Old Woman
THE owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo From building and battered paving-stone. The headlight scoffs at the mist, And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain; Against a pane I press
Salvage
GUNS on the battle lines have pounded now a year Between Brussels and Paris. And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on The great arches and naves and little whimsical Corners of
All Day Long
ALL day long in fog and wind, The waves have flung their beating crests Against the palisades of adamant. My boy, he went to sea, long and long ago, Curls of brown were slipping
Carlovingian Dreams
COUNT these reminiscences like money. The Greeks had their picnics under another name. The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors, “What of it?” The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too Stuck
Testament
I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body To the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the Feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left Over they can not
Kin
BROTHER, I am fire Surging under the ocean floor. I shall never meet you, brother Not for years, anyhow; Maybe thousands of years, brother. Then I will warm you, Hold you close, wrap you
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
Hate
ONE man killed another. The saying between them had been “I’d give you the shirt off my back.” The killer wept over the dead. The dead if he looks back knows the killer was
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;
Shirt
I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in the wind. Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and the picture of you shivered and
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