The following are a few selections chosen at random; while they exemplify to a certain extent the variety of subjects and treatments, a few scattered examples cannot begin to display the hreadth and diversity of the entire book.

Honey tinged with gall made up my drink,
While thunder poised to darken summer's leaves;
And seas would rumble grimly earth's black link
With heaven where the dark-winged brooder grieves.
No blue held dome too pure to gray with clouds,
No green content could could lack its brown, behind;
Each swaddling held its memory of shrouds,
And freedom's air brought chains to balk and bind.
My love, shrink not that I admit the stain
Dark acid burns in applewood or bronze,
Cry not of traitorhood when in the grain
I spy the fault; in metal, weak'ning bonds:
   We best see suns when gasping from the knife,
   In love's perennial dying find its life.

A perilous footprint you made, my love,
Between the void and time's too-sudden brink;
And standing there I felt the cold star sink
To glory with the echo'd you above;
A flight you made, like that of mourning dove
To leave the air a worm unfathom'd link
Between the star and echo; yet I think
I felt your hand within the moment's glove.
I cannot tell the high-flown arrow's path,
Or where the whirling shaft of light begins,
Or when day's dimming glow becomes a night;
I merely swim in this, times's golden bath,
   Delirium, and shut with silvered lens
   Next moment's haunt, oblivion, from sight.

I wandered wood wise and nighted,
Building shapes of horror with each branch,
And where through upward gloom a star was sighted,
Pterodactyls that poor gleam would stanch;
Vultured, torn and bled by pricks of dank,
I doubted that alive I'd fight to cross,
Til sluddenly a new star formed and sank,
And took a form of Man, and filled my loss;
Long on that arm I glided as in ease;
But once looked sideways; full returned my dread
For all waa emptiness and flowing trees;
I fell, but in the clearing. Some voice said
   That he'd but touched my arm. The rest my aid
   Who in that time forgot to be afraid.

Light-wraith'd, O slim abundance star-encased,
Small universe encircled by light years
And spiraling to nebulae flame-raced,
And whirled to silver-blazéd Titan tears,
O world and worlds, so cleverly conjoined,
For this I love ye not, yet love, and this
Reaps glory from my love, this form purloined
From myths more sacrosanct than angels,
More innocent than Seraph-song or bells
From cherub dawn, more pure than the heaven spring
Whose nurture mooned-Dian partook where spells
The morning star his greeting to earth's ring;
   O light-enwreathed and lovely, now what lute
   Celestial sounds: The gods to thee pay suit!!

Violet river smaller than its banks
Crept meandering (thaw had incepted)
Leaving coldfaced crowds molecular
(H2O in bond) to ride her shiv'ring
Serpentsides with slimy white; and deep
Enshimmring wraps the shiverd dusk in lav-
Ender of violet, the flow of mauve
Enmeshing age and spring, the veind sky tent-
Acling with tangletree (prelude to dawn
Whose next rose tremble omens golden day
Upon the quietning nerve); thus musk from bitters,
Azure crystal dreaming, sky from rippld
   Groundswell swollen sable, lockd of heart,
   Cerulean opning from the leapd rockroot.

So still were Nile's brown waters when the Cleo
Rode aheav with Antony, and trail'd
Her silver limbs to scald dusk prow and keel
And suddenbubbl'd foam, so claret ran
The sky, in touch upon that moving breast
Distended that all Man relapsed to swell her
Growing through the desecrated form
Of putrid flesh; ah, surface, utter chromegrin
Superficiality of real,
And depth of false: prevent me, sweet long enterer
From e'er forsaking thee, thy honey'd tomb,
Deathdealing pleasant longsigh drownbreathe clutchsink
   Scream! 'Tis thou that provest heavensquirming
   What more are we than flytwist excrement.

Tamarisk, bend to me, O sweeping willow,
Wand the lowing branches cross my rippling,
Down the trunkline glow of evening, stopping sapphires
Hung in western heaven; birch more searing
Silver than the naked morningchild
In prayr at dusk where winds the cottonwood
By banks of milkblue serpentine, the angel
Dew of waters, weave the bending triplets
Stirrupleavd across my prancing, stalliond,
Trampld in the desecrated lust
Of autumnd prematurely summer's dead
In life at drizzleheat, O stalwart maple
   (For no more than that thou art, my dazzle)
   Lure me through the nonewas night; morn's never.

Spireshape domed to ecstasy, amid
That spray and fir, that proud that lean'd to Heaven
(Palm transplanted, cooling into age
Where northclime lengthens sweet of day's climax
And sun reluctant wheels to russia shade):
O tight the shell of spirit clamps this bone,
And thru serene slings astral knowing, borne
Of crag and year and sexes' obsolescent:
Scream remember'd, now in mellow doom
Where prime is rounded, peak's erosion furring
Girths gaunt with the phallic spruce and steeple
Worshiping that gone and yet to come,
   As young repeats age, youth with risen fire
   Provides the infant aeon boiling eye.

The Rose Garden:
Portland, Oregon, 1967