The Diamond Cutter

Not what the light will do but how he shapes it

And what particular colours it will bear.

And something of the climber's concentration

Seeing the white peak, setting the right foot there.

Not how the sun was plausible at morning

Nor how it was distributed at noon,

And not how much the single stone could show

But rather how much brilliance it would shun:

Simply a paring down, a cleaving to

One object, as the star-gazer who sees

One single comet polished by its fall
Rather than countless, untouched galaxies.

The Ideal

This is where I came from.

I passed this way.

This should not be shameful

Or hard to say.

A self is a self.

It is not a screen.

A person should respect

What he has been.

This is my past

Which I shall not discard.

This is the ideal.
This is hard.

From the Irish

According to Dineen, a Gael unsurpassed

in lexicographical enterprise, the Irish

for moon means 'the white circle in a slice

of half-boiled potato or turnip'. A star

is the mark on the forehead of a beast

and the sun is the bottom of a lake, or well.

Well, if I say to you your face

is like a slice of half-boiled turnip,

your hair is the colour of a lake's bottom

and at the centre of each of your eyes

is the mark of the beast, it is because
I want to love you properly, according to Dineen.

Flowers

Some men never think of it.

You did. You'd come along

And say you'd nearly brought me flowers

But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts -

The sort that minds like ours

Dream up incessantly. You thought

I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.

Now I can only smile.

But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.

Spellbound

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

'After great pain, a formal feeling comes'

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -

First - Chill - then Stupor - Then the letting go -

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   

How little that which thou deniest me is;   

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

    Yet this enjoys before it woo,

    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.   

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;   

Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,   

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

    Though use make you apt to kill me,

    Let not to that, self-murder added be,

    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?   

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?   

Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou   

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

    ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.