where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies my son my son let us always scuff along through the colour of the world that looks bluer than the metro and astronomy we are too skinny we have no mouth our legs…
One time there was a picket fence with space to gaze from hence to thence. An architect who saw this sight approached it suddenly one night, removed the spaces from the fence, and built of them a residence. The picket fence stood there dumbfounded with pickets wholly unsurrounded, a view so loathsome and obscene, the Senate had to intervene. The…
Storm has set the heavens scowling, Whirling gusty blizzards wild, Now they are like beasts a-growling, Now a-wailing like a child; Now along the brittle thatches They will scud with rustling sound, Now against the window latches Like belated wanderers pound. Our frail hut is glum and sullen, Dim with twilight and with care. Why, dear granny, have you fallen…
Long rain of May, The whole world is A single sheet of paper Under the clouds. Circa 1675. Hokku from the haikai no renga (comic linked verse) of Nishiyama Sōin, Ihara Saikaku, and followers of the Danrin school. Translation by Nobuyuki Yuasa.
No sign of Spring! Florentine sentinels from icy campanili watch for a sign— Lorenzo dreams to awaken bluebirds Ariosto sucks his thumb. Michelangelo sits forward on his bed . . . awakened by no new change. Dante pulls back his velvet hood, his eyes are deep and sad. His great dane weeps. No sign of Spring! Leonardo paces his unbearable…
(Dedicated to the End of the Dictionary) A xylographer started to cross the sea By means of a Xanthic Xebec; But, alas! he sighed for the Zuyder Zee, And feared he was in for a wreck. He tried to smile, but all in vain, Because of a Zygomatic pain; And as for singing, his cheeriest tone Reminded him of a…
Filling her compact & delicious body with chicken páprika, she glanced at me twice. Fainting with interest, I hungered back and only the fact of her husband & four other people kept me from springing on her or falling at her little feet and crying ‘You are the hottest one for years of night Henry’s dazed eyes have enjoyed, Brilliance.’ I…
(There is a fairly common expression: to kill time. Here it is time who speaks.) There’s scarce a point wherein mankind agree, So well as in their boast of killing me: I boast of nothing, but when I’ve a mind, I think I can be even with mankind. Circa 1751.
Compose compose beds. Wives of great men rest tranquil. Come go stay philip philip. Egg be takers. Parts of place nuts. Suppose twenty for cent. It is rose in hen. Come one day. A firm terrible a firm terrible hindering, a firm hindering have a ray nor pin nor. Egg in places. Egg in few insists. In set a place….
I saw a peacock with a fiery tail I saw a blazing comet drop down hail I saw a cloud with ivy circled round I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground I saw a pismire swallow up a whale I saw a raging sea brim full of ale I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep I saw…
