houseonthecliff: (daemon)

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.
houseonthecliff: house window (Default)
 
Pat Dugan……..my grandfather……..throat cancer……..1947.
 
Ed Berrigan……..my dad……..heart attack……..1958.
 
Dickie Budlong……..my best friend Brucie’s big brother, when we were
                                                        five to eight……..killed in Korea, 1953.
 
Red O’Sullivan……..hockey star & cross-country runner
                                                who sat at my lunch table
                                                            in High School……car crash…...1954.
 
Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan……..my friend, in High School,
                                       Football & Hockey All-State……car crash….1959.
 
Cisco Houston……..died of cancer……..1961.
 
Freddy Herko, dancer….jumped out of a Greenwich Village window
     in 1963.
 
Anne Kepler….my girl….killed by smoke-poisoning while playing
                                    the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital                         
                                    during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist….1965.
 
Frank……Frank O’Hara……hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966.
 
Woody Guthrie……dead of Huntington’s Chorea in 1968.
 
Neal……Neal Cassady……died of exposure, sleeping all night
                                            in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico….1969.
 
Franny Winston……just a girl….totalled her car on the Detroit-Ann Arbor
                                    Freeway, returning from the dentist….Sept. 1969.
 
Jack……Jack Kerouac……died of drink & angry sickness….in 1969.
 
My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.
houseonthecliff: house window (Default)

—how her loose curls float
above each silver fish as she leans in
to pluck its eyes—
 
You died just hours ago.
Not suddenly, no. You'd been dying so long   
nothing looked like itself: from your window,   
fishermen swirled sequins;   
fishnets entangled the moon.
 
Now the dark rain   
looks like dark rain. Only the wine   
shimmers with candlelight. I refill the glasses
and we raise a toast to you   
as so and so's daughter—elfin, jittery as a sparrow—
slides into another lap   
to eat another pair of slippery eyes   
with her soft fingers, fingers rosier each time,   
for being chewed a little.
 
If only I could go to you, revive you.
You must be a little alive still.   
I'd like to put this girl in your lap.
She's almost feverishly warm and she weighs   
hardly anything. I want to show you how   
she relishes each eye, to show you
her greed for them.   
 
She is placing one on her tongue,
bright as a polished coin—   
 
What do they taste like? I ask.
Twisting in my lap, she leans back
sleepily. They taste like eyes, she says.
houseonthecliff: (open road)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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houseonthecliff: house window (Default)
houseonthecliff

August 2024

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