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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35667 ***
+
+
+
+
+  'SOUR GRAPES'
+
+  _A Book of Poems_
+
+
+  BOSTON
+  THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY
+  1921
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1921, by_
+  THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY
+
+  The Four Seas Press
+  Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+  To ALFRED KREYMBORG
+
+
+
+
+Certain of the poems in this book have appeared in the magazines:
+_Poetry_, _a Magazine of Verse_, _The Egoist_, _The Little Review_,
+_The Dial_, _Others_, and _Contact_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                          Page
+
+  THE LATE SINGER                           11
+
+  MARCH                                     12
+
+  BERKET AND THE STARS                      17
+
+  A CELEBRATION                             18
+
+  APRIL                                     21
+
+  A GOODNIGHT                               22
+
+  OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES        24
+
+  ROMANCE MODERNE                           26
+
+  THE DESOLATE FIELD                        30
+
+  WILLOW POEM                               31
+
+  APPROACH OF WINTER                        32
+
+  JANUARY                                   33
+
+  BLIZZARD                                  34
+
+  TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY                      35
+
+  WINTER TREES                              36
+
+  COMPLAINT                                 37
+
+  THE COLD NIGHT                            38
+
+  SPRING STORM                              39
+
+  THE DELICACIES                            40
+
+  THURSDAY                                  43
+
+  THE DARK DAY                              44
+
+  TIME, THE HANGMAN                         45
+
+  TO A FRIEND                               46
+
+  THE GENTLE MAN                            47
+
+  THE SOUGHING WIND                         48
+
+  SPRING                                    49
+
+  PLAY                                      50
+
+  LINES                                     51
+
+  THE POOR                                  52
+
+  COMPLETE DESTRUCTION                      53
+
+  MEMORY OF APRIL                           54
+
+  EPITAPH                                   55
+
+  DAISY                                     56
+
+  PRIMROSE                                  57
+
+  QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE                          58
+
+  GREAT MULLEN                              59
+
+  WAITING                                   60
+
+  THE HUNTER                                61
+
+  ARRIVAL                                   62
+
+  TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES     63
+
+  YOUTH AND BEAUTY                          65
+
+  THE THINKER                               66
+
+  THE DISPUTANTS                            67
+
+  THE TULIP BED                             68
+
+  THE BIRDS                                 69
+
+  THE NIGHTINGALES                          70
+
+  SPOUTS                                    71
+
+  BLUEFLAGS                                 72
+
+  THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME          73
+
+  LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM                     74
+
+  PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR                    75
+
+  THE LONELY STREET                         77
+
+  THE GREAT FIGURE                          78
+
+
+
+
+SOUR GRAPES
+
+
+
+
+THE LATE SINGER
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+MARCH
+
+
+I
+
+  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.
+
+
+II
+
+  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.
+
+
+III
+
+  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
+  Nebuchadnezzar'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.
+
+
+IV
+
+  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 coloured wings
+  half kneeling before her--
+  and smiling--the angel's eyes
+  holding the eyes of Mary
+  as a snake's holds a bird's.
+  On the ground there are flowers,
+  trees are in leaf.
+
+
+V
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+BERKET AND THE STARS
+
+
+  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 the vender'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!
+
+
+
+
+A CELEBRATION
+
+
+  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 mould: 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 to-morrow
+  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 coloured 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 odd January, died--in Villon's time.
+  Snow, this is and this the stain of a 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 colour ran true but the plant is small.
+
+  This falling spray of snowflakes is
+  a handful of dead Februarys
+  prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez
+  of Guatemala.
+                Here's that old friend who
+  went by my side 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 stern, 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.
+
+
+
+
+APRIL
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+A GOODNIGHT
+
+
+  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 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--
+
+
+
+
+OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES
+
+
+I
+
+  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
+  earthcoloured 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:
+  disaccordant hands straining out from
+  a center: inevitable postures infinitely
+  repeated--
+
+
+II
+
+  Two--twofour--twoeight!
+  Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms.
+  This way ma'm!
+                --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.
+
+
+
+
+ROMANCE MODERNE
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE DESOLATE FIELD
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+WILLOW POEM
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+APPROACH OF WINTER
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+JANUARY
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+BLIZZARD
+
+
+  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 track stretched out
+  upon the world.
+
+
+
+
+TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY
+
+
+  Old age is
+  a flight of small
+  cheeping birds
+  skimming
+  bare trees
+  above a snow glaze.
+  Gaining and failing
+  they are buffetted
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+WINTER TREES
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+COMPLAINT
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE COLD NIGHT
+
+
+  It is cold. The white moon
+  is up among her scattered stars--
+  like the bare thighs of
+  the Police Seargent'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 Sergent's wife
+  perfect still after many babies.
+  Oya!
+
+
+
+
+SPRING STORM
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE DELICACIES
+
+
+  The hostess, in pink satin and blond hair--dressed
+  high--shone beautifully in her white slippers against
+  the great silent bald head of her little-eyed husband!
+    Raising a glass of yellow Rhine wine in the narrow
+  space just beyond the light-varnished woodwork and
+  the decorative column between dining-room and hall,
+  she smiled the smile of water tumbling from one ledge
+  to another.
+
+  We began with a herring salad: delicately flavoured
+  saltiness in scallops of lettuce-leaves.
+
+    The little owl-eyed and thick-set lady with masses
+  of grey hair has smooth pink cheeks without a wrinkle.
+  She cannot be the daughter of the little red-faced
+  fellow dancing about inviting lion-headed Wolff the
+  druggist to play the piano! But she is. Wolff is a
+  terrific smoker: if the telephone goes off at night--so
+  his curled-haired wife whispers--he rises from bed but
+  cannot answer till he has lighted a cigarette.
+
+    Sherry wine in little conical glasses, dull brownish
+  yellow, and tomatoes stuffed with finely cut chicken
+  and mayonnaise!
+
+    The tall Irishman in a Prince Albert and the usual
+  striped trousers is going to sing for us. (The piano
+  is in a little alcove with dark curtains.) The hostess's
+  sister--ten years younger than she--in black net and
+  velvet, has hair like some filmy haystack, cloudy about
+  the eyes. She will play for her husband.
+
+    My wife is young, yes she is young and pretty when
+  she cares to be--when she is interested in a discussion:
+  it is the little dancing mayor's wife telling her of the
+  Day nursery in East Rutherford, 'cross the track,
+  divided from us by the railroad--and disputes as to
+  precedence. It is in this town the saloon flourishes,
+  the saloon of my friend on the right whose wife has
+  twice offended with chance words. Her English is
+  atrocious! It is in this town that the saloon is situated,
+  close to the railroad track, close as may be, this side
+  being dry, dry, dry: two people listening on opposite
+  sides of a wall!--The Day Nursery had sixty-five
+  babies the week before last, so my wife's eyes shine
+  and her cheeks are pink and I cannot see a blemish.
+
+    Ice-cream in the shape of flowers and domestic
+  objects: a pipe for me since I do not smoke, a doll
+  for you.
+
+    The figure of some great bulk of a woman disappearing
+  into the kitchen with a quick look over the
+  shoulder. My friend on the left who has spent the
+  whole day in a car the like of which some old fellow
+  would give to an actress: flower-holders, mirrors,
+  curtains, plush seats--my friend on the left who is
+  chairman of the Streets committee of the town council--and
+  who has spent the whole day studying automobile
+  fire-engines in neighbouring towns in view of
+  purchase,--my friend, at the Elks last week at the
+  breaking-up hymn, signalled for them to let Bill--a
+  familiar friend of the saloon-keeper--sing out all alone
+  to the organ--and he did sing!
+
+    Salz-rolls, exquisite! and Rhine wine _ad libitum_.
+  A masterly caviare sandwich.
+
+    The children flitting about above stairs. The
+  councilman has just bought a National eight--some
+  car!
+
+    For heaven's sake I mustn't forget the halves of
+  green peppers stuffed with cream cheese and whole
+  walnuts!
+
+
+
+
+THURSDAY
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE DARK DAY
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+TIME THE HANGMAN
+
+
+  Poor old Abner, 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.
+
+
+
+
+TO A FRIEND
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE MAN
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUGHING WIND
+
+
+  Some leaves hang late, some fall
+  before the first frost--so goes
+  the tale of winter branches and old bones.
+
+
+
+
+SPRING
+
+
+  O my grey hairs!
+  You are truly white as plum blossoms.
+
+
+
+
+PLAY
+
+
+  Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,
+  by what devious means do you contrive
+  to remain idle? Teach me, O master.
+
+
+
+
+LINES
+
+
+  Leaves are greygreen,
+  the glass broken, bright green.
+
+
+
+
+THE POOR
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+COMPLETE DESTRUCTION
+
+
+  It was an icy day.
+  We buried the cat,
+  then took her box
+  and set fire to it
+  in the back yard.
+  Those fleas that escaped
+  earth and fire
+  died by the cold.
+
+
+
+
+MEMORY OF APRIL
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+EPITAPH
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+DAISY
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+PRIMROSE
+
+
+  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, forgetmenots
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE
+
+
+  Her body is not so white as
+  anemony 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.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT MULLEN
+
+
+  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, 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, duncake, you have--
+  I am a cricket waving his antenae
+  and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!
+
+
+
+
+WAITING
+
+
+  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 sassafrass 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?
+
+
+
+
+THE HUNTER
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+ARRIVAL
+
+
+  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...!
+
+
+
+
+TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES
+
+
+  You know there is not much
+  that I desire, a few crysanthemums
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+YOUTH AND BEAUTY
+
+
+  I bought a dishmop--
+  having no daughter--
+  for they had twisted
+  fine ribbons of shining copper
+  about white twine
+  and made a towsled 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.
+
+
+
+
+THE THINKER
+
+
+  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 DISPUTANTS
+
+
+  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.
+  Cooly their colloquy continues
+  above the coffee and loud talk
+  grown frail as vaudeville.
+
+
+
+
+TULIP BED
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRDS
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE NIGHTINGALES
+
+
+  My shoes as I lean
+  unlacing them
+  stand out upon
+  flat worsted flowers
+  under my feet.
+  Nimbly the shadows
+  of my fingers play
+  unlacing
+  over shoes and flowers.
+
+
+
+
+SPOUTS
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+BLUEFLAGS
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME
+
+
+  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 turn 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.
+
+
+
+
+LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM
+
+
+  Light hearted 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.
+
+
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR
+
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+THE LONELY STREET
+
+
+  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 GREAT FIGURE
+
+
+  Among the rain
+  and lights
+  I saw the figure 5
+  in gold
+  on a red
+  firetruck
+  moving
+  with weight and urgency
+  tense
+  unheeded
+  to gong clangs
+  siren howls
+  and wheels rumbling
+  through the dark city.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35667 ***