Lizard Fever
Forlornly now I wander:
I linger at your gate.
I try my hand at slander
To rustle up a hate.
I eat of bitter berries,
Unshaven is my chin.
Your lease of heart is canceled
And all is dark within.
Oh, damn the month of April,
And damn the moonstruck mood.
The only things I'll conjure
Are music, war, and food.
For love's an incidental,
A leaf upon the stream:
Why must you keep waltzing
Through my every dream?
-The Very Young Man
When I looked at the Northern sky
I saw a falling star flash by,
And quick, before it's spell had died,
I wondered how many hearts had cried
Forth all their woes in a secret wish,
Thinking the moon is a silver dish
To catch their tears.
-The Falling Star
I think of you at night, late, and my head
On the pillow aches for yours next to it.
I think of how each mind holds its own court, hears
Its own music, traversing many a winding road
Always toward the center of its own world.
Then I feel the singing sadness--
The white cresting and green receding
That broods over hearts: passion's own sorrow
Which tempers joy, and restrains grace,
Makes soft laughter at a fiery grief.
I think how no creature knows any creature
Except in flashes so quick they are fled
Before the eyelid is rolled up again,
In this mood and in this hour of night
I think of you and ache to be
In the corridors of your thought,
Be words to your tongue, and know you, have you,
Be you, yet not be lost in oneness.
Then when we two walked together
Through dry leaves again, and leaf smoke
Clung in the trees: gold in every green,
On every moment - then I could say
Those simple words, which then I'd know,
Which mean there is no curtain between us:
No door, no mist, no thought, no spell,
But we are minds welded by lightning:
(Opposite action from fire cleaving oak)
We could, hand in hand, walk together
Past all light, all dark, and know
That never had there been so bright a unity.
-To the One I Love
These are all poems by one of my favorite poets, Eugene Walter. I finally found a copy of his book, Lizard Fever, and I'm so excited about it! One of my friends had it, and I read it and loved it, but since it was printed at the college, its kind of hard to find at Amazon or Books-A-Million. There's a copy in the display case in front of the printing office, and finally the other day, I found two copies in the free books section next to it. Yay!