Onion Days

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1. Five Cent Balloons PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string. They flutter and dance pulling Pietro’s arm. A nickel apiece is what they sell for. Wishing children tag Pietro’s heels. He sells out and goes the streets alone....
2. Day of These Days Such a morning it is when love Leans through geranium windows And calls with a cockerel’s tongue. When red-haired girls scamper like roses Over the rain-green grass; And the sun drips honey. When hedgerows grow venerable, Berries dry black as blood, And holes suck in their bees. Such a morning it is when mice Run […]...
3. Balloon Faces THE BALLOONS hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens. They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky. Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, “What shall we eat?”-and the waiters, “Have you ordered?” they are sixty ballon […]...
4. Rich Days Welcome to you rich Autumn days, Ere comes the cold, leaf-picking wind; When golden stocks are seen in fields, All standing arm-in-arm entwined; And gallons of sweet cider seen On trees in apples red and green. With mellow pears that cheat our teeth, Which melt that tongues may suck them in; With blue-black damsons, yellow […]...
5. Son-Days 1 Bright shadows of true Rest! some shoots of bliss, Heaven once a week; The next world’s gladness prepossest in this; A day to seek; Eternity in time; the steps by which We Climb above all ages; Lamps that light Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich, And full redemption of the […]...
6. Hi-spy Strange that the city thoroughfare, Noisy and bustling all the day, Should with the night renounce its care, And lend itself to children’s play! Oh, girls are girls, and boys are boys, And have been so since Abel’s birth, And shall be so till dolls and toys Are with the children swept from earth. The […]...
7. Isa Nutter Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis, And Doc Hill called it leucaemia But I know what brought me here: I was sixty-four but strong as a man Of thirty-five or forty. And it wasn’t writing a letter a day, And it wasn’t late hours seven nights a week, And it wasn’t the strain of thinking […]...
8. Last Week Oh, the new-chum went to the backblock run, But he should have gone there last week. He tramped ten miles with a loaded gun, But of turkey of duck saw never a one, For he should have been there last week, They said, There were flocks of ’em there last week. He wended his way […]...
9. Harlem Shadows I hear the halting footsteps of a lass In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass To bend and barter at desire’s call. Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet Go prowling through the night from street to street! Through the long night until […]...
10. Poems Done on a Late Night Car I. CHICKENS I am The Great White Way of the city: When you ask what is my desire, I answer: “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, With young faces tired of the cows and barns, Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries, Slender supple girls with shapely legs, Lure in the […]...
11. Ode To The Onion Onion, Luminous flask, Your beauty formed Petal by petal, Crystal scales expanded you And in the secrecy of the dark earth Your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth The miracle Happened And when your clumsy Green stem appeared, And your leaves were born Like swords In the garden, The earth heaped up her […]...
12. Crabapple Blossoms SOMEBODY’S little girl-how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now. Somebody’s little girl-she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair. It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse’s […]...
13. The Onion, Memory Divorced, but friends again at last, We walk old ground together In bright blue uncomplicated weather. We laugh and pause To hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs, Prehistoric, crenelated, cast Between the tractor ruts in mud. On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks, Swinging on the chestnut’s unlit chandelier, Defies the corporation spears A single […]...
14. Market days Mondays, way before dawn, Before even the first hint of blue in the windows, We’d hear it start, off the road past our place, Over on the highway nearby, In a clatter of market-bound traffic. Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl, Or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the […]...
15. The Only News I know The Only News I know Is Bulletins all Day From Immortality. The Only Shows I see Tomorrow and Today Perchance Eternity The Only One I meet Is God The Only Street Existence This traversed If Other News there be Or Admirable Show I’ll tell it You...
16. How News must feel when travelling How News must feel when travelling If News have any Heart Alighting at the Dwelling ‘Twill enter like a Dart! What News must think when pondering If News have any Thought Concerning the stupendousness Of its perceiveless freight! What News will do when every Man Shall comprehend as one And not in all the Universe […]...
17. Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks What is so utterly invisible As tomorrow? Not love, Not the wind, Not the inside of a stone. Not anything. And yet, how often I’m fooled I’m wading along In the sunlight And I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining Days ahead I can see the light spilling Like a shower […]...
18. Graceland TOMB of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament […]...
19. Days Of 1903 I never found them again the things so quickly lost…. The poetic eyes, the pale Face…. in the dusk of the street…. I never found them again the things acquired quite by chance, That I gave up so lightly; And that later in agony I wanted. The poetic eyes, the pale face, Those lips, I […]...
20. A Game of Fives Five little girls, of Five, Four, Three, Two, One: Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun. Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six: Sitting down to lessons – no more time for tricks. Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven: Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven! Five winsome girls, […]...
21. Days Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, […]...
22. The Little Orphan The crowded street his playground is, a patch of blue his sky; A puddle in a vacant lot his sea where ships pass by: Poor little orphan boy of five, the city smoke and grime Taint every cooling breeze he gets throughout the summer time; And he is just as your boy is, a child […]...
23. Working Girls THE working girls in the morning are going to work Long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores And factories, thousands with little brick-shaped Lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms. Each morning as I move through this river of young- Woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all Going, so […]...
24. Blue Ridge BORN a million years ago you stay here a million years… Watching the women come and live and be laid away… You and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely. So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star. I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains....
25. In a Breath To the Williamson Brothers HIGH noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue Asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors. Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching Play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes. Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea. From the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks, […]...
26. Dreams of better days At break of day we rested, the contest of our wills Declined to wrest the peace away and where The foreign powers held sway a quiet was in abundance; A ghostly calm entranced the crowd shrouded In the shadow dance we left them, proud and unafraid, We fled the play, we fled the crowd, we […]...
27. We talked as Girls do We talked as Girls do Fond, and late We speculated fair, on every subject, but the Grave Of ours, none affair We handled Destinies, as cool As we Disposers be And God, a Quiet Party To our Authority But fondest, dwelt upon Ourself As we eventual be When Girls to Women, softly raised We occupy […]...
28. Ida Chicken After I had attended lectures At our Chautauqua, and studied French For twenty years, committing the grammar Almost by heart, I thought I’d take a trip to Paris To give my culture a final polish. So I went to Peoria for a passport (Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.) And there the clerk […]...
29. The Laughter Of Women The laughter of women sets fire To the Halls of Injustice And the false evidence burns To a beautiful white lightness It rattles the Chambers of Congress And forces the windows wide open So the fatuous speeches can fly out The laughter of women wipes the mist From the spectacles of the old; It infects […]...
30. Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind “The past is a bucket of ashes.” 1 THE WOMAN named To-morrow Sits with a hairpin in her teeth And takes her time And does her hair the way she wants it And fastens at last the last braid and coil And puts the hairpin where it belongs And turns and drawls: Well, what of […]...
31. Among the Multitude AMONG the men and women, the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else-not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am; Some are baffled-But that one is not-that one knows me. Ah, lover and perfect equal! I meant that you should discover me so, by […]...
32. My Rocking-Chair When I am old and worse for wear I want to buy a rocking-chair, And set it on a porch where shine The stars of morning-glory vine; With just beyond, a gleam of grass, A shady street where people pass; And some who come with time to spare, To yarn beside my rocking-chair. Then I […]...
33. The Sequel to a Reminiscence Not in the street and not in the square, The street and square where you went and came; With shuttered casement your house stands bare, Men hush their voice when they speak your name. I, too, can play at the vain pretence, Can feign you dead; while a voice sounds clear In the inmost depths […]...
34. Acrostic Little maidens, when you look On this little story-book, Reading with attentive eye Its enticing history, Never think that hours of play Are your only HOLIDAY, And that in a HOUSE of joy Lessons serve but to annoy: If in any HOUSE you find Children of a gentle mind, Each the others pleasing ever Each […]...
35. Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded Has sorrow thy young days shaded, As clouds o’er the morning fleet? Too fast have those young days faded That, even in sorrow, were sweet? Does Time with his cold wing wither Each feeling that once was dear? Then, child of misfortune, come hither, I’ll weep with thee, tear for tear. Has love to that […]...
36. 301. Lines to a Gentleman who sent a Newspaper KIND Sir, I’ve read your paper through, And faith, to me, ’twas really new! How guessed ye, Sir, what maist I wanted? This mony a day I’ve grain’d and gaunted, To ken what French mischief was brewin; Or what the drumlie Dutch were doin; That vile doup-skelper, Emperor Joseph, If Venus yet had got his […]...
37. Our Daily Bread “Give me my daily bread. It seems so odd, When all is done and said, This plea to God. To pray for cake might be The thing to do; But bread, it seems to me, Is just our due. “Give me my daily toil,” I ought to say – (If from life’s cursed coil I’d […]...
38. Do You Want Affidavits? THERE’S a hole in the bottom of the sea. Do you want affidavits? There’s a man in the moon with money for you. Do you want affidavits? There are ten dancing girls in a sea-chamber off Nantucket waiting for you. There are tall candles in Timbuctoo burning penance for you. There are-anything else? Speak now-for […]...
39. Choices They offer you many things, I a few. Moonlight on the play of fountains at night With water sparkling a drowsy monotone, Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk And a cross-play of loves and adulteries And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets: All this they offer you. I come with: Salt and bread […]...
40. The Roaring Days The night too quickly passes And we are growing old, So let us fill our glasses And toast the Days of Gold; When finds of wondrous treasure Set all the South ablaze, And you and I were faithful mates All through the roaring days! Then stately ships came sailing From every harbour’s mouth, And sought […]...