Honey and Salt Read Online Free

      along with the corn:
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                                They are cut down
                                and piled high
                                and burned.
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                                Their fire
                                lights the west in November.

Fame If Not Fortune
    A half-dollar in the hand of a gypsy
tells me this and more:
    You shall go broken on the wheel,
lashed to the bars and fates of steel,
a nickel’s worth of nothing,
a vaudeville gag,
a child’s busted rubber balloon kicked
        amid dirty bunting and empty popcorn
        bags at a summer park.
    Yet cigarmakers shall name choice Havanas and
paste your picture on the box,
    Racehorses foaming under scarlet and ochre jockeys
shall wear your name,
    And policemen direct strangers to parks and schools
remembered after you.

Impasse
    Bring on a pail of smoke.
    Bring on a sieve of coffee.
    Bring on shovels speaking Javanese.
    Open your newest, latest handkerchief
    And let down a red-mouthed hankering hippopotamus.
    Perform for us these offertories in blue.
    Tell us again: Nothing is impossible.
    We listen while you tell us.

Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?
    Apes, may I speak to you a moment?
    Chimpanzees, come hither for words.
    Orangoutangs, let’s get into a huddle.
    Baboons, lemme whisper in your ears.
    Gorillas, do yuh hear me hollerin’ to yuh?
    And monkeys! monkeys! get this chatter—
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For a long time men have plucked letters
Out of the air and shaped syllables.
And out of the syllables came words
And from the words came phrases, clauses.
Sentences were born—and languages.
(The Tower of Babel didn’t work out—
it came down quicker than it went up.)
Misunderstandings followed the languages,
Arguments, epithets, maledictions, curses,
Gossip, backbiting, the buzz of the bazoo,
Chit chat, blah blah, talk just to be talking,
Monologues of members telling other members
How good they are now and were yesterday,
Conversations missing the point,
Dialogues seldom as beautiful as soliloquies,
Seldom as fine as a man alone, a woman by herself
Telling a clock, “I’m a plain damn fool.”
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    Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.
    Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.
    See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

Keepsake Boxes
    Now we shall open boxes and look.
    In this one a storm was locked up, hoarse
from long howling.
    In this one lay fair weather, a blue sky
manuscript.
    In this one unfolded a gray monotone of
a fog afternoon.
    In each box was a day and its story of
air and wind.
    Sometimes one shook with confusions,
processionals of weather.
    â€œOne day may be too much to gather, consider,
and look among keepsakes.”
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    ***
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    ***

Impossible Iambics
    He saw a fire dancer take two flambeaus
    And do red shadows with her shoulders.
    And he met two fools looking on and saying
    Horsefeathers horsefeathers, and he said
    I must bethink myself, I must throw seven
    Eleven, O God am I a two-spot or what am
    I? a who or a what or a which am I?
        And the next day it rained,
        the next day was something
        else again.
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    Well, hibiscus, what would you?
    The flambeau dancer did it,
she and the red shadows she threw.

Lackawanna Twilight
    Twilight and little mountain
    towns along the Lehigh, sundown
    and grey lavender flush.
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    Miners with dinner buckets and
    headlamps, state constabulary on
    horses, guns in holsters, Scranton,
    Wilkesbarre, the Lackawanna Trail.
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    Twilight and the blessed armistice
    of late afternoon and early evening.
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    Twilight and the sport sheets, movies,
    chain programs, magazines, comics,
    revival