He shall eat flowers,
Chew honey and spit out gall. They shall all smile
And love and pity him.

His death shall be by drowning.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Poet (l. 63-66). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

However others calculate the cost,
To us the final aggregate is one,
One with a name, one transferred to the blest;
And though another stoops and takes the gun,
We cannot add the second to the first.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Elegy for a Dead Soldier (l. 56-60). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.)

Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart
Clumps in the breast with heavy stride;
The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart,
The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide.
Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Nostalgia (l. 21-25). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

My soul is now her day, my day her night,
So I lie down, and so I rise;

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Nostalgia (l. 11-12). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

Flouncing your skirts, you blueness of joy, you flirt of
politeness,
You leap, you intelligence, essence of wheelness with silvery nose,
And your platinum clocks of excitement stir like the hairs of a
fern.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Buick (l. 8-10). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Elegy for a Dead Soldier (l. 13-18). . . Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.)

I see slip to the curb the long machines
Out of whose warm and windowed rooms pirouette
Shellacked with silk and light
The hard legs of our women.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. The Dome of Sunday (l. 17-20). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

The body, what is it, Father, but a sign
To love the force that grows us, to give back
What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. The Leg (l. 29-31). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

Give me the free and poor inheritance
Of our own kind, not furniture
Of education, or the prophet's pose,
The general cause of words, the hero's stance,
The ambitions incommensurable with flesh,

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. V-Letter (l. 45-49). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)

As groceries in a pantry gleam and smile
Because they are important weights
Bought with the metal minutes of your pay,
So do these hours stand in solid rows,
The dowry for a use in common life.

(Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. V-Letter (l. 56-60). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)