I am a great inventor, did you but know it.
I have new weapons and explosives and devices to
     substitute for your obsolete tactics and tools.
Mine are the battle-ships of righteousness and integrity—
The armor-plates of a quiet conscience and self-respect—
The impregnable conning-tower of divine manhood—
The Long Toms of persuasion—
The machine guns of influence and example—
The dum-dum bullets of pity and remorse—
The impervious cordon of sympathy—
The concentration camps of brotherhood—
The submarine craft of forgiveness—
The torpedo-boat-destroyer of love—
And behind them all the dynamite of truth!
I do not patent my inventions.
Take them. They are free to all the world.

A Colonial Custom

Bathsheba came out to the sun,
Out to our wallèd cherry-trees;
The tears adown her cheek did run,
Bathsheba standing in the sun,
Telling the bees.

My mother had that moment died;
Unknowing, sped I to the trees,
And plucked Bathsheba’s hand aside;
Then caught the name that there she cried
Telling the bees.

Her look I never can forget,
I that held sobbing to her knees;
The cherry-boughs above us met;
I think I see Bathsheba yet
Telling the bees.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they smell,
And never sit when you say sit,
Or even when you yell.
And when you come home late at night
And there is ice and snow,
You have to go back out because
The dumb dog has to go.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they shed,
And always let the strangers in
And bark at friends instead,
And do disgraceful things on rugs,
And track mud on the floor,
And flop upon your bed at night
And snore their doggy snore.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
She's making a mistake.
Because, more than a dog, I think
She will not want this snake.

America I was I think I was

Seven I think or anyway I prob-

ably was    nine    I anyway was nine

And riding in the back    seat of our tan

Datsun 210    which by the way Amer-

ica I can’t believe    Datsun is just

Gone    anyway   America I was

Riding in the back    seat we were we my grand-

mother and I were passing the it must

Have been a mall    but I have tried    and can’t

Remember any malls in Austin at

The time America but do I really

Remember Austin really    I remember

This thing that happened    once when I was passing

A mall in Austin so    the mall so Austin

But then and when America will my

Grandmother be    my memories of her her-

self be replaced by memories of just

Her presence near    important or unusu-

al things that happened does that happen will

That happen we     America we were

Anyway passing     on a city street

But next to it the    mall and actually

I might have been in the front seat actually

And maybe it was    winter all the windows

Were rolled up maybe or at least the one

Right next to me    in the front seat Amer-

ica when for    no reason I could see the

Window exploded    glass swallowed me    the way

A cloudburst swallows a car    glass and a

Great stillness    flying glass and stillness both

Together    then the stillness left    and I

Jumped either over my    seat or between

The seats    into the back America

Or neither    here I might just be remem-

bering the one real accident I’ve ever

Been in I was    a child still maybe seven

Or nine and we    were in an intersec-

tion hit    and I for sure jumped then my grand-

mother and I again already my

Memories of the Datsun breaking seem

More solid than my memories of her

America    but I remember her

Mobile home filling up with trash    until

She couldn’t walk through any room    and still she

Walked through her rooms she walked the way I walk

Through stores    suspicious    and aloof watched e-

ven by the products I consume consumed

By you America    O cloud of glass

In Iraq,

after a thousand and one nights,

someone will talk to someone else.

Markets will open

for regular customers.

Small feet will tickle

the giant feet of the Tigris.

Gulls will spread their wings

and no one will fire at them.

Women will walk the streets

without looking back in fear.

Men will give their real names

without putting their lives at risk.

Children will go to school

and come home again.

Chickens in the villages

won’t peck at human flesh

on the grass.

Disputes will take place

without any explosives.

A cloud will pass over cars

heading to work as usual.

A hand will wave

to someone leaving

or returning.

The sunrise will be the same

for those who wake

and those who never will.

And every moment

something ordinary

will happen

under the sun.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

It’s true I never loved my country
in the abstract sense: red, white, or blue.
I have only this black waving flag,
my disposition.
Stars, bold stripes,
remind me of a million dead young men
in far-off ditches,
remind me of the innocents who fell,
collaterally damaged,
wild-eyed, blazing: each of them
a universe unmade.
I say that I have never loved my country,
but I’d surely die
for several good friends, my wife and sons.
I’d sacrifice a number of pink toes
and fingers, too (my own)
for Emerson, for Whitman and Thoreau.
I’d give an eye for one deep lake,
for several good streams,
at least one waterfall,
a lovely stand of Norway pines
just east of here, not far away.

Stumble to silence, all you uneasy things, 
That pack the day with bluster and with fret.
For here is music at each window set;
Here is a cup which drips with all the springs
That ever bud a cowslip flower; a roof
To shelter till the argent weathers break;
A candle with enough of light to make
My courage bright against each dark reproof. 
A hand’s width of clear gold, unraveled out
The rosy sky, the little moon appears;
As they were splashed upon the paling red,
Vast, blurred, the village poplars lift about. 
I think of young, lost things: of lilacs; tears;
I think of an old neighbor, long since dead.