Purple Poems

204

A slash of Blue—
A sweep of Gray—
...

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
...

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
...

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
...

IS it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
...

AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
...

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
...

Let us be thankful, Lord, for little things -
The song of birds, the rapture of the rose;
Cloud-dappled skies, the laugh of limpid springs,
Drowned sunbeams and the perfume April blows;
...

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
...

In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
...

Sleep, darling
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is
...

Young palmer sun, that to these shining sands
Pourest thy pilgrim's tale, discoursing still
Thy silver passages of sacred lands,
With news of Sepulchre and Dolorous Hill,
...

A man leaves the world
and the streets he lived on
grow a little shorter.
...

Far are the shades of Arabia,
Where the Princes ride at noon,
'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,
Under the ghost of the moon;
...

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
...

What do you sell O ye merchants ?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
...

I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
...

THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
...

As the dim twilight shrouds
The mountain's purple crest,
And Summer's white and folded clouds
...

Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
...