Foreword.
xv
Remembrance.
1
Pretend at Being Blind, Which Calls Truth Near.
4
The Boys Across the Street Are Driving My Young Daughter Mad.
6
Old Ahab’s Friend, and Friend to Noah, Speaks His Piece.
8
When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.
13
Darwin, the Curious.
16
Darwin, in the Fields.
17
Darwin, Wandering Home at Dawn.
18
Evidence.
20
Telling Where the Sweet Gums Are.
21
Emily Dickinson, Where Are You? Herman Melville Called Your Name Last Night in His Sleep!.
23
O Give a Fig for Newton, Praise for Him!.
28
I Was the Last, the Very Last.
30
Man Is the Animal that Cries.
35
N.
38
Air to Lavoisier.
42
Women Know Themselves; All Men Wonder.
44
Death in Mexico.
46
All Flesh Is One; What Matter Scores?.
49
The Machines, Beyond Shylock.
54
The Beast Upon the Wire.
56
Christ, Old Student in a New School.
58
This Time of Kites.
65
If You Will Wait Just Long Enough, All Goes.
67
For a Daughter, Traveling.
70
Old Mars, Then Be a Hearth to Us.
72
The Thing That Goes by Night: The Self That Lazes Sun.
75
Groon.
77
That Woman on the Lawn.
81
A Train Station Sign Viewed from an Ancient Locomotive Passing Through Long After Midnight.
83
Please to Remember the Fifth of November: A Birthday Poem for Susan Marguerite.
86
That Is Our Eden’s Spring, Once Promised.
89
The Fathers and Sons Banquet.
91
Touch Your Solitude to Mine.
95
God Is a Child; Put Toys in the Tomb.
97
Ode to Electric Ben.
99
Some Live Like Lazarus.
101
These Unsparked Flints, These Uncut Gravestone Brides.
103
And This Did Dante Do.
107
You Can Go Home Again.
110
And Dark Our Celebration Was.
114
Mrs. Harriet Hadden Atwood, Who Played the Piano for Thomas A. Edison for the World’s First Phonograph Record, Is Dead at 105.
116
What Seems a Balm Is Salt to Ancient Wounds.
120
Here All Beautifully Collides.
122
God for a Chimney Sweep.
125
To Prove That Cowards Do Speak Best and True and Well.
128
I, Tom, and My Electric Gran.
130
Boys Are Always Running Somewhere.
133
O to Be a Boy in a Belfry.
137
If I Were Epitaph.
140
If Only We Had Taller Been.
142
Prologue.
144
Byzantium I Come Not From.
146
What I Do Is Me—For That I Came.
149
I Am the Residue of All My Daughters’ Lives.
151
We March Back to Olympus.
153
Ghost at the Window, Hive on the Hearth.
155
Boy Pope Behold! Dog Bishop See!.
157
I Have a Brother, Mostly Dead.
160
Why Viking Lander, Why the Planet Mars?.
162
We Have Our Arts So We Won’t Die of Truth.
164
I Die, So Dies the World.
166
My Love, She Weeps at Many Things.
168
Death as a Conversation Piece.
170
Remembrance II.
172
J.C.—Summer ’28.
175
The Young Galileo Speaks.
177
The Beast Atop the Building, the Tiger on the Stairs.
179
Why Didn’t Someone Tell Me About Crying in the Shower?.
182
Somewhere a Band Is Playing.
185
The Nefertiti—Tut Express.
188
Telephone Friends, in Far Places.
191
Death for Dinner, Doom for Lunch.
193
Out of Dickinson by Poe, or The Only Begotten Son of Emily and Edgar.
195
Lo, the Ghost of Our Least Favorite Uncle.
197
That Son of Richard III.
200
A Poem with a Note: All England Empty, the People Flown.
206
The Syncopated Hunchbacked Man.
212
If Man Is Dead, Then God Is Slain.
214
Thoughts on Visiting the Main Rocket Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral for the First Time.
217
Their Names in Dust, Their Dates in Grass.
221
Long Thoughts on Best-Sellers by Worst People.
224
Abandon in Place.
227
This Attic Where the Meadow Greens.
230
Poem Written at Noon While Passing Through a Small Town in Upper Illinois on June 25, 1978.
233
Melville: A Requiem and a Warning.
235
The Shakespeare Banquet, The Kipling Feast.
238
Shakespeare the Father, Freud the Son.
240
A Miracle of Popes, All with One Face!.
242
The Bike Repairmen.
244
If Peaches Could Be Painters.
246
Once the Years Were Numerous and the Funerals Few.
247
The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope.
249
Go Not with Ruins in Your Mind.
251
Poem from a Train Window.
253
Nor Is the Aim of Man to Stay Beneath a Stone.
255
Joy Is the Grace We Say to God.
257
They Have Not Seen the Stars.
259
The Great Man Speaks.
261
The East Is Up!.
263
Satchmo Saved!.
265
God Blows the Whistle.
267
The Infirmities of Genius.
269
Farewell Summer.
272
The Dogs of Mesopotamia—Dyed by Spring.
274
Two Impressionists.
276
And Yet the Burning Bush Has Voice.
278
To an Early Morning Darning-Needle Dragonfly.
281
Poem Written on a Train Just Leaving a Small Southern Town.
284
Too Much.
286
There Are No Ghosts in Catholic Spain.
288
I Am God’s Greatest Basking Hound.
290
Doing Is Being.
291
Ode to an Utterance by Norman Corwin, Who Punned the First Line, and Must Suffer the Rest.
293
Nectar and Ambrosia.
294
We Are the Reliquaries of Lost Time.
297
Anybody Who Can Make Great Strawberry Shortcake Can’t Be All Bad.
299
And Have You Seen God’s Birds Collide?.
302
You Can’t Go Home Again, Not Even If You Stay There!.
304
Schliemann.
307
Of What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come.
309
Within a Summer Frame.
311
Ode to Ty Cobb, Who Stole First Base from Second.
313
GBS and the Loin of Pork.
316
Let Us Live But Safely, No Bright Flags Be Ours.
318
Everyone’s Got to Be Somewhere.
320
The Past Is the Only Dead Thing that Smells Sweet.
322
Ode to Trivia.
323
Good Shakespeare’s Son, the Typing Ape.
325
Que Bella! The Flagella of the Beasts.
328
Pope Android Seventh.
330
Death Has Lost Its Charm for Me.
334
The Other Me.
336
Ode to Dorothy Parker.
338
Clouds Are Rivers Gone Back Upstream.
339
Hairwash.
340
For Leonard Bradbury.
342
America.
344
It Is Always a Mistake to Vacation.
346
I Claim.
348
No More Cameras, No More Ghosts.
350
Boys Are Spooked Because They’re Horses.
352
Go Panther-Pawed Where All the Mined Truths Sleep.
354
Satchmo’s Syndrome.
356
Taint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin and Dance Ariund in Your Bones.
357
Troy.
359
Encore, Manet, Renoir.
361
My Cat Has Swallowed a Bumblebee.
362
Lip-Synch: Dali’s Dilemma.
363
To Ireland...
365
When God in Loins a Beehive Puts.
367
It’s No-Excuses-Needed-for-Living Weather.
369
Poem for David Lean Waiting Before Dawn, Before Sunset, for the Golden Light of Light.
371
To Know What Isn’t Known, That’s Mine.
373
Which Shall It Be: A Poem for H. G. Wells.
375
I Carry Always the Invisible.
376
Ring the Bells Backward: Give Up the Gun.
378
Dublin Sunday.
380
Better the Boy of Beauty, Than Unwashed Ugly Me.
381
To All Your Inner Selves Be True.
383
B.B. Remembered.
385
Revivere, Rex!.
387
I Have Endured Much to Reach This Place.
388
Sunrise Comes Later, Sunset Comes Sooner.
390
Ahab at the Helm.
391
The Bread of Beggars, the Wind of Christ: Dublin, Christmas 1953.
394
I Live By the Invisible.
396