Knocked Up by Henri Lawson (1867-1922)

I'm lyin' on the barren ground that's baked and cracked with drought,
And dunno if my legs or back or heart is most wore out;
I've got no spirits left to rise and smooth me achin' brow --
I'm too knocked up to light a fire and bile the billy now.




Oh it's trampin', trampin', tra-a-mpin', in flies an' dust an' heat,
Or it's trampin' trampin' tra-a-a-mpin'
through mud and slush 'n sleet;
It's tramp an' tramp for tucker -- one everlastin' strife,
An' wearin' out yer boots an' heart in the wastin' of yer life.




They whine o' lost an' wasted lives in idleness and crime --
I've wasted mine for twenty years, and grafted all the time
And never drunk the stuff I earned, nor gambled when I shore --
But somehow when yer on the track yer life seems wasted more.




A long dry stretch of thirty miles I've tramped this broilin' day,
All for the off-chance of a job a hundred miles away;
There's twenty hungry beggars wild for any job this year,
An' fifty might be at the shed while I am lyin' here.




The sinews in my legs seem drawn, red-hot -- 'n that's the truth;
I seem to weigh a ton, and ache like one tremendous tooth;
I'm stung between my shoulder-blades -- my blessed back seems broke;
I'm too knocked out to eat a bite -- I'm too knocked up to smoke.




The blessed rain is comin' too -- there's oceans in the sky,
An' I suppose I must get up and rig the blessed fly;
The heat is bad, the water's bad, the flies a crimson curse,
The grub is bad, mosquitoes damned -- but rheumatism's worse.




I wonder why poor blokes like me will stick so fast ter breath,
Though Shakespeare says it is the fear of somethin' after death;
But though Eternity be cursed with God's almighty curse --
What ever that same somethin' is I swear it can't be worse.


For it's trampin', trampin', tra-a-mpin' thro' hell across the plain,
And it's trampin' trampin' tra-a-mpin' thro' slush 'n mud 'n rain --
A livin' worse than any dog -- without a home 'n wife,
A-wearin' out yer heart 'n soul in the wastin' of yer life.

Henry LAWSON

A Summer Afternoon by James Whitcomb Riley

A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
Break in crisp whispers at my feet.


My book, neglected of an idle mind,
Hides for a moment from the eyes of men;
Or lightly opened by a critic wind,
Affrightedly reviews itself again.


Off through the haze that dances in the shine
The warm sun showers in the open glade,
The forest lies, a silhouette design
Dimmed through and through with shade.


A dreamy day; and tranquilly I lie
At anchor from all storms of mental strain;
With absent vision, gazing at the sky,
"Like one that hears it rain."

The Katydid, so boisterous last night,
Clinging, inverted, in uneasy poise,
Beneath a wheat-blade, has forgotten quite
If "Katy DID or DIDN'T" make a noise.


The twitter, sometimes, of a wayward bird
That checks the song abruptly at the sound,
And mildly, chiding echoes that have stirred,
Sink into silence, all the more profound.


And drowsily I hear the plaintive strain
Of some poor dove . . . Why, I can scarcely keep
My heavy eyelids--there it is again--
"Coo-coo!"--I mustn't--"Coo-coo!"--fall asleep!


James Whitcomb Riley
 
à comparer avec la sieste de José Maria de Heredia (Les Trophées)

Meeting and Passing by Robert FROST

As I went down the hill along the wall

There was a gate I had leaned at for the view

And had just turned from when I first saw you

As you came up the hill.  We met.  But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew

The figure of our being less than two

But more than one as yet.  Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.

And all the time we talked you seemed to see

Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.

by Robert Frost (1874-1963) 

The house on the hill by E. A. ROBINSON

 Those on the hill
They are all gone away,

   The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
   The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day
   To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
   Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
   For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
   In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

A winter night by Tomas TRANSTROEMER

The storm puts its mouth to the house
and blows to get a tone.
I toss and turn, my closed eyes
reading the storm's text.

The child's eyes grow wide in the dark
and the storm howls for him.
Both love the swinging lamps;
both are halfway towards speech.

The storm has the hands and wings of a child.
Far away, travellers run for cover.
The house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.

The night is calm in our rooms,
where the echoes of all footsteps rest
like sunken leaves in a pond,
but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world.
It puts its mouth to our soul
and blows to get a tone. We are afraid
the storm will blow us empty.

  (Text of the poem in the original Swedish)
Tomas Tranströmer
translated from the Swedish by Robin Robertson

The Deleted World
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The wereman by Margaret Atwood

My husband walks in the frosted field
an X, a concept
defined against a blank;
he swerves, enters the forest
and is blotted out.

Unheld by my sight
what does he change into
what other shape
blends with the under,
growth, wavers across the pools
is camouflaged from the listening
swamp animals

At noon he will
return; or it may be
only my idea of him
I will find returning
with him hiding behind it.

He may change me also
with the fox eye, the owl
eye, the eightfold
eye of the spider

I can't think
what he will see
when he opens the door


extrait de The Journals of Susanna MOODIE
by Margaret Atwood 
chez Bloomsbury Publishing 
isbn 0-7475 3721 6 

Globule by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

To be transparent, to contain the world,

To be jellyfish, lucent, mobile, membraned,

Boneless behold me, my mica bits

Expensive steel suspended in my substance,

Afloat in floodwater, swinging shoreward,

Ebbing oceanward, clockless among quick fishes

Striped, sported,

Speckled, stippled

Swishing between braincoral cobbles

Granulated brine, ever in motion.

II

From plate tinted a shell’s hard innerness,

Cerise bleeds, leads chilly dawn.

Sunlight struggles downward through wavelets

Near the sound’s warm surface, visible even

From the cliffs of cottages, it pushes relentlessly

Finding us, feeding us, diatoms, sea-lace,

Anemones, kelp. Breathing in our beds,

Bright sunlight sustains us, formidable father,

We who are oblivious, maybe immortal,

Then softens, slants, abruptly dips. There’s darkness.

Brutally cold, the boom of surf unheard,

Over pocked sand, purely indifference,

Rock ridges ready to razor tenderness

Seawater keeps moving forgetfully.

III

Now on the surface moonlight rests like ice

And the far sky blinks its pointed messages,

Pointless to me, about matter’s beginnings-

Membranous, shapeless, rocking undersea,

Both a thing contained and container of mystery,

Smoothness inside of smoothness, cold in cold,

Wishing only to be as I am, transparent,

Textured fleck afloat in a wet world. 

The Crack in Everything (1996) 
page 170-171

in The Little Space 

by Alicia Suskin OSTRIKER 

isbn 0-8229-5680-2