Collecte Works Read Online Free PDF Page B

shack—
    insurance against wind, fire, falling aircraft, riots—
             home itself, was our break in the thick.
    Because look! How can she keep it?—
    to hold a house has to rent it out
            and spend her life on the street.
     

     
    Hand Crocheted Rug
    Gather all the old, rip and sew
    the skirt I've saved so long,
    Sally's valance, the twins' first calico
    and the rest I worked to dye.
    Red, green, black, hook,
    hitch, nevermind, cramped
    around back not yet the turn
    of the century…Grandpa forward
    from the shop, “Ought to have a machine.”
     

     
    They came at a pace
    to go to war.
    They came to more:
    a leg brought back
    to a face.
     

     
    I doubt I'll get silk stockings out
    of my asparagus
    that grows too fast to stop it,
    or any pair of Capital's
    miracles of profit.
     

     
    To see the man who took care of our stock
    as we slept in the dark, the blackbirds flying
    high as the market out of our pie,
    I travel now at crash of day
    on the el, a low rush of geese over those below,
    to see the man who smiled
    and gave us a first-hand country shake.
     

     
    A monster owl
    out on the fence
    flew away. What
    is it the sign
    of? The sign of
    an owl.
     

     
    Gen. Rodimstev's story (Stalingrad)
    Four of us lived off half an acre
    till grandfather traded it
    for a gallon of liquor.
    White Guards flogged father to death,
    I studied to save
    man's sweet breath.
     

     
    Birds' mating-fight
    feathers floating down
    offspring started
    toward the ground.
     

     
    From my bed I see
    the wind willow
    the grass.
    From my head
    in feathers comes
    a gas.
    I think of a tree
    to make it
    last.
     

     
    Asa Gray wrote Increase Lapham:
    pay particular attention
    to my pets, the grasses.
     

     
    Pioneers
    Anson Dart pierced the forest,
                                                  fell upon wild strawberries.
    Frosts, fires, land speculation, comet.
                                                          Corn to be planted.
    How to keep the strawberries?—
                                                  Indians' sugar full of dirt.
    How to keep the earth.
    Winnebagoes knew nothing
    of government purchase of their land,
    agency men got chiefs drunk
    then let them stand.
    On the steamer Consolation
                               came Dart's wife and daughters,
    already there his sons and three sides of the house.
    In the Great Bitter Winter a rug closed the side
                                                    that was bare.
    For mortar they bored out a white-oak log,
    pounded enough corn for a breakfast Johnnie cake
    by rising—all sons—at 4:00.
    Could be more, could be warmer, could be more.
    Sun, turn the earth once more.
    Between fighting fourteen nations' invading troops
    and starting the first thousand-acre farms
           we hungered,
    an effort to rise or stand up straight.
    A tractor has seven hundred fifteen parts.
                   I studied—
    I'm a Morvin from the Eraya tribe—
                                 learned all about oil and sand
    the whole inner essence of the core.
    Gorky recalls Professor Hvolson
                                                lecturing on Einstein,
    clung with his hands to the pulpit,
    swayed back and forth from lack of food.
    Then—the first one!—red wheels
                               dipped, met the earth.
    Red wheels gave the earth a new turn.
     

     
    Well, spring overflows the land,
    floods floor, pump, wash machine
    of the woman moored to this low shore by deafness.
        Good-bye to lilacs by the door
        and all I planted for the eye.
        If I could hear—too much talk in the world,
        too much