All Poems
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In Memoriam Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse
© Henry Kendall
SHALL he, on whom the fair lord, Delphicus,
Turned gracious eyes and countenance of shine,
Be left to lie without a wreath from us,
To sleep without a flower upon his shrine?
The Having To Love Something Else
© Russell Edson
There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his
father for his mother's hand in marriage, and was told he could
not marry his mother's hand because it was attached to all
the rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that
he'd have to love something else . . .
As Lords Their Labourers' Hire Delay
© Sir Walter Scott
As lords their labourers' hire delay,
Fate quits our toil with hopes to come,
Which, if far short of present pay,
Still, owns a debt and names a sum.
Vomit
© Russell Edson
The house grows sick in its dining room and begins to vomit.
Father cries, the dining room is vomiting.
No wonder, the way you eat, it's enough to make anybody sick,
says his wife.
The Sad Message
© Russell Edson
The Captain becomes moody at sea. He's
afraid of water; such bully amounts that prove the
seas. . .
The Patrol And The Gold-Digger
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Gordon, mounted, loq.
Ho ! you chap of grit and sinew,
Smoking in your pit,
Why thus labour discontinue ?
Why your forehead knit ?
The Changeling
© Russell Edson
A man had a son who was an anvil. And then sometimes
he was an automobile tire.
I do wish you would sit still, said the father.
Sometimes his son was a rock.
A Convent Wothout God
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Here a base turnkey novice--master is,
Teaching humility. The matin bell
Calls thee to toil, but little comforteth.
None heed thy prayers or give the kiss of peace.
Nathless, my soul, be valiant. Even in Hell
Wisdom shall preach to thee of life and death.
The Philosophers
© Russell Edson
. . . I think, therefore I am, said the man.
I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets
hit, said the man's mother.
But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he
could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am,
and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it . . .
The Reflection Of Mountains.
© Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
How happy my heart is, how buoyant,
On my boat so tiny and light,
I am sailing the ripples and light
All day long and from dusk till the dawning.
The Tree
© Russell Edson
They have grafted pieces of an ape with a dog. . .
Then, what they have, wants to live in a tree.
No, it wants to lift its leg and piss on the tree. . .
You
© Russell Edson
Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which
is simply a path leading through an archway called
adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.
Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life
The Rat's Tight Schedule
© Russell Edson
A man stumbled on some rat droppings.
Hey, who put those there? That's dangerous, he said.
His wife said, those are pieces of a rat.
Wait, he's coming apart, he's all over the floor, said the
Solitude
© Harold Monro
WHEN you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.
Elephant Dormitory
© Russell Edson
But just as the great gray head began filling with the gray
wrinkles of sleep it was awakened by the thud of its tail
falling out of bed.
Ballade Of A Toyokuni Colour-Print
© William Ernest Henley
Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago;
But that I was a lucky man
The Toyokuni here will show:
I loved you--once--in old Japan.
Accidents
© Russell Edson
The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
Compensation
© Sara Teasdale
I SHOULD be glad of loneliness
And hours that go on broken wings,
A thirsty body, a tired heart
And the unchanging ache of things,
A Journey Through The Moonlight
© Russell Edson
In sleep when an old man's body is no longer
aware of his boundaries, and lies flattened by
gravity like a mere of wax in its bed . . . It drips
down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a
Sorrow's Treachery
© Robert Fuller Murray
I made a truce last night with Sorrow,
The queen of tears, the foe of sleep,
To keep her tents until the morrow,
Nor send such dreams to make me weep.
