Live With Me on Earth Under the Invisible Daylight Moon by Milton James Rhode Acorn

Live with me on Earth among red berries and the bluebirds
And leafy young twigs whispering
Within such little spaces, between such floors of green, such figures in the clouds
That two of us could fill our lives with delicate wanting:

Where stars past the spruce copse mingle with fireflies
Or the dayscape flings a thousand tones of light back at the sun—
Be any one of the colours of an Earth lover;
Walk with me and sometimes cover your shadow with mine.

From: https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/acorn/poem5.htm

Date: 1973

By: Milton James Rhode Acorn (1923-1986)

Jacket Notes by Ishmael Scott Reed

Being a colored poet
Is like going over
Niagara Falls in a
Barrel

An 8 year old can do what
You do unaided
The barrel maker doesn’t
Think you can cut it

The gawkers on the bridge
Hope you fall on your
Face

The tourist bus full of
Paying customers broke-down
Just out of Buffalo

Some would rather dig
The postcards than
Catch your act

A mile from the drink
It begins to storm

But what really hurts is
You’re bigger than the
Barrel.

From: http://www.afropoets.net/ishmaelreed1.html

Date: 1973

By: Ishmael Scott Reed (1938- )

All Those Ships That Never Sailed by Robert (Bob) Garnell Kaufman

All those ships that never sailed
The ones with their seacocks open
That were scuttled in their stalls…
Today I bring them back
Huge and transitory
And let them sail
Forever.

All those flowers that you never grew-
that you wanted to grow
The ones that were plowed under
ground in the mud-
Today I bring them back
And let you grow them
Forever.

All those wars and truces
Dancing down these years-
All in three flag swept days
Rejected meaning of God-

My body once covered with beauty
Is now a museum of betrayal.
This part remembered because of that one’s touch
This part remembered for that one’s kiss-
Today I bring it back
And let you live forever.

I breath a breathless I love you
And move you
Forever.

Remove the snake from Moses’ arm…
And someday the Jewish queen will dance
Down the street with the dogs
And make every Jew
Her lover.

From: http://meaningsbehindthemessages.blogspot.com/2009/11/all-those-ships-that-never-sailed-bob.html

Date: 1973

By: Robert (Bob) Garnell Kaufman (1925-1986)

Reasons by Thomas James (Thomas Edward Bojeski)

For our own private reasons
We live in each other for an hour.
Stranger, I take your body and its seasons,
Aware the moon has gone a little sour
For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone
Shaken out of its proper setting.
We lie down in each other. We lie down alone
And watch the moon’s flawed marble getting
Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight?
The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black,
Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight.
Even this moon could never pull them back,
Even if it held them in its arms
And weighed them down with stones,
Took them entirely on their own terms
And piled the orchard’s blossom on their bones.
I am aware of your body and its dangers.
I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather
Where other fugitives and other strangers
Will put their mouths together.

From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2004/12/05/thomas-james-1946-1974-publi/c8393ec7-f150-4bbd-bd1b-48cdc7f44121/

Date: 1973

By: Thomas James (Thomas Edward Bojeski) (1946-1974)

The Secretary Chant by Marge Piercy

My hips are a desk.
From my ears hang
chains of paper clips.
Rubber bands form my hair.
My breasts are wells of mimeograph ink.
My feet bear casters.
Buzz. Click.
My head
is a badly organized file.
My head is a switchboard
where crossed lines crackle.
My head is a wastebasket
of worn ideas.
Press my fingers
and in my eyes appear
credit and debit.
Zing. Tinkle.
My navel is a reject button.
From my mouth issue canceled reams.
Swollen, heavy, rectangular
I am about to be delivered
of a baby
xerox machine.
File me under W
because I wonce
was
a woman.

From: The secretary chant | Library of Congress (loc.gov)

Date: 1973

By: Marge Piercy (1936- )

Winter Solstice by Alan Alexander

These nights are cold and still
And something in me awakes
Listening like an animal,

Waiting for those times to come
Which belong to the blowdown of rain
And the hard, pure heart of wind

When the two trees in the garden
Fill out and the cats scamper
For shelter and I go crazy

With meaning, opening the door
To the neurotic girl who
Was so difficult to handle,

Who shakes her coat and tells me
Not to worry, she won’t be long
Gathering her few odd things together

And stilts about from room to room,
Leaving a scent of broken things
Helplessly on the air,

While the two trees in the garden fill again
And the house is buffeted with returning rain.

From: Alexander, Alan, “Winter Solstice” in Westerly, No. 2, June 1973, p. 35.
(http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/westerly/all/53479.pdf)

Date: 1973

By: Alan Alexander (1973- )

New Flowers by Wang Anshi

Old age has few joys or comforts,
Let alone lying sick in bed.
Drawing water to put new flowers in,
I hope to console myself with the floating fragrance.
The floating fragrance lasts only a moment,
And I too – how can I endure long?
The new flowers and the old I
Are all over, and both may be forgotten.

From: Liu, James J. Y., “Six Poems by Wang An-Shih” in Renditions, Autumn 1973, pp. 91-93.
(https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/pdf/e_outputs/b01/v01p091.pdf)

Date: 11^th century (original in Chinese); 1973 (translation in English)

By: Wang Anshi (1021-1086)

Translated by: James J Y Liu (1926-1986)

Poem [This Poem Is Not Addressed to You] by Donald Justice

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.

From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57598/poem-this-poem-is-not-addressed-to-you

Date: 1973

By: Donald Justice (1925-2004)

Verdict by Michael Goldman

Nothing has happened.
We sit as if preserved.

Spared
at random.

From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=121&issue=5&page=12

Date: 1973

By: Michael Goldman (19??-????)

Epigram 419 by Marcus Argentarius

Hetero-sex is best for the man of a serious turn of mind,
But here’s a hint, if you should fancy the other:
Turn Menophila round in bed, address her peachy behind.
And it’s easy to pretend you’re screwing her brother.

From: Jay, Peter (ed.), The Greek Anthology and Other Ancient Greek Epigrams: A Selection in Modern Verse Translations, 1973, Allen Lane: London, p. 201.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=7YtfAAAAMAAJ)

Date: c1st century (original in Greek); 1973 (translation in English)

By: Marcus Argentarius (c1st century)

Translated by: Fleur Adcock (1934- )