Memoranda
THIS handful of grass, brown, says little. This quarter mile field of it, waving seeds ripening in the sun, is a lake of luminous firefly lavender. Prairie roses, two of them, climb down the
Our Prayer of Thanks
For the gladness here where the sun is shining at Evening on the weeds at the river, Our prayer of thanks. For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and Bareheaded in the summer
Throwbacks
SOMEWHERE you and I remember we came. Stairways from the sea and our heads dripping. Ladders of dust and mud and our hair snarled. Rags of drenching mist and our hands clawing, climbing. You
Calls
BECAUSE I have called to you As the flame flamingo calls, Or the want of a spotted hawk Is called- because in the dusk The warblers shoot the running Waters of short songs to
The Four Brothers
MAKE war songs out of these; Make chants that repeat and weave. Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns; Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Personality
Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb. You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only One thumb. You
Cahoots
PLAY it across the table. What if we steal this city blind? If they want any thing let ’em nail it down. Harness bulls, dicks, front office men, And the high goats up on
Silver Wind
DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer- Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change
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
Ashurnatsirpal III
THREE walls around the town of Tela when I came. They expected everything of those walls; Nobody in the town came out to kiss my feet. I knocked the walls down, killed three thousand
Good-night
MANY ways to spell good night. Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes. They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit. Rockets
Old Osawatomie
JOHN BROWN’S body under the morning stars. Six feet of dust under the morning stars. And a panorama of war performs itself Over the six-foot stage of circling armies. Room for Gettysburg, Wilderness, Chickamauga,
Mist Forms
THE SHEETS of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all? How many times can
Sandpipers
Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers-the script of their feet is on the sea shingles-they write in the morning, it is gone at noon-they write at noon, it
Clean Curtains
NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets. The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun’s bonnet. One way was an oyster
Among the Red Guns
After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang Low among dry leaves in an elm AMONG the red guns, In the hearts of soldiers Running free blood In the long, long campaign:
Blizzard Notes
I DON’T blame the kettle drums-they are hungry. And the snare drums-I know what they want-they are empty too. And the harring booming bass drums-they are hungriest of all.. . . The howling spears
Slants at Buffalo, New York
A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky. It says: This way! this way! Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft. They too are the dream
Broken Tabernacles
HAVE I broken the smaller tabernacles, O Lord? And in the destruction of these set up the greater and massive, the everlasting tabernacles? I know nothing today, what I have done and why, O
Back Yard
Shine on, O moon of summer. Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, All silver under your rain to-night. An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. A
Sand Scribblings
THE WIND stops, the wind begins. The wind says stop, begin. A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor. The shovel changes, the floor changes. The sandpipers, maybe they know. Maybe a three-pointed foot can
Crucible
Hot gold runs a winding stream on the inside of a green bowl. Yellow trickles in a fan figure, scatters a line of skirmishers, spreads a chorus of dancing girls, performs blazing ochre evolutions,