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| gene fowler |  | 1. THE POET'S CRAFT 1 for Hilary Ayer Shall I compare you to a summer day? You have more colors and more spirit: Your laugh is trickier than summer winds at play. Summer will buckle and end, we won't fear it. I've seen you hotter than the sun and golden And raging crouched flesh in thunderclouds. Your breathing sings summer myths of olden Times; all the summers gather in crowds. The summers are not lost, nor will this one be. You will wrinkle and gray, when winter Comes, grow youthful in the spring for me And young and fair in summer, a sun's splinter. All the years I can breathe, or turn in time, In each of them you are summer and rhyme. 2 on the sea And sitting in sand, a weighted whisper around Me of the sea, I watch the swelling gray Rise thick and fall onto rocks and spray The mouths of caves, wistful flights in sound. I've seen it silver leaf, or glasses ground To ornate mirrors, fitted carefully the way Best to catch the eye, the frozen sway And leap of it an escaped secret I've found. And curling toes in sand, rest the eye By letting it roll far and wild as the sea. And rest the ear in a waking ancient growl, The muscles with an unbending of the knee. It's time to walk the beach, and time to prowl The forests, time to taste the fleshy sky. 3 Oh, singeth thee the gentle chunes Of love! And let thy voices guide my pen To make a flaming thread to weave again The fiery net that trappeth lovers' runes And make of them our songs! The yellow noones Have burnèd greenery, dried our sea-ken; And thou hast gone to some unfindable den. And I am left with burnèd flesh on the dunes. Oh, I have writ the songs of old, Revivèd forms and words and ways of speech. And I have callèd forth the sea and drowning. And loving work maketh desert a beach. But critics say I sound like Mrs. Browning, And avant gardists fear my soul is sold. 4 on tennis, for R.F. Giddy ap, giddy ap, old horse! You, who used to ride the side of night, Who tore out your flanks on branches of wild gorse, Who turned maids to windy screams of fright, Giddy ap! Giddy ap, old mare! Oh, and hold down now, some more Field, then the oats, and not a scare Left in you; heavy shoulders sore, I reckon, old horse; so, giddy ap! Say, you hear the night coming on? The trees wailing? The house shutters flap? Old times galloping by on the run? I'd pull the halter off, Dark Roan, But you'd go, and I'd be left alone. | |
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