a vine
or turn into an insect. And the women have come
in a turmoil of hair, with their extraordinary ascensions
and terrifying declinations like commas, comas, and black comets
streaking across my field of vision
with its damsel-winged chromatic aberrations
smearing the light with rainbows, and I have held them
spectroscopically in a clock-driven parabolic begging bowl
benching butterflies with the dumb-bells of my intersection axes.
Maybe creation is a forsaken remnant
of apocalyptic extinctions so fine-tuned to the dimpled atoms,
one would have to be a tattoo on water
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poem by Patrick White
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Blinks through bloodshot walks
When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half wakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.
When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while
Exchanges a casual passing word
Standing in the Rembrandtesque clefts
And the multipled ma'm'selle trips out:
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poem by T. Wignesan
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A Fluctuation In The Cosmic Void
A fluctuation in the cosmic void,
a wink of atoms,
a fallen eyelash of light,
the seeing of a lifetime
nothing but candle vapour,
ghost-water on the moon,
the exhalation of a vagrant star
looking for its lost constellation
like a berry or a gem
that had wandered off road
from the vine of a crown.
The eye that regards all
as it rises like a blue mystic sun
over the morning eyelids
of the remote hills
waking up in the arms of their shadows
demands exposure of the sky,
a clarity pure enough for stars
as it turns the day over
like the palm of a hand
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poem by Patrick White
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I'll Wear This Robe
I'll wear this robe like a desert;
and release the hinges on the gate
that is closing like a rib cage
on the heart of the nightbird
that returns to the silence
like water taken from a river.
I'll pour the moon out of its stone cup
and let this vine of eyes,
this bone of light
wander where it will
in search of a face in the darkness
sweeter than the blood-vows of wine.
These flowers aren't the rags
of the legends of radiance
and a dragon doesn't waste eclipses
on the blind.
The wind opens its hand
and I disappear like a gust of crows
in the startled night groves.
I will drag this empty robe of blood along the ground
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poem by Patrick White
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Not Again, Tonight, These Fin de Siecle Blues
Not again, tonight, these fin de siecle blues
that subsume all my blossoming overviews
into the mystic specificity of concrete things
I stub my heart against as if I'd just had
a head on collision with the moon. Impact.
Emotional meteor showers, the Virginids, perhaps,
I'm being stoned by my own congenital radiants
as if I were being driven out of somewhere
like an extinct species. Bad memories, lifeboats
that didn't make it back to shore, things I've tried
to mythologize like a shipwreck in coral on the moon.
Subtle childhood fears that run my tongue along
the shadows of their blades, when I was scared and young,
and the words would come out like drops of blood
sliding down the length of the stargrass I grazed upon
alone as now in my high wide starfields.
The same ones that are seeking me out tonight
like a rogue planet that's never quite known
where it's belonged, or with whom, if anyone
or where at all. Looking for an exit sign
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poem by Patrick White
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