"Of Bronze - and Blaze -" by Emily Dickinson

Of Bronze - and Blaze -

The North - tonight -

So adequate - it forms -

So preconcerted with itself -

So distant - to alarms -

An Unconcern so sovereign

To Universe, or me -

Infects my simple spirit

With Taints of Majesty -

Till I take vaster attitudes -

And strut opon my stem -

Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,

For Arrogance of them -

My Splendors, are Menagerie -

But their Competeless Show

Will entertain the Centuries

When I, am long ago,

An Island in dishonored Grass -

Whom none but Daisies, know -

Source of the text – The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 142.

Bourguignomicon: Ars poetica borealis. This lyric posits the northern lights as an ideal poetic stance—arrogant & grand—unlike the poet’s little mixed bag.

"Joseph Conrad’s Last Novel (Which Is Comprised Entirely of Face Colors Used in His Previous Novels)" by Molly Brodak

Joseph Conrad’s Last Novel (Which Is Comprised

Entirely of Face Colors Used in His Previous Novels)

Cinnamon, Nut Brown, Yellow, Lemon Yellow,

Fatty Yellow, Shiny Yellow, Healthy Creole White

Which is Never Tanned by its Native Sunshine,

Clear, Twice as Sunbaked as Before, Shabby Gold,

Thinly Blue, Off-Black, of Too Much Swedish Punch,

Cooling Silver, Negrish, White as the Snows of Higuerota,

of Half-Raw Beef, of Rippling Copper, Semi-Translucent,

Waxy, Brick Dusty, of Quivering Leather, of Wet Hair,

Refreshingly Green, Poisonously Green, of Sodden Lead,

Dazzling Like a Ballroom with an Earthen Floor,

Invisibly Coloured, of Horn Powder, of a Hopeless Bird,

Besmeared with Tobacco, Exceedingly Rusted, of Crumbs,

Cigaresque, Betrayingly Pink, of Varied Loathsome Colors.

Source of the text – Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night.  Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010, p. 57.

TJB: Face book. Amid this garden of delights, it’s hard to be sure if we’re more impressed by Brodak’s loom-work or Conrad’s turns of phrase.

"It sifts from Leaden Sieves" by Emily Dickinson

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -

It powers all the Wood -

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road -

It scatters like the Birds -

Condenses like a Flock -

Like Juggler’s Figures situates

Upon a baseless Arc -

It traverses yet halts -

Disperses as it stays -

Then curls itself in Capricorn -

Denying that it was -

Source of the text – The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 129.

Bourguignomicon: Snow litany. The white stuff assumes a rich presence with 3 active verbs each in stanzas 1 & 2 and paradoxically-paired verbs in the third.

"predawn," part six of "The Volcano and the Covenant" by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

6. predawn

ruach, ruach, the language to say it

ruach, ruach, wind, spirit, breath

spirit of god on the deep’s face

spirit of god moved on the face

of the deep, spirit

moved

spirit was moving, spirit was moving

ruach elohim

the face of the deep waters moved

first it was dark darkness was on it

the face of the deep darkness was upon it

then the spirit came the wind came

the breath came and it moved

it moved, the breath came

and it moved

ruach it

moved

~

what did the stars do

the stars sang for joy

what did the hills do

they leaped like young rams

what does the day do

it tells the next day

what does the night do

whisper to the next night

what shall I do

Source of the text – Alicia Suskin Ostriker, the volcano sequence.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002, p. 99.

Bourguignomicon: Creation-aubade. The wind-of-God meets face-of-the-deep, luxuriating in the dark waters & King James sounds of Gen 1:2, ending in questions.

from "Upon the translation of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sydney and the Countess of Pembroke His Sister" by John Donne

UPON THE TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS BY

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY AND THE COUNTESS

OF PEMBROKE HIS SISTER.

                                 1635.

Eternal God, (for whom who ever dare

Seek new expressions, do the circle square

And thrust into straight corners of poor wit

Thee, who art cornerless and infinite,)

I would but bless thy name, not name thee now;

And thy gifts are as infinite as thou;

Fix we our praises therefore on this one,

That, as thy blessed Spirit fell upon

These psalms’ first author in a cloven tongue,

(For ‘t was a double power by which he sung

The highest matter in the noblest form),

So thou hast cleft that Spirit to perform

That work again, and shed it here upon

Two by their bloods, and by thy Spirit one,

A brother and a sister, made by thee

The organ, where thou art the harmony,

Two, that make one John Baptist’s holy voice,

And who that Psalm, Now let the Isles rejoice,

Have both translated and applied it too,

Both told us what, and taught us how to do.

Source of the text – The Poems of John Donne, from the text of the edition of 1633, revised by James Russell Lowell with the various readings of the other editions of the seventeenth century, and with a preface, an introduction, and notes by Charles Eliot Norton, Volume II.  New York: The Grolier Club, 1895, p. 176.

TJB: A refusal to wit. Should Donne’s warning against naming God apply to either of the sibling-translators (on whose behalf Donne praises God)?

"Junk" by Richard Wilbur

JUNK

        Huru Welandes

                                      worc ne geswiceσ?

        monna ænigum

                                       σara σe Mimming can

        heardne gehealdan.

                                                            —Waldere

An axe angles

                               from my neighbor’s ashcan;

It is hell’s handiwork,

                                          the wood not hickory,

The flow of the grain

                                         not faithfully followed.

The shivered shaft

                                     rises from a shellheap

Of plastic playthings,

                                         paper plates,

And the sheer shards

                                         of shattered tumblers

That were not annealed

                                             for the time needful.

At the same curbside,

                                          a cast-off cabinet

Of wavily warped

                                    unseasoned wood

Waits to be trundled

                                        in the trash-man’s truck.

Haul them off! Hide them!

                                                 The heart winces

For junk and gimcrack,

                                            for jerrybuilt things

And the men who make them

                                                      for a little money,   

Bartering pride

                                like the bought boxer

Who pulls his punches,

                                            or the paid-off jockey   

Who in the home stretch

                                              holds in his horse.   

Yet the things themselves

                                               in thoughtless honor

Have kept composure,

                                            like captives who would not

Talk under torture.

                                      Tossed from a tailgate

Where the dump displays

                                                its random dolmens,

Its black barrows

                                    and blazing valleys,

They shall waste in the weather

                                                        toward what they were.

The sun shall glory

                                     in the glitter of glass-chips,

Foreseeing the salvage

                                            of the prisoned sand,   

And the blistering paint

                                            peel off in patches,

That the good grain

                                       be discovered again.

Then burnt, bulldozed,

                                           they shall all be buried   

To the depth of diamonds,

                                                 in the making dark

Where halt Hephaestus

                                            keeps his hammer

And Wayland’s work

                                          is worn away.

Source of the text – Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems 1943-2004.  Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2004, pp. 261-2.

TJB: Trash invective. Wilbur’s essayistic ramble in alliterative accentuals captures the hard sounds but not the fury of its Anglo-Saxon models.

from "To Penshurst" by Ben Jonson

from “To Penshurst” lines 22-75

The lower land, that to the river bends,

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;

The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed;

Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops

Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney’s copps,

To crown thy open table, doth provide

The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side;

The painted partridge lies in every field,

And for thy mess is willing to be killed;

And if the high-swoln Medway fail thy dish,

Thou hast the ponds that pay thee tribute fish,

Fat agèd carps that run into thy net,

And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,

As loth the second draught or cast to stay,

Officiously at first, themselves betray;

Bright eels that emulate them, leap on land,

Before the fisher, or into his hand.

Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,

Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours:

The early cherry, with the later plum,

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;

The blushing apricot, and woolly peach

Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.

And though thy walls be of the country stone,

They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;

There’s none that dwell about them wish them down,

But all come in, the farmer and the clown,

And no one empty-handed, to salute

Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.

Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,

Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make

The better cheeses, bring them; or else send

By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend

This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear

An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.

But what can this, more than express their love,

Add to thy free provisions, far above

The need of such? where liberal board doth flow

With all that hospitality doth know!

Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat,

Without his fear, and of thy lord’s own meat;

Where the same beer and bread, and self-same wine,

This is his lordship’s, shall be also mine.

And I not fain to sit, as some this day

At great men’s tables, and yet dine away.

Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by,

A waiter doth my gluttony envy,

But gives me what I call, and lets me eat,

He knows, below, he shall find plenty of meat;

Thy tables hoard not up for the next day,

Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray

For fire, or lights, or livery; all is there,

As if thou then wert mine, or I reigned here;

There’s nothing I can wish, for which I stay.

Source of the text – Poetical Works of Ben Jonson, edited by Robert Bell.  London: John W. Parker and Son, 1856, pp. 92-3.

TJB: Good housekeeping. In sumptuous yet not-excessive couplets Town Mouse praises his client Country Mouse’s sumptuous yet not-excessive living.

"The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate" by Anne Askew

The Ballad Which Anne Askew Made and Sang When She Was in Newgate

Like as the armèd knight

Appointed to the field,

With this world will I fight,

And faith shall be my shield.

    Faith is that weapon strong

Which will not fail at need;

My foes therefore among

Therewith will I proceed.

    As it is had in strength

And force of Christ’s way,

It will prevail at length

Though all the devils say nay.

    Faith in the father’s old

Obtainèd righteousness

Which make me very bold

To fear no world’s distress.

    I now rejoice in heart

And hope bid me do so,

For Christ will take my part

And ease me of my woe.

    Thou sayst lord, who so kneck,

To them wilt thou attend;

Undo therefore the lock

And thy strong power send.

    More enemies now I have

Than hairs upon my head

Let them not me deprave,

But fight thou in my stead.

    On thee my care I cast

For all their cruel spite

I set not by their haste,

For thou art my delight.

    I am not she that list

My anchor to let fall

For every drizzling mist

My ship substantial.

    Not oft use I to write

In prose, nor yet in rhyme,

Yet will I show one sight

That I saw in my time.

    I saw a royal throne

Where Justice should have sit,

But in her stead was one

Of modie cruel wit.

    Absorbed was rightwiseness

As of the raging flood;

Satan in his excess

Sucked up the guiltless blood.

    Then thought I, Jesus lord,

When thou shall judge us all,

Hard is it to record

On these men what will fall.

    Yet lord I thee desire

For that they do to me,

Let them not taste the hire

Of their iniquity.

Source of the text – The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5^th edition, edited by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 140-141.

Bourguignomicon: Martyrdom in anapests. The poet leaves unchallenged her veneer of righteous courage, addressing her lord & pretend-ignoring her persecutors.

"Breaded Fish" by A.K. Ramanujan

Breaded Fish

Specially for me, she had some breaded

fish; even thrust a blunt-headed

smelt into my mouth;

and looked hurt when I could

neither sit nor eat, as a hood

of memory-like a coil on a heath

opened in my eyes: a dark half-naked

length of woman, dead

on the beach in a yard of cloth,

dry, rolled by the ebb, breaded

by the grained indifference of sand. I headed

for the shore, my heart beating in my mouth.

Source of the text - A.K. Ramanujan, Collected Poems.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bourguignomicon: Why ‘Specially’? This poem—tightly wrapped in stanzaic form & rhyme—employs a queasy yoking of lakefish & dead woman, of memory & cobra.

"Pastoral" by Bob Perelman

PASTORAL

One person each, out

Into one world, back into many.

The collection, the alphabet. He imitates

Its power, sentiments, antiquity. Scenery

In the form of a dramatic monolog.

She trails out of the present

Both ways, but is sitting

At the table with him. Sprays

Of bay, laurel, and their natural

Interpretations are tacked above them.

Hearts beating. A storm at sea.

Gossip at length, hours

Yoked together, sun shines,

Air presses on their capillaries,

Actions. Desire pronounced and

Punctuated, their minds end

In their senses. Pleasures

Lag across solid bridges.

Time to eat. Light is suffused, revised

Among the letters. Their ears fill

With sounds of the visible world.

Minutes surround them, trees

In the foreground by voice vote.

Their eyes close. It is night.

Source of the text – Bob Perelman, Primer.  Berkely: CA, THIS press, 1981, pp. 70-1.

Bourguignomicon: Pastoral as romance, no, perhaps as marriage between word & world, between writing & reading, & built of dualities: he-she, seeing-hearing.

"That the Science of Cartography is Limited" by Eavan Boland

That the Science of Cartography Is Limited

—and not simply by the fact that this shading of

forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,

the gloom of cypresses

is what I wish to prove.

When you and I were first in love we drove

to the borders of Connacht

and entered a wood there.

Look down you said: this was once a famine road.

I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass

rough-cast stone had

disappeared into as you told me

in the second winter of their ordeal, in

1847, when the crop had failed twice,

Relief Committees gave

the starving Irish such roads to build.

Where they died, there the road ended

and ends still and when I take down

the map of this island, it is never so

I can say here is

the masterful, the apt rendering of

the spherical as flat, nor

an ingenious design which persuades a curve

into a plane,

but to tell myself again that

the line which says woodland and cries hunger

and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,

and finds no horizon

will not be there.

Source of the text - Eavan Boland, In a Time of Violence.  New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995.

Bourguignomicon: Maps—which convey far more data than text—are critiqued here amid many reduced relative clauses for lack of a sensory-historical essence.

"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" by Kenneth Koch

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams


                                              1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next
       summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

                                              2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do no know what I am doing.

                                              3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten
       years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

                                              4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!



Source of the text - Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, p. 135.

TJB: Plum lines. These gentle deadpan parodies keep the declarative syntax while intensifying and/or misunderstanding Dr Williams’ erotic motif.

Sonnet 1 from "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus" by Lady Mary Wroth

                                             I.

When nights black mantle could most darknes prove,

   And sleepe deaths Image did my senceses hiere

   From knowledg of my self, then thoughts did move

   Swifter then those most switnes need require;

In sleepe, a Chariot drawne by wing’d desire

   I sawe: wher sate bright Venus Queene of love,

   And att her feete her sonne, still adding fire

   To burning hearts which she did hold above,

Butt one heart flaming more then all the rest

   The goddess held, and putt itt to my brest,

   Dear sonne, now shutt sayd she: thus must wee winn;

Hee her obay’d, and martir’d my poore hart,

   I, waking hop’d as dreames itt would depart

   Yett since: O mee: a lover I have binn.

Source of the text - The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, edited with an introduction and notes by Josephine A. Roberts.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983, p. 85.

TJB: This elegant sonnet begins with a remarkable image—sleep borrowing the poet’s senses & riding her thoughts hard—before the heartburn starts.

"The night of storms has past" by Emily Brontë

The night of storms has past
The sunshine bright and clear
Gives glory to the verdent waste
And warms the breezy air

And I would leave my bed
Its cheering smile to see
To chase the visions from my head
Whose forms have toubled me

In all the hours of gloom
My soul was wrapt away
I stood by a marble tomb
Where royal corpses lay

It was just the time of eve
When parted ghosts might come
Above their prisoned dust to grieve
And wail their woeful doom

And truly at my side
I saw a shadowy thing
Most dim, and yet its presence there
Curdled my blood with ghastly fear
And ghastlier wondering

My breath I could not draw
The air seemed uncanny
But still my eyes with maddening gaze
Were fixed upon its fearful face
And its were fixed on me

I fell down on the stone
But could [not] turn away
My words died a voiceless moan
When I began to pray

And still it bent above
Its features full in view
It seemed close by and yet more far
Than this world from the farthest star
That tracks the boundless blue

Indeed 't was not the space
Of earth or time between
But the sea of deep eternity
The gulph o'er which mortality
Has never never been

Oh, bring not back again
The horror of that hour
When its lips opened and a sound
Awoke the stillness reigning round
Faint as a dream but the earth shrank
And heavens lights shivered neath its power

Woe for the day Regina's pride
Regina's hope is in the grave
And who shall rule my land beside
And who shall save

Woe for the day with gory tears
My countless sons this day shall rule
Woe for the day a thousand years
Cannot repair what one shall do

Woe for the day 'twix rain and wind
That sad lament was ringing
It almost broke my heart to hear
Such dreamy dreary singing

Source of the text - Poems by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë.  New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902, pp. 45-7.

Bourguignomicon: Great expectation-play. After 4 ballad-stanzas, form & content open into a ghostly world of long, bending phrases before ending in ballad.

"'oilfish' to 'old chap' for 'C'" by Tina Darragh

“oilfish” to “old chap” for “C”


Performing military service for the king and bearing a child
have a common medieval root. The progression to this point
is first academic, then technical. Textbooks give way
to textiles which lead to T-formations and T-groups.
We pause to add “th” and proceed through Mediterranean
anemia, deep seas, Greek muses, pesticides, young shoots
and the instinctual desire for death. It is there that
we find “thane” to be followed by all manner of “thanks”,
including the “thank-you-ma’am”—a ridge built across a
road so rain will roll off.


Source of the text - Tina Darragh, on the corner   to   off the corner.  College Park, MD: Sun & Moon Press, 1981, p. 7.

Bourguignomicon: Root brood. A fantastic image concludes this prose posing philology as an odyssey backwords through time, both an adventure & a return home.

"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" by W.B. Yeats

AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES
HIS DEATH

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor angry crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Source of the text - W.B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919, p. 13.

Bourguignomicon: Grouch prophecy; aerial bombardment as a way to stave off boredom. This chant is so strong & memorable we almost wish it were patriotic.

"My Pen & Pad" by Blackalicious

MY PEN & PAD

Here we go [6x]

Back on the journey again, tool is a pad and a pen
Cool as the fan, as the wind soothing you after I send
True inner-vision risen and driven while givin you my
Isms of intuition while niggas is livin a lie
Syllables spill and I fly, high as a pinnacle rhyme
Not to belittle a fool, but try to get into you, my 
Lyrics inherited form awareness somewhere in the sky
Clearly, you'll give them merit and cherish 'em better with time
There is none ever and on like rivers so clever I shine
Verbal ambassador travel in this endeavor of mine
Never a antigangster, the ghetto is still on the mind
If I was not rappin, a nigga might be up inside
All of your terraces, stealin wallets and necklaces, I
Give hella gratefulness for the blessing to share this and fly
Everywhere people outside the culture now try to divine
What it is, but it is mine, such it is, love with blind-
Vision but no division is vivid, we livin inside
Vicious vindictive and mental prisons from within the mind
Sits and I find stillness, from minutes is written the rhyme
Gettin you smitten with it, particularly if you're a prime
Listener, listen up, twist it up like the lyrics was lime
Vintage is instant, so give it up when you hear it reci-ted
At attention, relieving tension and bending yo' spine
Sendin you signals to get yo' internal system aligned
Lyrical pinnacle situation is critical
Syllable after syllable, give it to you, deliver you my 
Intervals, sendin you through dimensions you didn't know
Hidden in you, within you, when you get into the begin to intuit
Sentiments, internets, couldn't send you yet signals you get
Ripping through skin and through tissue, fix you elixirs that might
Lift your peripheral vision, the mystical wisdom that tends
To go into the infinite system of livin and this is the ending
As well as the beginning of the Gift in his prime
Mission the bliss is divine, christen it, isn't it fine?
Listen and dissin it, that's the incident innocent
Men and women hit lyrics is killin niggas, they shiverin
The predicament's thick, and it splits the wig of the ignorant lyricist
Puttin fear in their spirit—Yo, that's my time!...

Source of the text - The Anthology of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 584-585.

Bourguignomicon: High-road ode. The poet spills many syllables in unusually dense assonance to rap about spilling syllables in unusually dense assonance.

"I Will Not Be Sad In This World" by Rachel Contreni Flynn

I WILL NOT BE SAD IN THIS WORLD

                      after an Armenian melody

Though fog rolls
off the coast,

and a goat turns
its whiskey eye to find me
                               and finds me. . .

I will not be sad in this world.

Though squirrels rise up laughing
even while begging
                               forgiveness. . .

I will not be sad in this world.

Though my hands fill with whelks,
I build cairns, think in Braille,
                               read flatness

in the ocean, and my soul dilates
like onyx.  . . .

I will not be sad in this world.

Not sad, not flesh filled with mist.

And not in this world,
though I crouch among spruce and ghosts
and kiss the mouth

I thought would be soft.

It is tight
                   with dirt.

The goat circles,
and I know. . .

but I will not be sad in this world.


Source of the text - Rachel Contreni Flynn, Ice, Mouth, Song.  Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2005, pp. 68-9.

Bourguignomicon: This refusal-to-mourn litany is built of solid objects & quirky details. Listen to the anaphoric force of “though,” more so than “because.”

"The Mogami River" by Matsuo Bashō

Text of the poem in Japanese:

Text of the poem transliterated:

Mogami-gawa

Atsuki hi wo
        Umi ni iretari
                         Mogami-gawa



English translation by R.H. Blyth:


The Mogami River
Has swept the burning Sun
Down into the Ocean.




Source of the text in Japanese [and transliteration]: Classic Haiku: An Anthology of Poems by Bashō and His Followers, translated and annotated by Asatarō Miyamori.  Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002, p. 104.

Source of the text as translated - Haiku, Volume III: Summer-Autumn, edited and translated by R.H. Blyth. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1968, p. 83.

TJB: Who’d sweep a burning thing? This elegant image of a summer sunset is seen from a specific vantage point & conveys movement of river & sun.

"No One So Much As You" by Edward Thomas

No One So Much As You

No one so much as you

Loves this my clay,

Or would lament as you

Its dying day.

You know me through and through

Though I have not told,

And though with what you know

You are not bold.

None ever was so fair

As I thought you:

Not a word can I bear

Spoken against you.

All that I ever did

For you seemed coarse

Compared with what I hid

Nor put in force.

Scarce my eyes dare meet you

Lest they should prove

I but respond to you

And do not love.

We look and understand,

We cannot speak

Except in trifles and

Words the most weak.

For I at most accept

Your love, regretting

That is all: I have kept

Only a fretting

That I could not return

All that you gave

And could not ever burn

With the love you have,

Till sometimes it did seem

Better it were

Never to see you more

Than linger here

With only gratitude

Instead of love –  

A pine in solitude

Cradling a dove.

Source of the text – Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets, written and edited by Ian Hamilton. New York: Viking, 2002, pp. 29-30.

Bourguignomicon: Heavy light verse; confessional over easy. With accentual accents & homespun rhymes, the simplicity of this poem assumes rhetorical force.