Poems

Refugee Blues Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my […]

Roman Wall Blues Over the heather the wet wind blows, I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose. The rain comes pattering out […]

Seascape Look, stranger, at this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the […]

September 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: […]

Song Of The Master And Boatswain At Dirty Dick’s and Sloppy Joe’s We drank our liquor straight, Some went upstairs with Margery, And some, alas, with […]

Taller To-day Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings, Walking together in a windless orchard Where the brook runs over the gravel, far from the glacier. Nights […]

The Fall of Rome (for Cyril Connolly) The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill […]

The Geography of the House (for Christopher Isherwood) Seated after breakfast In this white-tiled cabin Arabs call the House where Everybody goes, Even melancholics Raise a […]

The Hidden Law The Hidden Law does not deny Our laws of probability, But takes the atom and the star And human beings as they are, […]

The Labyrinth Anthropos apteros for days Walked whistling round and round the Maze, Relying happily upon His temperment for getting on. The hundredth time he sighted, […]