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The Owls

The mothers of owls hiboux
Are looking for fleas poux
On their dear little ‘cabbages’ choux
Perched on their knees. genoux
 
Their gold eyes worth jewels bijoux
Their beak hard as pebbles cailloux
They’re soft as soft baubles joujoux
Though owls have no knees!
 
Where did it happen, your whole to-do?
In land of Zulu or Andalu?
In an igloo, or lean-to of bamboo?
In Anjou, Poitou, Kalamazoo
Or Timbuktu or Khatmandu?
Chez vous, Manchu? Perhaps Peru?
 
To-whit! To-woo!
 
No, they were funny folk, that’s who.
 

The Pelican

Versions: #1
A captain known as Jonathan,
Who’s turned eighteen, become a man,
Captures, one day, a pelican,
On Gan, Hainan, or Banaban.
 
The pelican of Jonathan
Lays a white egg, at nine a.m.
Out of it jumps a pelican
With an astonishing resem-
 
Blance to the first. This pelican
Lays its white egg in turn, and then,
Of course, another pelican
Jumps out to do the same again.
 
This state of things may never end
Unless an omelette bucks the trend.
 

Stone to Stone

Stone to stone and foot to foot
And heart to heart and head to head
The good days are over
 
Thread to thread and page to page
And one to one and self to self
The days are good and never end
 
Grain to grain and hand-to-hand
And side by side and hand in hand
God knows who will win the battle
 
Stone into grain and self into one
And hand to heart and head for the heart
Love is as vast as the world
 

This heart that used to hate war

This heart that used to hate war
is now beating for fighting and battle!
This heart that used to beat to the rhythm of tides and seasons,
to the hours of day and night,
is now pumping furiously into the veins
a blood that burns with salpetre and hatred.
And it causes such a din in the brains that it makes the ears whistle
and this noise can't possibly fail to spread across the city and the country,
like the tone of a bell calling to insurrection and fighting.
Listen, I hear it coming back to me, sent back by echoes.
 
No, these are no echoes, but the sound of hearts,
millions of other hearts beating like mine across France.
They beat to the same rhythm, for the same task, all these hearts,
their sound is that of the sea assaulting the cliffs.
And all this blood carries into the brains a single motto:
Revolt against Hitler and death to his supporters!
And yet this heart used to hate war and beat to the rhythm of the seasons,
but a single word: freedom was enough to wake the old angers,
and millions of French people are getting ready in the shadows
for the task that a dawn soon to come will force upon them.
For these hearts that used to hate war were beating for freedom,
to the very rhythm of seasons and tides,
of day and night.
 
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I have dreamed of you so much

. . I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
 
. .Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?
 
. . I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
 
. . For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
 
. . O scales of feeling.
 
. .I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up. I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.
 
. .I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.
 
***