#AmericanWriters
What should I be but a prophet an… Whose mother was a leprechaun, who… Teethed on a crucifix and cradled… What should I be but the fiend’s… And who should be my playmates but…
“Curse thee, Life, I will live wi… Thou hast mocked me, starved me, b… And all for a pledge that was not… I have kissed thy crust and eaten… That I might eat again, and met t…
Well, I have lost you; and I lost… In my own way, and with my full co… Say what you will, kings in a tumb… Went to their deaths more proud th… Some nights of apprehension and ho…
Oh, my beloved, have you thought o… How in the years to come unscrupul… More cruel than Death, will tear… And make you old, and leave me in… How you and I, who scale together…
I know I might have lived in such… As to have suffered only pain: Loving not man nor dog; Not money, even; feeling Toothache perhaps, but never more…
Time cannot break the bird’s wing… Bird and wing together Go down, one feather. No thing that ever flew, Not the lark, not you,
I drank at every vine. The last was like the first. I came upon no wine So wonderful as thirst. I gnawed at every root.
I, being born a woman and distress… By all the needs and notions of my… Am urged by your propinquity to fi… Your person fair, and feel a certa… To bear your body’s weight upon my…
Silver bark of beech, and sallow Bark of yellow birch and yellow Twig of willow. Stripe of green in moosewood maple… Colour seen in leaf of apple,
When will you learn, myself, to be a dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air,
To what purpose, April, do you re… Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with th… Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know.
(Vassar College, 1918) O, loveliest throat of all sweet t… Where now no more the music is, With hands that wrote you little n… I write you little elegies!
Be to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be: Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free,
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly… Come and see my shining palace bui…
Oh, my belovèd, have you thought… How in the years to come unscrupul… More cruel than Death, will tear… And make you old, and leave me in… How you and I, who scale together…