fbpx

Poetry

“Negative Entropy,” from The Lightning-Struck Tower, by Sheila Shannon (1947)

cells

Negative Entropy
or
The Third Law of Thermodynamics
or
How It is We Keep Alive

We feed on crystals, feast on minerals,
Batten, upon the moon, consume the stars
And through the channels of our love drain off
The sun’s heat and the whole world’s energy.

The crocus and the oak, the elephant,
The long-tailed tit, the taxidermist’s owl,
Our eyes, our hair, our nails, all, all the same
Millions of indistinguishable atoms
Chaos in single numbers, order in milliards.

Only the passionate indestructible pattern
Of the all-but-eternal molecule, carries the key.
Locked in its heart lies the secret
To grow from the acorn the oak,
From the corm the year’s yellow crocus,
From the fertilised cell the elephant,
From the egg the tit or the owl,
From eyes our children’s eyes, from hair their hair
And from our nails their same peculiar nails.

Each greedy of life resists death,
Sucks sustenance from the desert;
Devours the rock and the ruby.
Until we cool to our end
And dying provide new fires
For love and fresh generation.

from The Lightning Struck Tower, by Sheila Shannon
London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1947

Available on the Internet Archive Link.

This is one of a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Light in Dark,” by Josephine Preston Peabody from Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1911)

lightindark

Light in Dark

It was the twilight made you look
So kindly and so far.
It was the twilight gave your eyes
A shadow, and a star.

For loveliness is not to keep
Unto the skies alone;
And though the glories may be gone,
The heart will have its own.

Some likeness of a dream is shed
From all fair things, too far;
And so your eyes have left to me
A shadow and a star.

from Fortune and Men’s Eyes, by Josephine Preston Peabody
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1911

Available on the Internet Archive Link.

This is one in a series of neglected poems from the Internet Archive.

“Never,” by Bernice Kenyon, from Night Sky (1951)

blankgravestone

Never

I will not come today–
I cannot come tomorrow.
I am gone far away
Beyond the realm of sorrow;
Beyond the reach of sleep,
And past the firmament
I am gone. No word is sent.
I am submerged, sunk deep
In the black basalt of eternity.
So call no name–you will call hopelessly.
But let the turning sky be fair and blue,
With what I loved the most: the eternal hue
Of hope and wonder, that is always you.

from Night Sky, by Bernice Kenyon
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951

In memory of Bill Andrews, August 29, 1955 – October 3, 2014

“When You Go Away,” by Sally Kinsolving from David and Bath-sheba (1922)

emptybedroom

When You Go Away

When you go away
Then I enter your room,
And suddenly
A faint and lingering scent
Of cigarettes
Stabs me,
Like the perfume of bruised violets
In the quiet gloom
Of twilight, and I begin to look
Around me and I see
A book
That is open on its face
In the place
Where you laid it.
And I find ashes still scattered on the floor.
And my heart beats faster when I remember
That before you left
I loved to kneel and brush them out of the way.
Because I knew that you had spilled them
And would spill more. . . .
And then I look into the mirror until it seems
As empty as a house of dreams.
Or the white-pillowed bed where recently you lay,
And I shut the door
Quietly —
And go away.

from David and Bath-sheba, and other poems, by Sally Kinsolving
Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company, 1922

Available on the Internet Archive Link.

This is one of a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“In Time of Swallows,” from In Time of Swallows, by Mae Winkler Goodman (1951)

intimeofswallows
 

In Time of Swallows

The pear is weighted now with more than fruit–
In hordes they come, a winged avalanche,
Descending on the tree from tip to root,
Shaking the leaves, bending each silver branch.
They overflow the meadows for miles around
In multitudes, spilling their liquid song;
This is the time of swallows; along the ground,
On fence posts, bushes, these living beads are strung.
And then, in thousands, they reclaim the sky,
Sailing across the soft blue sea of air,
A bright, light-winged armada; we watch them fly
To what far destination; suddenly aware
Of the year’s waning, as the quick eye follows
The end of summer in the flight of swallows.

from In Time of Swallows: 52 American Birds, by Mae Winkler Goodman, illustrated by William E. Scheele
New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1951

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“The Incendiary,” by Nina Frances Layard, from Poems (1890)

beerdrinker

The Incendiary

Pull down the stars;
Here let us have a game
Of patent pattern;
You bowl with Mars,
And I will take an aim
With belted Saturn.

Come, lend a hand;
The bright thing there is wasting,
Not serving Hodges;
Well make a stand,
And give the star a basting:
Till it dislodges.

Well sink the scale
And light the rich man’s winders:
I’ve tar and matches.
When we turn tail,
And all the house in cinders,
Hindmost he catches.

How now, you dolts?
Why tremble in your boots.
My sucking Platos,
At thunder-bolts,
Or little star that shoots,
Or — hot potatoes?

We have no fear;
And if you talk of reverence,
And all that twaddle.
We love our beer,
And hope to see no severance
‘Twixt screw and paddle.

Who cares for caste
In these new days of level?
We didn’t make it.
As for the past.
It may go to the devil
An’ he will take it.

Hold!— there is God?
I almost had forgotten
The Book–His letter–
But paths are trod,
And the old ways get rotten
And we want better;

And, as I say,
The old road is too straight,
We’d have it wider.
There’s room to pray,
But to be mad and hate.
Or drunk on cider.

There’s hardly space.
Or so our mother taught us
When she lay dying.
I see her face,
And how her look besought us
For some replying.

My mother! — yes!
All right, my lads. I’11 come;
You needn’t doubt it;
But I confess
Just now I’m flummoxed some;
I’ll—think about it.

from Poems, by Nina Frances Layard
London and New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1890

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Low Tide,” by Lynette Roberts, from The New British Poets

lowtide

Low Tide

Every waiting moment is a fold of sorrow
Pierced within the heart.
Pieces of mind get torn off emotionally
In large wisps.

Like a waif I lie, stillbound to action:
Each waiting hour I stare and see not,
Hum and hear not, nor care I how long
The lode mood lasts.

My eyes are raw and wide apart
Stiffened by the salt bar
That separates us.

You so far;
I at ease at the hearth
Glowing for a welcome
From your heart.

Each beating moment crosses my dream
So that wise things cannot pass
As we had planned.

Woe for all of us : supporting those
Who like us fail to steel their hearts,
But keep them wound in clocktight rooms,
Ill found. Unused. Obsessed by time.

Each beating hour
Rings false.

from The New British Poets: An Anthology, edited by Kenneth Rexroth
New York City: New Directions, 1948

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Knowledge,” from The Shoes that Danced, and Other Poems, by Anna Hempstead Branch

Liceu_Pedro_Nunes

Knowledge

Once I thought that healing came
From the angels wings.

Now the bruised hands of men
Seem the kindest things.

Once I thought to pluck and eat

The fruit of Paradise.
Now I break with these their bread

With unsaddened eyes.

Once I thought to find on earth
Love, perfect and complete.

Now I know it carries wounds
In its hands and feet.

from The Shoes that Danced, and Other Poems, by Anna Hempstead Branch
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Afternoon Tea,” from Some Poems, by Clara Louise Lawrence (1914)

afternoontea

Afternoon Tea

An attractive table, round and neat.
Presided over by faces sweet;
Wafers and candy by fair hands passed.
And I’m having my afternoon tea, at last.

Luxurious pillows, an easy chair;
Odors of violets filling the air.
The mingling voices of women and men.
Discussing events that are and have been.

My thoughts are dreamily lifting to things
More ideal than commonplace brings.
When a bit of gossip commands my ear.
Wafted from someone to someone near.

Touching lightly a woman’s name;
Adding a thoughtless word of blame.
Oh, why could they not let that scandal rest.
Who welcomed her once as an honored guest?

My illusion is ended; no longer the light
Of the sweet-scented room is delicious and bright;
For gossip, that poison, has sifted, I see.
To the very dregs of the afternoon tea.

from Some Poems, by Clara Louise Lawrence
Carlton, Pennsylvania: Publisher unknown, 1914

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“To Myself,” from Spicewood, by Lizette Woodworth Reese

tomyself

To Myself

Girl, I am tired of blowing hot and cold;
Of being that with that, and this with this;
A loosened leaf no bough would ever miss,
At the wind’s whim betwixt the sky and mould.
Of wearing masks. Oh, I would rend them all
Into the dust that by my door is blown;
Of my old secret bare me to the bone.
Myself at last, none other! I would call:——
“I had a lover once. This is the face
He lauded April-high and April-deep,
As fair a flower as hers of Camelot;
And yet he loved it but an April’s space.
This is myself indeed. Now hear me weep.
I had a lover once, but he forgot.”

from Spicewood, by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Baltimore : Norman, Remington Company, 1920

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

spacer

“The Palace-Burner,” from Poems by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

communefire

The Palace-Burner

[Paris, 1871]
A Picture in a Newspaper.

She has been burning palaces. “To see
The sparks look pretty in the wind!” Well, yes
And something more. But women brave as she
Leave much for cowards, such as I, to guess.

But this is old, so old that everything
Is ashes here, the woman and the rest.
Two years are oh! so long. Now you may bring
Some newer pictures. You like this one best?

You wish that you had lived in Paris then?
You would have loved to bum a palace, too?
But they had guns in France, and Christian men
Shot wicked little Communists like you.

You would have burned the palace? — Just because
You did not live in it yourself! Oh! why
Have I not taught you to respect the laws?
You would have burned the palace would not I?

Would I? … Go to your play. . . . Would I, indeed?
I? Does the boy not know my soul to be
Languid and worldly, with a dainty need
For light and music? Yet he questions me.

Can he have seen my soul more near than I?
Ah! in the dusk and distance sweet she seems,
With lips to kiss away a baby’s cry,
Hands fit for flowers, and eyes for tears and dreams.

Can he have seen my soul? And could she wear
Such utter life upon a dying face:
Such unappealing, beautiful despair:
Such garments soon to be a shroud with grace?

Would I burn palaces? The child has seen
In this fierce creature of the Commune here,
So bright with bitterness and so serene,
A being finer than my soul, I fear.

from Poems, by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1894

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

Most of the poems in this two-volume collection, taken from over a half-dozen previous books by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, a Kentucky-born poet who lived from 1836 to 1919, fall into the same category of delicate, decorative, and deadly-dull poetry that American and British men and women of the Victorian era produced in brain-numbing quantities. Romantic poetry utterly devoid of passion and utterly unworthy of rediscovery.

And then there are a few like this, in which the poet acknowledges that the firebrand Communiste is “a bring finer than my soul,” suggesting that a life spent writing delicate, decorative poems is not perhaps the fullest realization of her potential. They’re like little whispers of sedition — whispers it might have taken another hundred years for anyone to really hear.

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

spacer

“The Hotel,” from You and I, by Harriet Monroe (1914)

chicagohotel

The Hotel

The long resounding marble corridors, the shining parlors with shining women in them.

The French room, with its gilt and garlands under plump little tumbling painted loves.

The Turkish room, with its jumble of many carpets and its stiffly squared un-Turkish chairs.

The English room, all heavy crimson and gold, with spreading palms lifted high in round green tubs.

The electric lights in twos and threes and hundreds, made into festoons and spirals and arabesques, a maze and magic of bright persistent radiance.

The people sitting in corners by twos and threes, and cooing together under the glare.

The long rows of silent people In chairs, watching with eyes that see not while the patient band tangles the air with music.

The bell-boys marching in with cards, and shouting names over and over into ears that do not heed.

The stout and gorgeous dowagers In lacy white and lilac, bedizened with many jewels, with smart little scarlet or azure hats on their gray-streaked hair.

The business men in trim and spotless suits, who walk In and out with eager steps, or sit at the desks and tables, or watch the shining women.

The telephone girls forever listening to far voices, with the silver band over their hair and the little black caps obliterating their ears.

The telegraph tickers sounding their perpetual chit-chit-chit from the uttermost ends of the earth.

The waiters. In black swallow-tails and white aprons, passing here and there with trays of bottles and glasses.

The quiet and sumptuous bar-room, with purplish men softly drinking in little alcoves, while the bar-keeper, mixing bright liquors, is rapidly plying his bottles.

The great bedecked and gilded cafe, with its glitter of a thousand mirrors, with its little white tables bearing gluttonous dishes whereto bright forks, held by pampered hands, flicker daintily back and forth.

The white-tiled, immaculate kitchen, with many little round blue fires, where white-clad cooks are making spiced and flavored dishes.

The cool cellars filled with meats and fruits, or layered with sealed and bottled wines mellowing softly in the darkness.

The invisible stories of furnaces and machines, burrowing deep down into the earth, where grimy workmen are heavily laboring.

The many-windowed stories of little homes and shelters and sleeping-places, reaching up into the night like some miraculous, high-piled honeycomb of wax-white cells.

The clothes inside of the cells — the stuffs, the silks, the laces; the elaborate delicate disguises that wait in trunks and drawers and closets, or bedrape and conceal human flesh.

The people inside of the clothes, the bodies white and young, bodies fat and bulging, bodies wrinkled and wan, all alike veiled by fine fabrics, sheltered by walls and roofs, shut in from the sun and stars.

The souls inside of the bodies — the naked souls; souls weazened and weak, or proud and brave; all imprisoned in flesh, wrapped in woven stuffs, enclosed in thick and painted masonry, shut away with many shadows from the shining truth.

God inside of the souls, God veiled and wrapped and imprisoned and shadowed in fold on fold of flesh and fabrics and mockeries; but ever alive, struggling and rising again, seeking the light, freeing the world.

from You and I, by Harriet Monroe
New York: The Macmillian Company, 1914

This poem is Arnold Bennett’s The Grand Babylon Hotel in miniature, with all the glittering details of a big city hotel in an era when they were the great crossroads of social and business life for those who could afford the price of entry. And I love that last line, which to me captures what is going on in most of us every day, whatever name or spirit we associate with God.

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Train Window,” from Sun-Up and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge (1920)

trainwindow

Train Window

Small towns
Crawling out of their green shirts …
Tubercular towns
Coughing a little in the dawn …
And the church …
There is always a church
With its natty spire
And the vestibule–
That’s where they whisper:
Tzz-tzz . . . tzz-tzz . . . tzz-tzz . . .
How many codes for a wireless whisper
And corn flatter than it should be
And those chits of leaves
Gadding with every wind?
Small towns
From Connecticut to Maine:
Tzz-tzz . . . tzz-tzz . . . tzz-tzz. .

from Sun-Up and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge
New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1920

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“How Like a Woman,” from Poems, by Alice and Caroline Duer (1896)

Women in tea-room

How Like a Woman

I wanted you to come to-day —
Or so I told you in my letter —
And yet, if you had stayed away,
I should have liked you so much better.
I should have sipped my tea unseen,
And thrilled at every door-bell’s pealing,
And thought how nice I could have been
Had you evinced a little feeling.

I should have guessed you drinking tea
With someone whom you loved to madness;
I should have thought you cold to me,
And reveled in a depth of sadness.
But, no! you came without delay
I could not feel myself neglected:
You said the things you always say,
In ways not wholly unexpected.

If you had let me wait in vain,
We should, in my imagination,
Have held, what we did not attain,
A most dramatic conversation.
Had you not come, I should have known
At least a vague anticipation,
Instead of which, I grieve to own,
You did not give me one sensation.

from Poems, by Alice and Caroline Duer
New York: George H. Richmond & Co., 1896

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

Alice Duer married Henry Wise Miller a few years after publishing this book of poems with her sister Caroline, and became Alice Duer Miller, who wrote “Forsaking All Others,” a verse short novel featured here recently (post).

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Theodore Dreiser,” from Precipitations, by Evelyn Scott (1920)

dreiser

Theodore Dreiser

The man body jumbled out of the earth, half, formed,
Clay on the feet.
Heavy with the lingering might of chaos.
The man face so high above the feet
As if lonesome for them like a child.
The veins that beat heavily with the music they but half understood
Coil languidly around the heart
And lave it in the death stream
Of a grand impersonal benignance.

from Precipitations, by Evelyn Scott
New York: Nicholas L. Brown, 1920

I could hardly imagine a less likely subject for a poem than Theodore Dreiser, but this sketch by Evelyn Scott is close to perfection, both in its imagery and in the clay-footedness of that last line, which might have come straight off the pages of one of Dreiser’s novels.

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Take Their Little Necks,” by Loureine Aber, from We. the Musk Chasers

flappers

Take Their Little Necks

I ask you to be fierce, Chicago,
As a drowning man in the first spasm
Fierce first of all to your women.
Trip them when they come mincing down the Avenue,
Take their little necks and squeeze them,
Frantically.
(Women grow scatter-brained with no fingers at them,
There is no white glory to them if they are not hurt,
Oh, the unhurt women you see ogling at the shops.
Paint and cloth!)

And when you get a chance at men.
Be fierce with them;
It is their hands have made you,
Their insistent, silly howling for the moon.
When they wrought you, Chicago,
They wrought pigstys out of gauze.
And fine dreams.

from We, the Musk Chasers, by Loureine Aber
Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1921

Available on the Internet Archive: Link.

I like this poem because the poet’s voice is ferocious. She invites Sandburg’s Hog Butcher of the World, City of Big Shoulders, to wring the necks of her men and women with the facts of the real world.

We, the Musk Chasers–one of the odder titles of its time–was Loureine Aber’s only book, and at that, was a cheap paperback edition from a minor Chicago publisher. A graduate of Oberlin College, she had a number of poems published in Harriet Monroe’s magazine, including a feature spot right after Wallace Stevens in the October 1921 issue. She worked in advertising and then in the offices of the Leschin Apparel Company and boarded with a fellow Oberlin graduate, Lillian Blackwell Dial, and her husband. She died in 1930, a few days past her 37th birthday.

She was in her late 20s when she wrote “Take Their Little Necks.” She’d already been out, presumably on her own, for some years. Was she writing out of frustration with her own situation or with the fact that so many others hadn’t yet come to share her outlook on the world? Another poem in the collection, “You Will Never Go Picking Wild Flowers,” tells a well-to-do woman that she can never be carefree again because “You must go stiff now/Furs in storage/Diamonds in vault/Limousine waiting.” And was to make of “Four Corners of a Room”? Is this a celebration of limits or a declaration of resignation?

It is only four corners of a room
That keep me from becoming God.
I might leap out and spin stars,
I might address myself to grass
And long windy nights.
But these four corners hold me,
They have memories in them.

They will keep me fast

I am glad to be kept from being God.

It is certainly tempting to weave a whole story for Loureine Aber out of the lines of We, the Musk Chasers.

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“Night at Scheveningen,” by F. V. Branford, from Titans and Gods (1922)

scheveningennight

Night at Scheveningen

The North Sea shakes
His ranks in
Thunder
Through
The moon,
Beats and breaks
His flanks in
Sunder
To
The dune.

Cold
Song,
And pitiless
On rock and century.
Bold,
Strong
And cityless
My soul is as the sea.

from Titans and Gods, by F. V. Branford
London: Christophers, 1922

Available on the Internet Archive: Link

Sitting here tonight in a hotel on the beach at Scheveningen, looking out into the dunes, I wondered if I could find any poem about this most unpoetic sounding place.

En hier is het. Wie had dat gedacht?

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive.

“The Unhappy Few,” by Thomas McAfee, from Poems and Stories

loner

The Unhappy Few

–after reading Weldon Kees

Most of us spend most of our lives
Climbing in and out of wombs,
Bitching about bad coffee and too wet
Martinis. Most of us lust for, more than love,
Our wives, waitresses, and celluloid sirens.

But a few seem to move to the total horror
Of ennui, to wake tired at morning,
To be glad to face another alley, rather
Than to go on for another hour with the sheets,
Fighting the nightmares that gang up.

Those few are real and positive. They know
What misery and terror really are.
They’re usually the very last ones to bitch.
They go off somewhere to drink in a bar
Or cry or quietly to kill themselves.

from Poems and Stories, by Thomas McAfee
Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1960

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive (link).

“Cadillac Square: 1933,” by John Malcolm Brinnin, from Selected Poems

cadillac square

Cadillac Square: 1933

Whoever know a city, know this square:
The loud and quaking air
That breaks on brick or scales the sun-choked glass,
The travelers who pass
One minute of one day and nevermore,
The neo-Grecian door
Poised like the needle’s eye, open and shut
For the mythical feet
Of some squat nobleman of fields and mines,
Industrial scenes,
Or eggshell yachts afloat in summer water,
The pink expensive daughter
With a flair for shady friends and maybe Bach,
The colonnaded house and the Chinese cook.

In early spring this heartlike acre shines:
Canyoned streets, carlines
Flow with violence of union, men
Learn faith in fathers then;
The butcher from the suburb and the clerk
Hear the organizers speak
The echoing language of the pioneer,
And in that press they cheer
With such a swirling and reproachless voice
The city swims in noise;
Those sooty faces and grime-sculptured hands
Live where the river bends,
They own the rotted gardens made to green
Where but the fossils of machines have lain.

All interweaves among the changing years:
Progress is in arrears
Until some chanticleering message raids
The disparate multitudes,
Or the bark of some command, made sharp with hate,
Sends Property’s gunmen out.
Poised in that infinity of death
Or life, or barely both,
The human balance sways; away, away,
The bleak night and the day,
The bankers couched in limousines, the poor
Jackknifed against a door,
The bankers conscious of defeat, the poor
Jackknifed, oblivious, against a door.

from The Selected Poems of John Malcolm Brinnin
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive (link)

“Elegy Before the Time,” by William Dickey, from The Interpreter’s House

kansascitymotel

Elegy Before the Time

From Kansas City, the
last bleeding station-stop
of mother’s cancer, goes
west and then south, writes
“Having become myself
my fiction’s hero, will
pause at tonight’s hotel,
called (letterhead translates)
Inn of the Last Resort,
(amused) tomorrow will
taken sudden steps to go
into Mexico, write
nothing to anyone.”

Like a cheap dog thereafter
in grey timorousness
will his hallucinations
attend his heel
to lick at the least call?
Heroic, in the bar
back of the best streets,
he, in a diamond vest,
gold pieces in his ears,
muscles like a hoopsnake,
cheerfully will impart
his daddy’s wisdom with
new lies in a new night.

Or if that keepsake fails,
the coin in his hand turns
to a useless penny, he
cursed for a male witch,
eyes superstitiously full,
flesh softer than human,
“having become himself
his fiction’s hero” may
dance to a smart blaze,
staccato feet bound
fast to the fire’s end,
his clumsy hands told
gestures of departure.

Why worry, lovey? He,
mother in her fat tomb,
auntie on her pension,
Kansas City an act done
in an indecent story,
now suffers his own air,
breathes himself wholly.
And if he takes off
all clothes, smarts
in another country’s love, if
he takes off his heart, bleeds
untranslated blood, still
it is his fiction.

But I agree, I
cannot leave it there, and
wait the improbable card
postmarked Champs Elysees:
“Everything dandy, death
easily managed. Find
fine company; Ambrose Bierce,
all others who disappeared
stopping by for a drink.
Having become themselves
their fictions, are
spoken with new tongues.
Write to me. Love me. Yours.”

from The Interpreter’s House, by William Dickey
Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1963

This is one in a series of neglected poems taken from the Internet Archive (link).