Grass

Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. 

Shovel them under and let me work--

          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:

          What place is this?

          Where are we now?

          I am the grass.

          Let me work. 

These poems, she said,

Robert Bringhurst

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man   
who would leave his wife and child because   
they made noise in his study. These are the poems   
of a man who would murder his mother to claim   
the inheritance. These are the poems of a man   
like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not   
comprehend but which nevertheless
offended me. These are the poems of a man
who would rather sleep with himself than with women,   
she said. These are the poems of a man
with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket’s   
hands, woven of water and logic
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These   
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant   
as elm leaves, which if they love, love only   
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,   
and not a beginning. Love means love
of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.   
These poems, she said....
                                       You are, he said,
beautiful.
                That is not love, she said rightly.

The Does' Prayer

The does, as the hour grows late,

med-it-ate;

med-it-nine;

med-i-ten;

med-eleven;

med-twelve;

mednight!

The does, as the hour grows late,

meditate.

They fold their little toesies,

the doesies.

Christian Morgenstern 

 translation by Max Knight