Selected Poems
By W. D. Snodgrass

From Heart's Needle

Here in the scuffled dust
is our ground of play.
I lift you on your swing and must
shove you away,
see you return again,
drive you off again, then

stand quiet till you come.
You, though you climb
higher, farther from me, longer,
will fall back to me stronger:
Bad penny, pendulum,
you keep my constant time

to bob in blue July
where fat goldfinches fly
over the glittering, fecund
reach of our growing lands.
Once more now, this second,
I hold you in my hands.

April Inventory

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I'd ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who's trusted me
I'd be substantial, presently.

I haven't read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead's notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler's.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of 
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body's hunger;
That I have forces, true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

Old Jewelry

This Gypsy bodice of old coins
From seven countries, woven fast
So that a silver braidwork joins
The years and places their tribe passed;

This crown-shaped belt, cast in Souflí-
Jeweled, enameling on silver-gilt-
A trothplight, then that surety
On which a family would be built;

This Roman fibula, intact
From the fourth century though bent;
This Berber fibula, once blacked
With layers of thick tar to prevent

Theft but that, scoured and polished, shone
As luminous as it ever was;
This lapis, Persian, the unfading stone
Gold-flecked and implicate with flaws;

Brass arm bands, rings, pins, bracelets, earrings-
Something from nearly every place
We'd been. Once more to see these dear things
Laid out for buyers in a locked showcase.


I'd known them, each one-weighed in hand,
rubbed, bargained, and then with my love,
Pinned each one on for her, to stand
In fickle times for emblems of

What lasts-just as they must have once
for someone long dead. Love that dies
Can still be wrung out for quick funds;
Someone, no doubt, would pay the price.

Who Steals My Good Name

-for the person who obtained my debit card numbers 
and spent 11,000 in five days


My pale stepdaughter, just off the schoolbus,
Scowled, "Well, that's the last time I say my name's
Snodgrass!" Just so, may that anonymous
Mexican male who prodigally claims

My clan lines, identity and the sixteen
Digits that unlock my bank account
Think twice. This less than proper name's been
Taken by three ex-wives, each for an amount

Past all you've squandered, each more than pleased
To change it back. That surname you affect
May have more consequences than getting teased
By dumb kids or tracked down by bank detectives.

Don't underrate its history: one of ours played
Piano on his prison's weekly broadcast;
One got rich on a scammed quiz show; one made
A bungle costing the World Series. My own past

Could subject you to guilt by association:
Should you write anything beyond false checks,
Abandon all hope of large press publication
Or prizes-critics shun that name like sex

Without a condom. Whoever steals my purse
Helps chain me to my writing desk again
For fun and profit. Take thanks, then, with my curse:
May your pen name help send you to your pen.

Farm Kids

Our neighbor's slim rag doll of a daughter (not,
we're told of his own getting) breathed out: "You've got
so many cookbooks!"-each eye a startled O
as it skimmed our kitchen shelves- "And so
much food!" Later, straight-faced, she said her mother
lives now with her new boyfriend in another
county. Hard up for farm jobs, her "Dad" has to drive
60 miles to the factory, getting up at 5
AM to leave them where his folds watch them
until he gets back home- sometimes 5 PM.

We go for long walks every evening. If we pass
their trailer, they all tumble out shouting, "Snodgrass!
Snodgrass!" The slim, straight-faced one is thought slow
by her teachers. There's much she'd do well not to know.
The cool offspring of our city friends are driven
to special schools, sports dates, parties, given
phones, computers, cars, the insatiate stuff
that will guarantee they can't ever get enough.
Our neighbors' less keen hungers and kinder drives
make sure they'll make nothing of their lives but lives.

Invitation

Come live with me and be my last
Resource, location and resort,
My workday's focus and steadfast
Distraction to a weekend's sport.

Come end up with me, close my list;
Blank my black book, block every e-mail
From ex-loves whose mouths won't be missed;
Let nothing else alive look female.

Come couch with me mit Freud und Lust
As every evening's last connection.
Talk to me; prove the day like Proust;
Let what comes next rise to inspection.

Come, let old aftermaths get lost,
Let failures and betrayals mend,
Cancel repayments; clear the cost;
Once more unto the breach, dear friend.

Come lay us down to sleep at least,
Sharing this pillow's picture show.
Who's been my braintrust and best beast?
Who else knows what I need to know?