'The Poet'

Bury me in a nameless grave

I came from God the World to save

I brought them wisdom from above: Worship and Liberty and Love.

They slew me for I did disparage

Therefore religion, Law and Marriage. So be my grave without a name

That Earth may swallow up my shame!

- Aleister Crowley

O dear sweet rosy
unattainable desire
...how sad, no way
to change the mad
cultivated asphodel, the
visible reality...


and skin's appalling
petals--how inspired
to be so Iying in the living
room drunk naked
and dreaming, in the absence
of electricity...
over and over eating the low root
of the asphodel,
gray fate...


rolling in generation
on the flowery couch
as on a bank in Arden--
my only rose tonite's the treat
of my own nudity.

- Allen Ginsberg.

My dear, my dear, I know

More than another

What makes your heart beat so;

Not even your own mother

Can know it as I know,

Who broke my heart for her

When the wild thought,

That she denies

And has forgot,

Set all her blood astir

And glittered in her eyes.

- W.B. Yeats

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

- Ernest Dowson.

Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
‘Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.

‘Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end
With the birds’ songs. I think they blend
Better than in the same fair days
That shall pronounce the Winter’s end.

Do men mark, and none dares say,
How it may shift and long delay,
Somewhere before the first of Spring,
But never fails, this singing day?

When it falls on Sunday, bells
Are a wild natural voice that dwells
On hillsides; but the birds’ songs have
The holiness gone from the bells.

This day unpromised is more dear
Than all the named days of the year
When seasonable sweets come in,
Since now we know how lucky we are.

—	Edward Thomas

Through these pale cold days
What dark faces burn
Out of three thousand years,
And their wild eyes yearn,

While underneath their brows
Like waifs their spirits grope
For the pools of Hebron again—-
For Lebanon’s summer slope.

They leave these blond still days
In dust behind their tread
They see with living eyes
How long they have been dead

—	Isaac Rosenberg

Come, let us pity not the dead but Death
For He can only come when we are leaving,
He cannot stay for tea or share our sherry.
He makes the old man vomit on the hearthrug
But never knew his heart before it failed him.
He shoves the shopgirl under the curt lorry
But could not watch her body undivided.
Swerving the cannon-shell to smash the airman
He had no time to hear my brother laughing.

—	Drummond Allison