For, as we hunt you down, you must escape
And we pursue a shadow of our own
That can be caught in a magician’s cape
But has the flatness of a painted stone.
Never the running stag, the gull at wing,
The pure elixir, the American thing.
And yet, at moments when the mind was hot
With something fierier than joy or grief,
When each known spot was an eternal spot
And every leaf was an immortal leaf,
I think that I have seen you, not as one,
But clad in diverse semblances and powers,
Always the same, as light falls from the sun,
And always different, as the differing hours.
Yet, through each altered garment that you wore,
The naked body, shaking the heart’s core.
All day the snow fell on that Eastern town
With its soft, pelting, little, endless sigh
Of infinite flakes that brought the tall sky down
Till I could put my hands in the white sky
And taste cold scraps of heaven on my tongue
And walk in such a changed and luminous light
As gods inhabit when the gods are young.
All day it fell. And when the gathered night
Was a blue shadow cast by a pale glow
I saw you then, snow-image, bird of the snow.
And I have seen and heard you in the dry
Close-huddled furnace of the city street
When the parched moon was planted in the sky
And the limp air hung dead against the heat.
I saw you rise, red as that rusty plant,
Dizzied with lights, half-mad with senseless sound,
Enormous metal, shaking to the chant
Of a triphammer striking iron ground.
Enormous power, ugly to the fool,
And beautiful as a well-handled tool.
These, and the memory of that windy day
On the bare hills, beyond the last barbed wire,
When all the orange poppies bloomed one way
As if a breath would blow them into fire,
I keep forever, like the sea-lion’s tusk
The broken sailor brings away to land,
But when he touches it, he smells the musk,
And the whole sea lies hollow in his hand.
So, from a hundred visions, I make one,
And out of darkness build my mocking sun.
And should that task seem fruitless in the eyes
Of those a different magic sets apart
To see through the ice-crystal of the wise
No nation but the nation that is Art,
Their words are just. But when the birchbark-call
Is shaken with the sound that hunters make
The moose comes plunging through the forest-wall
Although the rifle waits beside the lake.
Art has no nations—but the mortal sky
Lingers like gold in immortality.
This flesh was seeded from no foreign grain
But Pennsylvania and Kentucky wheat,
And it has soaked in California rain
And five years tempered in New England sleet
To strive at last, against an alien proof
And by the changes of an alien moon,
To build again that blue, American roof
Over a half-forgotten battle-tune
And call unsurely, from a haunted ground,
Armies of shadows and the shadow-sound.
In your Long House there is an attic-place
Full of dead epics and machines that rust,
And there, occasionally, with casual face,
You come awhile to stir the sleepy dust;
Neither in pride not mercy, but in vast
Indifference at so many gifts unsought,
The yellowed satins, smelling of the past,
And all the loot the lucky pirates brought.
I only bring a cup of silver air,
Yet, in your casualness, receive it there.
Receive the dream too haughty for the breast,
Receive the words that should have walked as bold
As the storm walks along the mountain-crest
And are like beggars whining in the cold.
The maimed presumption, the unskilful skill,
The patchwork colors, fading from the first,
And all the fire that fretted at the will
With such a barren ecstasy of thirst.
Receive them all—and should you choose to touch them
With one slant ray of quick, American light,
Even the dust will have no power to smutch them,
Even the worst will glitter in the night.
If not—the dry bones littered by the way
May still point giants toward their golden prey.
Prelude
The Slaver
He closed the Bible carefully, putting it down
As if his fingers loved it. Then he turned.
“Mr. Mate.” “Yes, sir.” The captain’s eyes held a shadow.
“I think, while this weather lasts,” he said, after a pause,
“We’d better get them on deck as much as we can.
They keep better that way. Besides,” he added, unsmiling,
“She’s begun to stink already. You’ve noticed it?”
The mate nodded, a boyish nod of half-apology,
“And only a week out, too, sir.” “Yes,” said the skipper.
His eyes looked into themselves. “Well. The trade,” he said,
“The trade’s no damn perfume-shop.” He drummed with his fingers.
“Seem to be quiet tonight,” he murmured at last.
“Oh yes sir, quiet enough.” The mate flushed. “Not
What you’d call quiet at home but—quiet enough.”
“Um,” said the skipper. “What about the big fellow?”
“Tarbarrel, sir? The man who says he’s a king?
He was praying to something—it made the others restless.
Mr. Olsen stopped it.” “I don’t like that,” said the skipper.
“It was only an idol, sir.” “Oh.” “A stone or something.”
“Oh.” “But he’s a bad one, sir—a regular sullen one—
He—eyes in the dark—like a cat’s—enough to give you—”
The mate was young. He shivered. “The creeps,” he said.
“We’ve had that kind,” said the skipper. His mouth was hard
Then it relaxed. “Damn cheating Arabe!” he said,
“I told them I’d take no more of their pennyweight kings,
Worth pounds to look at, and then when you get them aboard
Go crazy so they have to be knocked on the head
Or else just eat up their hearts and die in a week
Taking up room for nothing.”
The mate hardly heard him, thinking of something else.
“I’m afraid we’ll lose some more of the women,” he said.
“Well, they’re a scratch lot,” said the skipper, “Any sickness?”
“Just the usual, sir.” “But nothing like plague or—” “No sir.”
“The Lord is merciful,” said the skipper.
His voice was wholly sincere—an old ship’s bell
Hung in the steeple of a meeting-house
With all New England and the sea’s noise in it.
“Well, you’d better take another look-see, Mr. Mate.”
The mate felt his lips go dry. “Aye aye, sir,” he said,
Wetting his lips with his tongue. As he left the cabin
He heard the Bible being opened again.
Lantern in hand, he went down to the hold.
Each time he went he had a trick of trying
To shut the pores of his body against the stench
By force of will, by thinking of
