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Last night I fled until I came To streets where leaking casements dripped Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame A nervous window bled.

Allen Tate

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Allen Tate
Age: 79 †
Born: 1899
Born: November 19
Died: 1979
Died: February 9
Author
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Streets
Fled
Came
Corpse
Lasts
Stale
Last
Corpses
Night
Flame
Lamplight
Flames
Dripped
Nervous
Bled
Window
Leaking

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There's precious little to say between day and dark, Perhaps a few words on the implacable will Of time sailing like a magic barque Or something as fine for the amenities.
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The twilight is long fingers and black hair.
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William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of woman is the work of God', Or that title--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
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All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
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Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky And I must think a little of the past: When I was ten I told a stinking lie That got a black boy whipped.
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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
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Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
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Let us lie down once more by the breathing side Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!
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And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.
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For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain.
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Our loss put six feet under ground Is measured by the magnolia's root Our gain's the intellectual sound Of death's feet round a weedy tomb.
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For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from.
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The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark and then the towering weak and pale.
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What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.
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Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
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Death's long anabasis.
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Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.
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Men expect too much, do too little.
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Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red Reverberance of hail upon the dead Thunder like an exploding crucible!
Allen Tate