written by Robert LowellWallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.
A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?
Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.
Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
Its bloody waters into holes;
A grain of sand inside my shoe
Mimics the moon that might undo
Man and Creation too; remorse,
Stinking, has puddled up its source;
Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
This is the pot-hole of old age.
Is there no way to cast my hook
Out of this dynamited brook?
The Fisher's sons must cast about
When shallow waters peter out.
I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
And when the Prince of Darkness stalks
My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . .
On water the Man-Fisher walks.
Robert Lowell
written by Robert Lowell, published on Sat 11.22.2008 at 08:02
What was is ... since 1930;
the boys in my old gang
are senior partners. They start up
bald like baby birds
written by Robert Lowell, published on Sun 10.26.2008 at 08:43
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
written by Robert Lowell, published on Mon 07.21.2008 at 11:12
The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped onThe Meaning of Meaning .
written by Robert Lowell, published on Mon 04.28.2008 at 21:03
Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
written by Robert Lowell, published on Mon 04.14.2008 at 08:23
Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
written by Robert Lowell, published on Wed 01.31.2007 at 11:40
Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redmen's bones;