The Discovery of the Madeiras by Robert Frost

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Discovery of the Madeiras
A Rhyme of Hakluyt

By Robert Frost


A stolen lady was coming on board,
But whether stolen from her wedded lord
Or from her own self against her will
Was not set forth in the lading bill.
A stolen lady was all it said.
She came down weakly and blindly led
To the darkening, windy village slip.
She would not look at the fateful ship.
Her lover to make the ordeal swift
Had to give her the final lift
And force her farewell step off shore.
The way she clung to him the more
Seemed to argue perhaps she went
Not entirely without consent.
But with no companion of womankind
To leave the English law behind
And sail for some vague Paphian bourn
Began already to seem forlorn.

( It did more distance up and down, )

Gift of the Book -- C. D. Wright

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

Gift of the Book
by C. D. Wright

lights go off
all over
rhode island
everyone falls
into bed
I stay awake
reading
re-reading
the long-awaited
prose
of your
body
stunned
by the hunger

Timor Mortis by Sean O'Brien

[brttvns.livejournal.com]

Into the pit go all Estates,
All princes, pimps and potentates,
The fiend next door, the BBC -
The living and those yet to be,
Eminem, Ms Ruby Wax
And Robert Johnson's vanished tracks,
Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle,
Madonna and the Duke of Earl,
Occam's razor, Charlie Chan,
Lord Lucan and the bogey man,
Mister Tony, Conrad Black,
The orchestra from Crackerjack,
The Andrews Sisters, Clausewitz,
That wasname who gets on your tits,
Captain Nemo, Guildenstern
And suchlike planks booked in to burn,
De Tocqueville and Thomas Hobbes,
Ascetics, charvers, Rent-a-Gobs,
Boadicea, Brian Clough -
The world itself is not enough
To satisfy the hungry void,
Though "housewives and the unemployed"
Slip down with Marx and Jackie O.
Last sitting, everything must go -
Indifference and appetite,
The dimwit armies of the night,
Dispensers of banal advice,
Kate Moss and Condoleezza Rice,
Machine Gun Kelly, Iron Mike,
The Beemer and the butcher's bike,
Wallace Stevens, you and me,
The Devil and the deep blue sea,
The wonks who work the cutting edge,
Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge,
With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde,
All travellers not yet on board
Plus those who think it don't apply,
Who witter, witter, "I'm, like, why?"
Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire
As conscripts of le grand nowhere -
Some on ice and some on fire,
Some with slow piano wire,
Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck
And absolutely out of luck.
My friends, Lord Death is cruel but fair:
He loves it when there's nothing there,
No Baghdad and no Superbowl,
No langue and likewise no parole,
No Gulf Stream and no polar ice,
No evidence of Paradise.
His only mood's imperative.
He knows our names and where we live.
He sees no reason to record
The names of those whose bones are stored
In his extensive cellarage:
They are unwritten, like this page.
Come now, and board his empty ark -
What need of poems in the dark?