TO AN ARTIST, TO TAKE HEART
Slipping in blood, by his own hand, through pride,
Hamlet, Othello, Coriolanus fall.
Upon his bed, however, Shakespeare died,
Having endured them all.
CARTOGRAPHY
As you lay in sleep
I saw the chart
Of artery and vein
Running from your heart,
Plain as the strength
Marked upon the leaf
Along the length,
Mortal and brief,
Of your gaunt hand.
I saw it clear:
The wiry brand
Of the life we bear
Mapped like the great
Rivers that rise
Beyond our fate
And distant from our eyes.
ZONE
We have struck the regions wherein we are keel or reef.
The wind breaks over us,
And against high sharp angles almost splits into words,
And these are of fear or grief.
Like a ship, we have struck expected latitudes
Of the universe, in March.
Through one short segment's arch
Of the zodiac's round
We pass,
Thinking: Now we hear
What we heard last year,
And bear the wind's rude touch
And its ugly sound
Equally with so much
We have learned how to bear.
MUSICIAN
Where these hands have been,
By what delayed,
That so long stayed
Apart from the thin
Strings which they now grace
With their lonely skill?
Music and their cool will
At last interlace.
Now with great ease, and slow,
The thumb, the finger, the strong
Delicate hand plucks the long
String it was born to know.
And, under the palm, the string
Sings as it wished to sing.
