Manual System
MARY has a thingamajig clamped on her ears And sits all day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in. Flashes and flashes-voices and voices calling for ears to pour words in Faces at the
Eleventh Avenue Racket
THERE is something terrible About a hurdy-gurdy, A gipsy man and woman, And a monkey in red flannel All stopping in front of a big house With a sign “For Rent” on the door
Under a Hat Rim
WHILE the hum and the hurry Of passing footfalls Beat in my ear like the restless surf Of a wind-blown sea, A soul came to me Out of the look on a face. Eyes
Tangibles
(Washington, August, 1918)I HAVE seen this city in the day and the sun. I have seen this city in the night and the moon. And in the night and the moon I have seen
Mammy Hums
THIS is the song I rested with: The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on. The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat. The eyes
Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight
THE POLICEMAN buys shoes slow and careful; The teamster buys gloves slow and careful; They take care of their feet and hands; They live on their feet and hands. The milkman never argues; He
Potomac Town in February
THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am. The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up. The white water says: I go on;
The Lawyers Know Too Much
THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much. They are chums of the books of old John Marshall. They know it all, what a dead hand wrote, A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling, The
Boes
I WAITED today for a freight train to pass. Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the Bars, went by. And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between Cars. Well, the
Sleepyheads
SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at the balance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy over, the whole works tumbles a
Proud and Beautiful
AFTER you have spent all the money modistes and manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you over into a thing the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After the shops and
White Shoulders
YOUR white shoulders I remember And your shrug of laughter. Low laughter Shaken slow From your white shoulders. Where the moon slants and wavers.
Memoir of a Proud Boy
HE lived on the wings of storm. The ashes are in Chihuahua. Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks. Killings ran under the
Dancer
THE LADY in red, she in the chile con carne red, Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun, She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after
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
Cool Tombs
WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs. And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street,
Branches
The long beautiful night of the wind and rain in April, The long night hanging down from the drooping branches of the top of a birch tree, Swinging, swaying, to the wind for a
Boy and Father
THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer. The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn. Alexander has asked his father to let him
Street Window
THE PAWN-SHOP man knows hunger, And how far hunger has eaten the heart Of one who comes with an old keepsake. Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets, Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled
Young Sea
The sea is never still. It pounds on the shore Restless as a young heart, Hunting. The sea speaks And only the stormy hearts Know what it says: It is the face of a
From The Shore
A LONE gray bird, Dim-dipping, far-flying, Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults Of night and the sea And the stars and storms. Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers, Out into
Killers
I AM singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs, Held where he cannot move: Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for
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
Vaudeville Dancer
ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville. The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues. It is long
Who am I?
My head knocks against the stars. My feet are on the hilltops. My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of Universal life. Down in the sounding foam of primal things I Reach my
Bronzes
I THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr By in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment For dinner
A Teamster's Farewell
Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary GOOD-BY now to the streets and the clash of wheels and Locking hubs, The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs. The muscles of the horses
Crimson Changes People
DID I see a crucifix in your eyes And nails and Roman soldiers And a dusk Golgotha? Did I see Mary, the changed woman, Washing the feet of all men, Clean as new grass
Flash Crimson
I SHALL cry God to give me a broken foot. I shall ask for a scar and a slashed nose. I shall take the last and the worst. I shall be eaten by gray
Upstairs
I TOO have a garret of old playthings. I have tin soldiers with broken arms upstairs. I have a wagon and the wheels gone upstairs. I have guns and a drum, a jumping-jack and
On The Breakwater
On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting, She across his knee and they are looking face into face Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in
Under the Harvest Moon
Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Under the summer roses When
Languages
THERE are no handles upon a language Whereby men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its remembrance. It is a river, this language, Once in a thousand years Breaking a
Momus
Momus is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, Where gray rocks let the salt water
Waiting
TODAY I will let the old boat stand Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway. And I will rest and dream and sit on
Stars, Songs, Faces
GATHER the stars if you wish it so. Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years. And then… Loosen your hands, let go and say
Crimson
CRIMSON is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold, Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (A great man I know is dead and while he lies
Joy
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands And take it when it runs by, As the Apache dancer Clutches his woman. I have seen them Live long and laugh loud, Sent on
Losers
IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark And came out alive after all. If I
On the Way
LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with Lawyers And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been Getting an earful of speech
Sandhill People
I TOOK away three pictures. One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan. One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset
Weeds
FROM the time of the early radishes To the time of the standing corn Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes. There are laws in the village against weeds. The law says a weed is wrong and
Put Off the Wedding Five Times and Nobody Comes to It
(Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms. I might have said, “Dogs bark and the wind carries it away.” I might have said, “He who would make a door of gold must
Fire-Logs
NANCY HANKS dreams by the fire; Dreams, and the logs sputter, And the yellow tongues climb. Red lines lick their way in flickers. Oh, sputter, logs. Oh, dream, Nancy. Time now for a beautiful
River Roads
LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw. They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere. Let ’em hawk their caw and caw. Let the woodpecker drum and drum on
Threes
I WAS a boy when I heard three red words A thousand Frenchmen died in the streets For: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—I asked Why men die for words. I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
Laughing Corn
THERE was a high majestic fooling Day before yesterday in the yellow corn. And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn There will be high majestic fooling. The ears ripen in late summer And
Jazz Fantasia
DRUM on your drums, batter on your banjoes, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen. Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy tin pans, let your trombones
Wind Song
LONG ago I learned how to sleep, In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away, In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and
Moonset
LEAVES of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west. Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures. The moon’s good-by ends pictures. The west is empty. All else is empty. No moon-talk at
Flying Fish
I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself… and so I know you. I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by
Theme In Yellow
I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children
Troths
YELLOW dust on a bumble Bee’s wing, Grey lights in a woman’s Asking eyes, Red ruins in the changing Sunset embers: I take you and pile high The memories. Death will break her claws
Mask
Fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer. It is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves, masses of green. Your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling. The silk and
Sketch
THE shadows of the ships Rock on the crest In the low blue lustre Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide. A long brown bar at the dip of the sky Puts an
People With Proud Chins
I TELL them where the wind comes from, Where the music goes when the fiddle is in the box. Kids-I saw one with a proud chin, a sleepyhead, And the moonline creeping white on
Fish Crier
I KNOW a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a Voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble In January. He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing A joy identical with
Baltic Fog Notes
(Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun,
John Ericsson Day Memorial, 1918
INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings
Dusty Doors
CHILD of the Aztec gods, How long must we listen here, How long before we go? The dust is deep on the lintels. The dust is dark on the doors. If the dreams shake
Broken-face Gargoyles
ALL I can give you is broken-face gargoyles. It is too early to sing and dance at funerals, Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and
They All Want to Play Hamlet
THEY all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly
Soup
I SAW a famous man eating soup. I say he was lifting a fat broth Into his mouth with a spoon. His name was in the newspapers that day Spelled out in tall black
Plaster
“I KNEW a real man once,” says Agatha in the splendor of a shagbark hickory tree. Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold her in his arms? Did a
Aprons of Silence
MANY things I might have said today. And I kept my mouth shut. So many times I was asked To come and say the same things Everybody was saying, no end To the yes-yes,
Jack
JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, And his hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight
Haze
KEEP a red heart of memories Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky, Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers. Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds; All starlights of
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
Bas-Relief
FIVE geese deploy mysteriously. Onward proudly with flagstaffs, Hearses with silver bugles, Bushels of plum-blossoms dropping For ten mystic web-feet- Each his own drum-major, Each charged with the honor Of the ancient goose nation,
Clocks
HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. A tall one I know at the
The Wind Sings Welcome in Early Spring
(For Paula)THE GRIP of the ice is gone now. The silvers chase purple. The purples tag silver. They let out their runners Here where summer says to the lilies: “Wish and be wistful, Circle
The South Wind Say So
IF the oriole calls like last year When the south wind sings in the oats, If the leaves climb and climb on a bean pole Saying over a song learnt from the south wind,
Early Moon
THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west. A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon. One
Night Stuff
LISTEN a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus rider’s silver dress. Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely
Lawyer
WHEN the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks of direct and cross examinations, hot clashes of lawyers and cool decisions of the judge, There are points of high silence-twiddling of thumbs
Alix
THE MARE Alix breaks the world’s trotting record one day. I see her heels flash down the dust of an Illinois race track on a summer afternoon. I see the timekeepers put their heads
Mag
I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. I wish we never bought a license and a white dress For you
Halsted Street Car
COME you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o’clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these
Woman with a Past
THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry. There was a woman spoke six
Evening Waterfall
WHAT was the name you called me?- And why did you go so soon? The crows lift their caw on the wind, And the wind changed and was lonely. The warblers cry their sleepy-songs
Jan Kubelik
YOUR bow swept over a string, and a long low note Quivered to the air. (A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child perfect Learning to suck milk.) Your bow ran fast over
Buffalo Bill
BOY heart of Johnny Jones-aching to-day? Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town? Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians? Some of us know All about it, Johnny Jones. Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of
The Noon Hour
SHE sits in the dust at the walls And makes cigars, Bending at the bench With fingers wage-anxious, Changing her sweat for the day’s pay. Now the noon hour has come, And she leans
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
Brass Keys
JOY… weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel… painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face… slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door
Aztec Mask
I wanted a man’s face looking into the jaws and throat Of life With something proud on his face, so proud no smash Of the jaws, No gulp of the throat leaves the face
Subway
DOWN between the walls of shadow Where the iron laws insist, The hunger voices mock. The worn wayfaring men With the hunched and humble shoulders, Throw their laughter into toil.
Pals
Take a hold now On the silver handles here, Six silver handles, One for each of his old pals. Take hold And lift him down the stairs, Put him on the rollers Over the
In a Back Alley
REMEMBRANCE for a great man is this. The newsies are pitching pennies. And on the copper disk is the man’s face. Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?
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
A Tall Man
THE MOUTH of this man is a gaunt strong mouth. The head of this man is a gaunt strong head. The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians. The
Home Thoughts
THE SEA rocks have a green moss. The pine rocks have red berries. I have memories of you. Speak to me of how you miss me. Tell me the hours go long and slow.
The Has-Been
A STONE face higher than six horses stood five thousand Years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret. A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the End of the
Humming Bird Woman
WHY should I be wondering How you would look in black velvet and yellow? in orange and green? I who cannot remember whether it was a dash of blue Or a whirr of red
Omaha
RED barns and red heifers spot the green Grass circles around Omaha-the farmers Haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese. Shale hogbacks across the river at Council Bluffs-and shanties hang by an
Bringers
COVER me over In dusk and dust and dreams. Cover me over And leave me alone. Cover me over, You tireless, great. Hear me and cover me, Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams.
Interior
IN the cool of the night time The clocks pick off the points And the mainsprings loosen. They will need winding. One of these days… they will need winding. Rabelais in red boards, Walt
Death Snips Proud Men
DEATH is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs: Now you see ’em, now you don’t. Death is stronger than all proud men and
In Tall Grass
BEES and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture corner-a skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters. And I ask no
To a Contemporary Bunkshooter
YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about Jesus. Where do you get that stuff? What do you know about Jesus? Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside