Squares for a Patchwork Quilt

i

The Queen Mother is dead, it's Easter Sunday,
Israel is at war. That fragile hope I sometimes feel -
like a breath of sweetness from mown grass.

I need a little chest in which to put these poems.
What nothings we think ourselves 'informed' on!
The numbers are against the West.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
Oh, who can live with this fickle weather? I feel
like one pole of a magnet, a bell without a clapper.


ii

To keep up a steady gentle pressure
on the glassy pond, on a low tripod:
large and small goldfish bright as new pennies.
Ambient voices of summer laziness,
a fork clinking, a distant doorlatch clicking shut,
one on each side of the climbing ivies.
I don't dote on every leaf the way I should.
...