and death i think is no parenthesis

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow, And ne’er a word said she; But, oh! The things I learned from her, When sorrow walked with me.

Belinda lived in a little white house,  With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,  And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,  And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon. 

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,  And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,  And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,  But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard. 

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,  And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,  Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,  And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes. 

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,  And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,  Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,  But Custard cried for a nice safe cage. 

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,  Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,  They all sat laughing in the little red wagon  At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon. 

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,  And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,  Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,  When Custard cried for a nice safe cage. 

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,  And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.  Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,  For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda. 

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,  And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,  His beard was black, one leg was wood;  It was clear that the pirate meant no good. 

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!  But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,  Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,  And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed. 

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,  Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,  With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm  He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm. 

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,  And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,  He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,  And Custard gobbled him, every bit. 

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,  No one mourned for his pirate victim  Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate  Around the dragon that ate the pyrate. 

Belinda still lives in her little white house,  With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,  And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,  And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon. 

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,  And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,  Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,  But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage. 

Touching your goodness, I am like a man  Who turns a letter over in his hand  And you might think that this was because the hand  Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man  Has never had a letter from anyone;  And now he is both afraid of what it means  And ashamed because he has no other means  To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,  Or his parents died before he sent them word,  Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.  Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.  What would you call his feeling for the words  that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.  I love thee to the level of everyday's  Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.  I love thee with the passion put to use  In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose  With my lost saints!--I love thee with the breath,  Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,  I shall but love thee better after death.

Faint winds, and a song fading and leaves falling, Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter . . . And the rain and over the fields a voice calling . . . One gray blown cloud scurries and lifts above, Slides on the sun and flutters there to waft her Sisters on. The shadow of a dove Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings; And down the valley through the crying trees The body of the darker storm flies; brings With its new air the breath of sunken seas And slender tenuous thunder . . . But I wait . . . Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain-- Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate, Happier winds that pile her hair; Again They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air Upon me, winds that I know, and storm. There was a summer every rain was rare; There was a season every wind was warm . . . And now you pass me in the mist . . . your hair Rain-blown about you, damp lips curved once more In that wild irony, that gay despair That made you old when we have met before; Wraith-like you drift on out before the rain, Across the fields, blown with the stemless flowers, With your old hopes, dead leaves and loves again-- Dim as a dream and wan with all old hours (Whispers will creep into the growing dark . . . Tumult will die over the trees) Now night Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse Of day, glides down the dreaming hills, tear-bright, To cover with her hair the eerie green . . . Love for the dusk . . . Love for the glistening after; Quiet the trees to their last tops . . . serene . . . Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter . . .

Here, Earth-born, over the lilt of the water, Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light, Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughter . . . Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night. Walking alone . . . was is splendor, or what, we were bound with, Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair? Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air. That was the day . . . and the night for another story, Pale as a dream and shadowed with penciled trees-- Ghosts of the stars came by who had sought for glory, Whispered to us of peace in the plaintive breeze, Whispered of old dead faiths that the day had shattered, Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon; That was the urge that we knew and the language that mattered That was the debt that was paid to the userer June. Here, deepest of dreams, by the waters that bring not Anything back of the past that we need not know, What if the light is but sun and the little streams sing not, We are together, it seems . . . I have loved you so . . . What did the last night hold, with the summer over, Drawing us back to the home in the changing glade? What leered out of the dark in the ghostly clover? God! . . . till you stirred in your sleep . . . and were wild afraid . . . Well . . . we have passed . . . we are chronicle now to the eerie. Curious metal from meteors that failed in the sky; Earth-born the tireless is stretched by the water, quite weary, Close to this ununderstandable changeling that's I . . . Fear is an echo we traced to Security's daughter; Now we are faces and voices . . . and less, too soon, Whispering half-love over the lilt of the water . . . Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

instead, insulted. to look, in green light. redact. can you read... the oracular, such indifference. failing in the halls of an unknown.

to have powered down. mission. some sort of cavalcade, plane flight caucus to indifference. a mission, museum, the night in the unknown. a city.

raked forest leaves, consorted with compost fires, down in steam, walked an incline, slipped to fall. the clatter of bones on buried stones, on those leaves fallen, but not as fast as I fell.

in Turrell's dim light, I realized the failure of the art official. an artificial stance, an impossibility: to speak and listen simultaneously.

the train bed, we call them tracks, where two ties swim beneath. a gossip, these gadgets, soaked in white scrimmed preamble. I made the mistake of coming closer, again.

ihe rejection, a mastication of the brain, those thoughts that fuel the day. I can't, besides, canning involves brine and fish we simply don't have.

in the sea farm, large carp. in the lake, a new cat finds our resources, our swims, those precious summer waters, where the between marks space.

the train from platform; here, everything in an elevated series of windows, lighted, in yellow mirrored fashion. large tower rests on the ground. the pavement gives way, the grinding of breaks.

came across a few seats, edits, and large empty doors. there were paintings, an elderly man. a slipped space to look aside guards and walls. I can't think of how many steps it takes to escape.

platformed, clasped, we waited to circulate, encased, dined within curator's task, lips sown in a silence of those emeriti.

caustic, in bold approach, pallid lips, rouged face, nearly quaffed and ensconced. I edged the red, a rage lost in the linen weave, a time.

The geraniums I left last night on the windowsill,  To the best of my knowledge now, are out there still,  And will be there as long as I think they will. And will be there as long as I think that I  Can throw the window open on the sky,  A touch of geranium pink in the tail of my eye; As long as I think I see, past leaves green-growing,  Barges moving down a river, water flowing,  Fulfillment in the thought of thought outgoing, Fulfillment in the sight of sight replying,  Of sound in the sound of small birds southward flying,  In life life-giving, and in death undying.

The wind blows through the doors of my heart. It scatters my sheet music that climbs like waves from the piano, free of the keys. Now the notes stripped, black butterflies, flattened against the screens. The wind through my heart blows all my candles out. In my heart and its rooms is dark and windy. From the mantle smashes birds’ nests, teacups full of stars as the wind winds round, a mist of sorts that rises and bends and blows or is blown through the rooms of my heart that shatters the windows, rakes the bedsheets as though someone had just made love. And my dresses they are lifted like brides come to rest on the bedstead, crucifixes, dresses tangled in trees in the rooms of my heart. To save them I’ve thrown flowers to fields, so that someone would pick them up and know where they came from. Come the bees now clinging to flowered curtains. Off with the clothesline pinning anything, my mother’s trousseau. It is not for me to say what is this wind or how it came to blow through the rooms of my heart. Wing after wing, through the rooms of the dead the wind does not blow. Nor the basement, no wheezing, no wind choking the cobwebs in our hair. It is cool here, quiet, a quilt spread on soil. But we will never lie down again.

Go deeper than love, for the soul has greater depth, love is like the grass, but the heart is deep wild rock molten, yet dense and permanent. Go down to your deep old heart, woman, and lose sight of yourself. And lose sight of me, the me whom you turbulently loved. Let us lose sight of ourselves, and break the mirrors. For the fierce curve of our lives is moving again to the depths out of sight, in the deep living heart.

But say, in the dark wild metal of your heart is there a gem, which came into being between us? is there a sapphire of mutual trust, a blue spark? is there a ruby of fused being, mine and yours, an inward glint?

If there is not, O then leave me, go away. For I cannot be bullied back into the appearances of love, any more than August can be bullied to look like March.

Love out of season, especially at the end of the season is merely ridiculous. If you insist on it, I insist on departure.

Have you no deep old heart of wild womanhood self-forgetful, and gemmed with experience, and swinging in a strange unison of power with the heart of the man you are supposed to have loved?

If you have not, go away. If you can only sit with a mirror in your hand, an ageing woman posing on and on as a lover, in love with a self that now is shallow and withered, your own self--that has passed like a last summer's flower-- then go away--

I do not want a woman who age cannot wither. She is a made up lie, a dyed imortelle of infinite staleness.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in  my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done  by only me is your doing,my darling)  i fear  no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant  and whatever a sun will always sing is you  here is the deepest secret nobody knows  (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)  and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart  i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) 

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning,  And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,  Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover  The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,  Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,  And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,  Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter:  The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter  These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover. 

Yesterday we walked apart  Separate and cold and mortal.  Now the sacred kiss has joined us,  Now we stand inside the portal  That permits of no returning  And my heart is burning, burning.  I know not what the word may be,  Or what the charm, or what the token  That has filled us with this glory,  But never let the spell be broken;  Let it stay a mystery  For all times to be.  Yesterday, with lighter joys  We wantoned at the outer portal.  Now, with love's old alchemy  We have made ourselves immortal. 

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,  You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)  I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,  All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,  You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,  I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,  You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,  I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,  I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,  I am to see to it that I do not lose you. 

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied  Who told me time would ease me of my pain!  I miss him in the weeping of the rain;  I want him at the shrinking of the tide;  The old snows melt from every mountain-side,  And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;  But last year's bitter loving must remain  Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.  There are a hundred places where I fear  To go - so with his memory they brim.  And entering with relief some quiet place  Where never fell his foot or shone his face  I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'  And so stand stricken, so remembering him. 

Always for the first time  Hardly do I know you by sight  You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window  A wholly imaginary house  It is there that from one second to the next  In the inviolate darkness  I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occuring  The one and only rift  In the facade and in my heart  The closer I come to you  In reality  The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room  Where you appear alone before me  At first you coalesce entierly with the brightness  The elusive angle of a curtain  It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse  With the diagonal slant of its girls picking  Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare  Before them a T-square of dazzling light  The curtain invisibly raised  In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in  It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep  You as though you could be  The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you  You pretend not to know I am watching you  Marvelously I am no longer sure you know  You idleness brings tears to my eyes  A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures  It's a honeydew hunt  There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest  There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette  Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings  Flaring out in the center of a great white clover  There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy  There is  By my leaning over the precipice  Of your presence and your absense in hopeless fusion  My finding the secret  Of loving you  Always for the first time