Poetry

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,