Collecte Works (10 page)

Missus Dorra

came to town

to buy some silkalene.

The clerk said Oh

my dear Mrs. Morra

is it in style ageen?

All these years

I saved and saved

and saved my silkalene

and yesterday

I threw it away—

how would taffeta be?

No, taffeta

cracks from hanging, besides

it's not being worn.

Mrs. Porra my dear

if you're going to be hung

won't crêpe do as weel?

No retiring summer stroke

nor the dangerous parasol

on the following sands,

no earth under fire flood lava forecast,

not the pop play of tax, borrow or inflate

but the radiant, tight energy

boring from within

communizing fear

into strike,

work.

To war they kept

                us going

but when the garden

                bloomed

I let them know

                my death.

With time war

                is splendid

and the rainbow

                sword,

they do not break

                my rest.

Petrou his name was sorrow

and little did he know

they called him Tomorrow

and Today let him go.

The eleventh of progressional

the make-believe of prayer,

too many dunderoos

and everybody there.

If you stay at home

loving in the light

you'll always get an answer

wrong or right.

Young girl to marry,

winds the washing harry.

I spent my money

by the ocean

and have not any

to fill a tooth.

Trees over the roof

and I was down

when the night

came in.

New Goose

Don't shoot the rail!

Let your grandfather rest!

Tho he sees your wild eyes

he's falling asleep,

his long-billed pipe

on his red-brown vest.

Bombings

You could go to the Underground's platform

for a three half-penny tube fare;

safe vaults of the Bank of England

you couldn't go there.

The sheltered slept

under eiderdown,

Lady Diana and the Lord himself

in apartments deep in the ground.

Hop press

               and conveyor for a hearse,

Newall Carpenter Senior's

                         two patented works.

…

Kilbourne. Eighteen sixty-eight.

Twelve hundred women and boys hopped.

When the market raced down to a dime a pound

from sixty-five cents, planters who'd staked

all they had, stopped.

Ash woods, willow, close to shore,

gentle overflow each spring,

here he lived to be eighty-four

then left everything.

Heirs rush in—lay one tree bare

claiming a birdhouse, leave

wornout roof hanging there

nothing underneath.