Стихи и эссе

The tyrant's device:
Whatever is Possible
Is Necessary.

* * *

When Chiefs of State
Prefer to work at night,
Let the citizen beware.

Iceland revisited (for Basil and Susan Boothby) Encounter July 1964

* * *

Unwashed, unshat,
He was whisked from the plane
To a lunch in his honour.

* * *

He hears a 1oud-speaker
Call him wen known,
But knows himself no better.

* * *

The desolate fjord
Denied the possibility
Of many gods.

* * *

Twenty-eight years ago
Three slept well here.
Now one is married, one dead,

Where the harmonium stood

A radio:¬
Have the Fittest survived?

* * *

Unable to speak Icelandic,
He helped instead
To do the dishes.

* * *

The bondi's sheep-dog
and the visitor from New York
Conversed freely.

* * *

Snow had camouflaged
The pool of liquid manure:
The town-mouse fell in.

* * *

A blizzard. A bare room.
Thoughts of the past.
He forgot to wind his watch.

* * *

The gale howled over lava. Suddenly,
In the storm's eye,
A dark speck,

Perseus in an air-taxi,

Come to snatch
Shivering Andromeda

Out of the wilderness

And bring her back
To hot baths, cocktails, habits.

* * *

Once more
A child's dream verified
The magical light beyond Hekla.

* * *

Fortunate island,
Where all men are equal
But not vulgar-not yet.

THE PRESUMPTUOUS

They noticed that virginity was needed
To trap the unicorn in every case,
But not that, of those virgins who succeeded,
A high percentage had an ugly face.

The hero was a daring as they thought him,

But these peculiar boyhood missed them all;
The angel with the broken leg had taught him
The right precautions to avoid a fall.

So in presumption they set forth alone

On what, for them, was not compulsory:
And stuck hallway to settle in some cave
With desert lions in domesticity
Or turned aside to be absurdly brave
And met the ogre and were turned on stone.

Короткие стихи 1929-1931

1

Pick a quarrel, go to war,
Leave the hero in the bar;
Hunt the lion, climb the peak:
No one guesses you are weak.

2

The friends of the born nurse
Are always getting worse.

3

When he is well
She gives him hell;
But she's a brick
When he is sick.

4

You’re a long way off becoming a saint
So long as you suffer from any complaint;
But, if you don’t, there’s no denying
The chances are that you’re not trying.

5

I am afraid there is many a spectacled sod
Prefers the British Museum to God.

6

I'm beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations:
They are not deep,
And they are not cheap.

7

Those who will not reason
Perish in the act;
Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.

8

Let us honor if we can
The vertical man,
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.

9