Lorine Niedecker, from "For Paul" (1950)

section IX from a nine-part poem that was first published in the annual New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1950 (volume 12), pp. 184-85


You are far away
sweet reason

Since I saw you last, Paul
my sight is weaker . . .

I still see--
it's the facts are thick--
thru glass:
a peace scare on Wall St.

		. . .

O Tannenbaum
the children seem to sing
round and round
one child sings out:
atomic bomb

not all suckling
where Paul is
and check-writing
but as the queen, Elizabeth,
beside the barge that night 
		"longing
to listen . . .
Muzik is a nobl art"

Hi, Hot-and-Humid

That June she's a lush

She marsh wallows, frog bickering
moon pooling, green gripping

Fool
Keep cool