Karl Shapiro Hair Poems
- 1. The Piano Tuner-s Wife
That note comes clear, like water running clear,
Then the next higher note, and up and up
And more and more, with now and then a chord,
The highest notes like tapping a tile with a hammer,
... - 2. Conscription Camp
Your landscape sickens with a dry disease
Even in May, Virginia, and your sweet pines
Like Frenchmen runted in a hundred wars
Are of a childâ??s height in these battlefields.
... - 3. The Intellectual
What should the wars do with these jigging fools?
The man behind the book may not be man,
... - 4. Buick
As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
... - 5. The Fly
O hideous little bat, the size of snot,
With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes,
To populate the stinking cat you walk
The promontory of the dead manâ??s nose,
...