Robert Penn Warren (1905 – 1989)
The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.
Robert Penn Warren
Grieve Not
by Walter Clyde Curry
To swathe herself in napkins till rebirth.
These buddings, flowerings, are nothing worth;
. . This ermine cloud stretched firm across the lakes
. . Will presently be shattered into flakes;
Then, starveling world, be subject to my mirth.
I know that faithful swift mortality
. . Subscribes to nothing longer than a day;
. All beauty signals imminent decay;
And painted wreckage cumbers land and sea.
I laugh to hear a sniveling wise one say,
“Some winnowed self escapes this reckless way.”
Vision
by Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
I shall build me a house where the larkspur blooms
. . In a narrow glade in an alder wood,
Where the sunset shadows make violet gloom,
, . And a whip-poor-will calls in eerie mood.
I shall lie on a bed of river sedge,
. . And listen to the glassy dark,
With a guttered light on my window ledge,
. . While an owl stares in at me white and stark.
I shall burn my house with the rising dawn,
. . And leave but the ashes and smoke behind,
And again give the glade to the owl and the fawn,
. . When the grey wood smoke drifts away with the wind.
Fourteen Lines 