W. D. Snodgrass

"It was the nature of the thing: No moon outlives its leaving night, No sun its day. And I went on Rich in the loss of all I sing To the threshold of waking light, To larksong and the live, gray dawn. So night by night, my life has gone."

"In darkness and in hedges I sang my sour tone and all my love was howling conspicuously alone."

"Up the reputable walks of old established trees They stalk, children of the nouveaux riches; chimes Of the tall Clock Tower drench their heads in blessing."

"Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama; Aged in wrong, the empires are declining, And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence. What shall I say to the young on such a morning?— Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?— No; my little ones lean not toward revolt."

"They wear their godhead lightly. They look out from their hill and say, To themselves, "We have nowhere to go but down; The great destination is to stay.""

"The sleek, expensive girls I teach, Younger and pinker every year, Bloom gradually out of reach."

"I haven't read one book about A book or memorized one plot. Or found a mind I did not doubt. I learned one date. And then forgot. And one by one the solid scholars Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars."

"I taught myself to name my name, To bark back, loosen love and crying; To ease my woman so she came, To ease an old man who was dying."

"I have not learned how often I Can win, can love, but choose to die."

"Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives, We shall afford our costly seasons; There is a gentleness survives That will outspeak and has its reasons. There is a loveliness exists, Preserves us, not for specialists."

"I happened to find Your picture. That picture. I stopped there cold, Like a man raking piles of dead leaves in his yard Who has turned up a severed hand."

"—Before we drained out one another’s force With lies, self-denial, unspoken regret And the sick eyes that blame; before the divorce And the treachery. Say it: before we met. Still, I put back your picture. Someday, in due course, I will find that it’s still there."

"After experience taught me that all the ordinary Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;"

"You must call up every strength you own And you can rip off the whole facial mask."

"And you, whiner, who wastes your time Dawdling over the remorseless earth, What evil, what unspeakable crime Have you made your life worth?"

"You seem to be all finished, so We'll plug your old recalcitrant anus And tie up your discouraged penis In a great, snow-white bow of gauze."

"—All this Dark Age machinery On which we had tormented you To life."

"You still whispered you would not die. Yet the nights I heard you cry Like a whipped child;"

"Is it, then, your opinion Women are putty in your hands? Is this the face to launch upon A thousand one night stands?"

"Where, where is the long, flowing hair, The velvet suit, the broad bow tie; Where is the other-worldly air, Where the abstracted eye?"

"Where are the beard, the bongo drums, Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals, As who, released from Iowa, comes To tell of wondrous scandals?"

"Have you subversive, out of date, Or controversial ideas?"

"Ah, what avails the tenure race, Ah, what the Ph.D., When all departments have a place For nincompoops like thee?"