16
LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE
Inspiration
The season's ill;
Yesterday Deer Isle fishermen
Threw Captain Greenwright's wreaths into the channel
And wooed his genius for their race
In the yachtsmen's yawls. A red fox stain
Covers Blue Hill.
Beaten by summer,
I hear a hollow, sucking moan
Inside my wild heart's prison cell;
The slow wave loosens stone from stone
By bleeding. I myself am hell;
I hate the summer,
But cannot move it.
My shades are drawn, my daylight bulb is on;
Writing verses like a Turk,
I lie in bed from sun to sun There is no money in this work,
You have to love it.
On a dark night,
MyoId Ford climbs the hill's bald skull;
I look for love-cars. Lights turned down,
They lie together, hull to hull,
Where the graveyard shelves on the town;
My mind's not right It's the moon's search,
All elbows, crashing on a tree,
Downhill and homeward. My home-fire
Whitens deadly and royally
Under the chalk-dry and pure spire
Of a Trinitarian church.
My headlights glare
On a galvanized bucket crumpling up A skunk glares in a garbage pail.
It jabs its trowel-head in a cup
Of sour cream, drops its ostrich tail,
And cannot scare.