Read 77 Dream Songs for Free Online Page A

languished, anguished; dearth of group
    and what else had been;
    the splendour & the lose grew all the same,
    Sire. His heart stiffened, and he failed to smile,
    catching (enfint) on.
    The law: we must, owing to chiefly shame

    lacing our pride, down what we did. A mile,
    a mile to Avalon.
    Stuffy & lazy, shaky, making roar
    overseas presses, he quit wondering:
    the mystery is full.
    Sire, damp me down. Me feudal O, me yore
    (male Muse) serf, if anyfing;
    which rank I pull.

59
    Henry’s Meditation in the Kremlin
    Down on the cathedrals, as from the Giralda
    in a land no crueller, and over the walls
    to domes & river look
    from Great John’s belfry, Ivan-Veliky,
    whose thirty-one are still
    to hail who storms no father’s throne. Bell, book
    & candle rule, in silence. Hour by hour
    from time to time with holy oil
    touch yet the forehead eyelids nose
    lips ears breastfists of Krushchev, for Christ knows
    poor evil Kadar, cut, is back in power.
    Boils his throne. The moujik kneels & votes.
    South & east of the others’ tombs—where? why,
    in Arkhanghelsky, on the Baptist’s side,
    lies Brother Jonas (formerly Ivan the Terrible),
    where Brother Josef came with his fiend’s heart
    out of such guilt it proved all bearable,
    and Brother Nikita will come and lie.

60
    Afters eight years, be less dan eight percent,
    distinguish’ friend, of coloured wif de whites
    in de School, in de Souf.
    —Is coloured gobs, is coloured officers,
    Mr Bones. Dat’s nuffin? —Uncle Tom,
    sweep shut yo mouf,
    is million blocking from de proper job,
    de fairest houses & de churches eben.
    —You may be right, Friend Bones.
    Indeed you is. Dey flyin ober de world,
    de pilots, oberofays. Bit by bit
    our immemorial moans
    brown down to all dere moans. I flees that, sah.
    They brownin up to ourn. Who gonna win?
    —I wouldn’t pre dict.
    But I do guess mos peoples gonna lose.
    I never saw no pinkie wifout no hand.
    O my, without no hand.

61
    Full moon. Our Narragansett gales subside
    and the land is celebrating men of war
    more or less, less or more.
    In valleys, thin on headlands, narrow & wide
    our targets rest. In us we trust. Far, near,
    the bivouacs of fear
    are solemn in the moon somewhere tonight,
    in turning time. It’s late for gratitude,
    an annual, rude
    roar of a moment’s turkey’s ‘Thanks’. Bright & white
    their orderedmarkers undulate away
    awaiting no day.
    Away from us, from Henry’s feel or fail,
    campaigners lie with mouldered toes, disarmed,
    out of order,
    with whom we will one. The war is real,
    and a sullen glory pauses over them harmed,
    incident to murder.

62
    That dark brown rabbit, lightness in his ears
    & underneath, gladdened our afternoon
    munching a crab-’.
    That rabbit was a fraud, like a black bull
    prudent I admired in Zaragoza, who
    certainly was brave as a demon
    but would not charge, being willing not to die.
    The rabbit’s case, a little different,
    consisted in alert
    & wily looks down the lawn, where nobody was,
    with prickt ears,while rapt but chatting on the porch
    we sat in view nearby.
    Then went he mildly by, and around behind
    my cabin, and when I followed, there he just sat.
    Only at last
    he turned down around, passing my wife at four feet
    and hopped the whole lawn and made thro’ the hedge for the big house.
    —Mr Bones, we all brutes & fools.

63
    Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
    and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
    and, in general, bats have it made.
    Henry for joining the human race is bats,
    known to be so, by few them who think,
    out of the cave.
    Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,
    ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve
    with personal radar,
    crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,
    inside,my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights
    reflect on the whites of our eyes.
    He then salutes for sixty years of it
    just now a one of valor and insights,
    a theatrical man,
    O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might
    have killed as cast you. Olè.