e-commerce

• He: 'After the first phase, after passionate nights and intimate days, only then would he let me trace the frozen river which ran through his face, only then would he let me explore the blown hinge of his lower jaw, and handle and hold the damaged, porcelain collar-bone, and mind and attend the fractured rudder of shoulder-blade, and finger and thumb the parachute silk of his punctured lung. Only then could I bind the struts and climb the rungs of his broken ribs, and feel the hurt of his grazed heart. Skirting along, only then could I picture the scan, the foetus of metal beneath his chest where the bullet had finally come to rest. Then I widened the search, traced the scarring back to its source to a sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind, around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed. Then, and only then, did I come close'
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death'
• I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear. How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry Every black’ning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier’s sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls. But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot’s curse Blasts the new born Infant’s tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
• Rupert Brooke: 'If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven'
• Lord Byron: 'She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!'
• There are just not enough straight lines. That is the problem. Nothing is flat or parallel. Beams balance crookedly on supports thrust off the vertical. Nails clutch at open seams. The whole structure leans dangerously towards the miraculous. Into this rough frame, someone has squeezed a living space and even dared to place these eggs in a wire basket, fragile curves of white hung out over the dark edge of a slanted universe, gathering the light into themselves, as if they were the bright, thin walls of faith.
• As imperceptibly as Grief The Summer lapsed away — Too imperceptible at last To seem like Perfidy — A Quietness distilled As Twilight long begun, Or Nature spending with herself Sequestered Afternoon — The Dusk drew earlier in — The Morning foreign shone — A courteous, yet harrowing Grace, As Guest, that would be gone — And thus, without a Wing Or service of a Keel Our Summer made her light escape Into the Beautiful.
• I could pick anything and think of you—: 'This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page.'
• I could choose any hero, any cause or age And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart, Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart As standing in silver stirrups will allow—: 'There you'll be, with furrowed brow And chain mail glinting, to set me free: One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.'
• This post-post-modern age is all business: compact disks And faxes, a do-it-now-and-take-no-risks Event.
• Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast, Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host Of daydreams: awkward reminiscences Of teenage crushes on worthless boys


  Whose only talent was to kiss you senseless.
• They all had sissy names—Marcel, Percy, Dewey; Were thin as licorice and as chewy, Sweet with a dark and hollow center.
• Floyd's Cussing up a storm.


  You're bunkered in your Aerie, I'm perched in mine (Twin desks, computers, hardwood floors):
• We're content, but fall short of the Divine.
• Still, it's embarrassing, this happiness—Who's satisfied simply with what's good for us, When has the ordinary ever been news?
• And yet, because nothing else will do To keep me from melancholy (call it blues), I fill this stolen time with you.
• Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. I am trying to be truthful. Not a cute card or a kissogram. I give you an onion. Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are. Take it. Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring, if you like. Lethal. Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife.
• The Tragedy: 'She sits in the tawny vapour That the City lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold on fold Like a waning taper The street-lamp glimmers cold. A messenger's knock cracks smartly, Flashed news is in her hand Of meaning it dazes to understand Though shaped so shortly: He – has fallen – in the far South Land …'
• The Irony: ''Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, The postman nears and goes: A letter is brought whose lines disclose By the firelight flicker His hand, whom the worm now knows: Fresh – firm – penned in highest feather, Page-full of his hoped return, And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn In the summer weather, And of new love that they would learn.'
• Frogspawn


  Warm thick slobber that grew like clotted water in the shade of the banks
• Frogspawn hatching

  The fattening dots burst into nimble swimming tadpoles
• Daddy frog


  Called a bullfrog, croaked
• Mammy frog


  Laid hundreds of little eggs, this was frogspawn
• Weather


  Frogs were yellow in the sun and brown in rain
• The speaker sickened, turned, and ran
• The speaker knew that if they dipped their hand the spawn would clutch it
• 1. 'I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.'
• Narrator


  • Sits in the top of the wood
  • Eyes closed
  • Rehearses perfect kills and eats in sleep
• The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection.
• My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
• It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather:
• Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly
• I kill where I please because it is all mine.
• There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads – The allotment of death.
• For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living.
• No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
• John Keats: 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.'
• Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
• Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
• And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.