Authors: Lorine Niedecker
stood at my door in the cold days
when the wolf was expected.
She lay her brown nose inside my coat.
We two unfortunate dogs.
”Oh ivy green
oh ivy green—”
you spoke your poem
as we walked a city terrace
and said if you could hear—sneeze
sneeze on the corner—
Handel clean
Christmas would be green
Christmas would be cherished.
To the mother
ivy
does not matter
with her son's cold no better
unless a friend should hold her
warm in a green
cover
then Christmas would be cherished
Christmas would be cherished.
As I shook the dust
from my father's door
I saw young Aeneas
on the shore
mulling the past
—a large town
and a wartime island—
a pleasure now.
I'll wait, he said,
till a star shows
that's gone
when it snows.
They live a cool distance
inside today's woods.
My cutting friends' concise art
—intelligence in beauty—
exacts their violinist son
to make it come clean-sung.
Their further woods—
they live without food-heavy table,
soft bed, the whole easy lot of us,
the sick, thick leaf-tickling outersurface
lot of us.
A tough game, art,
humanity's other part.
Violin Debut
Carnegie Hall, the great musicbox—
lift: the lid on the hard-working parts
of the boy whose smooth power
is saved—
his tone and more: what he's done with his life
—those two who sent the flow thru him have done—
he's been true to himself, a knife
behaved.
OTHER POEMS
Horse, hello
I too live hot before the final flash
cavort for others' gain
We toss our shining heads
in an ever increasing standard of sweat
The mind deranged, Democritus
Who knows us, friend—
our indicator needles shot off scale—
Spinoza, Burns, Xenophanes knew us
in days when thought arose and kindly stayed—
All creatures whatsoever desire this glow
Energy glows at the lips—
a cigarette—
measure the man pending…
under him droppings
larger, whiter than owls'—
What thought burns here?
Hi, Hot-and-Humid
That June she's a lush
Marshmushing, frog bickering
moon pooling, green gripping
fool
keep cool
Woman in middle life
raises hot fears—
a few cool years after these
then who'll remember
flash to black
I gleamed?
We physicians watch the juices rise
as we tend
to bend her
toward the soft-blowing air.
Girl, personal grass,
we saved you
waved you
closer. Don't despise us
if we ask
or do not ask:
what for?
1937
In the picture soldiers
moving thru a field
of flowers,
Spanish reds.
The flowers of war
move cautiously
not to tread
the wild heads.
Here we last,
lilacs, vacant lots,
taxes, no work,
debts, the wind widens
the grass.
In the old house
the clocks are dead,
past dead.