The driver was issued a ticket (around $300) for second-degree negligent driving, WSP said.

The One Hundred Years of Solitude of Chinese Poetry

About your poetry –
I'm guessing it adapts to the environment
better than you do.
It's avoided the problem of inheritance.

Digesting its food, it's like swaying corn,
asleep, it's like a pregnant wild dog.
Out for a stroll, it's a stream flowing
past the plaque-like railroad bridge.

It fires language
because language takes work too seriously.
It slaps the customer. It pulls off
The condom of prosody. It reveals impossibility.

It's like a wooden spoon in a non-stick pan
commanding the peas' undeclared war.
These peas are round and plump
but still aren't words.

About the relationship between you and me,
your poetry is an unrented house.
Right now the scene is so empty
it's like a ring picked out somewhere else.

Along the wall, at least it brings out sponge gourds
like those I bought at the morning market, fresh and tender,
clever enough for erotic stories.
It is the life inside of life.

It's astonished by the number of times you've returned.
I try my best not to ask where you've been.
This poem is yours.
Yes, for a moment, it almost seemed not your writing.

The Dark is Rising

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the Greenwitch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.

On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.
There fire shall fly from the raven boy,
And the silver eyes that see the wind,
And the Light shall have the harp of gold.

By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,
On Cadfael’s Way where the kestrels call;
Though grim from the Grey King shadows fall,
Yet singing the golden harp shall guide
To break their sleep and bid them ride.

When light from the lost land shall return,
Six Sleepers shall rise, six Signs shall burn,
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon’s sword the Dark shall fall.

Kinder than Man

And God
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go someplace
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

O Luminous Late Day!

O luminous late day !
The air's enchanted.
The white stork flying by
is half asleep
and the swallows
cross one another—wings
sharp-stretched
to the gold air—
and away
through the benign
distance of evening,
flying, dreaming.

And there is one
returns like the arrow—wings
sharp-stretched
to the sombre air—
bound for the roof
and its black corner there.

The white stork,
like a pot-hook,
tranquil and ungainly
so absurd !
looms on the belfray.

The Game: Christmas Day, 1914

It is so cold.
The lines of this poem are sinking
Into the unforgiving mud. No clean sheet.

Dawn on a perishing day. The weapons freeze
In the hands of a flat back four.
The moon hangs in the air like a ball
Skied by a shivering keeper.
All these boys want to do today
Is shoot, and defend, and attack.

Light on a half-raised wave. The trench-faces
Lifted till you see their breath.
A ball flies in the air like a moon
Kicked through the morning mist.
All these boys want to have today
Is a generous amount of extra time.

No strict formations here, this morning;
No 4-4-2 or 4-5-1
No rules, really. Just a kickabout
With nothing to be won
Except respect. We all showed pictures,
I learned his baby’s name.
Now clear the lines of this poem
And let’s get on with the game.

No white penalty spot, this morning,
The players are all unknown.
You can see them in the graveyards In teams of forgotten stone;
The nets are made of tangled wire,
No Man’s Land is the pitch,
A flare floodlights the moments
Between the dugouts and the ditch.

A hundred winters ago sky opened
To the sunshine of the sun
Shining on these teams of players
And the sounds of this innocent game.
All these boys want to hear today
Is the final whistle. Let them walk away.

It has been so cold. The lines
Of these poems will be found, written
In the unforgotten mud like a team sheet.
Remember them. Read them again.

To a New Librarian Who Thinks I Don’t Write Poetry

Poets come in many shapes

Tall, lanky girls dressed in drapes;

Moon-round ladies who rhyme;

Well-worn gents wearing chaps;

And sexy ladies who sit on laps

Writing sonnets, and love poems,

And the one poem everyone

Reads out at funerals.

There are white-haired poets who farm;

Curly-haired poets who alarm

The ladies, and howl at the moon.

Poets who dance, and poets who can’t;

And poets who stand at the podium and rant;

Poets who use no capital letters;

And poets who write around the edges of the page.

I knew a poet once who wrote

Between the lines on his palm

Though today he’d probably write

On a palm-pilot instead.

Why do you think I don’t write poetry?

Am I the wrong shape, the wrong age,

The wrong size, the wrong gender,

Or have you just not gotten down to the Ys yet?

War Machines Dress Up as Drag Queens

  after Audre Lorde

There are many roots.

War machines are coin-operated arcade games,
and your penny sprays and juvenile plays
are just as greedy as a bulldozer's mouth
chewing life into debris for me to dish-wash and make poetry of.

War machines wear lipstick, carry bedazzled purses, and wave
  hellohowareyou?
vogue on said debris / pink faucets. If you ignore the rubble,
this is a haven––its earth is flesh, brown and uncounted.

War machines are American-made, and they are never thirsty / rivers in their throats.
American water is brown and dirtied and children famished,
cracked, caged in cages, / in uneducated education.
Surf their boats in drought. Their knuckles stiff, cold is this verse.

I sit here wondering:

Which me will survive bulldozers undoing God?
Which me will soak their hands in these wells?
Which me will console the dead's loved ones with prevention, not mourning,
bottle our Jordan River to smack American thirst,
for greed and grief.
Water     stolen or neglected.

Which me will survive all these liberations?