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  1. TopTop #31
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poems from Larry Robinson

    The Fall of Rome


    (for Cyril Connolly)


    The piers are pummelled by the waves;
    In a lonely field the rain
    Lashes an abandoned train;
    Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

    Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
    Agents of the Fisc pursue
    Absconding tax-defaulters through
    The sewers of provincial towns.

    Private rites of magic send
    The temple prostitutes to sleep;
    All the literati keep
    An imaginary friend.

    Cerebrotonic Cato may
    Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
    But the muscle-bound Marines
    Mutiny for food and pay.

    Caesar's double-bed is warm
    As an unimportant clerk
    Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
    On a pink official form.

    Unendowed with wealth or pity,
    Little birds with scarlet legs,
    Sitting on their speckled eggs,
    Eye each flu-infected city.

    Altogether elsewhere, vast
    Herds of reindeer move across
    Miles and miles of golden moss,
    Silently and very fast.

    - W. H. Auden
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  2. TopTop #32
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poems from Larry Robinson

    Long Hair
    Hunting Season:

    Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They
    do various things which irresistibly draw men near them;
    each one selects a certain man. The Deer shoots the man,
    who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home
    and eat it. Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and
    hides in there, but the man doesn't know it. When
    enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all
    at once. The men who don't have Deer in them will
    also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.
    This is called "takeover from inside".

    Deer Trails:

    Deer trails run on the side hills
    cross country access roads
    dirt ruts to bone-white
    board house ranches,
    tumbled down.

    Waist high through manzanita,
    Through sticky, prickly, crackling
    gold dry summer grass.

    Deer trails lead to water,
    Lead sideways all ways
    Narrowing down to one best path --
    And split --
    And fade away to nowhere.

    Deer trails slide under freeways
    slip into cities
    swing back and forth in crops and orchards
    run up the sides of schools!

    Deer spoor and crisscross dusty tracks
    Are in the house: and coming out the walls:

    And deer bound through my hair.

    Gary Snyder
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  3. TopTop #33
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poems from Larry Robinson

    Snow Geese

    Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
    What a task
    to ask

    of anything, or anyone,

    yet it is ours,
    and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

    One fall day I heard
    above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
    I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was

    a flock of snow geese, winging it
    faster than the ones we usually see,
    and, being the color of snow, catching the sun

    so they were, in part at least, golden. I

    held my breath
    as we do
    sometimes
    to stop time
    when something wonderful
    has touched us

    as with a match,
    which is lit, and bright,
    but does not hurt
    in the common way,

    but delightfully,
    as if delight
    were the most serious thing
    you ever felt.

    The geese
    flew on,
    I have never seen them again.

    Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
    Maybe I won't.
    It doesn't matter.
    What matters
    is that, when I saw them,
    I saw them
    as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

    - Mary Oliver


    I will be on retreat for the next while, so this will be the last poem I will post until October 24.
    Larry
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  4. TopTop #34
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poems from Larry Robinson

    The Diameter Of The Bomb

    The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
    and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
    with four dead and eleven wounded.
    And around these, in a larger circle
    of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
    and one graveyard. But the young woman
    who was buried in the city she came from,
    at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
    enlarges the circle considerably,
    and the solitary man mourning her death
    at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
    includes the entire world in the circle.
    And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
    that reaches up to the throne of God and
    beyond, making
    a circle with no end and no God.

    - Yerhuda Amichai

    (translated by Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell)
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  5. TopTop #35
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poems by Larry Robinson

    Twilight in Hendy Woods

    This is the hour of magic
    When this world and the other world
    Touch in a lingering kiss
    And a deep stillness settles over all things.

    This is the hour of magic
    When the Earth,
    For one eternal moment, holds its breath
    Before turning from the sun.

    This is the hour of magic
    When, if you listen
    With an open heart and a quiet mind,
    You can hear the Ancient Ones, the elders of the forest

    Telling the old stories:
    Of the chainsaw massacres and the fires;
    Of the great ice ages and the birth of mountain ranges;
    Of the times long past when they were many and covered the Earth.

    They are leaving us now.
    When they are gone,
    Who will tell these stories?

    Larry Robinson
    Last edited by Barry; 01-07-2007 at 03:42 PM.
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