O, little dove, have you flown so far
You’ve lost the way in your lonely flight
Can you now wing back to that Star
Leaving behind the sullen night?
There is a wide and hopeless land
Bright though it be, beneath the sun
Dry and hot lies the lifeless sand
Waiting the return of the sweet, kind One
To bring the joy it sorely needs:
Christmas joy. O, little dove
With branch of olive and hope-sown seeds,
At last flower the desert with peace and love
The tree flamed
a lone amber flower
on a silent plain
The mind stirred
there fell the sound
of golden rain
And I am filled
with wonder now:
how that amber power
the silent tree
on the lonely plain
sang golden fire
rang golden rain
Palest to cold orange
Stares through
Autumn cloak
A relentless eye
Unwinking.
A poet is born, not made
Yet the poet must be made
Once born
The leaven and the kneading
And the slow rising
And the heat, the pain
Of the hot, hot stove
Before the hunger-ease—
The sharing—
The time of feasting
When piece by piece
The bread from the heart
Is torn
Great Antares
So lately warm
And glowing
With pulsating light
swinging
Copper amulet
On the summer
Throat of night
Palest to cold orange
Stares through
Autumn cloak
A relentless eye
Unwinking.
Long had he walked
The silent way
Wrapped in thoughts
Too delicate to lay
Before the horde
To let them cry
With derision
And mocking tones
Casting curses
And verbal stones
As they did at his humble head
He could afford
To lie
In peace
With an eradicable smile
On a face
That never knew the vile
Distorting dread
Stalking their own sad mile
The halls of the heart
Have templed walls
Where secret gods abide.
There the soul burns incense
And offers up its prayers,
And only that votary
Knows those halls,
And what strange gods dwell there.
For Pegasus
What makes your wild-fire heart cry low,
Calling for the gypsies so?
The violin with singing bow
The music and the dancing flow
Like phantom rhythms through your dreams
And you with willing heart take flight
To a high land place of strange delight
Pursuing ghost-fires in the night.
What is the song that beckons you still
To vagabond play beyond the hill?
All night long it lures you on
Only to find the caravan gone,
Misted away into the dawn.
What makes your yearning heart cry low,
Longing for gypsies so?
Emerging
from the closed cocoon,
a butterfly on the wing:
each work of art, God’s gift,
streams rainbow colors
for the mind,
memories for the heart
It’s a stormy, dark night
The seas flinging, frothing with foam
Toss in fitful slumber
On their white sand-beds.
The moon is ghastly,
Flees across a blackened sky.
The wind’s low voice
Has taken to dreadful, deep sobbing:
And the hills, with heads bowed
And shoulders hunched
Are draped in mourning.
What secret sorrow
What awful foe
Has taught nature
Such abysmal woe?
For those of us condemned to dream
To dream behind invisible walls
Whose every little wish
And half-formed hope,
Like will-o-the-wisps,
Blow willy-nilly away
With every errant breeze