Chapter V

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?

WINTER QUIET

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.

DAWN

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.

GOOD NIGHT

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 sound 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 my drink
and yawn deliciously.
I am ready for bed.

DANSE RUSSE

If I 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
danse 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?

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN BED

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 county 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.

VIRTUE

Now? Why--
whirl-pools 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!

CONQUEST

[_Dedicated to F. W._]

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!

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN WITH A BAD HEART

Have I seen her?
Only through the window
across the street.

If I go meeting her
on the corner
some damned fool
will go blabbing it
to the old man and
she’ll get hell.
He’s a queer old bastard!
Every time he sees me
you’d think
I wanted to kill him.
But I figure it out
it’s best to let things
stay as they are--
for a while at least.

It’s hard
giving up the thing
you want most
in the world, but with this
damned pump of mine
liable to give out ...

She’s a good kid
and I’d hate to hurt her
but if she can get over it--

it’d be the best thing.

KELLER GEGEN DOM

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.

SMELL!

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 spring-time!
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?

BALLET

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.

SYMPATHETIC PORTRAIT OF A CHILD

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 as 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?

THE OGRE

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.

RIPOSTE

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!

THE OLD MEN

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!

PASTORAL

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.

SPRING STRAINS

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!

TREES

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.

A PORTRAIT IN GREYS

Will it never be possible
to separate you from your greyness?
Must you be always sinking backward
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.

INVITATION

You who had the sense
to choose me such a mother,
you who had the indifference
to create me,
you who went to some pains
to leave hands off me
in the formative stages,--
(I thank you most for that
perhaps)
but you who
with an iron head, first,
fiercest and with strongest love
brutalized me into strength,
old dew-lap,--
I have reached the stage
where I am teaching myself
to laugh.
Come on,
take a walk with me.

DIVERTIMIENTO

Miserable little woman
in a brown coat--
quit whining!
My hand for you!
We’ll skip down the tin cornices
of Main Street
flicking the dull roof-line
with our toe-tips!
Hop clear of the bank! A
pin-wheel round the white flag-pole.

And I’ll sing you the while
a thing to split your sides
about Johann Sebastian Bach,
the father of music, who had
three wives and twenty-two children.

JANUARY MORNING

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