A help, a right to help, a right

To know what helps and to attain,

By right of knowing, another plane.

The englistered woman is now seen

In an isolation, separate

From the human in humanity,

A part of the inhuman more,

The still inhuman more, and yet

An inhuman of our features, known

And unknown, inhuman for a little while,

Inhuman for a little, lesser time.”

The great sail of Ulysses seemed.

In the breathings of this soliloquy,

Alive with an enigma’s flittering …

As if another sail went on

Straight forwardly through another night

And clumped stars dangled all the way.

A Child Asleep in Its Own Life

Among the old men that you know,

There is one, unnamed, that broods

On all the rest, in heavy thought.

They are nothing, except in the universe

Of that single mind. He regards them

Outwardly and knows them inwardly,

The sole emperor of what they are,

Distant, yet close enough to wake

The chords above your bed to-night.

On the Way to the Bus

A light snow, like frost, has fallen during the night.

Gloomily, the journalist confronts

Transparent man in a translated world,

In which he feeds on a new known,

In a season, a climate of morning, of elucidation,

A refreshment of cold air, cold breath,

A perception of cold breath, more revealing than

A perception of sleep, more powerful

Than a power of sleep, a clearness emerging

From cold, slightly irised, slightly bedazzled,

But a perfection emerging from a new known,

An understanding beyond journalism,

A way of pronouncing the word inside of one’s tongue

Under the wintry trees of the terrace.

First Warmth

I wonder, have I lived a skeleton’s life,

As a questioner about reality,

A countryman of all the bones of the world?

Now, here, the warmth I had forgotten becomes

Part of the major reality, part of

An appreciation of a reality;

And thus an elevation, as if I lived

With something I could touch, touch every way.

As You Leave the Room

You speak. You say: Today’s character is not

A skeleton out of its cabinet. Nor am I.

That poem about the pineapple, the one

About the mind as never satisfied,

The one about the credible hero, the one

About summer, are not what skeletons think about.

I wonder, have I lived a skeleton’s life,

As a disbeliever in reality,

A countryman of all the bones in the world?

Now, here, the snow I had forgotten becomes

Part of a major reality, part of

An appreciation of a reality

And thus an elevation, as if I left

With something I could touch, touch every way.

And yet nothing has been changed except what is

Unreal, as if nothing had been changed at all.

Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination

Last Friday, in the big light of last Friday night,

We drove home from Cornwall to Hartford, late.

It was not a night blown at a glassworks in Vienna