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Evening
Richard Aldington (England, 1892-1962)

The chimneys, rank on rank,
Cut the clear sky;
The moon
With a rag of gauze about her loins
Poses among them, an awkward Venus—
And here am I looking wantonly at her
Over the kitchen sink.

Sunsets
Richard Aldington (England, 1892-1962)

The white body of the evening
Is torn into scarlet,
Slashed and gouged and seared
Into crimson,And hung ironically
With garlands of mist.

And the wind
Blowing over London from Flanders
Has a bitter taste.

Living sepulchres

Richard Aldington (England, 1892-1962)

One frosty night when the guns were still
I leaned against the trench
Making for myself hokku
Of the moon and flowers and of the snow.
But the ghostly scurrying of huge rats
Swollen with feeding upon men’s fleshFilled me with shrinking dread.

Portrait with beast and omnibus

Pamela Alexander (EEUU, 1948- )

The paraphernalia required
to take the turn-of-the-century photograph
must have been considerable
but common enough
that no one is paying much attention
to the contraption on the beach
-- most of the secondary figures show
as backs of hats, or backs.
The donkey, of course, isdisinterested, head half out of the frame.
It is the style of his species
to be undisturbed
by messiahs or machines, whatever
their reception by another genus.
In the two dimensions
of the brown and white photo
printed crooked on a post card,
the woman seems to be wearing
the building behind her as a hat: two large
arched windows and cupolas –
one louvered -- of a streetcar station
frame herhead
as a pagoda does a sitting saint.
Under the brim is a fringe
of tassels, which are distant women
in long skirts on a curved sidewalk
going to meet the next car.
With bare legs dangling
around the donkey's barrel,
two children stare at the mountainous
camera on command; their histories pause
in their held breath. A hand
on one shoulder of each child
like parentheses or whitehalves of a prayer, she stands
behind durable beast and passengers,
pointing the latter in the direction
of their inscrutable futures
while other people hurry up the street
to catch theirs
and the century turns a corner
of its own invention.

Air
Pamela Alexander (EEUU, 1948- )

It holds us, gently,
together.
It presses out, against the eardrum
It presses in. It curls
in the palms ofour hands
but holds nothing
to itself. It steps over
the sock flung onto the chair, the blouse
on the floor. When we touch,
it moves aside -- a modest medium
that solid things displace.
The children running down the street
punch through it, leaving
a cut-out shape of each position
hovering behind them
for an instant.
It is made of round
spinning things, but
it will adjust to arectangular space such as
a room.
It's the only company
the old man who stays in his long underwear all day
has.
He comes onto the porch at noon
to get more.
People identify it by objects it surrounds.
They call it "atmosphere."
What people see is
themselves: they approve or they don't,
they leave for good or they come back.
Air is innocent of such judgments, having
no personality toprotect.
It has
a simple habit:
it fills anything.
It occupies entire hotels
in the off season.
It is drawn to emptiness as to
a question it answers. Only a person
can puzzle it: the vacancy interior,
locked behind the eyes.
It stays whole, flows around
the wall, the knife.
We can change it
as much as ourselves, or
another person:
very little.

Inside story at the asylum

PamelaAlexander (EEUU, 1948- )
Come for tea,
chickadee in the evergreen; clear green tea.
How long. Oolong.
Music on the porch.
Foxtrots on the lawn. The stems of the mint
are as square as the steps. Come.
Comfortable. A white cloth.
Cream tea, sugar tea, round. Steep
steep tea and light brown light.
Earl grey watercolors, glazed
clay urn.
The azaleas are lovely. Why
be one? People do that, put...