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