Omaha

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1. Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window INTO the blue river hills The red sun runners go And the long sand changes And to-day is a goner And to-day is not worth haggling over. Here in Omaha The gloaming is bitter As in Chicago Or Kenosha. The long sand changes. To-day is a goner. Time knocks in another brass nail. Another yellow […]...
2. From Paumanok Starting FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird, Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself-to Michigan then, To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;) Then to Ohio and Indiana […]...
3. Limited I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains Of the nation. Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air Go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people. (All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men And women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall Pass […]...
4. New Farm Tractor The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses. It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here. The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules-he sings to you instead of ten span of mules. A bucket of oil and a […]...
5. Legend of the Albino Farm Omaha, Nebraska They do not sleep nights But stand between Rows of glowing corn and Cabbages grown on acres past The edge of the city. Surrendered flags, Their nightgowns furl and Unfurl around their legs. Only women could be this White. Like mules, They are sterile And it appears that Their mouths are always Open. […]...
6. Others may Praise what They Like OTHERS may praise what they like; But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in art, or aught else, Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river-also the western prairie-scent, And fully exudes it again....
7. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
8. Eve – Song I span and Eve span A thread to bind the heart of man; But the heart of man was a wandering thing That came and went with little to bring: Nothing he minded what we made, As here he loitered, and there he stayed. I span and Eve span A thread to bind the heart […]...
9. Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
10. Joliet ON the one hand the steel works. On the other hand the penitentiary. Sante Fé trains and Alton trains Between smokestacks on the west And gray walls on the east. And Lockport down the river. Part of the valley is God’s. And part is man’s. The river course laid out A thousand years ago. The […]...
11. River Moons THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face, The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head. I saw them last […]...
12. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
13. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
14. Dear Deborah They tell me that your heart Has been found in Iowa, Pumping along Interstate 35. Do you want it back? When the cold comes on This fast, it’s Iowa again- Where pollen disperses Evenly on the dented Fords, Where white houses sag By the town’s corn silos, Where people in the houses Sicken on corn […]...
15. Drinking Song, On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine My jolly fat host with your face all a-grin, Come, open the door to us, let us come in. A score of stout fellows who think it no sin If they toast till they’re hoarse, and drink till they spin, Hoofed it amain Rain or no rain, To crack your old jokes, and your bottle […]...
16. Josiah Tompkins I was well known and much beloved And rich, as fortunes are reckoned In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. That was the home for me, Though all my children had flown afar- Which is the way of Nature-all but one. The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, To be my […]...
17. Hemlock and Cedar THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs… near the shingle mill… winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard… circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland… brown… soft… tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires… funnel of yellow smoke… spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled […]...
18. A Musical Instrument What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river. He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of […]...
19. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
20. Buttons I HAVE been watching the war map slammed up for Advertising in front of the newspaper office. Buttons red and yellow buttons blue and black buttons Are shoved back and forth across the map. A laughing young man, sunny with freckles, Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd, And then fixes […]...
21. Fog Portrait RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail… and a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the […]...
22. 235. Song-The Fall of the Leaf THE LAZY mist hangs from the brow of the hill, Concealing the course of the dark-winding rill; How languid the scenes, late so sprightly, appear! As Autumn to Winter resigns the pale year. The forests are leafless, the meadows are brown, And all the gay foppery of summer is flown: Apart let me wander, apart […]...
23. Villanelle At Sundown Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow. The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened. Why this is, I’ll never be able to tell you. Or are Americans half in love with failure? One used to say so, reading Fitzgerald, as it happened. (That Viking Portable, all water spotted and yellow Remember?) […]...
24. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
25. Fight to a Finish The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying, And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, And hear the music of returning feet. ‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought, This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.) Snapping their bayonets on to charge the […]...
26. White Hands FOR the second time in a year this lady with the white hands is brought to the west room second floor of a famous sanatorium. Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa town and the lady has often read papers on Victorian poets before the local literary club. Yesterday she washed her hands […]...
27. Leather Leggings THEY have taken the ball of earth and made it a little thing. They were held to the land and horses; they were held to the little seas. They have changed and shaped and welded; they have broken the old tools and made new ones; they are ranging the white scarves of cloudland; they are […]...
28. The Mowed Hollow When yellow leaves the sky They pipe it to the houses To go on making red And warm and floral and brown But gradually people tire of it, Return it inside metal, and go To be dark and breathe water colours. Some yellow hangs on outside Forlornly tethered to posts. Cars chase their own supply. […]...
29. The Future A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he […]...
30. Darest Thou Now, O Soul 1 DAREST thou now, O Soul, Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow? 2 No map, there, nor guide, Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. 3 I […]...
31. The Rainy Day Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the Forest. O child, do not go out! The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads Against the dismal sky; the crows with their dragged wings are Silent on the tamarind branches, and the eastern bank of the river Is […]...
32. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
33. A Fence NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the Workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that Can stab the life out of any man who falls on them. As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble And all […]...
34. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
35. Read Your Fate A world’s disappearing. Little street, You were too narrow, Too much in the shade already. You had only one dog, One lone child. You hid your biggest mirror, Your undressed lovers. Someone carted them off In an open truck. They were still naked, travelling On their sofa Over a darkening plain, Some unknown Kansas or […]...
36. Are You Drinking? washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook out again I write from the bed as I did last year. will see the doctor, Monday. “yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head- aches and my back hurts.” “are you drinking?” he will ask. “are you getting your Exercise, your vitamins?” I think that I am just ill […]...
37. Chords IN the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea and adumbrants of rock in her eyes… horseback in leather boots and leather gauntlets by the sea. In the evening, a Sunday evening, a rope of pearls on her white shoulders… and a speaking, brooding black velvet, relapsing to the voiceless… battering Russian marches on a […]...
38. Smoke and Steel SMOKE of the fields in spring is one, Smoke of the leaves in autumn another. Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel, They all go up in a line with a smokestack, Or they twist… in the slow twist… of the wind. If the north wind comes they run to the south. If […]...
39. SYMPHONY IN YELLOW An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge. Big barges full of yellow hay Are moored against the shadowy wharf, And, like a yellow silken scarf, The thick fog hangs along the quay. The yellow leaves begin to fade And flutter […]...
40. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...