Authors: Jack Gilbert

Collected Poems (24 page)

Blinded by Seeing

Breakfast

Brief for the Defense, A

Bring in the Gods

Burma

Burning (Andante non troppo)

Burning and Fathering: Accounts of My Country

Butternut Tree at Fort Juniper, The

By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.

Byzantium Burning

Cargo and the Equity, The

Carrying Torches at Noon

Chastity

Cherishing What Isn’t

Close Call, A

Companion, The

Conceiving Himself

Container for the Thing Contained, The

Convalescing

County Musician

Crossing the Border, Searching for the City

Crusoe on the Mountain Gathering Faggots

Cucumbers of Praxilla of Sicyon, The

Danger of Wisdom, The

Dante Dancing

December Ninth, 1960

Description of Happiness in København, A

Difficult Beauty, The

Divorce

Doing Poetry

Don Giovanni in Trouble

Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell

Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell (II)

Dreaming at the Ballet

Duende

Eating with the Emperor

Edge of the World, The

Elegy

Elegy for Bob (Jean McLean)

Elephant Hunt in Guadalajara

Elephants

End of Paradise, The

Everywhere and Forever

Exceeding

Exceeding the Spirit

Explicating the Twilight

Fashionable Heart, The

First Morning of the World on Long Island, The

First Times

Flat Hedgehogs

For Example

Foraging for Wood on the Mountain

Forgotten Dialect of the Heart, The

Four Perfectly Tangerines, The

Friendship Inside Us, The

From These Nettles, Alms

Ghost Sings, a Door Opens, A

Greek Gods Don’t Come in Winter, The

Gros Ventre, The

Growing Up in Pittsburgh

Guilty

Half the Truth

Halloween

Happening Apart from What’s Happening Around It

Happily Planting the Beans Too Early

Hard Wired

Harm and Boon in the Meetings

Haunted Importantly

Having the Having

Heart Skidding

Highlights and Interstices

History of Men, The

Holding On to My Friend

Homage to Wang Wei

Homesteading

Honor

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

Hot Nights in Florida

House on the California Mountain

How Much of That Is Left in Me?

How to Love the Dead

Hunger

I Imagine the Gods

I’ll Try to Explain About the Fear

Il mio tesoro

Immaculate

In Dispraise of Poetry

In Perugino We Have Sometimes Seen Our Country

It Is Clear Why the Angels Come No More

It May Be No One Should Be Opened

Leporello on Don Giovanni

Less Being More

Letter to Mr. John Keats

Lions

Lives of Famous Men, The

Living Hungry After

Looking at Pittsburgh from Paris

Looking Away from Longing

Lord Sits with Me Out in Front, The

Losing

Lost Hotels of Paris, The

Malvolio in San Francisco

Man at a Window

Man in Black and White, A

Manger of Incidentals, The

Meditation Eleven: Reading Blake Again

Meelee’s Away

Meniscus

Meniscus: Or How the Heart Must Not Be Too Much Questioned

Métier

Mexico

Michiko Dead

Michiko Nogami (1946–1982)

Midnight Is Made of Bricks

Milk of Paradise, The

Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played

Music Is the Memory of What Never Happened

“My Eyes Adored You,”

My Graveyard in Tokyo

My Marriage with Mrs. Johnson

Myself Considered as the Monster in the Foreground

Naked Except for the Jewelry

Naked Without Intent

Neglecting the Kids

Negligible, The

New Bride Almost Visible in Latin, The

New Hampshire Marble

New York, Summer

Night After Night

Night Comes Every Day to My Window, The

Night Songs and Day Songs

1953

Not Easily

Not Getting Closer

Not Part of Literature

Not the Happiness but the Consequence of Happiness

Older Women

On Growing Old in San Francisco

On Stone

Once upon a Time

Orpheus in Greenwich Village

Ostinato rigore

Other Perfection, The

Ovid in Tears

Painting on Plato’s Wall

Pavane

Peaches

Perfected

Perspective He Would Mutter Going to Bed

Pewter

Piecing of the Life

Playing House

Plundering of Circe, The

Poem for Laura

Poem for the Fin Du Monde Man, A

Poetry Is a Kind of Lying

Portolano

Prospero Dreams of Arnaut Daniel Inventing Love in the Twelfth Century

Prospero Goes Home

Prospero Listening to the Night

Prospero Without His Magic

Put Her in the Fields for Kindness

Rain

Rainy Forests of Northern California, The

Recovering amid the Farms

Refusing Heaven

Registration

Reinvention of Happiness, The

Searching for It in a Guadalajara Dance Hall

Searching for Pittsburgh

Singing in My Difficult Mountains

Sirens Again, The

Sixth Meditation: Faces of God, The

Spirit and the Soul, The

Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

Susanna and the Elders

Sweet Taste of the Night, The

Taste for Grit and Whatever, A

Thanksgiving Dance, A

That Tenor of Which the Night Birds Are a Vehicle

Theoretical Lives

They Call It Attempted Suicide

They Will Put My Body into the Ground

Thinking About Ecstasy

Thirty Favorite Lives: Amager, The

Thirty Favorite Times

This Times That

Threshing the Fire

’Tis Here! ’Tis Here! ’Tis Gone! (The Nature of Presence)

To Know the Invisible

To See If Something Comes Next

Transgressions

Translation into the Original

Trying to Have Something Left Over

Trying to Write Poetry

Valley of the Owls

Valley of the Spirits

Voices Inside and Out

Waiting and Finding

Waking at Night

Walk Blossoming, A

Walking Home Across the Island

We Are the Junction

What I’ve Got

What Is There to Say?

What Plenty

What Song Should We Sing

What to Want

White Heart of God, The

Whiteness, the Sound, and Alcibiades, The

Winter Happiness in Greece

Winter in the Night Fields

Without Watteau, Without Burckhardt, Oklahoma

Worth

Year Later, A

Yelapa

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

About once a month the beautiful girl

A boy sits on the porch of a wooden house

After a summer with happy people

After she died he was seized

After twenty hours in bed with no food, I decided

Ah, you three women whom I have loved in this

A lady asked me

All at once these owls

All honor at a distance is punctilio

All night in the Iowa café. Friday night

All of it. The sane woman under the bed with the rat

All taken down like Trastevere or København

All that remains from the work of Skopas

All this windless day snow fell

Always I have been afraid

A man lies warm under the blankets in a house still

“And,” she said, “you must talk no more

Another beautiful love letter

An unfamiliar woman sleeps on the other side

Apollo walks the deep roads back in the hills

Are the angels of her bed the angels

As slowly as possible, I said

A white horse, Linda Gregg wrote, is not a horse

“Barefoot farm girls in silk dresses,” he thinks

Barrels of chains. Sides of beef stacked in vans

Bella fíca!
(beautiful fig, fine sex) the whore said

Beyond what the fires have left of the cathedral

Bring in the gods I say, and he goes out. When he comes

Can you understand being alone so long

Circe had no pleasure in pigs

Deep inside the night on the eighth floor

Digging into the apple

Do you think it’s easy for him, the poor bastard?

Dusk and the sea is thus and so. The cat

Each farmer on the island conceals

Easter on the mountain. The hanging goat roasted

El Serape’s floor show finished at one. The lights

Every generation tells

Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew

Fire begins seriously at the body

Flying up, crossing over, going forward

For eleven years I have regretted it

For example, that fragment of entablature

From my hill I look down on the freeway and over

From this distance they are unimportant

Go down to the drugstore at the corner

Got up before the light this morning

Gradually he could hear her. Stop, she was saying

Gradually we realize what is felt is not so important

Having reached the beginning, starting toward

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