Even in the time when as yet

I had no certain knowledge of her

She sprang from the nest, a young crow,

Whose first flight circled the forest.

I know now how then she showed me

Her mind, reaching out to the horizon,

She close above the tree tops.

I saw her eyes straining at the new distance

And as the woods fell from her flying

Likewise they fell from me as I followed

So that I strongly guessed all that I must put from me

To come through ready for the high courses.

But one day, crossing the ferry

With the great towers of Manhattan before me,

Out at the prow with the sea wind blowing,

I had been wearying many questions

Which she had put on to try me:

How shall I be a mirror to this modernity?

When lo! in a rush, dragging

A blunt boat on the yielding river—

Suddenly I saw her! And she waved me

From the white wet in midst of her playing!

She cried me, “Haia! Here I am, son!

See how strong my little finger is!

Can I not swim well?

I can fly too!” And with that a great sea-gull

Went to the left, vanishing with a wild cry—

But in my mind all the persons of godhead

Followed after.

“Come!” cried my mind and by her might

That was upon us we flew above the river

Seeking her, grey gulls among the white—

In the air speaking as she had willed it;

“I am given,” cried I, “now I know it!

I know now all my time is forespent!

For me one face is all the world!

For I have seen her at last, this day,

In whom age in age is united—

Indifferent, out of sequence, marvelously!

Saving alone that one sequence

Which is the beauty of all the world, for surely

Either there in the rolling smoke spheres below us

Or here with us in the air intercircling,

Certainly somewhere here about us

I know she is revealing these things!”

And as gulls we flew and with soft cries

We seemed to speak, flying, “It is she

The mighty, recreating the whole world,

This is the first day of wonders!

She is attiring herself before me—

Taking shape before me for worship,

A red leaf that falls upon a stone!

It is she of whom I told you, old

Forgiveless, unreconcilable;

That high wanderer of by-ways

Walking imperious in beggary!

At her throat is loose gold, a single chain

From among many, on her bent fingers

Are rings from which the stones are fallen,

Her wrists wear a diminished state, her ankles

Are bare! Toward the river! Is it she there?”

And we swerved clamorously downward—

“I will take my peace in her henceforth!”

It was then she struck—from behind,

In mid air, as with the edge of a great wing!

And instantly down the mists of my eyes

There came crowds walking—men as visions

With expressionless, animate faces;

Empty men with shell-thin bodies

Jostling close above the gutter,

Hasting—nowhere! And then for the first time

I really saw her, really scented the sweat

Of her presence and—fell back sickened!

Ominous, old, painted—

With bright lips, and lewd Jew’s eyes

Her might strapped in by a corset

To give her age youth, perfect

In her will to be young she had covered

The godhead to go beside me.

Silent, her voice entered at my eyes

And my astonished thought followed her easily:

“Well, do their eyes shine, do their clothes fit?

These live I tell you! Old men with red cheeks,

Young men in gay suits! See them!

Dogged, quivering, impassive—

Well—are these the ones you envied?”

At which I answered her, “Marvelous old queen,

Grant me power to catch something of this day’s

Air and sun into your service!

That these toilers after peace and after pleasure

May turn to you, worshippers at all hours!”

But she sniffed upon the words warily—

Yet I persisted, watching for an answer:

“To you, horrible old woman,

Who know all fires out of the bodies

Of all men that walk with lust at heart!

To you, O mighty, crafty prowler

After the youth of all cities, drunk

With the sight of thy archness! All the youth

That come to you, you having the knowledge

Rather than to those uninitiate—

To you, marvelous old queen, give me always

A new marriage—”

                  But she laughed loudly—

“A new grip upon those garments that brushed me

In days gone by on beach, lawn, and in forest!

May I be lifted still, up and out of terror,

Up from before the death living around me—

Torn up continually and carried

Whatever way the head of your whim is,

A burr upon those streaming tatters—”

But the night had fallen, she stilled me

And led me away.

At the first peep of dawn she roused me!

I rose trembling at the change which the night saw!

For there, wretchedly brooding in a corner

From which her old eyes glittered fiercely—

“Go!” she said, and I hurried shivering

Out into the deserted streets of Paterson.

That night she came again, hovering

In rags within the filmy ceiling—

“Great Queen, bless me with thy tatters!”

“You are blest, go on!”

                        “Hot for savagery,

Sucking the air! I went into the city,

Out again, baffled onto the mountain!

Back into the city!

                    Nowhere

The subtle! Everywhere the electric!”

“A short bread-line before a hitherto empty tea shop:

No questions—all stood patiently,

Dominated by one idea: something

That carried them as they are always wanting to be carried,

‘But what is it,’ I asked those nearest me,

‘This thing heretofore unobtainable

‘That they seem so clever to have put on now!’

“Why since I have failed them can it be anything but their own brood?

Can it be anything but brutality?

On that at least they’re united! That at least

Is their bean soup, their calm bread and a few luxuries!

“But in me, more sensitive, marvelous old queen

It sank deep into the blood, that I rose upon

The tense air enjoying the dusty fight!

Heavy drink where the low, sloping foreheads

The flat skulls with the unkempt black or blond hair,

The ugly legs of the young girls, pistons

Too powerful for delicacy!

The women’s wrists, the men’s arms red

Used to heat and cold, to toss quartered beeves

And barrels, and milk-cans, and crates of fruit!

“Faces all knotted up like burls on oaks,

Grasping, fox-snouted, thick-lipped,

Sagging breasts and protruding stomachs,

Rasping voices, filthy habits with the hands.

Nowhere you! Everywhere the electric!

“Ugly, venomous, gigantic!

Tossing me as a great father his helpless

Infant till it shriek with ecstasy

And its eyes roll and its tongue hangs out!—

“I am at peace again, old queen, I listen clearer now.”

Never, even in a dream,

Have I winged so high nor so well

As with her, she leading me by the hand,

That first day on the Jersey mountains!

And never shall I forget

The trembling interest with which I heard

Her voice in a low thunder:

“You are safe here. Look child, look open-mouth!

The patch of road between the steep bramble banks;

The tree in the wind, the white house there, the sky!

Speak to men of these, concerning me!

For never while you permit them to ignore me

In these shall the full of my freed voice

Come grappling the ear with intent!

Never while the air’s clear coolness

Is seized to be a coat for pettiness;

Never while richness of greenery

Stands a shield for prurient minds;

Never, permitting these things unchallenged

Shall my voice of leaves and varicolored bark come free through!”

At which, knowing her solitude,

I shouted over the country below me:

“Waken! my people, to the boughs green

With ripening fruit within you!

Waken to the myriad cinquefoil

In the waving grass of your minds!

Waken to the silent phoebe nest

Under the eaves of your spirit!”

But she, stooping nearer the shifting hills

Spoke again. “Look there! See them!

There in the oat field with the horses,

See them there! bowed by their passions

Crushed down, that had been raised as a roof beam!

The weight of the sky is upon them

Under which all roof beams crumble.

There is none but the single roof beam:

There is no love bears against the great firefly!”

At this I looked up at the sun

Then shouted again with all the might I had.

But my voice was a seed in the wind.

Then she, the old one, laughing

Seized me and whirling about bore back

To the city, upward, still laughing

Until the great towers stood above the marshland

Wheeling beneath: the little creeks, the mallows

That I picked as a boy, the Hackensack

So quiet that seemed so broad formerly:

The crawling trains, the cedar swamp on the one side—

All so old, so familiar—so new now

To my marvelling eyes as we passed

Invisible.

Eight days went by, eight days

Comforted by no nights, until finally:

“Would you behold yourself old, beloved?”

I was pierced, yet I consented gladly

For I knew it could not be otherwise.

And she—“Behold yourself old!

Sustained in strength, wielding might in gript surges!

Not bodying the sun in weak leaps

But holding way over rockish men

With fern-free fingers on their little crags,

Their hollows, the new Atlas, to bear them

For pride and for mockery! Behold

Yourself old! winding with slow might—

A vine among oaks—to the thin tops:

Leaving the leafless leaved,

Bearing purple clusters! Behold

Yourself old! birds are behind you.

You are the wind coming that stills birds,

Shakes the leaves in booming polyphony—

Slow winning high way amid the knocking

Of boughs, evenly crescendo,

The din and bellow of the male wind!

Leap then from forest into foam!

Lash about from low into high flames

Tipping sound, the female chorus—

Linking all lions, all twitterings

To make them nothing! Behold yourself old!”

As I made to answer she continued,

A little wistfully yet in a voice clear cut:

“Good is my over lip and evil

My under lip to you henceforth:

For I have taken your soul between my two hands

And this shall be as it is spoken.”

And so it came to that last day

When, she leading by the hand, we went out

Early in the morning, I heavy of heart

For I knew the novitiate was ended

The ecstasy was over, the life begun.

In my woolen shirt and the pale-blue necktie

My grandmother gave me, there I went

With the old queen right past the houses

Of my friends down the hill to the river

As on any usual day, any errand.

Alone, walking under trees,

I went with her, she with me in her wild hair,

By Santiago Grove and presently

She bent forward and knelt by the river,

The Passaic, that filthy river.

And there dabbling her mad hands,

She called me close beside her.

Raising the water then in the cupped palm

She bathed our brows wailing and laughing:

“River, we are old, you and I,

We are old and by bad luck, beggars.

Lo, the filth in our hair, our bodies stink!

Old friend, here I have brought you

The young soul you long asked of me.

Stand forth, river, and give me

The old friend of my revels!

Give me the well-worn spirit,

For here I have made a room for it,

And I will return to you forthwith

The youth you have long asked of me:

Stand forth, river, and give me

The old friend of my revels!”

And the filthy Passaic consented!

Then she, leaping up with a fierce cry:

“Enter, youth, into this bulk!

Enter, river, into this young man!”

Then the river began to enter my heart,

Eddying back cool and limpid

Into the crystal beginning of its days.

But with the rebound it leaped forward:

Muddy, then black and shrunken

Till I felt the utter depth of its rottenness

The vile breadth of its degradation

And dropped down knowing this was me now.

But she lifted me and the water took a new tide

Again into the older experiences,

And so, backward and forward,

It tortured itself within me

Until time had been washed finally under,

And the river had found its level

And its last motion had ceased

And I knew all—it became me.

And I knew this for double certain

For there, whitely, I saw myself

Being borne off under the water!

I could have shouted out in my agony

At the sight of myself departing

Forever—but I bit back my despair

For she had averted her eyes

By which I knew well what she was thinking—

And so the last of me was taken.

Then she, “Be mostly silent!”

And turning to the river, spoke again:

“For him and for me, river, the wandering,

But by you I leave for happiness

Deep foliage, the thickest beeches—

Though elsewhere they are all dying—

Tallest oaks and yellow birches

That dip their leaves in you, mourning,

As now I dip my hair, immemorial

Of me, immemorial of him

Immemorial of these our promises!

Here shall be a bird’s paradise,

They sing to you remembering my voice:

Here the most secluded spaces

For miles around, hallowed by a stench

To be our joint solitude and temple;

In memory of this clear marriage

And the child I have brought you in the late years.

Live, river, live in luxuriance

Remembering this our son,

In remembrance of me and my sorrow

And of the new wandering!”

The archer is wake!

The Swan is flying!

Gold against blue

An Arrow is lying.

There is hunting in heaven—

Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Bears are abroad!

The Eagle is screaming!

Gold against blue

Their eyes are gleaming!

Sleep!

Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Sisters lie

With their arms intertwining;

Gold against blue

Their hair is shining!

The Serpent writhes!

Orion is listening!

Gold against blue

His sword is glistening!

Sleep!

There is hunting in heaven—

Sleep safe till tomorrow.

Now that I have cooled to you

Let there be gold of tarnished masonry,

Temples soothed by the sun to ruin

That sleep utterly.

Give me hand for the dances,

Ripples at Philae, in and out,

And lips, my Lesbian,

Wall flowers that once were flame.

Your hair is my Carthage

And my arms the bow,

And our words arrows

To shoot the stars

Who from that misty sea

Swarm to destroy us.

But you there beside me—

Oh how shall I defy you,

Who wound me in the night

With breasts shining

Like Venus and like Mars?

The night that is shouting Jason

When the loud eaves rattle

As with waves above me

Blue at the prow of my desire.

O, prayers in the dark!

O, incense to Poseidon!

Calm in Atlantis.

Lady of dusk-wood fastnesses,

    Thou art my Lady.

I have known the crisp, splintering leaf-tread with thee on before,

White, slender through green saplings;

I have lain by thee on the brown forest floor

    Beside thee, my Lady.

Lady of rivers strewn with stones,

    Only thou art my Lady.

Where thousand the freshets are crowded like peasants to a fair;

Clear-skinned, wild from seclusion

They jostle white-armed down the tent-bordered thoroughfare

    Praising my Lady.

Elvira, by love’s grace

There goeth before you

A clear radiance

Which maketh all vain souls

Candles when noon is.

The loud clangor of pretenders

Melteth before you

Like the roll of carts passing,

But you come silently

And homage is given.

Now the little by-path

Which leadeth to love

Is again joyful with its many;

And the great highway

From love

Is without passers.

I tried to put a bird in a cage.

          O fool that I am!

    For the bird was Truth.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

          Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,

          O fool that I am!

    Why, it broke my pretty cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

          Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,

          O fool that I am!

    Why, I had nor bird nor cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

          Truth in a cage!

    Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

    Come with us and play!

See, we have breasts as women!

    From your tents by the sea

Come play with us: it is forbidden!

    Come with us and play!

Lo, bare, straight legs in the water!

    By our boats we stay,

    Then swimming away

Come to us: it is forbidden!

    Come with us and play!

See, we are tall as women!

    Our eyes are keen:

    Our hair is bright:

Our voices speak outright:

We revel in the sea’s green!

    Come play:

    It is forbidden!

Yes, there is one thing braver than all flowers;

    Richer than clear gems; wider than the sky;

Immortal and unchangeable; whose powers

    Transcend reason, love and sanity!

And thou, beloved, art that godly thing!

    Marvelous and terrible; in glance

An injured Juno roused against Heaven’s King!

    And thy name, lovely One, is Ignorance.

Take that, damn you; and that!

    And here’s a rose

  To make it right again!

    God knows

  I’m sorry, Grace; but then,

It’s not my fault if you will be a cat.

    Mother of flames,

    The men that went ahunting

Are asleep in the snow drifts.

    You have kept the fire burning!

Crooked fingers that pull

Fuel from among the wet leaves,

    Mother of flames

    You have kept the fire burning!

The young wives have fallen asleep

With wet hair, weeping,

    Mother of flames!

The young men raised the heavy spears

And are gone prowling in the darkness.

    O mother of flames,

    You who have kept the fire burning!

    Lo, I am helpless!

Would God they had taken me with them!

    So art thou broken in upon me, Apollo,

    Through a splendor of purple garments—

    Held by the yellow-haired Clymene

    To clothe the white of thy shoulders—

    Bare from the day’s leaping of horses.

This is strange to me, here in the modern twilight.

    O crimson salamander,

    Because of love’s whim

                      sacred!

Swim

    the winding flame

    Predestined to disman him

And bring our fellow home to us again.

    Swim in with watery fang,

    Gnaw out and drown

The fire roots that circle him

Until the Hell-flower dies down

    And he comes home again.

    Aye, bring him home,

    O crimson salamander,

That I may see he is unchanged with burning—

Then have your will with him,

    O crimson salamander.

You who are so mighty,

crimson salamander,

hear me once more.

I lay among the half-burned sticks

at the edge of the fire.

The fiend was creeping in.

I felt the cold tips of fingers—

O crimson salamander!

Give me one little flame,

one!

that I may bind it

protectingly about the wrist

of him that flung me here,

here upon the very center!

This is my song.

I am old.

You warm yourselves at these fires?

In the center of these flames

I sit, my teeth chatter!

Where shall I turn for comfort?

It is useless, good woman, useless: the spark fails me.

God! yet when the might of it all assails me

It seems impossible that I cannot do it.

Yet I cannot. They were right, and they all knew it

Years ago, but I—never! I have persisted

Blindly (they say) and now I am old. I have resisted

Everything, but now, now the strife’s ended.

The fire’s out; the old cloak has been mended

For the last time, the soul peers through its tatters.

Put a light by and leave me; nothing more matters

Now; I am done; I am at last well broken!

Yet, by God, I’ll still leave them a token

That they’ll swear it was no dead man writ it;

A morsel that they’ll mark well the day they bit it,

That there’ll be sand between their gross teeth to crunch yet

When goodman Gabriel blows his concluding trumpet.

Leave me!

          And now, little black eyes, come you out here!

Ah, you’ve given me a lively, lasting bout, year

After year to win you round me darlings!

Precious children, little gambollers! “farlings”

They might have called you once, “nearlings”

I call you now, I first of all the yearlings,

Upon this plain, for I it was that tore you

Out of chaos! It was I bore you!

Ah, you little children that go playing

Over the five-barred gate, and will still be straying

Spite of all that I have ever told you

Of counterpoint and cadence which does not hold you—

No more than chains will for this or that strange reason,

But you’re always at some new loving treason

To be away from me, laughing, mocking,

Witlessly, perhaps, but for all that forever knocking

At this stanchion door of your poor father’s heart till—oh, well

At least you’ve shown that you can grow well

However much you evade me faster, faster.

But, black eyes some day you’ll get a master,

For he will come! He shall, he must come!

And when he finishes and the burning dust from

His wheels settles—what shall men see then?

You, you, you, my own lovely children!

Aye, all of you, thus with hands together

Playing on the hill or there in a tether,

Or running free, but all mine! Aye, my very namesakes

Shall be his proper fame’s stakes.

And he shall lead you!

And he shall mead you!

And he shall build you gold palaces!

And he shall wine you from clear chalices!

For I have seen it! I have seen it

Written where the world-clouds screen it

From other eyes

Over the bronze gates of paradise!

Red cradle of the night,

    In you

    The dusky child

Sleeps fast till his might

    Shall be piled

Sinew on sinew.

Red cradle of the night,

    The dusky child

Sleeping sits upright.

    Lo! how

        The winds blow now!

    He pillows back;

The winds are again mild.

When he stretches his arms out,

Red cradle of the night,

    The alarms shout

From bare tree to tree,

    Wild

        In afright!

Mighty shall he be,

Red cradle of the night,

    The dusky child! !

    Still I bring flowers

Although you fling them at my feet

    Until none stays

That is not struck across with wounds:

    Flowers and flowers

That you may break them utterly

    As you have always done.

    Sure happily

I still bring flowers, flowers,

    Knowing how all

Are crumpled in your praise

    And may not live

To speak a lesser thing.

The corner of a great rain

Steamy with the country

Has fallen upon my garden.

I go back and forth now

And the little leaves follow me

Talking of the great rain,

Of branches broken,

And the farmer’s curses!

But I go back and forth

In this corner of a garden

And the green shoots follow me

Praising the great rain.

We are not curst together,

The leaves and I,

Framing devices, flower devices

And other ways of peopling

The barren country.

Truly it was a very great rain

That makes the little leaves follow me.

The coroner’s merry little children

    Have such twinkling brown eyes.

Their father is not of gay men

    And their mother jocular in no wise,

Yet the coroner’s merry little children

        Laugh so easily.

They laugh because they prosper.

    Fruit for them is upon all branches.

Lo! how they jibe at loss, for

    Kind heaven fills their little paunches!

It’s the coroner’s merry, merry children

        Who laugh so easily.

Miserly, is the best description of that poor fool

Who holds Lancelot to have been a morose fellow,

Dolefully brooding over the events which had naturally to follow

The high time of his deed with Guinevere.

He has a sick historical sight, if I judge rightly,

To believe any such thing as that ever occurred.

But, by the god of blood, what else is it that has deterred

Us all from an out and out defiance of fear

But this same perdamnable miserliness,

Which cries about our necks how we shall have less and less

Than we have now if we spend too wantonly?

Bah, this sort of slither is below contempt!

In the same vein we should have apple trees exempt

From bearing anything but pink blossoms all the year,

Fixed permanent lest their bellies wax unseemly, and the dear

Innocent days of them be wasted quite.

How can we have less? Have we not the deed?

Lancelot thought little, spent his gold and rode to fight

Mounted, if God was willing, on a good steed.

On the day when youth is no more upon me

I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top!

I will sing then the song, long in the making—

When the stress of youth is put away from me.

How can I ever be written out as men say?

Surely it is merely an interference with the long song—

This that I am now doing.

But when the spring of it is worn like the old moon

And the eaten leaves are lace upon the cold earth—

Then I will rise up in my great desire—

Long at the birth—and sing me the youth-song!

This quiet morning light

reflected, how many times

from grass and trees and clouds

enters my north room

touching the walls with

grass and clouds and trees.

Anthony,

trees and grass and clouds.

Why did you follow

that beloved body

with your ships at Actium?

I hope it was because

you knew her inch by inch

from slanting feet upward

to the roots of her hair

and down again and that

you saw her

above the battle’s fury—

clouds and trees and grass—

For then you are

listening in heaven.

First he said:

It is the woman in us

That makes us write—

Let us acknowledge it—

Men would be silent.

We are not men

Therefore we can speak

And be conscious

(of the two sides)

Unbent by the sensual

As befits accuracy.

I then said:

Dare you make this

Your propaganda?

And he answered:

Am I not I—here?

O—eh—lee! La—la!

    Donna! Donna!

Blue is the sky of Palermo;

Blue is the little bay;

And dost thou remember the orange and fig,

The lively sun and the sea-breeze at evening?

      Hey—la!

Donna! Donna! Maria!

O—eh—li! La—la!

    Donna! Donna!

Grey is the sky of this land.

Grey and green is the water.

I see no trees, dost thou? The wind

Is cold for the big woman there with the candle

      Hey—la!

Donna! Donna! Maria!

O—eh—li! O—la!

    Donna! Donna!

I sang thee by the blue waters;

I sing thee here in the grey dawning.

Kiss, for I put down my guitar;

I’ll sing thee more songs after the landing.

      O Jesu, I love thee!

Donna! Donna! Maria!

Oh I suppose I should

wash the walls of my office

polish the rust from

my instruments and keep them

definitely in order

build shelves in the laboratory

empty out the old stains

clean the bottles

and refill them, buy

another lens, put

my journals on edge instead of

letting them lie flat

in heaps—then begin

ten years back and

gradually

read them to date

cataloguing important

articles for ready reference.

I suppose I should

read the new books.

If to this I added

a bill at the tailor’s

and at the cleaner’s

grew a decent beard

and cultivated a look

of importance—

Who can tell? I might be

a credit to my Lady Happiness

and never think anything

but a white thought!

Here, no woman, nor man besides,

Nor child, nor dog, nor bird, nor wasp,

Nor ditch-pool, nor green thing. Color of flower,

Blood-bright berry none, nor flame-rust

On leaf, nor pink gall-sting on stem, nor

Staring stone, Ay de mi!

No hawthorn’s white thorn-tree here, nor lawn

Of buttercups, nor any counterpart:

Bed, book-backs, walls, floor,

Flat pictures, desk, clothes-box, litter

Of paper scrawls. So sit I here,

So stand, so walk about. Beside

The flower-white tree not so lonely I:

Torn petals, dew-wet, yellowed my bare ankles.

New books of poetry will be written

New books and unheard of manuscripts

will come wrapped in brown paper

and many and many a time

the postman will blow

and sidle down the leaf-plastered steps

thumbing over other men’s business

But we ran ahead of it all.

One coming after

could have seen her footprints

in the wet and followed us

among the stark chestnuts.

Anemones sprang where she pressed

and cresses

stood green in the slender source—

And new books of poetry

will be written, leather-colored oakleaves

many and many a time.

I awoke happy, the house

Was strange, voices

Were across a gap

Through which a girl

Came and paused,

Reaching out to me—

Then I remembered

What I had dreamed—

A girl

One whom I knew well

Leaned on the door of my car

And stroked my hand—

I shall pass her on the street

We shall say trivial things

To each other

But I shall never cease

To search her eyes

For that quiet look—

Your thighs are appletrees

whose blossoms touch the sky.

Which sky? The sky

where Watteau hung a lady’s

slipper. Your knees

are a southern breeze—or

a gust of snow. Agh! what

sort of man was Fragonard?

—as if that answered

anything. Ah, yes—below

the knees, since the tune

drops that way, it is

one of those white summer days,

the tall grass of your ankles

flickers upon the shore—

Which shore?—

the sand clings to my lips—

Which shore?

Agh, petals maybe. How

should I know?

Which shore? Which shore?

I said petals from an appletree.

Winter is long in this climate

and spring—a matter of a few days

only,—a flower or two picked

from mud or from among wet leaves

or at best against treacherous

bitterness of wind, and sky shining

teasingly, then closing in black

and sudden, with fierce jaws.

March,

    you remind me of

the pyramids, our pyramids—

stript of the polished stone

that used to guard them!

                          March,

you are like Fra Angelico

at Fiesole, painting on plaster!

March,

    you are like a band of

young poets that have not learned

the blessedness of warmth

(or have forgotten it).

At any rate—

I am moved to write poetry

for the warmth there is in it

and for the loneliness—

a poem that shall have you

    in it March.

See!

    Ashur-ban-i-pal,

the archer king, on horse-back,

in blue and yellow enamel!

with drawn bow—facing lions

standing on their hind legs,

fangs bared! his shafts

bristling in their necks!

Sacred bulls—dragons

in embossed brickwork

marching—in four tiers—

along the sacred way to

Nebuchadnessar’s throne hall!

They shine in the sun,

they that have been marching—

marching under the dust of

ten thousand dirt years.

Now—

they are coming into bloom again!

See them!

marching still, bared by

the storms from my calendar

—winds that blow back the sand!

winds that enfilade dirt!

winds that by strange craft

have whipt up a black army

that by pick and shovel

bare a procession to

                    the god, Marduk!

Natives cursing and digging

for pay unearth dragons with

upright tails and sacred bulls

alternately—

            in four tiers—

lining the way to an old altar!

Natives digging at old walls—

digging me warmth—digging me sweet loneliness

high enamelled walls.

My second spring—

passed in a monastery

with plaster walls—in Fiesole

on the hill above Florence.

My second spring—painted

a virgin—in a blue aureole

sitting on a three-legged stool,

arms crossed—

she is intently serious,

                        and still

watching an angel

with colored wings

half kneeling before her—

and smiling—the angel’s eyes

holding the eyes of Mary

as a snake’s hold a bird’s.

On the ground there are flowers,

trees are in leaf.

But! now for the battle!

Now for murder—now for the real thing!

My third springtime is approaching!

Winds!

lean, serious as a virgin,

seeking, seeking the flowers of March.

Seeking

flowers nowhere to be found,

they twine among the bare branches

in insatiable eagerness—

they whirl up the snow

seeking under it—

they—the winds—snakelike

roar among yellow reeds

seeking flowers—flowers.

I spring among them

seeking one flower

in which to warm myself!

I deride with all the ridicule

of misery—

my own starved misery.

Counter-cutting winds strike against me

refreshing their fury!

Come, good, cold fellows!

    Have we no flowers?

Defy then with even more

desperation than ever—being

    lean and frozen!

But though you are lean and frozen—

think of the blue bulls of Babylon.

Fling yourselves upon

    their empty roses—

        cut savagely!

But—

think of the painted monastery

    at Fiesole.

A wind might blow a lotus petal

over the pyramids—but not this wind.

Summer is a dried leaf.

Leaves stir this way then that

on the baked asphalt, the wheels

of motor cars rush over them,—

    gas smells mingle with leaf smells.

Oh, Sunday, day of worship! ! !

The steps to the Museum are high.

Worshippers pass in and out.

Nobody comes here today.

I come here to mingle faïence dug

from the tomb, turquoise-colored

necklaces and wind belched from the

stomach; deliberately veined basins

of agate, cracked and discolored and

the stink of stale urine!

Enter! Elbow in at the door.

Men? Women?

Simpering, clay fetish-faces counting

through the turnstile.

                        Ah!

This sarcophagus contained the body

of Uresh-Nai, priest to the goddess Mut,

Mother of All—

Run your finger against this edge!

—here went the chisel!—and think

of an arrogance endured six thousand years

Without a flaw!

But love is an oil to embalm the body.

Love is a packet of spices, a strong-

smelling liquid to be squirted into

the thigh. No?

Love rubbed on a bald head will make

hair—and after? Love is

a lice comber!

              Gnats on dung!

“The chisel is in your hand, the block

is before you, cut as I shall dictate:

This is the coffin of Uresh-Nai,

priest to the Sky Goddess,—built

to endure forever!

              Carve the inside

with the image of my death in

little lines of figures three fingers high.

Put a lid on it cut with Mut bending over

the earth, for my headpiece, and in the year

to be chosen I shall rouse, the lid

shall be lifted and I will walk about

the temple where they have rested me

and eat the air of the place:

Ah—these walls are high! This is in keeping.”

The priest has passed into his tomb.

The stone has taken up his spirit!

Granite over the flesh: who will deny its advantages?

Your death?—water

spilled upon the ground—

though water will mount again into rose-leaves—

but you?—Would hold life still,

even as a memory, when it is over,

Benevolence is rare.

Climb about this sarcophagus, read

what is writ for you in these figures

hard as the granite that has held them

with so soft a hand the while

your own flesh has been fifty times

through the guts of oxen,—read!

“I who am the one flesh say to you,

The rose-tree will have its donor

even though he give stingily.

The gift of some endures

ten years, the gift of some twenty

and the gift of some for the time a

great house rots and is torn down.

Some give for a thousand years to men of

one face, some for a thousand

to all men and some few to all men

while granite holds an edge against

the weather.

            Judge then of love!”

“My flesh is turned to stone. I

have endured my summer. The flurry

of falling petals is ended. Lay

the finger upon this granite. I was

well desired and fully caressed

by many lovers but my flesh

withered swiftly and my heart was

never satisfied. Lay your hands

upon the granite as a lover lays his

hand upon the thigh and upon the

round breasts of her who is beside

him, for now I will not wither,

now I have thrown off secrecy, now

I have walked naked into the street,

now I have scattered my heavy beauty

in the open market.

Here I am with head high and a

burning heart eagerly awaiting

your caresses, whoever it may be,

for granite is not harder than my

love is open, runs loose among you!

I arrogant against death! I

who have endured! I worn against

the years!”

But it is five o’clock. Come!

Life is good—enjoy it!

A walk in the park while the day lasts.

I will go with you. Look! this

northern scenery is not the Nile, but—

these benches—the yellow and purple dusk—

the moon there—these tired people—

the lights on the water!

Are not these Jews and—Ethiopians?

The world is young, surely! Young

and colored like—a girl that has come upon

a lover! Will that do?

the beginning—or

what you will:

              the dress

in which the veritable winter

walks in Spring—

Loose it!

Let it fall (where it will)

—again

A live thing

the buds are upon it

the green shoot come between

the red flowerets

                  curled back

Under whose green veil

strain trunk and limbs of

the supporting trees—

Yellow! the arched stick

pinning the fragile foil

—in abundance

              or

the bush before the rose

pointed with green

bent into form

upon the iron frame

    wild onion

    swifter than the grass

    the grass thick

    at the post’s base

    iris blades unsheathed—

    BUY THIS PROPERTY

—the complexion of the impossible

            (you’ll say)

            never realized—

At a desk in a hotel in front of a

            machine a year

later—for a day or two—

            (Quite so—)

Whereas the reality trembles

            frankly

in that though it was like this

            in part

it was deformed

even when at its utmost to

            touch—as it did

and fill and give and take

            —a kind

of rough drawing of flowers

            and April

         STOP : GO

        —she

opened the door! nearly

six feet tall, and I . . .

wanted to found a new country—

For the rest, virgin negress

at the glass

in blue-glass Venetian beads—

        a green truck

        dragging a concrete mixer

        passes

        in the street—

        the clatter and true sound

        of verse—

—the wind is howling

the river, shining mud—

Moral

    it looses me

Moral

    it supports me

Moral

    it has never ceased

    to flow

Moral

    the faded evergreen

Moral

    I can laugh

Moral

    the redhead sat

    in bed with her legs

    crossed and talked

    rough stuff

Moral

    the door is open

Moral

    the tree moving diversely

    in all parts—

—the moral is love, bred of

the mind and eyes and hands—

    But in the cross-current

    between what the hands reach

    and the mind desires

    and the eyes see

    and see starvation, it is

    useless to have it thought

    that we are full—

    But April is a thing

    comes just the same—

    and in it we see now

    what then we did not know—

         STOP : STOP

I believe

    in the sound patriotic and

    progressive Mulish policies

    and if elected—

I believe

    in a continuance of the pro-

    tective tariff because—

I believe

    that the country can’t do

    too much—

I believe

    in honest law enforcement—

    and I also believe—

I believe

    in giving the farmer and

    land owner adequate protection

I believe

I believe

I believe

    in equality for the negro—

      THIS IS MY PLATFORM

    I believe in your love

    the first dandelion

    flower at the edge of—

taraaaaaaa! taraaaaaaa!

—the fishman’s bugle announces

the warm wind—

    reminiscent of the sea

    the plumtree flaunts

    its blossom-encrusted

    branches—

I believe

    Moving to three doors

    above—May 1st.

I believe

    ICE—and warehouse site

No parking between tree and corner

You would “kill me with kindness”

I love you too, but I love you

too—

Thus, in that light and in that

light only can I say—

Winter : Spring

abandoned to you. The world lost—

in you

Is not that devastating enough

for one century?

I believe

    Spumoni $1.00

    French Vanilla .70

    Chocolate .70

    Strawberry .70

    Maple Walnut .70

    Coffee .70

    Tutti Frutti .70

    Pistachio .70

    Cherry Special .70

    Orange Ice .70

    Biscuit Tortoni

                   25c per portion

trees—seeming dead:

          the long years—

    tactus eruditus

    Maple, I see you have

    a squirrel in your crotch—

    And you have a woodpecker

    in your hole, Sycamore

—a fat blonde, in purple (no trucking

on this street)

I believe

The soul, my God, shall rise up

—a tree

    But who are You?

in this mortal wind

that I at least can understand

having sinned willingly

The forms

of the emotions are crystalline,

geometric-faceted. So we recognize

only in the white heat of

understanding, when a flame

runs through the gap made

by learning, the shapes of things—

the ovoid sun, the pointed trees

lashing branches

The wind is fierce, lashing

the long-limbed trees whose

branches

wildly toss—

Blessed moon

noon

of night

that through the dark

bids Love

stay—

curious shapes

awake

to plague me

Is day near

shining girl?

Yes, day!

the warm

the radiant

all fulfilling

day.

The trees—being trees

thrash and scream

guffaw and curse—

wholly abandoned

damning the race of men—

Christ, the bastards

haven’t even sense enough

to stay out of the rain—

Wha ha ha ha

Wheeeeee

Clacka tacka tacka

tacka tacka

wha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha

knocking knees, buds

bursting from each pore

even the trunk’s self

putting out leafheads—

Loose desire!

we naked cry to you—

“Do what you please.”

You cannot!

—ghosts

sapped of strength

wailing at the gate

heartbreak at the bridgehead—

desire

dead in the heart

haw haw haw haw

—and memory broken

wheeeeee

There were never satyrs

never maenads

never eagle-headed gods—

These were men

from whose hands sprung

love

bursting the wood—

Trees their companions

—a cold wind winterlong

in the hollows of our flesh

icy with pleasure—

no part of us untouched

The harried

earth is swept

                The trees

the tulip’s bright

      tips

              sidle and

toss—

      Loose your love

to flow

Blow!

Good Christ what is

a poet—if any

              exists?

a man

whose words will

      bite

              their way

home—being actual

having the form

                of motion

At each twigtip

new

upon the tortured

body of thought

      gripping

the ground

a way

      to the last leaftip

As love

      that is

each day upon the twig

      which may die

      So springs your love

fresh up

      lusty for the sun

the bird’s companion—

The house is yours

to wander in as you please—

Your breakfasts will be kept

ready for you until

you choose to arise!

This is the front room

where we stood penniless

by the hogshead of crockery.

This is the kitchen—

We have a new

hotwater heater and a new

gas-stove to please you

And the front stairs

have been freshly painted—

white risers

and the treads mahogany.

Come upstairs

to the bedroom—

Your bed awaits you—

the chiffonier waits—

the whole house

is waiting—for you

to walk in it at your pleasure—

It is yours.

Trundled from

the strangeness of the sea—

a kind of

heaven—

Ladies and Gentlemen!

the greatest

sea-monster ever exhibited

alive

the gigantic

sea-elephant! O wallow

of flesh were

are

there fish enough for

that

appetite stupidity

cannot lessen?

Sick

of April’s smallness

the little

leaves—

Flesh has lief of you

enormous sea—

Speak!

Blouaugh! (feed

me) my

flesh is riven—

fish after fish into his maw

unswallowing

to let them glide down

gulching back

half spittle half

brine

the

troubled eyes—torn

from the sea.

(In

a practical voice) They

ought

to put it back where

it came from.

Gape.

Strange head—

told by old sailors—

rising

bearded

to the surface—and

the only

sense out of them

is that woman’s

Yes

it’s wonderful but they

ought to

put it

back into the sea where

it came from.

Blouaugh!

Swing—ride

walk

on wires—toss balls

stoop and

contort yourselves—

But I

am love. I am

from the sea—

Blouaugh!

there is no crime save

the too-heavy

body

the sea

held playfully—comes

to the surface

the water

boiling

about the head the cows

scattering

fish dripping from

the bounty

of . . . . and spring

they say

Spring is icummen in—

As the rain falls

so does

        your love

bathe every

            open

object of the world—

In houses

the priceless dry

                  rooms

of illicit love

where we live

hear the wash of the

                    rain—

There

        paintings

and fine

        metalware

woven stuffs—

all the whorishness

of our

        delight

sees

from its window

the spring wash

of your love

            the falling

rain—

The trees

are become

beasts fresh-risen

from the sea—

water

trickles

from the crevices of

their hides—

So my life is spent

                    to keep out love

with which

she rains upon

              the world

of spring

          drips

so spreads

            the words

far apart to let in

                    her love

And running in between

the drops

        the rain

is a kind physician

                    the rain

of her thoughts over

the ocean

          every

where

      walking with

invisible swift feet

over

    the helpless

                  waves—

Unworldly love

that has no hope

                  of the world

                  and that

cannot change the world

to its delight—

        The rain

falls upon the earth

and grass and flowers

come

      perfectly

into form from its

                    liquid

clearness

          But love is

unworldly

          and nothing

comes of it but love

following

and falling endlessly

from

    her thoughts

He’s dead

the dog won’t have to

sleep on his potatoes

any more to keep them

from freezing

he’s dead

the old bastard—

He’s a bastard because

there’s nothing

legitimate in him any

more

      he’s dead

He’s sick-dead

              he’s

a godforsaken curio

without

any breath in it

He’s nothing at all

      he’s dead

shrunken up to skin

      Put his head on

one chair and his

feet on another and

he’ll lie there

like an acrobat—

Love’s beaten. He

beat it. That’s why

he’s insufferable—

      because

he’s here needing a

shave and making love

an inside howl

of anguish and defeat—

He’s come out of the man

and he’s let

the man go—

            the liar

Dead

      his eyes

rolled up out of

the light—a mockery

                    which

love cannot touch—

just bury it

and hide its face

for shame.

The alphabet of

the trees

is fading in the

song of the leaves

the crossing

bars of the thin

letters that spelled

winter

and the cold

have been illumined

with

pointed green

by the rain and sun—

The strict simple

principles of

straight branches

are being modified

by pinched-out

ifs of color, devout

conditions

the smiles of love—

. . . . . .

until the stript

sentences

move as a woman’s

limbs under cloth

and praise from secrecy

quick with desire

love’s ascendancy

in summer—

In summer the song

sings itself

above the muffled words—

Rather than permit him

to testify in court

Giving reasons

why he stole from

Exclusive stores

then sent post-cards

To the police

to come and arrest him

—if they could—

They railroaded him

to an asylum for

The criminally insane

without trial

The prophylactic to

madness

Having been denied him

he went close to

The edge out of

frustration and

Doggedness—

Inflexible, finally they

had to release him—

The institution was

“overcrowded”

They let him go

in the custody of

A relative on condition

that he remain

Out of the state—

They “cured” him all

right

But the set-up

he fought against

Remains—

and his youthful deed

Signalizing

the romantic period

Of a revolt

he served well

Is still good—

Let him be

a factory whistle

That keeps blaring—

Sense, sense, sense!

so long as there’s

A mind to remember

and a voice to

carry it on—

Never give up

keep at it!

Unavoided, terrifying

to such bought

Courts as he thought

to trust to but they

Double-crossed him.

When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s

edge, unseen, the salt ocean

lifts its form—chicory and daisies

tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone

but color and the movement—or the shape

perhaps—of restlessness, whereas

the sea is circled and sways

peacefully upon its plantlike stem

It is a broken country,

the rugged land is

green from end to end;

the autumn has not come.

Embanked above the orchard

the hillside is a wall

of motionless green trees,

the grass is green and red.

Five days the bare sky

has stood there day and night.

No bird, no sound.

Between the trees

stillness

and the early morning light.

The apple trees

are laden down with fruit.

Among blue leaves

the apples green and red

upon one tree stand out

most enshrined.

Still, ripe, heavy,

spherical and close,

they mark the hillside.

It is a formal grandeur,

a stateliness,

a signal of finality

and perfect ease.

Among the savage

aristocracy of rocks

one, risen as a tree,

has turned

from his repose.

Now the snow

lies on the ground

and more snow

is descending upon it—

Patches of red dirt

hold together

the old

snow patches

This is winter—

rosettes of

leather-green leaves

by the old fence

and bare trees

marking the sky—

This is winter

winter, winter

leather-green leaves

spearshaped

in the falling snow

I should have to be

Chaucer to describe

them—

          Loss keeps

me from such a

catalogue—

But!

          —low, the

violet, scentless as

it is here! higher,

the peartree in full

bloom through which

a light falls as

rain—

And that is gone—

Only, there remains—

Now!

          the cherry trees

white in all back

yards—

          And bare as

they are, the coral

peach trees melting

the harsh air—

          excellence

priceless beyond

all later

          fruit!

And now, driven, I

go, forced to

another day—

Whose yellow quilt

flapping in the

stupendous light—

Forsythia, quince

blossoms—

          and all

the living hybrids

The contours and the shine

hold the eye—caught and lying

orange-finned and the two

half its size, pout-mouthed

beside it on the white dish—

Silver scales, the weight

quick tails

whipping the streams aslant

The eye comes down eagerly

unravelled of the sea

separates this from that

and the fine fins’ sharp spines

Two W. P. A. men

stood in the new

sluiceway

overlooking

the river—

One was pissing

while the other

showed

by his red

jagged face the

immemorial tragedy

of lack-love

while an old

squint-eyed woman

in a black

dress

and clutching

a bunch of

late chrysanthemums

to her

fatted bosoms

turned her back

on them

at the corner

Among

of

green

stiff

old

bright

broken

branch

come

white

sweet

May

again

Among

the leaves

bright

green

of wrist-thick

tree

and old

stiff broken

branch

ferncool

swaying

loosely strung—

come May

again

white blossom

clusters

hide

to spill

their sweets

almost

unnoticed

down

and quickly

fall

This, with a face

like a mashed blood orange

that suddenly

would get eyes

and look up and scream

War! War!

clutching her

thick, ragged coat

A piece of hat

broken shoes

War! War!

stumbling for dread

at the young men

who with their gun-butts

shove her

sprawling—

a note

at the foot of the page

from a

highway below a face

of rock

too recently blasted

to be overgrown

with grass or fern:

Where a

waste of cinders

slopes down to

the railroad and

the lake

stand three children

beside the weed-grown

chassis

of a wrecked car

immobile in a line

facing the water

To the left a boy

in falling off

blue overalls

Next to him a girl

in a grimy frock

And another boy

They are intent

watching something

below—?

A section sign: 50

on an iron post

planted

by a narrow concrete

service hut

(to which runs

a sheaf of wires)

in the universal

cinders beaten

into crossing paths

to form the front yard

of a frame house

at the right

that looks

to have been flayed

Opposite

remains a sycamore

in leaf

Intently fixed

the three

with straight backs

ignore

the stalled traffic

all eyes

toward the water

and a small

    flock

of clay

    sheep—

a shepherd

    behind

them—The

    pig

is painted

    yellow

with green

    ears

There’s a

    slot

at the

    top—

Hair-pin

    wires

hold up the

    sheep

turning

    away—

The shepherd

    wears

a red

    blanket

on his left

    shoulder

munching a plum on

the street a paper bag

of them in her hand

They taste good to her

They taste good

to her. They taste

good to her

You can see it by

the way she gives herself

to the one half

sucked out in her hand

Comforted

a solace of ripe plums

seeming to fill the air

They taste good to her

He has on

an old light grey fedora

She a black beret

He a dirty sweater

She an old blue coat

that fits her tight

Grey flapping pants

Red skirt and

broken down black pumps

Fat Lost Ambling

nowhere through

the upper town they kick

their way through

heaps of

fallen maple leaves

still green—and

crisp as dollar bills

Nothing to do. Hot cha!

A big young bareheaded woman

in an apron

Her hair slicked back standing

on the street

One stockinged foot toeing

the sidewalk

Her shoe in her hand. Looking

intently into it

She pulls out the paper insole

to find the nail

That has been hurting her

Again

the bare brush of

the half-broken

and already-written-of

tree alone

on its battered

hummock—

Above

among the shufflings

of the distant

cloud-rifts

vaporously

the unmoving

blue

was very kind. When she regained

her wits, he said, It’s all right, kid,

I took care of you.

What a mess she was in. Then he added,

You’ll never forget me now.

And drove her home.

Only a man who is sick, she said

would do a thing like that.

It must be so.

No one who is not diseased could be

so insanely cruel. He wants to give it

to someone else—

to justify himself. But if I get a

venereal infection out of this

I won’t be treated.

I refuse. You’ll find me dead in bed

first. Why not? That’s

the way she spoke,

I wish I could shoot him. How would

you like to know a murderer?

I may do it.

I’ll know by the end of this week.

I wouldn’t scream. I bit him

several times

but he was too strong for me.

I can’t yet understand it. I don’t

faint so easily.

When I came to myself and realized

what had happened all I could do

was to curse

and call him every vile name I could

think of. I was so glad

to be taken home.

I suppose it’s my mind—the fear of

infection. I’d rather a million times

have been got pregnant.

But it’s the foulness of it can’t

be cured. And hatred, hatred of all men

—and disgust.

January!

The beginning of all things!

Sprung from the old burning nest

upward in the flame!

I was married at thirteen

My parents had nine kids

and we were on the street

That’s why the old bugger—

He was twenty-six

and I hadn’t even had

my changes yet. Now look at me!

contend in a sea which the land partly encloses

shielding them from the too-heavy blows

of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows

to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute

brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails

they glide to the wind tossing green water

from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls

ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,

making fast as they turn, lean far over and having

caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.

In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by

lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering

and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare

as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace

of all that in the mind is fleckless, free and

naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them

is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling

for some slightest flaw but fails completely.

Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts

move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they

are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too

well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.

Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows.

Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.

It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair

until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind,

the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies

lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,

beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up

they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising

in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.

Through what extremes of passion

had you come, Sappho, to the peace

of deathless song?

As from an illness, as after drought

the streams released to flow

filling the fields with freshness

the birds drinking from every twig

and beasts from every hollow—

bellowing, singing of the unrestraint

to colors of a waking world.

                            So

after love a music streams above it.

For what is love? But music is

Villon beaten and cast off

Shakespeare from wisdom’s grotto

looking doubtful at the world

Alighieri beginning all again

Goethe whom a rose ensnared

Li Po the drunkard, singers whom

love has overthrown—

To this company the birds themselves

and the sleek beasts belong and all

who will besides—when love is ended

to the waking of sweetest song.

Small barking sounds

Clatter of metal in a pan

A high fretting voice

and a low voice musical

as a string twanged—

The tempo is evenly drawn

give and take

A splash of water, the

ting a ring

of small pieces of metal

dropped, the clap of a door

A tune nameless as Time—

Then the voices—

Sound of feet barely moving

Slowly

And the bark, “What?”

“The same, the same, the—”

scrape of a chair

clickaty tee—

“Over Labor Day they’ll

be gone”

“Jersey City, he’s the

engineer—” “Ya”

“Being on the Erie R. R.

is quite convenient”

“No, I think they’re—”

“I think she is. I think—”

“German-American”

“Of course the Govern—”

      · · · · · · ·

A distant door slammed.

Amen.

Tho’ I’m no Catholic

I listen hard when the bells

in the yellow-brick tower

of their new church

ring down the leaves

ring in the frost upon them

and the death of the flowers

ring out the grackle

toward the south, the sky

darkened by them, ring in

the new baby of Mr. and Mrs.

Krantz which cannot

for the fat of its cheeks

open well its eyes, ring out

the parrot under its hood

jealous of the child

ring in Sunday morning

and old age which adds as it

takes away. Let them ring

only ring! over the oil

painting of a young priest

on the church wall advertising

last week’s Novena to St.

Anthony, ring for the lame

young man in black with

gaunt cheeks and wearing a

Derby hat, who is hurrying

to 11 o’clock Mass (the

grapes still hanging to

the vine along the nearby

Concordia Halle like broken

teeth in the head of an

old man) Let them ring

for the eyes and ring for

the hands and ring for

the children of my friend

who no longer hears

them ring but with a smile

and in a low voice speaks

of the decisions of her

daughter and the proposals

and betrayals of her

husband’s friends. O bells

ring for the ringing!

the beginning and the end

of the ringing! Ring ring

ring ring ring ring ring!

Catholic bells—!

Sweep the house

  under the feet of the curious

  holiday seekers—

sweep under the table and the bed

  the baby is dead—

The mother’s eyes where she sits

  by the window, unconsoled—

have purple bags under them

  the father—

tall, wellspoken, pitiful

  is the abler of these two—

Sweep the house clean

  here is one who has gone up

  (though problematically)

to heaven, blindly

  by force of the facts—

a clean sweep

  is one way of expressing it—

Hurry up! any minute

  they will be bringing it

  from the hospital—

a white model of our lives

  a curiosity—

surrounded by fresh flowers

The revolution

is accomplished

noble has been

changed to no bull

After that

has sickered down

slumming will

be done on Park Ave.

Or as chief

One Horn said to

the constipated

prospector:

You big fool!

and with his knife

gashed a balsam

standing nearby

Gathering the

gum that oozed out

in a tin spoon

it did the trick

You can do lots

if you know

what’s around you

No bull

Where shall I find you,

you my grotesque fellows

that I seek everywhere

to make up my band?

None, not one

with the earthy tastes I require;

the burrowing pride that rises

subtly as on a bush in May.

Where are you this day,

you my seven year locusts

with cased wings?

Ah my beauties how I long—!

That harvest

that shall be your advent—

thrusting up through the grass,

up under the weeds

answering me,

that will be satisfying!

The light shall leap and snap

that day as with a million lashes!

Oh, I have you; yes

you are about me in a sense:

playing under the blue pools

that are my windows,—

but they shut you out still,

there in the half light.

For the simple truth is

that though I see you clear enough

you are not there!

It is not that—it is you,

you I want!

—God, if I could fathom

the guts of shadows!

You to come with me

poking into negro houses

with their gloom and smell!

in among children

leaping around a dead dog!

Mimicking

onto the lawns of the rich!

You!

to go with me a-tip-toe,

head down under heaven,

nostrils lipping the wind!

Having died

one is at great advantage

over his fellows—

one can pretend.

And so,

the smell of earth

being upon you too—

I pretend

there is something

temptingly foreign

some subtle difference,

one last amour

to be divided for

our death-necklaces, when

I would merely lie

hand in hand in the dirt with you.

Soft as the bed in the earth

where a stone has lain—

so soft, so smooth and so cool

Spring closes me in

with her arms and her hands.

Rich as the smell

of new earth on a stone

that has lain breathing

the damp through its pores—

Spring closes me in

with her blossomy hair

brings dark to my eyes.

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk back streets

admiring the houses

of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel-staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate,

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.

            No one

will believe this

of vast import to the nation.

Lift your flowers

on bitter stems

chicory!

Lift them up

out of the scorched ground!

Bear no foliage

but give yourself

wholly to that!

Strain under them

you bitter stems

that no beast eats—

and scorn greyness!

Into the heat with them:

cool!

luxuriant! sky-blue!

The earth cracks and

is shriveled up;

the wind moans piteously;

the sky goes out

if you should fail.

I saw a child with daisies

for weaving into the hair

tear the stems

with her teeth!

There is a bird in the poplars!

It is the sun!

The leaves are little yellow fish

swimming in the river.

The bird skims above them,

day is on his wings.

Phoebus!

It is he that is making

the great gleam among the poplars!

It is his singing

outshines the noise

of leaves clashing in the wind.

The little sparrows

hop ingenuously

about the pavement

quarreling

with sharp voices

over those things

that interest them.

But we who are wiser

shut ourselves in

on either hand

and no one knows

whether we think good

or evil.

          Meanwhile,

the old man who goes about

gathering dog-lime

walks in the gutter

without looking up

and his tread

is more majestic than

that of the Episcopal minister

approaching the pulpit

of a Sunday.

          These things

astonish me beyond words.

Daisies are broken

petals are news of the day

stems lift to the grass tops

they catch on shoes

part in the middle

leave root and leaves secure.

Black branches

carry square leaves

to the wood’s top.

They hold firm

break with a roar

show the white!

Your moods are slow

the shedding of leaves

and sure

the return in May!

We walked

in your father’s grove

and saw the great oaks

lying with roots

ripped from the ground.

My townspeople, beyond in the great world,

are many with whom it were far more

profitable for me to live than here with you.

These whirr about me calling, calling!

and for my own part I answer them, loud as I can,

but they, being free, pass!

I remain! Therefore, listen!

For you will not soon have another singer.

First I say this: You have seen

the strange birds, have you not, that sometimes

rest upon our river in winter?

Let them cause you to think well then of the storms

that drive many to shelter. These things

do not happen without reason.

And the next thing I say is this:

I saw an eagle once circling against the clouds

over one of our principal churches—

Easter, it was—a beautiful day!

three gulls came from above the river

and crossed slowly seaward!

Oh, I know you have your own hymns, I have heard them—

and because I knew they invoked some great protector

I could not be angry with you, no matter

how much they outraged true music—

You see, it is not necessary for us to leap at each other,

and, as I told you, in the end

the gulls moved seaward very quietly.

Then I raised my head

and stared out over

the blue February waste

to the blue bank of hill

with stars on it

in strings and festoons—

but above that:

one opaque

stone of a cloud

just on the hill

left and right

as far as I could see;

and above that

a red streak, then

icy blue sky!

It was a fearful thing

to come into a man’s heart

at that time; that stone

over the little blinking stars

they’d set there.

Surely there, among the great docks, is peace, my mind;

there with the ships moored in the river.

Go out, timid child,

and snuggle in among the great ships talking so quietly.

Maybe you will even fall asleep near them and be

lifted into one of their laps, and in the morning—

There is always the morning in which to remember it all!

Of what are they gossiping? God knows.

And God knows it matters little for we cannot understand them.

Yet it is certainly of the sea, of that there can be no question.

It is a quiet sound. Rest! That’s all I care for now.

The smell of them will put us to sleep presently.

Smell! It is the sea water mingling here into the river—

at least so it seems—perhaps it is something else—but what matter?

The sea water! It is quiet and smooth here!

How slowly they move, little by little trying

the hawsers that drop and groan with their agony.

Yes, it is certainly of the high sea they are talking.

I will teach you my townspeople

how to perform a funeral

for you have it over a troop

of artists—

unless one should scour the world—

you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.

I begin with a design for a hearse.

For Christ’s sake not black—

nor white either—and not polished!

Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—

with gilt wheels (this could be

applied fresh at small expense)

or no wheels at all:

a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!

My God—glass, my townspeople!

For what purpose? Is it for the dead

to look out or for us to see

how well he is housed or to see

the flowers or the lack of them—

or what?

To keep the rain and snow from him?

He will have a heavier rain soon:

pebbles and dirt and what not.

Let there be no glass—

and no upholstery, phew!

and no little brass rollers

and small easy wheels on the bottom—

my townspeople what are you thinking of?

A rough plain hearse then

with gilt wheels and no top at all.

On this the coffin lies

by its own weight.

                      No wreaths please—

especially no hot house flowers.

Some common memento is better,

something he prized and is known by:

his old clothes—a few books perhaps—

God knows what! You realize

how we are about these things

my townspeople—

something will be found—anything

even flowers if he had come to that.

So much for the hearse.

For heaven’s sake though see to the driver!

Take off the silk hat! In fact

that’s no place at all for him—

up there unceremoniously

dragging our friend out to his own dignity!

Bring him down—bring him down!

Low and inconspicuous! I’d not have him ride

on the wagon at all—damn him—

the undertaker’s understrapper!

Let him hold the reins

and walk at the side

and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:

Walk behind—as they do in France,

seventh class, or if you ride

Hell take curtains! Go with some show

of inconvenience; sit openly—

to the weather as to grief.

Or do you think you can shut grief in?

What—from us? We who have perhaps

nothing to lose? Share with us

share with us—it will be money

in your pockets.

                      Go now

I think you are ready.

Why do I write today?

The beauty of

the terrible faces

of our nonentities

stirs me to it:

colored women

day workers—

old and experienced—

returning home at dusk

in cast off clothing

faces like

old Florentine oak.

Also

the set pieces

of your faces stir me—

leading citizens—

but not

in the same way.

Well, mind, here we have

our little son beside us:

a little diversion before breakfast!

Come, we’ll walk down the road

till the bacon will be frying.

We might better be idle?

A poem might come of it?

Oh, be useful. Save annoyance

to Flossie and besides—the wind!

It’s cold. It blows our

old pants out! It makes us shiver!

See the heavy trees

shifting their weight before it.

Let us be trees, an old house,

a hill with grass on it!

The baby’s arms are blue.

Come, move! Be quieted!

So. We’ll sit here now

and throw pebbles into

this water-trickle.

              Splash the water up!

(Splash it up, Sonny!) Laugh!

Hit it there deep under the grass.

See it splash! Ah, mind,

see it splash! It is alive!

Throw pieces of broken leaves

into it. They’ll pass through.

No! Yes—Just!

Away now for the cows! But—

It’s cold!

It’s getting dark.

It’s going to rain.

No further!

Oh, then a wreath! Let’s

refresh something they

used to write well of.

Two fern plumes. Strip them

to the mid-rib along one side.

Bind the tips with a grass stem.

Bend and interwist the stalks

at the back. So!

Ah! now we are crowned!

Now we are a poet!

Quickly!

A bunch of little flowers

for Flossie—the little ones

only:

                    a red clover, one

blue heal-all, a sprig of

bone-set, one primrose,

a head of Indian tobacco, this

magenta speck and this

little lavender!

          Home now, my mind!—

Sonny’s arms are icy, I tell you—

and have breakfast!

You sullen pig of a man

you force me into the mud

with your stinking ash-cart!

Brother!

        —if we were rich

we’d stick our chests out

and hold our heads high!

It is dreams that have destroyed us.

There is no more pride

in horses or in rein holding.

We sit hunched together brooding

our fate.

          Well—

all things turn bitter in the end

whether you choose the right or

the left way

            and—

dreams are not a bad thing.

Wanderer moon

smiling a

faintly ironical smile

at this

brilliant, dew-moistened

summer morning,—

a detached

sleepily indifferent

smile, a

wanderer’s smile,—

if I should

buy a shirt

your color and

put on a necktie

sky-blue

where would they carry me?

At ten A.M. the young housewife

moves about in negligee behind

the wooden walls of her husband’s house.

I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb

to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands

shy, uncorseted, tucking in

stray ends of hair, and I compare her

to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car

rush with a crackling sound over

dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

Sweep the house clean,

hang fresh curtains

in the windows

put on a new dress

and come with me!

The elm is scattering

its little loaves

of sweet smells

from a white sky!

Who shall hear of us

in the time to come?

Let him say there was

a burst of fragrance

from black branches.

Ecstatic bird songs pound

the hollow vastness of the sky

with metallic clinkings—

beating color up into it

at a far edge,—beating it, beating it

with rising, triumphant ardor,—

stirring it into warmth,

quickening in it a spreading change,—

bursting wildly against it as

dividing the horizon, a heavy sun

lifts himself—is lifted—

bit by bit above the edge

of things,—runs free at last

out into the open—! lumbering

glorified in full release upward—

                          songs cease.

Fool,

put your adventures

into those things

which break ships—

not female flesh.

Let there pass

over the mind

the waters of

four oceans, the airs

of four skies!

Return hollow-bellied

keen-eyed, hard!

A simple scar or two.

Little girls will come

bringing you

roses for your button-hole.

My whisky is

a tough way of life:

The wild cherry

continually pressing back

peach orchards.

I am a penniless

rumsoak.

Where shall I have that solidity

which trees find

in the ground?

My stuff

is the feel of good legs

and a broad pelvis

under the gold hair ornaments

of skyscrapers.

It’s a strange courage

you give me ancient star:

Shine alone in the sunrise

toward which you lend no part!

Limb to limb, mouth to mouth

with the bleached grass

silver mist lies upon the back yards

among the outhouses.

                    The dwarf trees

pirouette awkwardly to it—

whirling round on one toe;

the big tree smiles and glances

                            upward!

Tense with suppressed excitement

the fences watch where the ground

has humped an aching shoulder for

                        the ecstasy.

I know only the bare rocks of today.

In these lies my brown sea-weed,—

green quartz veins bent through the wet shale;

in these lie my pools left by the tide—

quiet, forgetting waves;

on these stiffen white star fish

on these I slip barefooted!

Whispers of the fishy air touch my body;

“Sisters,” I say to them.

Crooked, black tree

on your little grey-black hillock,

ridiculously raised one step toward

the infinite summits of the night:

even you the few grey stars

draw upward into a vague melody

of harsh threads.

Bent as you are from straining

against the bitter horizontals of

a north wind,—there below you

how easily the long yellow notes

of poplars flow upward in a descending

scale, each note secure in its own

posture—singularly woven.

All voices are blent willingly

against the heaving contra-bass

of the dark but you alone

warp yourself passionately to one side

in your eagerness.

The old black-man showed me

how he had been shocked

in his youth

by six women, dancing

a set-dance, stark naked below

the skirts raised round

their breasts:

            bellies flung forward

knees flying!

                          —while

his gestures, against the

tiled wall of the dingy bath-room,

swished with ecstasy to

the familiar music of

                his old emotion.

Winter has spent this snow

out of envy, but spring is here!

He sits at the breakfast table

in his yellow hair

and disdains even the sun

walking outside

in spangled slippers:

He looks out: there is

a glare of lights

before a theater,—

a sparkling lady

passes quickly to

the seclusion of

her carriage.

                      Presently

under the dirty, wavy heaven

of a borrowed room he will make

reinhaled tobacco smoke

his clouds and try them

against the sky’s limits!

In brilliant gas light

I turn the kitchen spigot

and watch the water plash

into the clean white sink.

On the grooved drain-board

to one side is

a glass filled with parsley—

crisped green.

                      Waiting

for the water to freshen—

I glance at the spotless floor—:

a pair of rubber sandals

lie side by side

under the wall-table

all is in order for the night.

Waiting, with a glass in my hand

—three girls in crimson satin

pass close before me on

the murmurous background of

the crowded opera—

                      it is

memory playing the clown—

three vague, meaningless girls

full of smells and

the rustling sounds of

cloth rubbing on cloth and

little slippers on carpet—

high-school French

spoken in a loud voice!

Parsley in a glass,

still and shining,

brings me back. I take a drink

and yawn deliciously.

I am ready for bed.

Witness, would you—

one more young man

in the evening of his love

hurrying to confession:

steps down a gutter

crosses a street

goes in at a doorway

opens for you—

like some great flower—

a room filled with lamplight;

or whirls himself

obediently to

the curl of a hill

some wind-dancing afternoon;

lies for you in

the futile darkness of

a wall, sets stars dancing

to the crack of a leaf—

and—leaning his head away—

snuffs (secretly)

the bitter powder from

his thumb’s hollow,

takes your blessing and

goes home to bed?

Witness instead

whether you like it or not

a dark vinegar-smelling place

from which trickles

the chuckle of

beginning laughter.

It strikes midnight.

If when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,—

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely.

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!”

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks

against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

Oh, black Persian cat!

Was not your life

already cursed with offsprings?

We took you for the rest to that old

Yankee farm,—so lonely

and with so many field mice

in the long grass—

and you return to us

in this condition—!

Oh, black Persian cat.

There’s my things

drying in the corner:

that blue skirt

joined to the grey shirt—

I’m sick of trouble!

Lift the covers

if you want me

and you’ll see

the rest of my clothes—

though it would be cold

lying with nothing on!

I won’t work

and I’ve got no cash.

What are you going to do

about it?

—and no jewelry

(the crazy fools)

But I’ve my two eyes

and a smooth face

and here’s this! look!

it’s high!

There’s brains and blood

in there—

my name’s Robitza!

Corsets

can go to the devil—

and drawers along with them—

What do I care!

My two boys?

—they’re keen!

Let the rich lady

care for them—

they’ll beat the school

or

let them go to the gutter—

that ends trouble.

This house is empty

isn’t it?

Then it’s mine

because I need it.

Oh, I won’t starve

while there’s the bible

to make them feed me.

Try to help me

if you want trouble

or leave me alone—

that ends trouble.

The country physician

is a damned fool

and you

can go to hell!

You could have closed the door

when you came in;

do it when you go out.

I’m tired.

Now? Why—

whirlpools of

orange and purple flame

feather twists of chrome

on a green ground

funneling down upon

the steaming phallus-head

of the mad sun himself—

blackened crimson!

                        Now?

Why—

it is the smile of her

the smell of her

the vulgar inviting mouth of her

It is—Oh, nothing new

nothing that lasts

an eternity, nothing worth

putting out to interest,

nothing—

but the fixing of an eye

concretely upon emptiness!

Come! here are—

cross-eyed men, a boy

with a patch, men walking

in their shirts, men in hats

dark men, a pale man

with little black moustaches

and a dirty white coat,

fat men with pudgy faces,

thin faces, crooked faces

slit eyes, grey eyes, black eyes

old men with dirty beards,

men in vests with

gold watch chains. Come!

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed

nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?

What tactless asses we are, you and I boney nose

always indiscriminate, always unashamed,

and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled

poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth

beneath them. With what deep thirst

we quicken our desires

to that rank odor of a passing springtime!

Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors

for something less unlovely? What girl will care

for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?

Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?

Must you have a part in everything?

Sweet child,

little girl with well-shaped legs

you cannot touch the thoughts

I put over and under and around you.

This is fortunate for they would

burn you to an ash otherwise.

Your petals would be quite curled up.

This is all beyond you—no doubt,

yet you do feel the brushings

of the fine needles;

the tentative lines of your whole body

prove it to me;

so does your fear of me,

your shyness;

likewise the toy baby cart

that you are pushing—

and besides, mother has begun

to dress your hair in a knot.

These are my excuses.

The murderer’s little daughter

who is barely ten years old

jerks her shoulders

right and left

so as to catch a glimpse of me

without turning round.

Her skinny little arms

wrap themselves

this way then that

reversely about her body!

Nervously

she crushes her straw hat

about her eyes

and tilts her head

to deepen the shadow—

smiling excitedly!

As best she can

she hides herself

in the full sunlight

her cordy legs writhing

beneath the little flowered dress

that leaves them bare

from mid-thigh to ankle—

Why has she chosen me

for the knife

that darts along her smile?

Love is like water or the air

my townspeople;

it cleanses, and dissipates evil gases.

It is like poetry too

and for the same reasons.

Love is so precious

my townspeople

that if I were you I would

have it under lock and key—

like the air or the Atlantic or

like poetry!

You exquisite chunk of mud

Kathleen—just like

any other chunk of mud!

—especially April!

Curl up round their shoes

when they try to step on you,

spoil the polish!

I shall laugh till I am sick

at their amazement.

Do they expect the ground to be

always solid?

Give them the slip then;

let them sit in you;

soil their pants;

teach them a dignity

that is dignity, the dignity

of mud!

                    Lie basking in

the sun then—fast asleep!

Even become dust on occasion.

Old men who have studied

every leg show

in the city

Old men cut from touch

by the perfumed music—

polished or fleeced skulls

that stand before

the whole theater

in silent attitudes

of attention,—

old men who have taken precedence

over young men

and even over dark-faced

husbands whose minds

are a street with arc-lights.

Solitary old men for whom

we find no excuses—

I bow my head in shame

for those who malign you.

Old men

the peaceful beer of impotence

be yours!

In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds

crowded erect with desire against the sky

      tense blue-grey twigs

slenderly anchoring them down, drawing

them in—

      two blue-grey birds chasing

a third struggle in circles, angles,

swift convergings to a point that bursts

instantly!

      Vibrant bowing limbs

pull downward, sucking in the sky

that bulges from behind, plastering itself

against them in packed rifts, rock blue

and dirty orange!

                                  But—

(Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)

the blinding and red-edged sun-blur—

creeping energy, concentrated

counterforce—welds sky, buds, trees,

rivets them in one puckering hold!

Sticks through! Pulls the whole

counter-pulling mass upward, to the right

locks even the opaque, not yet defined

ground in a terrific drag that is

loosening the very tap-roots!

On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds

two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,

at full cry! Now they are

flung outward and up—disappearing suddenly!

Will it never be possible

to separate you from your greyness?

Must you be always sinking backwards

into your grey-brown landscapes—and trees

always in the distance, always against

a grey sky?

        Must I be always

moving counter to you? Is there no place

where we can be at peace together

and the motion of our drawing apart

be altogether taken up?

        I see myself

standing upon your shoulders touching

a grey, broken sky—

but you, weighted down with me,

yet gripping my ankles,—move

        laboriously on,

where it is level and undisturbed by colors.

If I say I have heard voices

who will believe me?

  “None has dipped his hand

  in the black waters of the sky

  nor picked the yellow lilies

  that sway on their clear stems

  and no tree has waited

  long enough nor still enough

  to touch fingers with the moon.”

I looked and there were little frogs

with puffed-out throats,

singing in the slime.

I have discovered that most of

the beauties of travel are due to

the strange hours we keep to see them:

the domes of the Church of

the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken

against a smoky dawn—the heart stirred—

are beautiful as Saint Peters

approached after years of anticipation.

Though the operation was postponed

I saw the tall probationers

in their tan uniforms

                      hurrying to breakfast!

—and from basement entries

neatly coiffed, middle aged gentlemen

with orderly moustaches and

well-brushed coats

—and the sun, dipping into the avenues

streaking the tops of

the irregular red houselets,

                                and

the gay shadows dropping and dropping.

—and a young horse with a green bed-quilt

on his withers shaking his head:

bared teeth and nozzle high in the air!

—and a semicircle of dirt-colored men

about a fire bursting from an old

ash can,

                —and the worn,

blue car rails (like the sky!)

gleaming among the cobbles!

—and the rickety ferry-boat “Arden”!

What an object to be called “Arden”

among the great piers,—on the

ever new river!

              “Put me a Touchstone

at the wheel, white gulls, and we’ll

follow the ghost of the Half Moon

to the North West Passage—and through!

(at Albany!) for all that!”

Exquisite brown waves—long

circlets of silver moving over you!

enough with crumbling ice crusts among you!

The sky has come down to you,

lighter than tiny bubbles, face to

face with you!

              His spirit is

a white gull with delicate pink feet

and a snowy breast for you to

hold to your lips delicately!

The young doctor is dancing with happiness

in the sparkling wind, alone

at the prow of the ferry! He notices

the curdy barnacles and broken ice crusts

left at the slip’s base by the low tide

and thinks of summer and green

shell-crusted ledges among

                    the emerald eel-grass!

Who knows the Palisades as I do

knows the river breaks east from them

above the city—but they continue south

—under the sky—to bear a crest of

little peering houses that brighten

with dawn behind the moody

water-loving giants of Manhattan.

Long yellow rushes bending

above the white snow patches;

purple and gold ribbon

of the distant wood:

              what an angle

you make with each other as

you lie there in contemplation.

Work hard all your young days

and they’ll find you too, some morning

staring up under

your chiffonier at its warped

bass-wood bottom and your soul—

out!

—among the little sparrows

behind the shutter.

—and the flapping flags are at

half mast for the dead admiral.

All this—

          was for you, old woman.

I wanted to write a poem

that you would understand.

For what good is it to me

if you can’t understand it?

                But you got to try hard—

But—

    Well, you know how

the young girls run giggling

on Park Avenue after dark

when they ought to be home in bed?

Well,

that’s the way it is with me somehow.

Rather notice, mon cher,

that the moon is

tilted above

the point of the steeple

than that its color

is shell-pink.

Rather observe

that it is early morning

than that the sky

is smooth

as a turquoise.

Rather grasp

how the dark

converging lines

of the steeple

meet at the pinnacle—

perceive how

its little ornament

tries to stop them—

See how it fails!

See how the converging lines

of the hexagonal spire

escape upward—

receding, dividing!

—sepals

that guard and contain

the flower!

Observe

how motionless

the eaten moon

lies in the protecting lines.

It is true:

in the light colors

of morning

brown-stone and slate

shine orange and dark blue.

But observe

the oppressive weight

of the squat edifice!

Observe

the jasmine lightness

of the moon.

Are you not weary,

great gold cross

shining in the wind—

are you not weary

of seeing the stars

turning over you

and the sun

going to his rest

and you frozen with

a great lie

that leaves you

rigid as a knight

on a marble coffin?

—and you?

higher, still,

              robin,

untwisting a song

from the bare

top-twigs,

are you not

weary of labor,

even the labor of

a song?

Come down—join me

for I am lonely.

First it will be

a quiet pace

to ease our stiffness

but as the west yellows

you will be ready!

Here in the middle

of the roadway

we will fling

ourselves round

with dust lilies

till we are bound in

their twining stems!

We will tear

their flowers

with arms flashing!

And when

the astonished stars

push aside

their curtains

they will see us

fall exhausted where

wheels and

the pounding feet

of horses

will crush forth

our laughter.

This plot of ground

facing the waters of this inlet

is dedicated to the living presence of

Emily Dickinson Wellcome

who was born in England, married,

lost her husband and with

her five year old son

sailed for New York in a two-master,

was driven to the Azores;

ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,

met her second husband

in a Brooklyn boarding house,

went with him to Puerto Rico

bore three more children, lost

her second husband, lived hard

for eight years in St. Thomas,

Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed

the oldest son to New York,

lost her daughter, lost her “baby”,

seized the two boys of

the oldest son by the second marriage

mothered them—they being

motherless—fought for them

against the other grandmother

and the aunts, brought them here

summer after summer, defended

herself here against thieves,

storms, sun, fire,

against flies, against girls

that came smelling about, against

drought, against weeds, storm-tides,

neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,

against the weakness of her own hands,

against the growing strength of

the boys, against wind, against

the stones, against trespassers,

against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,

domineered over this grass plot,

blackguarded her oldest son

into buying it, lived here fifteen years,

attained a final loneliness and—

If you can bring nothing to this place

but your carcass, keep out.

Hard, chilly colors:

straw-grey, frost-grey

the grey of frozen ground:

and you, O Sun,

close above the horizon!

It is I holds you—

half against the sky

half against a black tree trunk

icily resplendent!

Lie there, blue city, mine at last—

rimming the banked blue-grey

and rise, indescribable smoky-yellow

into the overpowering white!

What have I to say to you

When we shall meet?

Yet—

I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love

Is upon the world.

Yellow, yellow, yellow,

It eats into the leaves,

Smears with saffron

The horned branches that lean

Heavily

Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—

Only a honey-thick stain

That drips from leaf to leaf

And limb to limb

Spoiling the colors

Of the whole world.

I am alone.

The weight of love

Has buoyed me up

Till my head

Knocks against the sky.

See me!

My hair is dripping with nectar—

Starlings carry it

On their black wings.

See at last

My arms and my hands

Are lying idle.

How can I tell

If I shall ever love you again

As I do now?

I lie here thinking of you:—

the stain of love

is upon the world!

Yellow, yellow, yellow

it eats into the leaves,

smears with saffron

the horned branches that lean

heavily

against a smooth purple sky!

There is no light

only a honey-thick stain

that drips from leaf to leaf

and limb to limb

spoiling the colors

of the whole world—

you far off there under

the wine-red selvage of the west!

It is the whales that drive

the small fish into the fiords.

I have seen forty or fifty

of them in the water at one time.

I have been in a little boat

when the water was boiling

on all sides of us

from them swimming underneath.

The noise of the herring

can be heard nearly a mile.

So thick in the water, they are,

you can’t dip the oars in.

All silver!

And all those millions of fish

must be taken, each one, by hand.

The women and children

pull out a little piece

under the throat with their fingers

so that the brine gets inside.

I have seen thousands of barrels

packed with the fish on the shore.

In winter they set the gill-nets

for the cod. Hundreds of them

are caught each night.

In the morning the men

pull in the nets and fish

altogether in the boats.

Cod so big—I have seen—

that when a man held one up

above his head

the tail swept the ground.

Sardines, mackerel, anchovies

all of these. And in the rivers

trout and salmon. I have seen

a net set at the foot of a falls

and in the morning sixty trout in it.

But I guess there are not

such fish in Norway nowadays.

On the Lofoten Islands—

till I was twelve.

Not a tree or a shrub on them.

But in summer

with the sun never gone

the grass is higher than here.

The sun circles the horizon.

Between twelve and one at night

it is very low, near the sea,

to the north. Then

it rises a little, slowly,

till midday, then down again

and so for three months, getting

higher at first, then lower,

until it disappears—

In winter the snow is often

as deep as the ceiling of this room.

If you go there you will see

many Englishmen

near the falls and on the bridges

fishing, fishing.

They will stand there for hours

to catch the fish.

Near the shore

where the water is twenty feet or so

you can see the kingflounders

on the sand. They have

red spots on the side. Men come

in boats and stick them

with long pointed poles.

Have you seen how the Swedes drink tea?

So, in the saucer. They blow it

and turn it this way then that: so.

Tall, gaunt

great drooping nose, eyes dark-circled,

the voice slow and smiling:

I have seen boys stand

where the stream is narrow

a foot each side on two rocks

and grip the trout as they pass through.

They have a special way to hold them,

in the gills, so. The long

fingers arched like grapplehooks.

Then the impatient silence

while a little man said:

The English are great sportsmen.

At the winter resorts

where I stayed

they were always the first up

in the morning, the first

on with the skis.

I once saw a young Englishman

worth seventy million pounds—

You do not know the north.

—and you will see perhaps huldra

with long tails

and all blue, from the night,

and the nekke, half man and half fish.

When they see one of them

they know some boat will be lost.

Tracks of rain and light linger in

the spongy greens of a nature whose

flickering mountain—bulging nearer,

ebbing back into the sun

hollowing itself away to hold a lake,—

or brown stream rising and falling

at the roadside, turning about,

churning itself white, drawing

green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels

fall—

    And—the other world—

the windshield a blunt barrier:

Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us.

—the backs of their heads facing us—

The stream continues its motion of

a hound running over rough ground.

Trees vanish—reappear—vanish:

detached dance of gnomes—as a talk

dodging remarks, glows and fades.

—The unseen power of words—

And now that a few of the moves

are clear the first desire is

to fling oneself out at the side into

the other dance, to other music.

Peer Gynt. Rip Van Winkle. Diana.

If I were young I would try a new alignment—

alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!—

Childhood companions linked two and two

criss-cross: four, three, two, one.

Back into self, tentacles withdrawn.

Feel about in warm self-flesh.

Since childhood, since childhood!

Childhood is a toad in the garden, a

happy toad. All toads are happy

and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana!

Lean forward. Punch the steersman

behind the ear. Twirl the wheel!

Over the edge! Screams! Crash!

The end. I sit above my head—

a little removed—or

a thin wash of rain on the roadway

—I am never afraid when he is driving,—

interposes new direction,

rides us sidewise, unforseen

into the ditch! All threads cut!

Death! Black. The end. The very end—

I would sit separate weighing a

small red handful: the dirt of these parts,

sliding mists sheeting the alders

against the touch of fingers creeping

to mine. All stuff of the blind emotions.

But—stirred, the eye seizes

for the first time—The eye awake!—

anything, a dirt bank with green stars

of scrawny weed flattened upon it under

a weight of air—For the first time!—

or a yawning depth: Big!

Swim around in it, through it—

all directions and find

vitreous seawater stuff—

God how I love you!—or, as I say,

a plunge into the ditch. The end. I sit

examining my red handful. Balancing

—this—in and out—agh.

Love you? It’s

a fire in the blood, willy-nilly!

It’s the sun coming up in the morning.

Ha, but it’s the grey moon too, already up

in the morning. You are slow.

Men are not friends where it concerns

a woman. Fighters. Playfellows.

White round thighs! Youth! Sighs—!

It’s the fillip of novelty. It’s—

Mountains. Elephants humping along

against the sky—indifferent to

light withdrawing its tattered shreds,

worn out with embraces. It’s

the fillip of novelty. It’s a fire in the blood.

Oh, get a flannel shirt, white flannel

or pongee. You’d look so well!

I married you because I liked your nose.

I wanted you! I wanted you

in spite of all they’d say—

Rain and light, mountain and rain,

rain and river. Will you love me always?

—A car overturned and two crushed bodies

under it.—Always! Always!

And the white moon already up.

White. Clean. All the colors.

A good head, backed by the eye—awake!

backed by the emotions—blind—

River and mountain, light and rain—or

rain, rock, light, trees—divided:

rain-light counter rocks—trees or

trees counter rain-light-rocks or—

Myriads of counter processions

crossing and recrossing, regaining

the advantage, buying here, selling there

—You are sold cheap everywhere in town!—

lingering, touching fingers, withdrawing

gathering forces into blares, hummocks,

peaks and rivers—river meeting rock

—I wish that you were lying there dead

and I sitting here beside you.—

It’s the grey moon—over and over.

It’s the clay of these parts.

Here it is spring again

and I still a young man!

I am late at my singing.

The sparrow with the black rain on his breast

has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past:

What is it that is dragging at my heart?

The grass by the back door

is stiff with sap.

The old maples are opening

their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers.

A moon hangs in the blue

in the early afternoons over the marshes.

I am late at my singing.

A middle-northern March, now as always—

gusts from the South broken against cold winds—

but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide,

it moves—not into April—into a second March,

the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping

upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree

upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere.

So we will put on our pink felt hat—new last year!

—newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back

the seasons—and let us walk to the orchid-house,

see the flowers will take the prize tomorrow

at the Palace.

              Stop here, these are our oleanders.

When they are in bloom—

                          You would waste words

It is clearer to me than if the pink

were on the branch. It would be a searching in

a colored cloud to reveal that which now, huskless,

shows the very reason for their being.

And these the orange-trees, in blossom—no need

to tell with this weight of perfume in the air.

If it were not so dark in this shed one could better

see the white.

              It is that very perfume

has drawn the darkness down among the leaves.

Do I speak clearly enough?

It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone

loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings—

not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion

of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves

its own caretaker.

And here are the orchids!

                        Never having seen

such gaiety I will read these flowers for you;

This is an old January, died—in Villon’s time.

Snow, this is and this the stain of violet

grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom.

And this, a certain July from Iceland:

a young woman of that place

breathed it toward the South. It took root there.

The color ran true but the plant is small.

This falling spray of snow-flakes is

a handful of dead Februaries

prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez

of Guatemala.

                Here’s that old friend who

went by my side for so many years, this full, fragile

head of veined lavender. Oh that April

that we first went with our stiff lusts

leaving the city behind, out to the green hill—

May, they said she was. A hand for all of us:

this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem.

June is a yellow cup I’ll not name; August

the over-heavy one. And here are—

russet and shiny, all but March. And March?

Ah, March—

            Flowers are a tiresome pastime.

One has a wish to shake them from their pots

root and stem, for the sun to gnaw.

Walk out again into the cold and saunter home

to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough.

I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze

instead which will at least warm our hands

and stir up the talk.

                    I think we have kept fair time.

Time is a green orchid.

If you had come away with me

into another state

we had been quiet together.

But there the sun coming up

out of the nothing beyond the lake was

too low in the sky,

there was too great a pushing

against him,

too much of sumac buds, pink

in the head

with the clear gum upon them,

too many opening hearts of lilac leaves,

too many, too many swollen

limp poplar tassels on the

bare branches!

It was too strong in the air.

I had no rest against that

springtime!

The pounding of the hoofs on the

raw sods

stayed with me half through the night.

I awoke smiling but tired.

The stars, that are small lights—

now that I know them foreign,

uninterfering, like nothing

in my life—I walk by their sparkle

relieved and comforted. Or when

the moon moves slowly up among them

with flat shine then the night

has a novel light in it—curved

curiously in a thin half-circle

A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of

student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones.

Berket in high spirits—“Ha, oranges! Let’s have one!”

And he made to snatch an orange from a vendor’s cart.

Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed

to the full sweep of certain wave summits,

that the rumor of the thing has come down through

three generations—which is relatively forever!

Go to sleep—though of course you will not—

to tideless waves thundering slantwise against

strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray

dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind,

scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady

car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls’ cries in a wind-gust

broken by the wind; calculating wings set above

the field of waves breaking.

Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests,

refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food!

Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white

for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild

chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices—

sleep, sleep . . .

Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby.

Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders,

hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings—

lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles,

the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks:

it is all to put you to sleep,

to soften your limbs in relaxed postures,

and that your head slip sidewise, and your hair loosen

and fall over your eyes and over your mouth,

brushing your lips wistfully that you may dream,

sleep and dream—

A black fungus springs out about lonely church doors—

sleep, sleep. The night, coming down upon

the wet boulevard, would start you awake with his

message, to have in at your window. Pay no

heed to him. He storms at your sill with

cooings, with gesticulations, curses!

You will not let him in. He would keep you from sleeping.

He would have you sit under your desk lamp

brooding, pondering; he would have you

slide out the drawer, take up the ornamented dagger

and handle it. It is late, it is nineteen-nineteen—

go to sleep, his cries are a lullaby;

his jabbering is a sleep-well-my-baby; he is

a crackbrained messenger.

The maid waking you in the morning

when you are up and dressing

the rustle of your clothes as you raise them—

it is the same tune.

At the table the cold, greenish, split grapefruit, its juice

on the tongue, the clink of the spoon in

your coffee, the toast odors say it over and over.

The open street-door lets in the breath of

the morning wind from over the lake.

The bus coming to a halt grinds from its sullen brakes—

lullaby, lullaby. The crackle of a newspaper,

the movement of the troubled coat beside you—

sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep . . .

It is the sting of snow, the burning liquor of

the moonlight, the rush of rain in the gutters packed

with dead leaves: go to sleep, go to sleep.

And the night passes—and never passes—

Men with picked voices chant the names

of cities in a huge gallery: promises

that pull through descending stairways

to a deep rumbling.

                    The rubbing feet

of those coming to be carried quicken a

grey pavement into soft light that rocks

to and fro, under the domed ceiling,

across and across from pale

earthcolored walls of bare limestone.

Covertly the hands of a great clock

go round and round! Were they to

move quickly and at once the whole

secret would be out and the shuffling

of all ants be done forever.

A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing

out at a high window, moves by the clock;

discordant hands straining out from

a center: inevitable postures infinitely

repeated—

two—twofour—twoeight!

Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms.

This way ma’am!

                —important not to take

the wrong train!

                  Lights from the concrete

ceiling hang crooked but—

                            Poised horizontal

on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders

packed with a warm glow—inviting entry—

pull against the hour. But brakes can

hold a fixed posture till—

                            The whistle!

Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two!

Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating

in a small kitchen. Taillights—

In time: twofour!

In time: twoeight!

—rivers are tunneled: trestles

cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating

the same gesture remain relatively

stationary: rails forever parallel

return on themselves infinitely.

                            The dance is sure.

Vast and grey, the sky

is a simulacrum

to all but him whose days

are vast and grey, and—

In the tall, dried grasses

a goat stirs

with nozzle searching the ground.

—my head is in the air

but who am I . . ?

And amazed my heart leaps

at the thought of love

vast and grey

yearning silently over me.

It is a willow when summer is over,

a willow by the river

from which no leaf has fallen nor

bitten by the sun

turned orange or crimson.

The leaves cling and grow paler,

swing and grow paler

over the swirling waters of the river

as if loath to let go,

they are so cool, so drunk with

the swirl of the wind and of the river—

oblivious to winter,

the last to let go and fall

into the water and on the ground.

The half-stripped trees

struck by a wind together,

bending all,

the leaves flutter drily

and refuse to let go

or driven like hail

stream bitterly out to one side

and fall

where the salvias, hard carmine,—

like no leaf that ever was—

edge the bare garden.

Again I reply to the triple winds

running chromatic fifths of derision

outside my window:

                  Play louder.

You will not succeed. I am

bound more to my sentences

the more you batter at me

to follow you.

              And the wind,

as before, fingers perfectly

its derisive music.

Snow:

years of anger following

hours that float idly down—

the blizzard

drifts its weight

deeper and deeper for three days

or sixty years, eh? Then

the sun! a clutter of

yellow and blue flakes—

Hairy looking trees stand out

in long alleys

over a wild solitude.

The man turns and there—

his solitary tracks stretched out

upon the world.

They call me and I go.

It is a frozen road

past midnight, a dust

of snow caught

in the rigid wheeltracks.

The door opens.

I smile, enter and

shake off the cold.

Here is a great woman

on her side in the bed.

She is sick,

perhaps vomiting,

perhaps laboring

to give birth to

a tenth child. Joy! Joy!

Night is a room

darkened for lovers,

through the jalousies the sun

has sent one gold needle!

I pick the hair from her eyes

and watch her misery

with compassion.

Old age is

a flight of small

cheeping birds

skimming

bare trees

above a snow glaze.

Gaining and failing

they are buffeted

by a dark wind—

But what?

On harsh weedstalks

the flock has rested,

the snow

is covered with broken

seedhusks

and the wind tempered

by a shrill

piping of plenty.

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

A three-day-long rain from the east—

an interminable talking, talking

of no consequence—patter, patter, patter.

Hand in hand little winds

blow the thin streams aslant.

Warm. Distance cut off. Seclusion.

A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves,

hurry from one place to another.

Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!—

An interminable talking, talking,

talking . . . it has happened before.

Backward, backward, backward.

The sky has given over

its bitterness.

Out of the dark change

all day long

rain falls and falls

as if it would never end.

Still the snow keeps

its hold on the ground.

But water, water

from a thousand runnels!

It collects swiftly,

dappled with black

cuts a way for itself

through green ice in the gutters.

Drop after drop it falls

from the withered grass-stems

of the overhanging embankment.

I have had my dream—like others—

and it has come to nothing, so that

I remain now carelessly

with feet planted on the ground

and look up at the sky—

feeling my clothes about me,

the weight of my body in my shoes,

the rim of my hat, air passing in and out

at my nose—and decide to dream no more.

It is cold. The white moon

is up among her scattered stars—

like the bare thighs of

the Police Sergeant’s wife—among

her five children . . .

No answer. Pale shadows lie upon

the frosted grass. One answer:

It is midnight, it is still

and it is cold . . . !

White thighs of the sky! a

new answer out of the depths of

my male belly: In April . . .

In April I shall see again—In April!

the round and perfect thighs

of the Police Sergeant’s wife

perfect still after many babies.

Oya!

Lo the leaves

Upon the new autumn grass—

Look at them well . !

Ladies, I crave your indulgence for

My friend Wu Kee; young, agile, clear-eyed

And clean-limbed, his muscles ripple

Under the thin blue shirt; and his naked feet, in

Their straw sandals, lift at the heels, shift and

Find new postures continually.

Your husband’s shirts to wash, please, for Wu Kee.

Poor old Abner, poor old white-haired nigger!

I remember when you were so strong

you hung yourself by a rope round the neck

in Doc Hollister’s barn to prove you could beat

the faker in the circus—and it didn’t kill you.

Now your face is in your hands, and your elbows

are on your knees, and you are silent and broken.

Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men—and

the baby hard to find a father for!

What will the good Father in Heaven say

to the local judge if he do not solve this problem?

A little two-pointed smile and—pouff!—

the law is changed into a mouthful of phrases.

I feel the caress of my own fingers

on my own neck as I place my collar

and think pityingly

of the kind women I have known.

Some leaves hang late, some fall

before the first frost—so goes

the tale of winter branches and old bones.

O my grey hairs!

You are truly white as plum blossoms.

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,

by what devious means do you contrive

to remain idle? Teach me, O master.

Leaves are grey green,

the glass broken, bright green.

By constantly tormenting them

with reminders of the lice in

their children’s hair, the

School Physician first

brought their hatred down on him.

But by this familiarity

they grew used to him, and so,

at last,

took him for their friend and adviser.

It was an icy day,

We buried the cat,

then took her box

and set match to it

in the back yard.

Those fleas that escaped

earth and fire

died by the cold.

You say love is this, love is that:

Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

the wind and the rain comb,

tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip—

branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.

The dayseye hugging the earth

in August, ha! Spring is

gone down in purple,

weeds stand high in the corn,

the rainbeaten furrow

is clotted with sorrel

and crabgrass, the

branch is black under

the heavy mass of the leaves—

The sun is upon a

slender green stem

ribbed lengthwise.

He lies on his back—

it is a woman also—

he regards his former

majesty and

round the yellow center,

split and creviced and done into

minute flowerheads, he sends out

his twenty rays—a little

and the wind is among them

to grow cool there!

One turns the thing over

in his hand and looks

at it from the rear: brownedged,

green and pointed scales

armor his yellow.

But turn and turn,

the crisp petals remain

brief, translucent, greenfastened,

barely touching at the edges:

blades of limpid seashell.

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!

It is not a color.

It is summer!

It is the wind on a willow,

the lap of waves, the shadow

under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,

three herons, a dead hawk

rotting on a pole—

Clear yellow!

It is a piece of blue paper

in the grass or a threecluster of

green walnuts swaying, children

playing croquet or one boy

fishing, a man

swinging his pink fists

as he walks—

It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots

in the ditch, moss under

the flange of the carrail, the

wavy lines in split rock, a

great oaktree—

It is a disinclination to be

five red petals or a rose, it is

a cluster of birdsbreast flowers

on a red stem six feet high,

four open yellow petals

above sepals curled

backward into reverse spikes—

Tufts of purple grass spot the

green meadow and clouds the sky.

Her body is not so white as

anemone petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over—

or nothing.

One leaves his leaves at home

being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse

to peer from: I will have my way,

yellow—A mast with a lantern, ten

fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller

as they grow more—Liar, liar, liar!

You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss

on your clothes. Ha! you come to me,

you—I am a point of dew on a grass-stem.

Why are you sending heat down on me

from your lantern?—You are cowdung, a

dead stick with the bark off. She is

squirting on us both. She has had her

hand on you!—well?—She has defiled

ME.—Your leaves are dull, thick

and hairy.—Every hair on my body will

hold you off from me. You are a

dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.—

I love you, straight, yellow

finger of God pointing to—her!

Liar, broken weed, dungcake, you have—

I am a cricket waving his antennae

and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!

An old willow with hollow branches

slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils

and sang:

Love is a young green willow

shimmering at the bare wood’s edge.

When I am alone I am happy.

The air is cool. The sky is

flecked and splashed and wound

with color. The crimson phalloi

of the sassafras leaves

hang crowded before me

in shoals on the heavy branches.

When I reach my doorstep

I am greeted by

the happy shrieks of my children

and my heart sinks.

I am crushed.

Are not my children as dear to me

as falling leaves or

must one become stupid

to grow older?

It seems much as if Sorrow

had tripped up my heels.

Let us see, let us see!

What did I plan to say to her

when it should happen to me

as it has happened now?

In the flashes and black shadows

of July

the days, locked in each other’s arms,

seem still

so that squirrels and colored birds

go about at ease over

the branches and through the air.

Where will a shoulder split or

a forehead open and victory be?

Nowhere.

Both sides grow older.

And you may be sure

not one leaf will lift itself

from the ground

and become fast to a twig again.

And yet one arrives somehow,

finds himself loosening the hooks of

her dress

in a strange bedroom—

feels the autumn

dropping its silk and linen leaves

about her ankles.

The tawdry veined body emerges

twisted upon itself

like a winter wind . . . !

You know there is not much

that I desire, a few chrysanthemums

half lying on the grass, yellow

and brown and white, the

talk of a few people, the trees,

an expanse of dried leaves perhaps

with ditches among them.

But there comes

between me and these things

a letter

or even a look—well placed,

you understand,

so that I am confused, twisted

four ways and—left flat,

unable to lift the food to

my own mouth:

Here is what they say: Come!

and come! and come! And if

I do not go I remain stale to

myself and if I go—

                    I have watched

the city from a distance at night

and wondered why I wrote no poem.

Come! yes,

the city is ablaze for you

and you stand and look at it.

And they are right. There is

no good in the world except out of

a woman and certain women alone

for certain things. But what if

I arrive like a turtle,

with my house on my back or

a fish ogling from under water?

It will not do. I must be

steaming with love, colored

like a flamingo. For what?

To have legs and a silly head

and to smell, pah! like a flamingo

that soils its own feathers behind?

Must I go home filled

with a bad poem?

And they say:

Who can answer these things

till he has tried? Your eyes

are half closed, you are a child,

oh, a sweet one, ready to play

but I will make a man of you and

with love on his shoulder—!

And in the marshes

the crickets run

on the sunny dike’s top and

make burrows there, the water

reflects the reeds and the reeds

move on their stalks and rattle drily.

Upon the table in their bowl!

in violent disarray

of yellow sprays, green spikes

of leaves, red pointed petals

and curled heads of blue

and white among the litter

of the forks and crumbs and plates

the flowers remain composed.

Coolly their colloquy continues

above the coffee and loud talk

grown frail as vaudeville.

The world begins again!

Not wholly insufflated

the blackbirds in the rain

upon the dead topbranches

of the living tree,

stuck fast to the low clouds,

notate the dawn.

Their shrill cries sound

announcing appetite

and drop among the bending roses

and the dripping grass.

I bought a dishmop—

having no daughter—

for they had twisted

fine ribbons of shining copper

about white twine

and made a tousled head

of it, fastened it

upon a turned ash stick

slender at the neck

straight, tall—

when tied upright

on the brass wallbracket

to be a light for me

and naked

as a girl should seem

to her father.

My wife’s new pink slippers

have gay pom-poms.

There is not a spot or a stain

on their satin toes or their sides.

All night they lie together

under her bed’s edge.

Shivering I catch sight of them

and smile, in the morning.

Later I watch them

descending the stair,

hurrying through the doors

and round the table,

moving stiffly

with a shake of their gay pom-poms!

And I talk to them

in my secret mind

out of pure happiness.

The May sun—whom

all things imitate—

that glues small leaves to

the wooden trees

shone from the sky

through bluegauze clouds

upon the ground.

Under the leafy trees

where the suburban streets

lay crossed,

with houses on each corner,

tangled shadows had begun

to join

the roadway and the lawns.

With excellent precision

the tulip bed

inside the iron fence

upreared its gaudy

yellow, white and red,

rimmed round with grass,

reposedly.

In this world of

as fine a pair of breasts

as ever I saw

the fountain in

Madison Square

spouts up of water

a white tree

that dies and lives

as the rocking water

in the basin

turns from the stonerim

back upon the jet

and rising there

reflectively drops down again.

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turned away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

My shoes as I lean

unlacing them

stand out upon

flat worsted flowers.

Nimbly the shadows

of my fingers play

unlacing

over shoes and flowers.

I stopped the car

to let the children down

where the streets end

in the sun

at the marsh edge

and the reeds begin

and there are small houses

facing the reeds

and the blue mist

in the distance

with grapevine trellises

with grape clusters

small as strawberries

on the vines

and ditches

running springwater

that continue the gutters

with willows over them.

The reeds begin

like water at a shore

their pointed petals waving

dark green and light.

But blueflags are blossoming

in the reeds

which the children pluck

chattering in the reeds

high over their heads

which they part

with bare arms to appear

with fists of flowers

till in the air

there comes the smell

of calamus

from wet, gummy stalks.

Lighthearted William twirled

his November moustaches

and, half dressed, looked

from the bedroom window

upon the spring weather.

Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily

leaning out to see

up and down the street

where a heavy sunlight

lay beyond some blue shadows.

Into the room he drew

his head again and laughed

to himself quietly

twirling his green moustaches.

School is over. It is too hot

to walk at ease. At ease

in light frocks they walk the streets

to while the time away.

They have grown tall. They hold

pink flames in their right hands.

In white from head to foot,

with sidelong, idle look—

in yellow, floating stuff,

black sash and stockings—

touching their avid mouths

with pink sugar on a stick—

like a carnation each holds in her hand—

they mount the lonely street.

The birches are mad with green points

the wood’s edge is burning with their green,

burning, seething—No, no, no.

The birches are opening their leaves one

by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold

and separate, one by one. Slender tassels

hang swaying from the delicate branch tips—

Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word.

Black is split at once into flowers. In

every bog and ditch, flares of

small fire, white flowers!—Agh,

the birches are mad, mad with their green.

The world is gone, torn into shreds

with this blessing. What have I left undone

that I should have undertaken?

O my brother, you redfaced, living man

ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon

this same dirt that I touch—and eat.

We are alone in this terror, alone,

face to face on this road, you and I,

wrapped by this flame!

Let the polished plows stay idle,

their gloss already on the black soil

But that face of yours—!

Answer me. I will clutch you. I

will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face

into your face and force you to see me.

Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest

thing that is in your mind to say,

say anything. I will understand you—!

It is the madness of the birch leaves opening

cold, one by one.

My rooms will receive me. But my rooms

are no longer sweet spaces where comfort

is ready to wait on me with its crumbs.

A darkness has brushed them. The mass

of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken.

Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed.

I am shaken, broken against a might

that splits comfort, blows apart

my careful partitions, crushes my house

and leaves me—with shrinking heart

and startled, empty eyes—peering out

into a cold world.

In the spring I would drink! In the spring

I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things.

Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei!

your hands, your lips to drink!

Give me your wrists to drink—

I drag you, I am drowned in you, you

overwhelm me! Drink!

Save me! The shad bush is in the edge

of the clearing. The yards in a fury

of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror.

Drink and lie forgetting the world.

And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one.

Coldly I observe them and wait for the end.

And it ends.

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

firetruck

moving

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city.

Before the grass is out the people are out

and bare twigs still whip the wind—

when there is nothing, in the pause between

snow and grass in the parks and at the street ends

—Say it, no ideas but in things—

nothing but the blank faces of the houses

and cylindrical trees

bent, forked by preconception and accident

split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained

secret—into the body of the light—

These are the ideas, savage and tender

somewhat of the music, et cetera

of Paterson, that great philosopher—

Say it! No ideas but in things. Mr.

Paterson has gone away

to rest and write. Inside the bus one sees

his thoughts sitting and standing. His thoughts

alight and scatter—

Who are these people (how complex

this mathematic) among whom I see myself

in the regularly ordered plateglass of

his thoughts, glimmering before shoes and bicycles—?

They walk incommunicado, the

equation is beyond solution, yet

its sense is clear—that they may live

his thought is listed in the Telephone

Directory—

        and there’s young Alex Shorn

whose dad the boot-black bought a house

and painted it inside

with seascapes of a pale green monochrome—

the infant Dionysus springing from

Apollo’s arm—the floors oakgrained in

Balkan fashion—Hermes’ nose, the body

of a gourmand, the lips of Cupid, the eyes

the black eyes of Venus’ sister—

But who! who are these people? It is

his flesh making the traffic, cranking the car

buying the meat—

Defeated in achieving the solution they

fall back among cheap pictures, furniture

filled silk, cardboard shoes, bad dentistry

windows that will not open, poisonous gin

scurvy, toothache—

                    . . . . . .

But never, in despair and anxiety

forget to drive wit in, in till it

discover that his thoughts are decorous and simple

and never forget that though his thoughts are decorous

and simple, the despair and anxiety

the grace and detail of

a dynamo—

Divine thought! Jacob fell backwards off the press

and broke his spine. What pathos, what mercy

of nurses (who keep birthday books)

and doctors who can’t speak proper english—

is here correctly on a spotless bed

painless to the Nth power—the two legs

perfect without movement or sensation

Twice a month Paterson receives letters

from the Pope, his works are translated

into French, the clerks in the post office

ungum the rare stamps from his packages

and steal them for their children’s albums

So in his high decorum he is wise

                  . . . . . .

What wind and sun of children stamping the snow

stamping the snow and screaming drunkenly

The actual, florid detail of cheap carpet

amazingly upon the floor and paid for

as no portrait ever was—Canary singing

and geraniums in tin cans spreading their leaves

reflecting red upon the frost—

They are the divisions and imbalances

of his whole concept, made small by pity

and desire, they are—no ideas beside the facts—

A petal, colorless and without form

the oblong towers lie

beyond the low hill and northward the great

bridge stanchions,

small in the distance, have appeared,

pinkish and incomplete—

It is the city,

approaching over the river. Nothing

of it is mine, but visibly

for all that it is petal of a flower—my own.

It is a flower through which the wind

combs the whitened grass and a black dog

with yellow legs stands eating from a

garbage barrel. One petal goes eight blocks

past two churches and a brick school beyond

the edge of the park where under trees

leafless now, women having nothing else to do

sit in summer—to the small house

in which I happen to have been born. Or

a heap of dirt, if you care

to say it, frozen and sunstreaked in

the January sun, returning.

Then they hand you—they who wish to God

you’d keep your fingers out of

their business—science or philosophy or

anything else they can find to throw off

to distract you. But Madame Lenine

is a benefactress when under her picture

in the papers she is quoted as saying:

Children should be especially protected

from religion. Another petal

reaches to San Diego, California where

a number of young men, New Yorkers most

of them, are kicking up the dust.

A flower, at its heart (the stamens, pistil,

etc.) is a naked woman, about 38, just

out of bed, worth looking at both for

her body and her mind and what she has seen

and done. She it was put me straight

about the city when I said, It

makes me ill to see them run up

a new bridge like that in a few months

and I can’t find time even to get

a book written. They have the power,

that’s all, she replied. That’s what you all

want. If you can’t get it, acknowledge

at least what it is. And they’re not

going to give it to you. Quite right.

For years I’ve been tormented by

that miracle, the buildings all lit up—

unable to say anything much to the point

though it is the major sight

of this region. But foolish to rhapsodize over

strings of lights, the blaze of a power

in which I have not the least part.

Another petal reaches

into the past, to Puerto Rico

when my mother was a child bathing in a small

river and splashing water up on

the yucca leaves to see them roll back pearls.

The snow is hard on the pavements. This

is no more a romance than an allegory.

I plan one thing—that I could press

buttons to do the curing of or caring for

the sick that I do laboriously now by hand

for cash, to have the time

when I am fresh, in the morning, when

my mind is clear and burning—to write.

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the

waste of broad, muddy fields

brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water

the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish

purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy

stuff of bushes and small trees

with dead, brown leaves under them

leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish

dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,

cold, uncertain of all

save that they enter. All about them

the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow

the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—

It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of

entrance—Still, the profound change

has come upon them: rooted, they

grip down and begin to awaken

Pink confused with white

flowers and flowers reversed

take and spill the shaded flame

darting it back

into the lamp’s horn

petals aslant darkened with mauve

red where in whorls

petal lays its glow upon petal

round flamegreen throats

petals radiant with transpiercing light

contending

          above

the leaves

reaching up their modest green

from the pot’s rim

and there, wholly dark, the pot

gay with rough moss.

The farmer in deep thought

is pacing through the rain

among his blank fields, with

hands in pockets,

in his head

the harvest already planted.

A cold wind ruffles the water

among the browned weeds.

On all sides

the world rolls coldly away:

black orchards

darkened by the March clouds—

leaving room for thought.

Down past the brushwood

bristling by

the rainsluiced wagonroad

looms the artist figure of

the farmer—composing

—antagonist

The Easter stars are shining

above lights that are flashing—

coronal of the black—

                      Nobody

to say it—

            Nobody to say: pinholes

Thither I would carry her

among the lights—

Burst it asunder

break through to the fifty words

necessary—

            a crown for her head with

castles upon it, skyscrapers

filled with nut-chocolates—

                      dovetame winds—

stars of tinsel

from the great end of a cornucopia

of glass.

Black winds from the north

enter black hearts. Barred from

seclusion in lilies they strike

to destroy—

Beastly humanity

where the wind breaks it—

                    strident voices, heat

quickened, built of waves

Drunk with goats or pavements

Hate is of the night and the day

of flowers and rocks. Nothing

is gained by saying the night breeds

murder—It is the classical mistake

The day

All that enters in another person

all grass, all blackbirds flying

all azalea trees in flower

salt winds—

Sold to them men knock blindly together

splitting their heads open

That is why boxing matches and

Chinese poems are the same—That is why

Hartley praises Miss Wirt

There is nothing in the twist

of the wind but—dashes of cold rain

It is one with submarine vistas

purple and black fish turning

among undulant seaweed—

Black wind, I have poured my heart out

to you until I am sick of it—

Now I run my hand over you feeling

the play of your body—the quiver

of its strength—

The grief of the bowmen of Shu

moves nearer—There is

an approach with difficulty from

the dead—the winter casing of grief

How easy to slip

into the old mode, how hard to

cling firmly to the advance—

No that is not it

nothing that I have done

nothing

I have done

is made up of

nothing

and the diphthong

ae

together with

the first person

singular

indicative

of the auxiliary

verb

to have

everything

I have done

is the same

if to do

is capable

of an

infinity of

combinations

involving the

moral

physical

and religious

codes

for everything

and nothing

are synonymous

when

energy in vacuo

has the power

of confusion

which only to

have done nothing

can make

perfect

The rose is obsolete

but each petal ends in

an edge, the double facet

cementing the grooved

columns of air—The edge

cuts without cutting

meets—nothing—renews

itself in metal or porcelain—

whither? It ends—

But if it ends

the start is begun

so that to engage roses

becomes a geometry—