Smoke and Steel

Carl Sandburg

This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com

  • FIVE TOWNS ON THE B. AND O.
  • WORK GANGS
  • PENNSYLVANIA
  • WHIRLS
  • PEOPLE WHO MUST
  • PEOPLE WHO MUST
  • ALLEY RATS
  • ELEVENTH AVENUE RACKET
  • HOME FIRES
  • HATS
  • THEY ALL WANT TO PLAY HAMLET
  • THE MAYOR OF GARY
  • OMAHA
  • GALOOTS
  • CRABAPPLE BLOSSOMS
  • REAL ESTATE NEWS
  • MANUAL SYSTEM
  • STRIPES
  • HONKY TONK IN CLEVELAND, OHIO
  • CRAPSHOOTERS
  • SOUP
  • CLINTON SOUTH OF POLK
  • BLUE ISLAND INTERSECTION
  • RED-HEADED RESTAURANT CASHIER
  • BOY AND FATHER
  • CLEAN CURTAINS
  • CRIMSON CHANGES PEOPLE
  • NEIGHBORS
  • CAHOOTS
  • BLUE MAROONS
  • THE HANGMAN AT HOME
  • MAN, THE MAN-HUNTER
  • THE SINS OF KALAMAZOO
  • BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES
  • BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES
  • APRONS OF SILENCE
  • DEATH SNIPS PROUD MEN
  • GOOD NIGHT
  • SHIRT
  • JAZZ FANTASIA
  • DO YOU WANT AFFIDAVITS?
  • "OLD-FASHIONED REQUITED LOVE"
  • PURPLE MARTINS
  • BRASS KEYS
  • PICK-OFFS
  • MANUFACTURED GODS
  • MASK
  • PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND
  • FOUR PRELUDES ON PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • BROKEN TABERNACLES
  • OSSAWATOMIE
  • LONG GUNS
  • DUSTY DOORS
  • FLASH CRIMSON
  • THE LAWYERS KNOW TOO MUCH
  • LOSERS
  • PLACES
  • THREES
  • THE LIARS
  • PRAYER AFTER WORLD WAR
  • A. E. F.
  • BAS-RELIEF
  • CARLOVINGIAN DREAMS
  • BRONZES
  • LET LOVE GO ON
  • KILLERS
  • CLEAN HANDS
  • THREE GHOSTS
  • PENCILS
  • JUG
  • AND THIS WILL BE ALL?
  • HOODLUMS
  • YES, THE DEAD SPEAK TO US
  • MIST FORMS
  • CALLS
  • SEA-WASH
  • SILVER WIND
  • EVENING WATERFALL
  • CRUCIBLE
  • SUMMER STARS
  • THROW ROSES
  • JUST BEFORE APRIL CAME
  • STARS, SONGS, FACES
  • SANDPIPERS
  • THREE VIOLINS
  • THE WIND SINGS WELCOME IN EARLY SPRING
  • TAWNY
  • SLIPPERY
  • HELGA
  • BABY TOES
  • PEOPLE WITH PROUD CHINS
  • WINTER MILK
  • SLEEPYHEADS
  • SUMACH AND BIRDS
  • WOMEN WASHING THEIR HAIR
  • PEACH BLOSSOMS
  • HALF MOON IN A HIGH WIND
  • REMORSE
  • RIVER MOONS
  • SAND SCRIBBLINGS
  • HOW YESTERDAY LOOKED
  • PAULA
  • LAUGHING BLUE STEEL
  • THEY ASK EACH OTHER WHERE THEY COME FROM
  • HOW MUCH?
  • THROWBACKS
  • WIND SONG
  • THREE SPRING NOTATIONS ON BIPEDS
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • SANDHILL PEOPLE
  • FAR ROCKAWAY NIGHT TILL MORNING
  • HUMMINGBIRD WOMAN
  • BUCKWHEAT
  • 1
  • 2
  • BLUE RIDGE
  • VALLEY SONG
  • MIST FORMS
  • PIGEON
  • CHASERS
  • HORSE FIDDLE
  • TIMBER WINGS
  • NIGHT STUFF
  • SPANISH
  • SHAG-BARK HICKORY
  • THE SOUTH WIND SAYS SO
  • ACCOMPLISHED FACTS
  • ACCOMPLISHED FACTS
  • GRIEG BEING DEAD
  • CHORDS
  • DOGHEADS
  • TRINITY PEACE
  • PORTRAIT
  • POTOMAC RIVER MIST
  • JACK LONDON AND O. HENRY
  • HIS OWN FACE HIDDEN
  • CUPS OF COFFEE
  • PASSPORTS
  • SMOKE ROSE GOLD
  • TANGIBLES
  • NIGHT MOVEMENT---NEW YORK
  • NORTH ATLANTIC
  • FOG PORTRAIT
  • FLYING FISH
  • HOME THOUGHTS
  • IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE
  • TWO ITEMS
  • STREETS TOO OLD
  • SAVOIR FAIRE
  • MOHAMMED BEK HADJETLACHE
  • HIGH CONSPIRATORIAL PERSONS
  • BALTIC FOG NOTES
  • CIRCLES OF DOORS
  • CIRCLES OF DOORS
  • HATE
  • TWO STRANGERS BREAKFAST
  • SNOW
  • DANCER
  • PLASTER
  • CURSE OF A RICH POLISH PEASANT ON HIS SISTER WHO RAN AWAY WITH A WILD MAN
  • WOMAN WITH A PAST
  • WHITE HANDS
  • AN ELECTRIC SIGN GOES DARK
  • THEY BUY WITH AN EYE TO LOOKS
  • PROUD AND BEAUTIFUL
  • TELEGRAM
  • GLIMMER
  • WHITE ASH
  • TESTIMONY REGARDING A GHOST
  • PUT OFF THE WEDDING FIVE TIMES AND NOBODY COMES TO IT (Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)
  • BABY VAMPS
  • VAUDEVILLE DANCER
  • BALLOON FACES
  • HAZE
  • HAZE
  • CADENZA
  • MEMORANDA
  • POTOMAC TOWN IN FEBRUARY
  • BUFFALO DUSK
  • CORN HUT TALK
  • BRANCHES
  • RUSTY CRIMSON
  • LETTER S
  • WEEDS
  • NEW FARM TRACTOR
  • PODS
  • HARVEST SUNSET
  • NIGHT'S NOTHINGS AGAIN
  • PANELS
  • PANELS
  • DAN
  • WHIFFLETREE
  • MASCOTS
  • THE SKYSCRAPER LOVES NIGHT
  • NEVER BORN
  • THIN STRIPS
  • FIVE CENT BALLOONS
  • MY PEOPLE
  • SWIRL
  • WISTFUL
  • BASKET
  • FIRE PAGES
  • FINISH
  • FOR YOU


  •            Smoke of the fields in spring is one,
               Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
               Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
               They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
               Or they twist ... in the slow twist ... of the wind.


               If the north wind comes they run to the south.
               If the west wind comes they run to the east.
                        By this sign
                        all smokes
                      know each other.
             Smoke of the fields in spring and leaves in autumn,
             Smoke of the finished steel, chilled and blue,
             By the oath of work they swear: "I know you."


             Hunted and hissed from the center
             Deep down long ago when God made us over,
             Deep down are the cinders we came from—
             You and I and our heads of smoke.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·




             Some of the smokes God dropped on the job
             Cross on the sky and count our years
             And sing in the secrets of our numbers;
             Sing their dawns and sing their evenings,
             Sing an old log-fire song:
                       You may put the damper up,
                       You may put the damper down,
                       The smoke goes up the chimney just the same.


             Smoke of a city sunset skyline,
             Smoke of a country dusk horizon—
                       They cross on the sky and count our years.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·




             Smoke of a brick-red dust
                        Winds on a spiral
                        Out of the stacks
             For a hidden and glimpsing moon.
             This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill,
             This is the slang of coal and steel.
             The day-gang hands it to the night-gang,
             The night-gang hands it back,


             Stammer at the slang of this—
             Let us understand half of it.
                       In the rolling mills and sheet mills,
                       In the harr and boom of the blast fires,
                       The smoke changes its shadow
                       And men change their shadow;
                       A nigger, a wop, a bohunk changes.


                       A bar of steel—it is only
             Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man.
             A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else,
             And left—smoke and the blood of a man
             And the finished steel, chilled and blue.
             So fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again,
             And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel,
             A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky;
             And always dark in the heart and through, it.
                      Smoke and the blood of a man.
             Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary—they make their steel,
                   with men.


             In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys
             The smoke nights write their oaths:
             Smoke into steel and blood into steel;
             Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their
                   steel with men.
             Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.


                     The birdmen drone
                     in the blue; it is steel
                     a motor sings and zooms.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·




             Steel barb-wire around The Works.
             Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of
                   The Works.
             Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth
                   by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung
                   on its way by the clanking clam-shells.
             The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig
                   and clutch and haul; they  hoist their automatic
                   knuckles from job to job; they are steel making
                   steel.


             Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is
                   timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped:
             Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel
                   in the sea, climbing steel in the sky.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·




             Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket,
                   you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks
                   with an evening paper for the woman and kids,
                   you Steve with your head wondering where we
                   all end up—
             Finders in the dark, Steve: I hook my arm in cinder
                   sleeves; we go down the street together; it is all
                   the same to us; you Steve and the rest of us end
                   on the same stars; we all wear a hat in hell
                   together, in hell or heaven.


                   Smoke nights now, Steve.
                   Smoke, smoke, lost in the sieves of yesterday;
                   Dumped again to the scoops and hooks today.
                   Smoke like the clocks and whistles, always.
                          Smoke nights now.
                          To-morrow something else.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·




             Luck moons come and go:
             Five men swim in a pot of red steel.
             Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel:
             Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils
             And the sucking plungers of sea-fighting turbines.
           Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless station.
           So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in
                mirrors.
           Peepers, skulkers—they shadow-dance in laughing
                tombs.
           They are always there and they never answer.


           One of them said: "I like my job, the company is
                good to me, America is a wonderful country."
           One: "Jesus, my bones ache; the company is a liar;
                this is a free country, like hell."
           One: "I got a girl, a peach; we save up and go on a
                farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves."
           And the others were roughneck singers a long ways
                from home.
           Look for them back of a steel vault door.


                       They laugh at the cost.
                       They lift the birdmen into the blue.
                       It is steel a motor sings and zooms.


           In the subway plugs and drums,
           In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel,
           Under dynamo shafts in the webs of armature spiders.
           They shadow-dance and laugh at the cost.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·




           The ovens light a red dome.
           Spools of fire wind and wind.
           Quadrangles of crimson sputter.
           The lashes of dying maroon let down.
           Fire and wind wash out the slag.
           Forever the slag gets washed in fire and wind.


           The anthem learned by the steel is:
                     Do this or go hungry.
           Look for our rust on a plow.
           Listen to us in a threshing-engine razz.
           Look at our job in the running wagon wheat.

                                ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·            




           Fire and wind wash at the slag.
           Box-cars, clocks, steam-shovels, churns, pistons, boilers,
                  scissors—
           Oh, the sleeping slag from the mountains, the slag-
                   heavy pig-iron will go down many roads.
           Men will stab and shoot with it, and make butter and
                  tunnel rivers, and mow hay in swaths, and slit
                  hogs and skin beeves, and steer airplanes across
                  North America, Europe, Asia, round the world.


           Hacked from a hard rock country, broken and baked
                  in mills and smelters, the rusty dust waits
           Till the clean hard weave of its atoms cripples and
                  blunts the drills chewing a hole in it.
           The steel of its plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God,
                  in one-millionth of an inch.

                                                      



           Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf
                  women dancing,
           Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks—flying hair
                  of fire, flying feet upside down;
           Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling,
                  fire running wild out of the steady and fastened
                  ovens;
           Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus
                 of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for them-
                 selves;
           Ears and noses of fire, gibbering gorilla arms of fire
                 gold mud-pies, gold bird-wings, red jackets riding
                 purple mules, scarlet autocrats tumbling from the
                 humps of camels, assassinated czars straddling
                 vermillion balloons;
           I saw then the fires flash one by one: good-by: then
                 smoke, smoke;
           And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool
                 stars, sitting women arranging their hair,
           Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, wait-
                 ing and half-murmuring:
                    "Since you know all
                    and I know nothing,
                    tell me what I dreamed last night."

                                                      




           Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
           in only a flicker of wind,
           are caught and lost and never known again.


           A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
           but never waits long: the wind picks up
           loose gold like this and is gone.


           A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
           on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
           sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
           sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
           a shirt of gathering sod and loam.


           The wind never bothers ... a bar of steel.
           The wind picks only .. pearl cobwebs .. pools
                 of moonshine.

    FIVE TOWNS ON THE B. AND O.


               By day ... tireless smokestacks ... hungry smoky
                     shanties hanging to the slopes ... crooning:
                     We get by, that's all.
               By night ... all lit up ... fire-gold bars, fire-gold
                     flues ... and the shanties shaking in clumsy
                     shadows ... almost the hills shaking ... all
                     crooning: By God, we're going to find out or
                     know why.

    WORK GANGS

               Box cars run by a mile long.
               And I wonder what they say to each other
               When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack.
                     Maybe their chatter goes:
               I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the
                     danger line.
               I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and
                     they splintered my boards.
               I came from Detroit heavy with a load of flivvers.
             I carried apples from the Hood river last year and this
                   year bunches of bananas from Florida; they look
                   for me with watermelons from Mississippi next
                   year.


             Hammers and shovels of work gangs sleep in shop
                   corners
             when the dark stars come on the sky and the night
                   watchmen walk and look.


             Then the hammer heads talk to the handles,
             then the scoops of the shovels talk,
             how the day's work nicked and trimmed them,
             how they swung and lifted all day,
             how the hands of the work gangs smelled of hope.


             In the night of the dark stars
             when the curve of the sky is a work gang handle,
             in the night on the mile long sidetracks,
             in the night where the hammers and shovels sleep in
                   corners,
             the night watchmen stuff their pipes with dreams—
             and sometimes they doze and don't care for nothin',
             and sometimes they search their heads for meanings,
                   stories, stars.
                       The stuff of it runs like this:
             A long way we come; a long way to go; long rests and
                   long deep sniffs for our lungs on the way.
             Sleep is a belonging of all; even if all songs are old
                   songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a
                   switchman's lantern with the oil gone, even if we
                   forget our names and houses in the finish, the
                   secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all,
                   sleep is the first and last and best of all.


             People singing; people with song mouths connecting
                   with song hearts; people who must sing or die;
                   people whose song hearts break if there is no
                   song mouth; these are my people.

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:PENNSYLVANIA

               I have been in Pennsylvania,
               In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys.


               In the blue Susquehanna
               On a Saturday morning
               I saw the mounted constabulary go by,
               I saw boys playing marbles.
               Spring and the hills laughed.


               And in places
               Along the Appalachian chain,
             I saw steel arms handling coal and iron,
             And I saw the white-cauliflower faces
             Of miners' wives waiting for the men to come home
                  from the day's work.


             I made color studies in crimson and violet
             Over the dust and domes of culm at sunset.

    WHIRLS

               Neither rose leaves gathered in a jar—respectably in
                     Boston—these—nor drops of Christ blood for a
                     chalice—decently in Philadelphia or Baltimore.


               Cinders—these—hissing in a marl and lime of Chicago
                     —also these—the howling of northwest winds
                     across North and South Dakota—or the spatter
                     of winter spray on sea rocks of Kamchatka.

    PEOPLE WHO MUST


    PEOPLE WHO MUST


               I painted on the roof of a skyscraper.
               I painted a long while and called it a day's work.
               The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop's
                     whistle never let up all afternoon.
               They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way—
               Those people on the go or at a standstill;
               And the traffic cop a spot of blue, a splinter of brass,
               Where the black tides ran around him
               And he kept the street. I painted a long while
             And called it a day's work.

    ALLEY RATS

               They were calling certain styles of whiskers by the
                     name of "lilacs."
               And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter
                     a verbal guise
               Of "mutton chops," "galways," "feather dusters."


               Metaphors such as these sprang from their lips while
                     other street cries
               Sprang from sparrows finding scattered oats among
                     interstices of the curb.
             Ah-hah these metaphors—and Ah-hah these boys—
                   among the police they were known
             As the Dirty Dozen and their names took the front
                   pages of newspapers
             And two of them croaked on the same day at a "neck-
                   tie party" ... if we employ the metaphors of
                   their lips.

    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
                            and the blinds hanging loose
                            and nobody home.
                            I never saw this.
                          I hope to God I never will.


                       Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
                       Hoodle-de-harr--de-hum.
             Nobody home? Everybody home.
                       Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
             Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night: Eddie
                    Jones died of whooping cough: George Hacks got
                    a job on the police force: the Rosenheims bought
                    a brass bed: Lena Hart giggled at a jackie: a
                    pushcart man called tomaytoes, tomay toes.
                       Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
                       Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum.
                              Nobody home? Everybody home.

    HOME FIRES


               In a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street ...
                     faces ... coffee spots ... children kicking at
                     the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks.
               They know it is September on Rivington when the red
                     tomaytoes cram the pushcarts,
               Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who
                     have never seen a cow.
               Here the stranger wonders how so many people re-
                     member where they keep home fires.

    HATS



                             Hats, where do you belong?
                                     what is under you?


               On the rim of a skyscraper's forehead
               I looked down and saw: hats: fifty thousand hats:
               Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and
                     waterfalls,
               Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of
                     prairie corn.
                           Hats: tell me your high hopes.

    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 the spinning circles of singing golden
                     spiders,
               Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of
                     flowers—O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing
                     girl—in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare,
                   ever wrote;
             Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad
                   like all actors are sad and to stand by an open
                   grave with a joker's skull in the hand and then
                   to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen,
                   beautiful words masking a heart that's breaking,
                   breaking,
             This is something that calls and calls to their blood.
             They are acting when they talk about it and they know
                   it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They
                   all want to play Hamlet.

    THE MAYOR OF GARY


               I asked the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day
                     and the 7-day week.
               And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal
                     time on the job in Gary than any other place in
                     the United States.
               "Go into the plants and you will see men sitting
                     around doing nothing—machinery does every-
                     thing," said the Mayor of Gary when I asked
                     him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
             And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary,
                   and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up
                   with a shampoo and a shave and he was easy
                   and imperturbable though the government weather
                   bureau thermometer said 96 and children were
                   soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the
                   street corners.
             And I said good-by to the Mayor of Gary and I went
                   out from the city hall and turned the corner into
                   Broadway.
             And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed
                   with fire and cinders, and pitted with little holes
                   from running molten steel,
             And some had bunches of specialized muscles around
                   their shoulder blades hard as pig iron, muscles
                   of their fore-arms were sheet steel and they looked
                   to me like men who had been somewhere.

    Gary, Indiana, 1915.



    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 eyelash to
               the hill slants back around Omaha.


               A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
               Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri
             River.


                 Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
                 Eats and swears from a dirty face.
                 Omaha works to get the world a breakfast.

    GALOOTS


               Galoots, you hairy, hankering,
               Snousle on the bones you eat, chew at the gristle and
                      lick the last of it.
               Grab off the bones in the paws of other galoots—hook
                      your claws in their sleazy mouths—snap and run.
               If long-necks sit on their rumps and sing wild cries
                      to the winter moon, chasing their tails to the
                      flickers of foolish stars ... let 'em howl.
               Galoots fat with too much, galoots lean with too little,
                    galoot millions and millions, snousle and snicker
                    on, plug your exhausts, hunt your snacks of fat
                    and lean, grab off yours.

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.: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 Head.
               And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went
                   into the house and her mother washed her face
                   and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel
                   voice, "I don't want to."


             Somebody's little girl—forty little girls of somebodies
                   splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches,
                   pyramids—forty little show girls, ponies, squabs.
             How easy a sob story over who she once was and who
                   she is now—and how the crabapple blossoms fell
                   on her dark hair in June.


             Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter—and
                   the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show
                   is over and the street goes dark.
             Let the girls wash off the pain and go for their mid-
                   night sandwiches—let 'em dream in the morning
                   sun, late in the morning, long after the morning
                   papers and the milk wagons—
             Let 'em dream long as they want to ... of June
                   somewhere on the Erie line ... and crabapple
                   blossoms.

    REAL ESTATE NEWS


               Armour Avenue was the name of this street and door
                     signs on empty houses read "The Silver Dollar,"
                     "Swede Annie" and the Christian names of
                     madams such as "Myrtle" and "Jenny."
               Scrap iron, rags and bottles fill the front rooms hither
                     and yon and signs in Yiddish say Abe Kaplan &
                     Co. are running junk shops in whore houses of
                     former times.
               The segregated district, the Tenderloin, is here no
                   more; the red-lights are gone; the ring of shovels
                   handling scrap iron replaces the banging of pianos
                   and the bawling songs of pimps.

    Chicago, 1915.



    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 ends of wires asking for other faces
                                             at the ends of other wires:
               All day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in,
               Mary has a thingamajig clamped on her ears.

    STRIPES

               Policeman in front of a bank 3 A.M.... lonely.
               Policeman State and Madison ... high noon ...
                     mobs ... cars ... parcels ... lonely.


               Woman in suburbs ... keeping night watch on a
                    sleeping typhoid patient ... only a clock to talk
                    to ... lonesome.
               Woman selling gloves ... bargain day department
                    store ... furious crazy-work of many hands
                    slipping in and out of gloves ... lonesome.

    HONKY TONK IN CLEVELAND, OHIO


               It's a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes.
               The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
               The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
               The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
                     The cartoonists weep in their beer.
                     Ship riveters talk with their feet.
                     To the feet of floozies under the tables.
               A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed
                      snickers:
                           "I got the blues.
                           I got the blues.
                           I got the blues."
             And ... as we said earlier:
                  The cartoonists weep in their beer.

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:CRAPSHOOTERS

               Somebody loses whenever somebody wins.
               This was known to the Chaldeans long ago.
               And more: somebody wins whenever somebody loses.
               This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.


               They take it heaven's hereafter is an eternity of crap
                     games where they try their wrists years and years
                     and no police come with a wagon; the game goes
                     on forever.
               The spots on the dice are the music signs of the songs
                   of heaven here.
             God is Luck: Luck is God: we are all bones the
                   High Thrower rolled: some are two spots, some
                   double sixes.


             The myths are Phoebe, Little Joe, Big Dick.
             Hope runs high with a: Huh, seven—huh, come seven
             This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.

    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 headlines
               And thousands of people were talking about him.


                     When I saw him,
               He sat bending his head over a plate
               Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon.

    CLINTON SOUTH OF POLK


               I wander down on Clinton street south of Polk
               And listen to the voices of Italian children quarreling.
               It is a cataract of coloratura
               And I could sleep to their musical threats and accusa-
                     tions.

    BLUE ISLAND INTERSECTION

               Six street ends come together here.
               They feed people and wagons into the center.
               In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags,
               Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby
                     buggies,
               Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day.
               The people and wagons come and go, out and in.
               Triangles of banks and drug stores watch.
               The policemen whistle, the trolley cars bump:
             Wheels, wheels, feet, feet, all day.


             In the false dawn when the chickens blink
             And the east shakes a lazy baby toe at to-morrow,
             And the east fixes a pink half-eye this way,
             In the time when only one milk wagon crosses
             These three streets, these six street ends,
             It is the sleep time and they rest.
             The triangle banks and drug stores rest.
             The policeman is gone, his star and gun sleep.
             The owl car blutters along in a sleep-walk.

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:RED-HEADED RESTAURANT CASHIER


               Shake back your hair, O red-headed girl.
               Let go your laughter and keep your two proud freckles
                      on your chin.
               Somewhere is a man looking for a red-headed girl and
                      some day maybe he will look into your eyes for a
                      restaurant cashier and find a lover, maybe.
               Around and around go ten thousand men hunting a
                      red headed girl with two freckles on her chin.
               I have seen them hunting, hunting.
                         Shake back your hair; let go your laughter.

    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 build a house
                    like bricklayers build, a house with walls and
                    roofs made of big leather law books.


                        The rain beats on the windows
                        And the raindrops run down the window glass
                      And the raindrops slide off the green blinds
                            down the siding.
             The boy Alexander dreams of Napoleon in John C.
                  Abbott's history, Napoleon the grand and lonely
                  man wronged, Napoleon in his life wronged and
                  in his memory wronged.
             The boy Alexander dreams of the cat Alice saw, the
                  cat fading off into the dark and leaving the teeth
                  of its Cheshire smile lighting the gloom.


             Buffaloes, blizzards, way down in Texas, in the pan-
                  handle of Texas snuggling close to New Mexico,
             These creep into Alexander's dreaming by the window
                  when his father talks with strange men about
                  land down in Deaf Smith County.


             Alexander's father tells the strange men: Five years
                  ago we ran a Ford out on the prairie and chased
                  antelopes.


             Only once or twice in a long while has Alexander heard
                  his father say "my first wife" so-and-so and
                  such-and-such.


             A few times softly the father has told Alexander,
                  "Your mother ... was a beautiful woman ...
                  but we won't talk about her."


             Always Alexander listens with a keen listen when he
                  hears his father mention "my first wife" or "Al-
                  exander's mother."


             Alexander's father smokes a cigar and the Episcopal
                  rector smokes a cigar and the words come often:
                  mystery of life, mystery of life.


             These two come into Alexander's head blurry and gray
                  while the rain beats on the windows and the rain-
                  drops run down the window glass and the rain-
                  drops slide off the green blinds and down the
                  siding.


             These and: There is a God, there must be a God, how
                  can there be rain or sun unless there is a God?


             So from the wrongs of Napoleon and the Cheshire cat
                  smile on to the buffaloes and blizzards of Texas
                  and on to his mother and to God, so the blurry
                  gray rain dreams of Alexander have gone on five
                  minutes, maybe ten, keeping slow easy time to the
                  raindrops on the window glass and the raindrops
                  sliding off the green blinds and down the siding.

    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 pail factory, one way they
                     made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard
                     cartons.


               The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways
                     loose and the wheels whirled dust—there was
                   dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire—
                   dust of police and fire wagons—dust of the winds
                   that circled at midnights and noon listening to no
                   prayers.


             "O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing
                   the rim of a nun's bonnet—O white curtains—and
                   people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the
                   faded ramshackle at Congress and Green.


             Dust and the thundering trucks won—the barrages of
                   the street wheels and the lawless wind took their
                   way—was it five weeks or six the little mother,
                   the new neighbors, battled and then took away
                   the white prayers in the windows?

    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
               when the old grass burns?


               Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths,
               with a flutter of wings that meant:
             we can never come again.


             Did I see No Man's Land in your eyes
             and men with lost faces, lost loves,
             and you among the stubs crying?


             Did I see you in the red death jazz of war
             losing moths among lost faces,
             speaking to the stubs who asked you
             to speak of songs and God and dancing,
             of bananas, northern lights or Jesus,
             any hummingbird of thought whatever
             flying away from the red death jazz of war?


             Did I see your hand make a useless gesture
             trying to say with a code of five fingers
             something the tongue only stutters?
             did I see a dusk Golgotha?

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:NEIGHBORS

               On Forty First Street
               near Eighth Avenue
               a frame house wobbles.


               If houses went on crutches
               this house would be
               one of the cripples.


               A sign on the house:
               Church of the Living God
               And Rescue Home for Orphan Children.


             From a Greek coffee house
             Across the street
             A cabalistic jargon
             Jabbers back.
                   And men at tables
                   Spill Peloponnesian syllables
                   And speak of shovels for street work.
                   And the new embankments of the Erie Railroad
                   At Painted Post, Horse's Head, Salamanca.

    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 the bench,
               Ain't they all in cahoots?
               Ain't it fifty-fifty all down the line,
               Petemen, dips, boosters, stick-ups and guns—
                         what's to hinder?


                       Go fifty-fifty.
             If they nail you call in a mouthpiece.
             Fix it, you gazump, you slant-head, fix it.
                       Feed 'em. ...


             Nothin' ever sticks to my fingers, nah, nah,
                       nothin' like that,
             But there ain't no law we got to wear mittens—
                       huh—is there?
             Mittens, that's a good one—mittens!
             There oughta be a law everybody wear mittens.

    BLUE MAROONS


               "You slut," he flung at her.
               It was more than a hundred times
               He had thrown it into her face
               And by this time it meant nothing to her.
               She said to herself upstairs sweeping,
               "Clocks are to tell time with, pitchers
               Hold milk, spoons dip out gravy, and a
               Coffee pot keeps the respect of those
               Who drink coffee—I am a woman whose
             Husband gives her a kiss once for ten
             Times he throws it my face, 'You slut.'
             If I go to a small town and him along
             Or if I go to a big city and him along,
             What of it? Am I better off?" She swept
             The upstairs and came downstairs to fix
             Dinner for the family.

    THE HANGMAN AT HOME


               What does the hangman think about
               When he goes home at night from work?
               When he sits down with his wife and
               Children for a cup of coffee and a
               Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
               Him if it was a good day's work
               And everything went well or do they
               Stay off some topics and talk about
               The weather, base ball, politics
             And the comic strips in the papers
             And the movies? Do they look at his
             Hands when he reaches for the coffee
             Or the ham and eggs? If the little
             Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's
             A rope—does he answer like a joke:
             I seen enough rope for today?
             Or does his face light up like a
             Bonfire of joy and does he say:
             It's a good and dandy world we live
             In. And if a white face moon looks
             In through a window where a baby girl
             Sleeps and the moon gleams mix with
             Baby ears and baby hair—the hangman—
             How does he act then? It must be easy
             For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
             I guess.

    MAN, THE MAN-HUNTER

               I saw Man, the man-hunter,
               Hunting with a torch in one hand
               And a kerosene can in the other,
               Hunting with guns, ropes, shackles.


                        I listened
                        And the high cry rang,
               The high cry of Man, the man-hunter:
               We'll get you yet,     you    sbxyzch!


                        I listened later.
                      The high cry rang:
             Kill him!     kill him!    the sbxyzch!


             In the morning the sun saw
             Two butts of something, a smoking rump,
             And a warning in charred wood:
                                                    Well, we got him,
                                                     the         sbxyzch.

    THE SINS OF KALAMAZOO

               The sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
               The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater
                     drab.
               And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are
                     neither scarlet nor crimson.
               They run to drabs and grays—and some of them sing
                     they shall be washed whiter than snow—and
                     some: We should worry


               Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map
             And the passenger trains stop there
             And the factory smokestacks smoke
             And the grocery stores are open Saturday nights
             And the streets are free for citizens who vote
             And inhabitants counted in the census.
             Saturday night is the big night.
                       Listen with your ears on a Saturday night in
                             Kalamazoo
                       And say to yourself: I hear America, I hear,
                             what do I hear?


             Main street there runs through the middle of the town
             And there is a dirty postoffice
             And a dirty city hall
             And a dirty railroad station
             And the United States flag cries, cries the Stars and
                   Stripes to the four winds on Lincoln's birthday
                   and the Fourth of July.


             Kalamazoo kisses a hand to something far off.
             Kalamazoo calls to a long horizon, to a shivering silver
                   angel, to a creeping mystic what-is-it.
             "We're here because we're here," is the song of Kala-
                   mazoo.
             "We don't know where we're going but we're on our
                   way," are the words.
             There are hound dogs of bronze on the public square,
                hound dogs looking far beyond the public square.


             Sweethearts there in Kalamazoo
             Go to the general delivery window of the postoffice
             And speak their names and ask for letters
             And ask again, "Are you sure there is nothing for me?
             I wish you'd look again—there must be a letter for
                   me."


             And sweethearts go to the city hall
             And tell their names and say, "We want a license."
             And they go to an installment house and buy a bed on
                   time and a clock
             And the children grow up asking each other, "What
                   can we do to kill time?"
             They grow up and go to the railroad station and buy
                   tickets for Texas, Pennsylvania, Alaska.
             "Kalamazoo is all right," they say. "But I want to
                   see the world."


             And when they have looked the world over they come
                   back saying it is all like Kalamazoo.


             The trains come in from the east and hoot for the
                   crossings,
             And buzz away to the peach country and Chicago to
                   the west
             Or they come from the west and shoot on to the Battle
                   Creek breakfast bazaars
             And the speedbug heavens of Detroit.


             "I hear America, I hear, what do I hear?"
             Said a loafer lagging along on the sidewalks of Kal-
                   amazoo,
             Lagging along and asking question, reading signs.


             Oh yes, there is a town named Kalamazoo,
             A spot on the map where the trains hesitate.
             I saw the sign of a five and ten cent store there
             And the Standard Oil Company and the International
                   Harvester
             And a graveyard and a ball grounds
             And a short order counter where a man can get a
                   stack of wheats
             And a pool hall where a rounder leered confidential
                   like and said:
             "Lookin' for a quiet game?"


             The loafer lagged along and asked,
             "Do you make guitars here?
             Do you make boxes the singing wood winds ask to
                   sleep in?


             Do you rig up strings the singing wood winds sift over
                   and sing low?"
             The answer: "We manufacture musical instruments
                   here."


             Here I saw churches with steeples like hatpins,
             Undertaking rooms with sample coffins in the show
                   window
             And signs everywhere satisfaction is guaranteed,
             Shooting galleries where men kill imitation pigeons,
             And there were doctors for the sick,
             And lawyers for people waiting in jail,
             And a dog catcher and a superintend of streets,
             And telephones, water-works, trolley cars,
             And newspapers with a splatter of telegrams from
                   sister cities of Kalamazoo the round world over.


             And the loafer lagging along said:
             Kalamazoo, you ain't in a class by yourself;
             I seen you before in a lot of places.
             If you are nuts America is nuts.
                       And lagging along he said bitterly:
                     Before I came to Kalamazoo I was silent.
                     Now I am gabby, God help me, I am gabby.


           Kalamazoo, both of us will do a fadeaway.
           I will be carried out feet first
           And time and the rain will chew you to dust
           And the winds blow you away.
           And an old, old mother will lay a green moss cover
                 on my bones
           And a green moss cover on the stones of your post-
                 office and city hall.


                     Best of all
           I have loved your kiddies playing run-sheep-run
           And cutting their initials on the ball ground fence.
           They knew every time I fooled them who was fooled
                 and how.


                     Best of all
           I have loved the red gold smoke of your sunsets;
           I have loved a moon with a ring around it
           Floating over your public square;
           I have loved the white dawn frost of early winter
                 silver
           And purple over your railroad tracks and lumber
                 yards.


                     The wishing heart of you I love, Kalamazoo.
                     I sang bye-lo, bye-lo to your dreams.
           I sang bye-lo to your hopes and songs.
           I wished to God there were hound dogs of bronze on
                 your public square,
           Hound dogs with bronze paws looking to a long
                 horizon with a shivering silver angel,
                 a creeping mystic what-is-it.

    BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES


    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.: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 throwing his
                     feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now
                     you see it and now you don't.


               Fish to swim a pool in your garden flashing a speckled
                     silver,
               A basket of wine-saps filling your room with flame-
                   dark for your eyes and the tang of valley orchards
                   for your nose,
             Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck
                   of apples, I cannot bring you now.
             It is too early and I am not footloose yet.


             I shall come in the night when I come with a hammer
                   and saw.
             I shall come near your window, where you look out
                   when your eyes open in the morning,
             And there I shall slam together bird-houses and bird-
                   baths for wing-loose wrens and hummers to live
                   in, birds with yellow wing tips to blur and buzz
                   soft all summer,
             So I shall make little fool homes with doors, always
                   open doors for all and each to run away when
                   they want to.
             I shall come just like that even though now it is early
                   and I am not yet footloose,
             Even though I am still looking for an undertaker with
                   a raw, wind-bitten face and a dance in his feet.
             I make a date with you (put it down) for six o'clock
                   in the evening a thousand years from now.


             All I can give you now is broken-face gargoyles.
             All I can give you now is a double gorilla head with
                   two fish mouths and four eagle eyes hooked on a
                   street wall, spouting water and looking two ways
                   to the ends of the street for the new people, the
                   young strangers, coming, coming, always coming.


                             It is early.
                             I shall yet be footlose.

    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, yes-yes,
                     me-too, me-too.


               The aprons of silence covered me.
               A wire and hatch held my tongue.
             I spit nails into an abyss and listened.
             I shut off the gabble of Jones, Johnson, Smith,
             All whose names take pages in the city directory.


             I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around.
             I locked myself in and nobody knew it.
             Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow
             Knew it—on the streets, in the postoffice,
             On the cars, into the railroad station
             Where the caller was calling, "All a-board,
             All a-board for .. Blaa-blaa .. Blaa-blaa,
             Blaa-blaa .. and all points northwest .. all a-board."
             Here I took along my own hoosegow
             And did business with my own thoughts.
             Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence.

    DEATH SNIPS PROUD MEN

               Death is stronger than all the governments because
                     the government 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 so death
                     snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of
                     dice and says: Read 'em and weep.


               Death sends a radiogram every day: When I want
                     you I'll drop in—and then one day he comes with a
                     master-key and lets himself in and says: We'll
                   go now.


             Death is a nurse mother with big arms: 'Twon't hurt
                   you at all; it's your time now; you just need a
                   long sleep, child; what have you had anyhow
                   better than sleep?

    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 make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
                     and then go out.


               Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack
                     mushrooming a white pillar.


               Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying
                   in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields
                   to a razorback hill.


             It is easy to spell good night.
                                           Many ways to spell good night.

    SHIRT

               My shirt is a token and symbol,
               more than a cover for sun and rain,
               my shirt is a signal,
               and a teller of souls.


               I can take off my shirt and tear it,
               and so make a ripping razzly noise,
               and the people will say,
               "Look at him tear his shirt."


               I can keep my shirt on.
             I can stick around and sing like a little bird
             and look 'em all in the eye and never be fazed.
                       I can keep my shirt on.

    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 ooze, and go husha-
               husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.


               Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-
               tops, moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible,
               cry like a racing car slipping away from a motorcycle
             cop, bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums,
             traps, banjoes, horns, tin cans—make two people fight
             on the top of a stairway and scratch each other's eyes
             in a clinch tumbling down the stairs.


             Can the rough stuff ... now a Mississippi steamboat
             pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo ...
             and the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars
             ... a red moon rides on the humps of the low river
             hills ... go to it, O jazzmen.

    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 Nan-
                      tucket waiting for you.
               There are tall candles in Timbuctoo burning penance
                      for you.
               There are—anything else?
             Speak now—for now we stand amid the great wishing
                    windows—and the law says we are free to be
                    wishing all this week at the windows.
             Shall I raise my right hand and swear to you in the
                    monotone of a notary public? this is "the truth,
                    the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:"OLD-FASHIONED REQUITED LOVE"

               I have ransacked the encyclopedias
               And slid my fingers among topics and titles
               Looking for you.


               And the answer comes slow.
               There seems to be no answer.


               I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the
                     why of it.


               Or—the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear
                     cube in summer sunlight—maybe he will know.

    PURPLE MARTINS

               If we were such and so, the same as these,
               maybe we too would be slingers and sliders,
               tumbling half over in the water mirrors,
               tumbling half at the horse heads of the sun,
               tumbling our purpose numbers.


               Twirl on, you and satin blue.
               Be water birds, be air birds.
               Be these purple tumblers you are.


                        Dip and get away
             From loops into slip-knots,
             Write your own ciphers and figure eights.
             It is your wooded island here in Lincoln park.
             Everybody knows this belongs to you.


                      Five fat geese
             Eat grass on a sod bank
             And never count your slinging ciphers,
                                                       your sliding figure eights,


             A man on a green paint iron bench,
             Slouches his feet and sniffs in a book,
             And looks at you and your loops and slip-knots,
             And looks at you and your sheaths of satin blue,
             And slouches again and sniffs in the book,
             And mumbles: It is an idle and a doctrinaire exploit.


             Go on tumbling half over in the water mirrors.
             Go on tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun.
                          Be water birds, br birds.
                          Be these purple tumblers you are.

    BRASS KEYS

               Joy ... weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel ...
               paXuinting on a slab of night sky a Christ face ...
               slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and
               shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in
               a new room ... forever and ever violet petals, slabs,
               the Christ face, brass keys and new rooms.


               are we near for far? ... is there anything else? ...
               who comes back? ... and why does love ask nothing
               and give all? and why is love rare as a tailed comet
             shaking guesses out of men at telescopes ten feet long?
             why does the mystery sit with its chin on the lean
             forearm of women in gray eyes and women in hazel
             eyes?


             are any of these less proud, less important, than a
             cross-examining lawyer? are any of these less perfect
             than the front page of a morning newspaper?


             the answers are not computed and attested in the back
             of an arithmetic for the verifications of the lazy


             there is no authority in the phone book for us to call
             and ask the why, the wherefore, and the howbeit
             it's ... a riddle ... by God

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:PICK-OFFS

               The telescope picks off star dust
               on the clean steel sky and sends it to me.


               The telephone picks off my voice and
               sends it cross country a thousand miles.


               The eyes in my head pick off pages of
               Napoleon memoirs ... a rag handler,
               a head of dreams walks in a sheet of
               mist ... the palace panels shut in no-
               bodies drinking nothings out of silver
             helmets ... in the end we all come to a
             rock island and the hold of the sea-walls.

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:MANUFACTURED GODS


               They put up big wooden gods.
               Then they burned the big wooden gods
               And put up brass gods and
               Changing their minds suddenly
               Knocked down the brass gods and put up
               A doughface god with gold earrings.
               The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads,
               They didn't know a little tin god
               Is as good as anything in the line of gods
             Nor how a little tin god answers prayer
             And makes rain and brings luck
             The same as a big wooden god or a brass
             God or a doughface god with golden
             Earrings.

    MASK

               To have your face left overnight
               Flung on a board by a crazy sculptor;
               To have your face drop off a board
               And fall to pieces on a floor
               Lost among lumps all finger-marked
                           —How now?


               To be calm and level, placed high,
               Looking among perfect women bathing
               And among bareheaded long-armed men,
             Corner dreams of a crazy sculptor,
             And then to fall, drop clean off the board,
             Four o'clock in the morning and not a dog
             Nor a policeman anywhere—


                         Hoo hoo!
                   had it been my laughing face
                   maybe I would laugh with you,
                   but my lover's face, the face I give
                   women and the moon and the sea!

    PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND


    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 it?
               My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
               What of it? Let the dead be dead.

    2



             The doors were cedar
             and the panels strips of gold
             and the girls were golden girls
             and the panels read and the girls chanted:
                      We are the greatest city,
                      the greatest nation:
                      nothing like us ever was.


             The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
             Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
                      where the golden girls ran and the panels
                            read:
                      We are the greatest city,
                      the greatest nation,
                      nothing like us ever was.

    3



             It has happened before.
             Strong men put up a city and got
                      a nation together,
             And paid singers to sing and women
                      to warble: We are the greatest city,
                            the greatest nation,
                            nothing like us ever was.


             And while the singers sang
             and the strong men listened
             and paid the singers well
             and felt good about it all,
                there were rats and lizards who listened
                ... and the only listeners left now
                ... are ... the rats ... and the lizards.


             And there are black crows
             crying, "Caw, caw,"
             bringing mud and sticks
             building a nest
                          over the words carved
                          on the doors where the panels were cedar
                          and the strips on the panels were gold
                          and the golden girls came singing:
                                We are the greatest city,
                                the greatest nation:
                                nothing like us ever was.


             The only singers now are cross crying, "Caw, caw,"
             And the sheets of rain white in the wind and doorways.
             And the only listeners now are ... the rats ... and
                   the lizards.

    4



                      The feet of the rats
                      scribble on the door sills;
                      the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
                      chatter the pedigrees of the rats
                      and babble of the blood
                      and gabble of the breed
                      of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
                      of the rats


                      And the wind shifts
                      and the dust on a door sill shifts
                      and even the writing of the rat footprints
                      tells us nothing, nothing at all
                      about the greatest city, the greatest nation
                      where the strong men listened
                      and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever
                            was.

    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 way,
                     O Lord, only I have broken and broken taber-
                     nacles.
               They were beautiful in a way, these tabernacles torn
                     down by strong hands swearing—
               They were beautiful—why did the hypocrites carve
                   their own names on the corner-stones? why did
                   the hypocrites keep on singing their own names
                   in their long noses every Sunday in these taber-
                   nacles?
             Who lays any blame here among the split corner-
                   stones?

    Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967.:OSSAWATOMIE

               I don't know how he came,
               shambling, dark, and strong.


               He stood in the city and told men:
               My people are fools, my people are young and strong,
                     my people must learn, my people are terrible
                     workers and fighters.
               Always he kept on asking: Where did that blood come
                     from?


                  They said: You for the fool killer,
                                you for the booby hatch
                                and a necktine party.


                They hauled him into jail.
                They sneered at him and spit on him,
                And he wrecked their jails,
                Singing, "God damn your jails,"
                And when he was most in jail
                Crummy among the crazy in the dark
                Then he was most of all out of jail
                Shambling, dark, and strong,
             Always asking: Where did that blood come from?


                They laid hands on him
                And the fool killers had a laugh
                And the necktie party was a go, by God.
             They laid hands on him and he was a goner.
                They hammered him to pieces and he stood up.
             They buried him and he walked out of the grave, by God,
                Asking again: Where did that blood come from?

    LONG GUNS

               Then came, Oscar, the time of the guns.
               And there was no land for a man, no land for a
                     country,
                         Unless guns sprang up
                         And spoke their language.
               The how of running the world was all in guns.


               The law of a God keeping sea and land apart,
               The law of a child sucking milk,
               The law of stars held together,
                       They slept and worked in the heads of men
                       Making twenty mile guns, sixty mile guns,
                       Speaking their language
                       Of no land for a man, no land for a country
             Unless ... guns ... unless ... guns.


             There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky,
                       asking a long gun to get the moon,
                       to conquer the insults of the moon,
                       to conquer something, anything,
                       to put it over and win the day,
             To show them the running of the world was all in guns.
             There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky.
             They dreamed ... in the time of the guns ... of guns.

    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 our bones,
                     what can we say or do?


               Since early morning we waited.
               Since early, early morning, child.
             There must be dreams on the way now.
             There must be a song for our bones.


             The dust gets deeper and darker.
             Do the doors and lintels shudder?
                How long must we listen here?
                How long before we go?

    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 creepers in a bunkhouse where
                     no runners of the sun come and no dogs live.


               And yet—of all "and yets" this is the bronze strong-
                     est—


               I shall keep one thing better than all else; there is the
                     blue steel of a great star of early evening in it;
                   it lives longer than a broken foot or any scar.


             The broken foot goes to a hole dug with a shovel or
                   the bone of a nose may whiten on a hilltop—and
                   yet—"and yet"—


             There is one crimson pinch of ashes left after all;
                   and none of the shifting winds that whip the grass
                   and none of the pounding rains that beat the dust,
                   know how to touch or find the flash of this crim-
                   son.


             I cry God to give me a broken foot, a scar, or a lousy
                   death.


             I who have seen the flash of this crimson, I ask God
                   for the last and worst.

    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 and its knuckles crumbling,
               The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
                     The lawyers know
                     a dead man's thoughts too well.


               In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
               Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
             Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,
             Too many doors to go in and out of.


                      When the lawyers are through
                      What is there left, Bob?
                      Can a mouse nibble at it
                      And find enough to fasten a tooth in?


                      Why is there always a secret singing
                      When a lawyer cashes in?
                      Why does a hearse horse snicker
                      Hauling a lawyer away?


             The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.
             The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
             The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
             The land of a farmer wishes him back again.
                      Singers of songs and dreamers of plays
                      Build a house no wind blows over.
             The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers
                   hauling a lawyer's bones.

    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 pass the burial spot of Nero
               I shall say to the wind, "Well, well!"—
               I who have fiddled in a world on fire,
               I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.


               I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.
             I want to shake his ghost-hand and say,
             "Neither of us died very early, did we?"


             And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar—
             When I arrive there I shall tell the wind:
             "You ate grass; I have eaten crow—
             Who is better off now or next year?"


             Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James,
             There too I could sit down and stop for awhile.
             I think I could tell their headstones:
             "God, let me remember all good losers."


             I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads
             In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods,
             Walking into the drumfires, calling his men,
             "Come on you ... Do you want to live forever?"

    PLACES

               Roses and gold
               For you today,
               And the flash of flying flags.


                        I will have
                        Ashes,
                        Dust in my hair,
                     Crushes of hoofs.


               Your name
               Fills the mouth
             Of rich man and poor.
                      Women bring
             Armfuls of flowers
             And throw on you.


                      I go hungry
                      Down in dreams
                      And loneliness,
                      Across the rain
                      To slashed hills
             Where men wait and hope for me.

    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,
               lilacs, told me the high golden words are:
               Mother, Home, and Heaven—other older men with
               face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality
               —they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.


             Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks
             of doom and damnation, soup and nuts: meteors flashed
             their say-so: and out of great Russia came three
             dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
             for: Bread, Peace, Land.


             And I met a marine of the U. S. A., a leatherned with
             a girl on his knee for a memory in ports circling the
             earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things
             and I always get by—gimme a plate of ham and eggs—
             how much?—and—do you love me, kid?

    THE LIARS


    (March, 1919)            A liar goes in fine clothes.
               A liar goes in rags.
               A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
               A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells
                             and dies in a life of lies.
               And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—
                             on the tombs of liars.


               A liar looks 'em in the eye
               And lies to a woman,
             Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.
             And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.


                A liar lies to nations.
                A liar lies to the people.
             A liar takes the blood of the people
             And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
                A laugh in his neck,
                A lie in his mouth.
             And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
                He is straight as a dog's hind leg.
                He is straight as a corkscrew.
             He is white as a black cat's foot at midnight.


             The tongue of a man is tied on this,
             On the liar who lies to nations,
             The liar who lies to the people.
             The tongue of a man is tied on this
             And ends: To hell with 'em all.
                            To hell with 'em all.


             It's a song hard as a riveter's hammer,
                Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
                Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
             Twisted as a shell-shock idiot's gibber.


             The liars met where the doors were locked.
             They said to each other: Now for war.
             The liars fixed it and told 'em: Go.


             Across their tables they fixed it up,
             Behind their doors away from the mob.
             And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.
             The guns blew seven million off the map,
             The guns sent seven million west.
             Seven million showing up the daisies.
             Across their tables they fixed it up,
                             The liars who lie to nations.


                And now
                Out of the butcher's job
                And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
                Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
             Out of this they are calling now: Let's go back where
                   we were.
                            Let us run the world again, us, us.


             Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and
                   we'll cash in again.


             So I hear The People talk.
             I hear them tell each other:
                Let the strong men be ready.
                Let the strong men watch.
                Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
                Let the liars get their finish,
                The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
                To open the doors and tell us; War! get out to your
                   war again.


             So I hear The People tell each other:
                Look at to-day and to-morrow.
                Fix this clock that nicks off millions
                When The Liars say it's time.
                Take things in your own hands.
                             To hell with 'em all,
                The liars who lie to nations,
                The liars who lie to The People.

    PRAYER AFTER WORLD WAR

               Wandering oversea dreamer,
               Hunting and hoarse, Oh daughter and mother,
               Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood,
               Child of the hair let down, and tears,
               Child of the cross in the south
               And the star in the north,
               Keeper of Egypt and Russia and France,
               Keeper of England and Poland and Spain,
               Make us a song for to-morrow.
             Make us one new dream, us who forget,
             Out of the storm let us have one star.


                   Struggle, Oh anvils, and help her.
             Weave with your wool, Oh winds and skies.
             Let your iron and copper help,
                         Oh dirt of the old dark earth.


             Wandering oversea singer,
             Singing of ashes and blood,
             Child of the scars of fire,
                   Make us one new dream, us who forget.
                   Out of the storm let us have one star.

    A. E. F.


               There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
               The rifle groovers curling with flakes of rust.
               A spider will make a silver string nest in the
                              darkest, warmest corner of it.
               The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
               And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang
                     on the wall.
               Forefingers and thumbs will point absently and casu-
                     ally toward it.
             It will be spoken among half-forgetten, wished-to-be-
                   forgotten things.
             They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good
                   work.

    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,
               Each with a nose-length surpassing
             The nose-lengths of rival nations.
             Somberly, slowly, unimpeachably,
             Five geese deploy mysteriously.

    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 their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to
                     their noses
               And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh eggs
                     broken over a frying pan left by an uncle who
                   killed men with spears and short swords.
             Count these reminiscences like money.


                      Drift, and drift on, white ships.
             Sailing the free sky blue, sailing and changing and
                   sailing,
             Oh, I remember in the blood of my dreams how they
                  sang before me.
             Oh, they were men and women who got money for
                   their work, money or love or dreams.
                           Sail on, white chips.
                           Let me have spring dreams.
             Let me count reminiscences like money; let me count
                   picnics, glad rags and the great bad manners of
                   the Carlovingians breaking fresh eggs in the cop-
                   per pans of their proud uncles.

    BRONZES

               They ask me to handle bronzes
               Kept by children in China
               Three thousand years
               Since their fathers
               Took fire and molds and hammers
               And made these.


               The Ming, the Chou,
               And other dynasties,
               Out, gone, reckoned in ciphers,
             Dynasties dressed up
             In old gold and old yellow—
             They saw these.


             Let the wheels
             Of three thousand years
             Turn, turn, turn on.


             Let one poet then
             (One will be enough)
             Handle these bronzes
             And mention the dynasties
             And pass them along.

    LET LOVE GO ON

               Let it go on; let the love of this hour he poured out
                     till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent
                     and the last blood gone.


               Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down
                     the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key,
                     and time gets by, time wins.


               Let the love of this hour go on; let all the oaths and
                     children and people of this love be clean as a
                     washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.


             Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs
                   a winning race against life and the clocks, time
                   tickles with rust and spots.


             Let love go on; the heartbeats are measured out with
                   a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with,
                   to use and spend and reckon; let love go on.

    KILLERS

               I am put high over all others in the city today.
               I am the killer who kills for those who wish a killing
                     today.


               Here is a strong young man who killed.
               There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung
                     blowing and he stood at an intersection of five
                     sewers and there pumped the bullets of an auto-
                     matic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen.
               Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens,
                    and a jury of his peers, also fellow citizens, lis-
                    tened to the testimony of other fellow citizens,
                    policemen, doctors, and after a verdict of guilty,
                   the judge, a fellow citizen, said: I sentence you
                    to be hanged by the neck till you are dead.


             So there is a killer to be killed and I am the killer of
                   the killer for today.
             I don't know why it beats in my head in the lines I
                   read once in an old school reader: I'm to be queen
                   of the May, mother, I'm to be queen of the May.
             Anyhow it comes back in language just like that today.


             I am the high honorable killer today.
             There are five million people in the state, five million
               killers for whom I kill
             I am the killer who kills today for five million killers
                   who wish a killing.

    CLEAN HANDS


               It is something to face the sun and know you are free.
               To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting
                     the earth
               And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood
                     runs clean:
                                     It is something.
               To go one day of your life among all men with clean
                     hands,
               Clean for the day book today and the record of the
                   after days,
             Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready,
             So to have clean hands:
                            God, it is something,
                            One day of life so
                      And a memory fastened till the stars sputter out
                      And a love washed as white linen in the noon
                               drying.
             Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see
                   the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay
                   longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or
                   the fires heave under the crust of the earth.
             O yes, clean hands is the chant and only one man
                   knows its sob and its undersong and he dies
                   clenching the secret more to him than any woman
                   or chum.
             And O the great brave men, the silent little brave
                  men, proud of their hands—clutching the knuckles
                  of their fingers into fists ready for death and the
                  dark, ready for life and fight, the pay and the
                  memories—O the men proud of their hands.

    THREE GHOSTS

               Three tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People.
               The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts.


               Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat
               cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each
               other thimbles.


               Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other
               as misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor,
               they sat and spoke their thoughts of the glory of
               The People, they met after work and drank beer to
             The People.


             Faded off into the twilights the names are forgotten.
             It is a joke in ghosts. Let it ride. They wrote: We,
             The People.

    PENCILS

                     Pencils
               telling where the wind comes from
                     open a story.


                     Pencils
               telling where the wind goes
                     end a story.


                     These eager pencils
                     come to a stop
                     .. only .. when the stars high over
                   come to a stop.


             Out of cabalistic to-morrows
             come cryptic babies calling life
             a strong and a lovely thing.


             I have seen neither these
             nor the stars high over
             come to a stop.


             Neither these nor the sea horses
             running with the clocks of the moon.
             Nor even a shooting star
             snatching a pencil of fire
             writing a curve of gold and white.
             Like you .. I counted the shooting stars of a
             winter night and my head was dizzy with all
             of them calling one by one:
                                                         Look for us again.

    JUG


               The shale and water thrown together so-so first of all,
               Then a potter's hand on the wheels and his fingers shap-
                     ing the jug; out of the mud a mouth and a handle;
               Slimpsy, loose and ready to fall at a touch, fire plays
                     on it, slow fire coaxing all the water out of the
                     shale mix.
               Dipped in glaze more fire plays on it till a molasses lava
                      runs in waves, rises and retreats, a varnish of
                      volcanoes.
             Take it now; out of mud now here is a mouth and
                   handle; out of this now mothers will pour milk
                   and maple syrup and cider, vinegar, apple juice,
                   and sorghum.
             There is nothing proud about this; only one out of
                   many; the potter's wheel slings them out and the
                   fires harden them hours and hours thousands and
                   thousands.
             "Be good to me, put me down easy on the floors of
                   the new concrete houses; I was poured out like a
                   concrete house and baked in fire too."

    AND THIS WILL BE ALL?

               And this will be all?
               And the gates will never open again?
               And the dust and the wind will play around the rusty
                     door hinges and the songs of October moan, Why-
                     oh, why-oh?


               And you will look to the mountains
               And the mountains will look to you
               And you will wish you were a mountain
               And the mountain will wish nothing at all?
                         This will be all?
             The gates will never-never open again?


             The dust and the wind only
             And the rusty door hinges and moaning October
             And Why-oh, why-oh, in the moaning dry leaves,
                         This will be all?


             Nothing in the air but songs
             And no singers, no mouths to know the songs?
             You tell us a woman with a heartache tells you it is so?
                         This will be all?

    HOODLUMS


               I am a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us
                     are a world of hoodlums—maybe so.
               I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so
                     do all of us—maybe—maybe so.
               In the ends of my fingers the itch for another man's
                     neck, I want to see him hanging, one of dusk's
                     cartoons against the sunset.
               This is the hate my father gave me, this was in my
                     mother's milk, this is you and me and all of us
                   in a world of hoodlums—maybe so.
             Let us go on, brother hoodlums, let us kill and kill, it
                   has always been so, it will always be so, there is
                   nothing more to it.
             Let us go on, sister hoodlums, kill, kill, and kill, the
                   torsoes of the world's mother's are tireless and the
                   loins of the world's fathers are strong—so go on
                   —kill, kill, kill.
             Lay them deep in the dirt, the stiffs we fixed, the
                   cadavers bumped off, lay them deep and let the
                   night winds of winter blizzards howl their burial
                   service.
             The night winds and the winter, the great white sheets
                   of northern blizzards, who can sing better for the
                   lost hoodlums the old requiem, "Kill him! kill
             him! ..."
             Today my son, to-morrow yours, the day after your
                   next door neighbor's—it is all in the wrists of
                   the gods who shoot craps—it is anybody's guess
                   whose eyes shut next.
             Being a hoodlum now, you and I, being all of us a
                   world of hoodlums, let us take up the cry when
                   the mob sluffs by on a thousand show soles, let
                   us too yammer, "Kill him! kill him! ..."
             Let us do this now ... for our mothers ... for our
                   sisters and wives ... let us kill, kill, kill—for
                   the torsoes of the women are tireless and the
                   loins of the men are strong.

    Chicago, July 29, 1919.



    YES, THE DEAD SPEAK TO US

               Yes, the Dead speak to us.
               This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to
                     the Wilderness.


               Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the
                     papers of the Dead in a house here
               And when two living men fall out, when one says the
                     Dead spoke a Yes, and the other says the Dead
                     spoke a No, they go then together to this house.


               They loosen the clamps and haul at the hasps and try
                   their keys and curse at the locks and the combina-
                   tion numbers.
             For the teeth of the rats are barred and the tongues
                   of the moths are outlawed and the sun and the
                   air of wind is not wanted.


             They open a box where a sheet of paper shivers, in a
                   dusty corner shivers with the dry inkdrops of the
                   Dead, the signed names.
             Here the ink testifies, here we find the say-so, here
                   we learn the layout, now we know where the
                   cities and farms belong.


                         Dead white men and dead red men
                         tested each other with shot and
                         knives: they twisted each others'
                         necks: land was yours if you took and
                         kept it.


                         How are the heads the rain seeps
                         in, the rain-washed knuckles in
                         sod and gumbo?


                         Where the sheets of paper shiver,
                         Back of the hasps and handles,
                         Back of the fireproof clamps,

    They read what the fingers scribbled, who the land
    belongs to now—it is herein provided, it is hereby
    stipulated—the land and all appurtenances thereto and
    all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and
    all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds,
    dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees,
    all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of
    running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading
    trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thorn-apple branches
    or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs
    shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops—

                         So it is scrawled here,
                         "I direct and devise
                         So and so and such and such,"
                         And this is the last word.
                         There is nothing more to it.


             In a shanty out in the Wilderness, ghosts of to-morrow
                   sit, waiting to come and go, to do their job.
             They will go into the house of the Dead and take the
                   shivering sheets of paper and make a bonfire and
                   dance a deadman's dance over the hissing crisp.
             In a slang their own the dancers out of the Wilderness
                   will write a paper for the living to read and sign:
             The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the dead
                   have peace and sleep, let the papers of the Dead
                   who fix the lives of the Living, let them be a
                   hissing crisp and ashes, let the young men and the
                   young women forever understand we are through
                   and no longer take the say-so of the Dead;
             Let the dead have honor from us with our thoughts
                   of them and our thoughts of land and all appur-
                   tenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold
                   and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories
                   of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese,
                   and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass,
                   johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running
                   water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees
                   or hazel bushes or sumach or thornapple branches
                   or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue
                   eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops.


             And so, it is a shack of ghosts, a lean-to they have in
                   the Wilderness, and they are waiting and they
                   have learned strange songs how easy it is to wait
                   and how anything comes to those who wait long
                   enough and how most of all it is easy to wait for
                   death, and waiting, dream of new cities.

    MIST FORMS


    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
               homecoming warblers—
                                                  because
             the cry here is wing to wing
             and song to song—


                       I am waiting,
             waiting with the flame flamingo,
             the spotted hawk, the running water
             warbler—
                             waiting for you.

    SEA-WASH


               The sea-wash never ends.
               The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
               Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows?
                        Only the old strong songs?
                        Is that all?
               The sea-wash repeats, repeats.

    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 to low contralto singing
                    mornings when the green corn leaves first break
                    through the black loam—
               And another long breath for the silver soprano melody
                    of the moon songs in the light nights when the
                    earth is lighter than a feather, the iron mountains
                  lighter than a goose down—
             So I shall look for you in the light nights then, in the
                  laughter of slats of silver under a hill hickory.
             In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind
                  motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imi-
                  tations of slow sea water on the shingle silver
                  in the wind—
                           I shall look for you.

    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
               Across the valley gloaming,
               Across the cattle-horns of early stars.


               Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop
               Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.


             What was the name you called me?—
             And why did you go so soon?

    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, gathers the
                    whole show into one stream, forgets the past and
                    rolls on.


               The sea-mist green of the bowl's bottom is a dark
                    throat of sky crossed by quarreling forks of
                  umber and ochre and yellow changing faces.

    SUMMER STARS


               Bend low again, night of summer stars.
               So near you are, sky of summer stars,
               So near, a long arm man can pick off stars,
               Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
               So near you are, summer stars,
               So near, strumming, strumming,
                               So lazy and hum-strumming.

    THROW ROSES


               Throw roses on the sea where the dead went down.
                          The roses speak to the sea,
                          And the sea to the dead.
               Throw roses, O lovers—
                          Let the leaves wash on the salt in the sun.

    JUST BEFORE APRIL CAME

               The snow piles in dark places are gone.
               Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
               The gravel of all shallow places shines.
               A white pigeon reels and somersaults.


               Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat
                            the air with a recurring thin
                            steel sliver of melody.
               Crows go in fives and tens; they march their
                            black feathers past a blue pool; they
                          celebrate an old festival.
             A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits
                          on my hand washing his forelegs.
             I might ask: Who are these people?

    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 good-by.
                      Let the stars and songs go.
                      Let the faces and years go.
                      Loosen your hands and say good-by.

    SANDPIPERS


               Ten miles of flat land along the sea.
               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 is gone at night.
               Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats,
                     pity anything but the sandpiper's wire
                   legs and feet.

    THREE VIOLINS


               Three violins are trying their hearts.
               The piece is MacDowell's Wild Rose.
                   And the time of the wild rose
                   And the leaves of the wild rose
               And the dew-shot eyes of the wild rose
               Sing in the air over three violins.
               Somebody like you was in the heart of MacDowell.
               Somebody like you is in three violins.

    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 this wind-hunted, wind-sung water."


               Come along always, come along now.
               You for me, kiss me, pull me by the ear.
             Push me along with the wind push.
             Sing like the whinnying wind.
             Sing like the hustling obstreperous wind.


             Have you ever seen deeper purple ...
                   this in my wild wind fingers?
             Could you have more fun with a pony or a goat?
             Have you seen such flicking heels before,
             Silver jig heels on the purple sky rim?
                   Come along always, come along now.

    TAWNY

               These are the tawny days: your face comes back.


               The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden
               early on the trellis.


               The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes
               of sunrise.


               Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome.


               Run on, yellow balls on the hills, and you tawny
               pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange.


               Tawny days: and your face again.

    SLIPPERY


               The six month child
               Fresh from the tub
               Wriggles in our hands.
               This is our fish child.
               Give her a nickname: Slippery.

    HELGA


               The wishes on this child's mouth
               Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
               The tamarack kept something for her;
               The wind is ready to help her shoes.
               The north has loved her; she will be
               A grandmother feeding geese on frosty
               Mornings; she will understand
               Early snow on the cranberries
               Better and better then.

    BABY TOES

               There is a blue star, Janet,
               Fifteen years' ride from us,
               If we ride a hundred miles an hour.


               There is a white star, Janet,
               Forty years' ride from us,
               If we ride a hundred miles an hour.


               Shall we ride
               To the blue star
               Or the white star?

    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 her pillow.
                  I have seen their heads in the starlight
                  And their proud chins marching in a mist of stars.


               They are the only people I never lie to.
                  I give them honest answers,
               Answers shrewd as the circles of white on brown
                   chestnuts.

    WINTER MILK

               The milk drops on your chin, Helga,
               Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your
                     cheeks
               Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes.
               Let your mammy keep hands off the chin.
               This is a high holy spatter of white on the reds and
                     blues.


               Before the bottle was taken away,
               Before you so proudly began today
             Drinking your milk from the rim of a cup
             They did not splash this high holy white on your chin.


             There are dreams in your eyes, Helga.
             Tall reaches of wind sweep the clear blue.
             The winter is young yet, so young.
             Only a little cupful of winter has touched your lips.
             Drink on ... milk with your lips ... dreams with
                   your eyes.

    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 done bird off the perch.

      Fox cubs sleep. The pointed head curls round into
    hind legs and tail. It is a ball of red hair. It is a muff
    waiting. A wind might whisk it in the air across
    pastures and rivers, a cocoon, a pod of seeds. The
    snooze of the black nose is in a circle of red hair.

      Old men sleep. In chimney corners, in rocking chairs,
    at wood stoves, steam radiators. They talk and forget
    and nod and are out of talk with closed eyes. For-
    getting to live. Knowing the time has come useless
    for them to live. Old eagles and old dogs run and
    fly in the dreams.

      Babies sleep. In flannels the papoose faces, the bam-
    bino noses, and dodo, dodo the song of many matush-
    kas. Babies—a leaf on a tree in the spring sun. A
    nub of a new thing sucks the sap of a tree in the sun,
    yes a new thing, a what-is-it? A left hand stirs, an
    eyelid twitches, the milk in the belly bubbles and gets
    to be blood and a left hand and an eyelid. Sleep is
    a maker of makers.



    SUMACH AND BIRDS


               If you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple
               Shining in the six o'clock September dusk:
               If the red sumach on the autumn roads
               Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes:
               If the red-haws never burst in a million
               Crimson fingertwists of your heartcrying:
               If all this beauty of yours never crushed me
               Then there are many flying acres of birds for me,
               Many drumming gray wings going home I shall see,
             Many crying voices riding the north wind.

    WOMEN WASHING THEIR HAIR

               They have painted and sung
               the women washing their hair,
               and the plaits and strands in the sun,
               and the golden combs
               and the combs of elephant tusks
               and the combs of buffalo horn and hoof.


               The sun has been good to women,
               drying their heads of hair
               as they stooped and shook their shoulders
             and framed their faces with copper
             and framed their eyes with dusk or chestnut.


             The rain has been good to women.
             If the rain should forget,
             if the rain left off for a year—
             the heads of women would wither,
             the copper, the dusk and chestnuts, go.


             They have painted and sung
             the women washing their hair—
             reckon the sun and rain in, too.

    PEACH BLOSSOMS

               What cry of peach blossoms
                    let loose on the air today
               I heard with my face thrown
                    in the pink-white of it all?
                    in the red whisper of it all?


               What man I heard saying:
                    Christ, these are beautiful!


               And Christ and Christ was in his mouth,
                    over these peach blossoms?

    HALF MOON IN A HIGH WIND

               Money is nothing now, even if I had it,
               O mooney moon, yellow half moon,
               Up over the green pines and gray elms,
               Up in the new blue.


                        Streel, streel,
               White lacey mist sheets of cloud,
               Streel in the blowing of the wind,
               Streel over the blue-and-moon sky,
               Yellow gold half moon. It is light
             On the snow; it is dark on the snow,
             Streel, O lacey thin sheets, up in the new blue.


             Come down, stay there, move on.
             I want you, I don't, keep all.
             There is no song to your singing.
             I am hit deep, you drive far,
             O mooney yellow half moon,
             Steady, steady; or will you tip over?
             Or will the wind and the streeling
             Thin sheets only pass and move on
             And leave you alone and lovely?
             I want you, I don't, come down,
                      Stay there, move on.
             Money is nothing now, even if I had it.

    REMORSE

               The horse's name was Remorse.
               There were people said, "Gee, what a nag!"
               And they were Edgar Allan Poe bugs and so
               They called him Remorse.
                                                   When he was a gelding
               He flashed his heels to other ponies
               And threw dust in the noses of other ponies
               And won his first race and his second
               And another and another and hardly ever
             Came under the wire behind the other runners.


             And so, Remorse, who is gone, was the hero of a play
             By Henry Blossom, who is now gone.


             What is there to a monicker? Call me anything.
             A nut, a cheese, something that the cat brought in.
                   Nick me with any old name.
             Class me up for a fish, a gorilla, a slant head, an egg,
                       a ham.
             Only ... slam me across the ears sometimes ...
                       and hunt for a white star
             In my forehead and twist the bang of my forelock
                       around it.
             Make a wish for me. Maybe I will light out like a
                       streak of wind.

    RIVER MOONS


               The double moon, one on the high back drop of the
                     west, one on the curve of the river face,
               The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water,
                     I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an
                     elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head.
               I saw them last night, a cradle moon, two horns of
                     a moon, such an early hopeful moon, such a child's
                     moon for all young hearts to make a picture of.
               The river—I remember this like a picture—the river
                   was the upper twist of a written question mark.
             I know now it takes many many years to write a river,
                   a twist of water asking a question.
             And white stars moved when the moon moved, and
                   one red star kept burning, and the Big Dipper was
                   almost overhead.

    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 tell.
               Maybe the fog moon they fly to, guesses.


               The sandpipers cheep "Here" and get away.
               Five of them fly and keep together flying.


             Nigh hair of some sea woman
             Curls on the sand when the sea leaves
             The salt tide without a good-by.


             Boxes on the beach are empty.
             Shake 'em and the nails loosen.
             They have been somewhere.

    HOW YESTERDAY LOOKED

               The high horses of the sea broke their white riders
               On the walls that held and counted the hours
               The wind lasted.


               Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east
               Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam
               And the evening began.


               The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their
               Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls
               For a wild night like this.


             The south and the west looked on and the moon came
             When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
             And the singing slow.


             Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
             Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
             To tell the how of it.


             I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
             The wind that blew them across and across,
             The scooping, mixing wind.

    PAULA

               Nothing else in this song—only your face.
               Nothing else here—only your drinking, night-gray eyes.


               The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel.
               I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings.
               It is not your eyes, your face, I remember.
               It is not your dancing, race-horse feet.
               It is something else I remember you for on the pier
                     mornings.


               Your hands are sweeter than nut-brown bread when
                   you touch me.
             Your shoulder brushes my arm—a south-west wind
                   crosses the pier.
             I forget your hands and your shoulder and I say again:


             Nothing else in this song—only your face.
             Nothing else here—only your drinking, night-gray
                   eyes.

    LAUGHING BLUE STEEL


               Two fishes swimming in the sea,
               Two birds flying in the air,
               Two chisels on an anvil—maybe.
               Beaten, hammered, laughing blue steel to each other
                      —maybe.
               Sure I would rather be a chisel with you
                                                             than a fish.
               Sure I would rather be a chisel with you
                                                             than a bird.
             Take these two chisel-pals, O God.
             Take 'em and beat 'em, hammer 'em,
                                                           hear 'em laugh.

    THEY ASK EACH OTHER WHERE THEY COME FROM


               Am I the river your white birds fly over?
               Are you the green valley my silver channels roam?
               The two of us a bowl of blue sky day time
                               and a bowl of red stars night time?
                         Who picked you
                         out of the first great whirl of nothings
                         and threw you here?

    HOW MUCH?

               How much do you love me, a million bushels?
               Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.


               And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?
               To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel.


               And is this your heart arithmetic?
               This is the way the wind measures the weather.

    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, climb-
                     ing.
               You and I that snickered in the crotches and corners,
                              in the gab of our first talking.
               Red dabs of dawn summer mornings and the rain
                     sliding off our shoulders summer afternoons.
             Was it you and I yelled songs and songs in the nights
                            of big yellow moons?

    WIND SONG

               Long ago I learned how to sleep,
               I 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 listened or never listened at all,
               In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the
                   wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?"
               I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer after-
                   noon and there I took a sleep lesson.
             There I went away saying: I know why they sleep,
                 I know how they trap the tricky winds.
             Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind
                 and how to forget and how to hear the deep
                 whine,
             Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night
                 stars:
                             Who, who are you?


                               Who can ever forget
                               listening to the wind go by
                               counting its money
                               and throwing it away?

    THREE SPRING NOTATIONS ON BIPEDS

    1


               The down drop of the blackbird,
               The wing catch of arrested flight,
               The stop midway and then off:
                   off for triangles, circles, loops
                   of new hieroglyphs—
               This is April's way: a woman:
               "O yes, I'm here again and your heart
                   knows I was coming."

    2


               White pigeons rush at the sun,
             A marathon of wing feats is on:
             "Who most loves danger? Who most loves
                 wings? Who somersaults for God's sake
                 in the name of wing power
                 in the sun and blue
                 on an April Thursday."
             So ten winged heads, ten winged feet,
                 race their white forms over Elmhurst.
             They go fast: once the ten together were
                 a feather of foam bubble, a chrysanthemum
                 whirl speaking to silver and azure.

    3


             The child is on my shoulders.
             In the prairie moonlight the child's legs
                 hang over my shoulders.
             She sits on my neck and I hear her calling
                 me a good horse.
             She slides down—and into the moon silver of
                 a prairie stream
             She throws stone and laughs at the clug-clug.

    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 gone or the dusk come.
               One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting
                     scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing
                     points, half over the sand, half over the water,
                     a half-love for the sea, a half-love for the land.


             I took away three thoughts.
             One was a thing my people call "love," a shut-in river
                   hunting the sea, breaking white falls between tall
                   clefs of hill country.
             One was a thing my people call "silence," the wind
                   running over the butter faced sand-flowers, run-
                   ning over the sea, and never heard of again.
             One was a thing my people call "death," neither a
                   whistle in the little sandhills, nor a bird Sanscrit
                   of wing points, yet a coat all the stars and seas
                   have worn, yet a face the beach wears between
                   sunset and dusk.

    FAR ROCKAWAY NIGHT TILL MORNING

               What can we say of the night?
               The fog night, the moon night,
                              the fog moon night last night?


               There swept out of the sea a song.
               There swept out of the sea—
                              torn white plungers.
               There came on the coast wind drive
               In the spit of a driven spray,
               On the boom of foam and rollers,
             The cry of midnight to morning:
                          Hoi-a-loa.
                          Hoi-a-loa.
                          Hoi-a-loa.


             Who has loved the night more than I have?
             Who has loved the fog moon night last night
                            more than I have?


             Out of the sea that song
                     —can I ever forget it?
             Out of the sea those plungers
                     —can I remember anything else?
             Out of the midnight morning cry: Hoi-a-loa:
                     —how can I hunt any other songs now?

    HUMMINGBIRD 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 under your willow throat—
               Why do I wonder how you would look in humming-
                     bird feathers?

    BUCKWHEAT

    1

               There was a late autumn cricket,
               And two smoldering mountain sunsets
               Under the valley roads of her eyes.


               There was a late autumn cricket,
               A hangover of summer song,
               Scraping a tune
               Of the late night clocks of summer,
               In the late winter night fireglow,
               This in a circle of black velvet at her neck.

    2



             In pansy eyes a flash, a thin rim of white light, a
                   beach bonfire ten miles across dunes, a speck of
                   a fool star in night's half circle of velvet.


             In the corner of the left arm a dimple, a mole, a
                   forget-me-not, and it fluttered a hummingbird
                   wing, a blur in the honey-red clover, in the honey-
                   white buckwheat.

    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.

    VALLEY SONG

                      The sunset swept
                      To the valley's west, you remember.


                      The frost was on.
                      A star burnt blue.
                      We were warm, you remember,
               And counted the rings on a moon.


                      The sunset swept
                      To the valley's west
               And was gone in a big dark door of stars.

    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 death come and pay back what
                     we saw?


               In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore,
               In the oath of night mist, nothing and all,
               A riddle is here no man tells, no woman.

    PIGEON

               The flutter of blue pigeon's wings
               Under a river bridge
               Hunting a clean dry arch,
               A corner for a sleep—
               This flutters here in a woman's hand.


               A singing sleep cry,
               A drunken poignant two lines of song,
               Somebody looking clean into yesterday
               And remembering, or looking clean into
             To-morrow, and reading,—
             This sings here as a woman's sleep cry sings.


             Pigeon friend of mine,
             Fly on, sing on.

    CHASERS

               The sea at its worst drives a white foam up,
               The same sea sometimes so easy and rocking with
                    green mirrors.
               So you were there when the white foam was up
               And the salt spatter and the rack and the dulse—
               You were done fingering these, and high, higher and
                    higher
               Your feet went and it was your voice went, "Hai,
                    hai, hai,"
             Up where the rocks let nothing live and the grass was
                  gone,
             Not even a hank nor a wisp of sea moss hoping.
             Here your feet and your same singing, "Hai, hai, hai."


             Was there anything else to answer than, "Hai, hai,
                  hai"?
             Did I go up those same crags yesterday and the day
                  before
             Scruffing my shoe leather and scraping the tough
                  gnomic stuff
             Of stones woven on a cold criss-cross so long ago?
             Have I not sat there ... watching the white foam up,
             The hoarse white lines coming to curve, foam, slip
                  back?
             Didn't I learn then how the call comes, "Hai, hai,
                  hai"?

    HORSE FIDDLE


               First I would like to write for you a poem to be
                    shouted in the teeth of a strong wind.
               Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a
                    hill and read down the river valley on a late
                    summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whis-
                    per to Jack on his soft wire legs learning to stand
                    up and preach, Jack-in-the-pulpit.
               As many poems as I have written to the moon and
                    the streaming of the moon spinners of light, so
                  many of the summer moon and the winter moon I
                  would like to shoot along to your ears for nothing,
                  for a laugh, a song,
                          for nothing at all,
                          for one look from you,
                          for your face turned away
                          and your voice in one clutch
                          half way between a tree wind moan
                          and a night-bird sob.
             Believe nothing of it all, pay me nothing, open your
                  window for the other singers and keep it shut
                  for me.
             The road I am on is a long road and I can go hungry
                  again like I have gone hungry before.
             What else have I done nearly all my life than go
                  hungry and go on singing?
             Leave me with the hoot owl.
             I have slept in a blanket listening.
             He learned it, he must have learned it
             From two moons, the summer moon,
             And the winter moon
             And the streaming of the moon spinners of light.

    TIMBER WINGS

               There was a wild pigeon came often to Hinkley's
                    timber
               Gray wings that wrote their loops and triangles on
                    the walnuts and the hazel.
                             There was a wild pigeon.


               There was a summer came year by year to Hinkley's
                    timber.
               Rainy months and sunny and pigeons calling and one
                    pigeon best of all who came.
                           There was a summer.


             It is so long ago I saw this wild pigeon and listened.
             It is so long ago I heard the summer song of the
                  pigeon who told me why night comes, why death
                  and stars come, why the whippoorwill remembers
                  three notes only and always.
             It is so long ago; it is like now and today; the gray
                  wing pigeon's way of telling it all, telling it to the
                  walnuts and hazel, telling it to me.
                      So there is memory.
                      So there is a pigeon, a summer, a gray wing
                           beating my shoulder.

    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 woman, a
                    lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mix-
                    ing their green and white among stars shattered
                    in spray clear nights.


               I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots
                    under my heart the same as a lonely woman, a
                  lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus rider's
                  silver dress.

    SPANISH


               Fasten black eyes on me.
               I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
               Fasten your black eyes in my gray
                              with the spear of a storm.
               The air under the peach blossoms in a haze of pink.

    SHAG-BARK HICKORY

               In the moonlight under a shag-bark hickory tree
               Watching the yellow shadows melt in hoof-pools,
               Listening to the yes and the no of a woman's hands,
               I kept my guess why the night was glad.


               The night was lit with a woman's eyes.
               The night was crossed with a woman's hands,
               The night kept humming an undersong.

    THE SOUTH WIND SAYS 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,
               if the crickets send up the same of old lessons
               found when the south wind keeps on coming,
               we will get by, we will keep on coming,
               we will get by, we will come along,
               we will fix our hearts over,
             the south wind says so.

    ACCOMPLISHED FACTS


    ACCOMPLISHED FACTS

               Every year Emily Dickinson sent one friend
               the first arbutus bud in her garden.


               In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson
               remembered a friend with the gift of George
               Washington's pocket spy-glass.


               Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver
               watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great,
               and pass along this trophy to a particular friend.


               O, Henry took a blood carnation from his coat lapel
             and handed it to a country girl starting work in a
             bean bazaar, and scribbled: "Peach blossoms may or
             may not stay pink in city dust."


             So it goes. Some things we buy, some not.
             Tom Jefferson was proud of his radishes, and Abe
             Lincoln blacked his own boots, and Bismarck called
             Berlin a wilderness of brick and newspapers.


             So it goes. There are accomplished facts.
             Ride, ride, ride on in the great new blimps—
             Cross unheard-of oceans, circle the planet.
             When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks.
             We might listen to boys fighting for marbles.
             The grasshopper will look good to us.


             So it goes ...

    GRIEG BEING DEAD

               Grieg being dead we may speak of him and his art.
               Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was
                     any good or not.
               Grieg being with Ibsen, Björnson, Lief Ericson and
                     the rest,
               Grieg being dead does not care a hell's hoot what
                     we say.


                         Morning, Spring, Anitra's Dance,
                         He dreams them at the doors of new stars.

    CHORDS

               In the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea
                    and adumbrants of rock in her eyes ... horse-
                    back in leather boots and leather gauntlets by
                    the sea.


               In the evening, a Sunday evening, a rope of pearls
                    on her white shoulders ... and a speaking,
                    brooding black velvet, relapsing to the voiceless
                    ... battering Russian marches on a piano ...
                    drive of blizzards across Nebraska.


             Yes, riding horseback on hills by the sea ... sitting
                  at the ivory keys in black velvet, a rope of pearls
                  on white shoulders.

    DOGHEADS

                     Among the grassroots
               In the moonlight, who comes circling,
                     red tongues and high noses?
               Is one of 'em Buck and one of 'em
                     White Fang?


               In the moonlight, who are they, cross-legged,
                     telling their stories over and over?
               Is one of 'em Martin Eden and one of 'em Larsen
                     the Wolf?


             Let an epitaph read:
                   He loved the straight eyes of dogs
                   and the strong heads of men.

    TRINITY PEACE

               The grave of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard
                    at the end of Wall Street.


               The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity,
                    yard where Wall Street stops.


               And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen,
                    sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of
                    graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies,
                    wages and love.


               An iron picket fence ... and streaming thousands
                  along Broadway sidewalks ... straw hats,
                  faces, legs ... a singing, talking, hustling river
                  ... down the great street that ends with a Sea.


             ... easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton.
             ... easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton.
             ... easy are the great governments and the great
                        steamboats.

    PORTRAIT


    (For S. A.)            To write one book in five years
               or five books in one year,
               to be the painter and the thing painted,
               ... where are we, bo?


               Wait—get his number.
               The barber shop handling is here
               and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist,
               and the flame orange scarf.


               Yet there is more—he sleeps under bridges
             with lonely crazy men; he sits in country
             jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children
             of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has
             cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson's
             father; he pencils wrists of lonely women.


             Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago
             and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa
             and feel the tall grass coming up in June
             and the ache of the cottonwood trees
             singing with the prairie wind?

    POTOMAC RIVER MIST

               All the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency ex-
                   perts in Toledo knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten
                   years when Whitlock was mayor.
               Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all
                   and how they fit from zone to zone, birds of
                   wind and weather, singers, fighters, scavengers.


               The Washington monument pointed to a new moon
                   for us and a gang from over the river sang rag-
                   time to a ukelele.
             The river mist marched up and down the Potomac,
                 we hunted the fog-swept Lincoln Memorial, white
                 as a blond woman's arm.
             We circled the city of Washington and came back home
                 four o'clock in the morning, passing a sign: House
                 Where Abraham Lincon Died, Admission 25
                 Cents.


             I got a letter from him in Sweden and I sent him a
                 postcard from Norway ... every newspaper from
                 America ran news of "the flu."


             The path of a night fog swept up the river to the
                 Lincoln Memorial when I saw it again and alone
                 at a winter's end, the marble in the mist white
                 as a blond woman's arm.

    JACK LONDON AND O. HENRY

               Both were jailbirds; no speechmakers at all;
               speaking best with one foot on a brass rail;
               a beer glass in the left hand and the right
               hand employed for gestures.


               And both were lights snuffed out ... no warning
               ... no lingering:


               Who knew the hearts of these boozefighters?

    HIS OWN FACE HIDDEN

               Hokusai's portrait of himself
               Tells what his hat was like
               And his arms and legs. The only faces
               Are a river and a mountain
               And two laughing farmers.


                    The smile of Hokusai
                    is under his hat.

    CUPS OF COFFEE

               The haggard woman with a hacking cough and a
                    deathless love whispers of white flowers ... in
                    your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel.


               The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of
                    flesh piled on her bones ... and the woman who
                    sold to many men and saw her breasts shrivel
                    ... in two poems you pour these like a cup of
                    coffee, Francois.


               The woman whose lips are a thread of scarlet, the
                  woman whose feet take hold on hell, the woman
                  who turned to a memorial of salt looking at the
                  lights of a forgotten city ... in your affidavits,
                  ancient Jews, you pour these like cups of coffee.


             The woman who took men as snakes take rabbits, a
                  rag and a bone and a hank of hair, she whose
                  eyes called men to sea dreams and shark's teeth
                  ... in a poem you pour this like a cup of coffee,
                  Kip.


             Marching to the footlights in night robes with spots
                  of blood, marching in white sheets muffling the
                  faces, marching with heads in the air they come
                  back and cough and cry and sneer: ... in your
                  poems, men, you pour these like cups of coffee.

    PASSPORTS


    SMOKE ROSE GOLD


               The dome of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
                           Out of haze over the sunset,
                           Out of a smoke rose gold:
               One star shines over the sunset.
               Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the
                     smoke rose gold,
               The haze changes from sunset to star.
               The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark.
               A star might call: It's a long way across.

    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 a thing this
                     city gave me nothing of in the day and the sun.


               The float of the dome in the day and the sun is one
                     thing.
               The float of the dome in the night and the moon is
                     another thing.
               In the night and the moon the float of the dome is a
                   dream-whisper, a croon of a hope: "Not today,
                   child, not today, lover; maybe tomorrow, child,
                   maybe tomorrow, lover."


             Can a dome of iron dream deeper than living men?
             Can the float of a shape hovering among tree-tops—
                   can this speak an oratory sad, singing and red
                   beyond the speech of the living men?


             A mother of men, a sister, a lover, a woman past the
                   dreams of the living—
             Does she go sad, singing and red out of the float of
                   this dome?


             There is ... something ... here ... men die for.

    NIGHT MOVEMENT—NEW YORK


               In the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their
                    arms,
               And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and
                    afternoon;
               In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of
                    the city,
               The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city;
               In the night, when the trains and wagons start from
                    a long way off
             For the city where the people ask bread and want
                  letters;
             In the night the city lives too—the day is not all.
             In the night there are dancers dancing and singers
                  singing,
             And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors.
             In the night the sea-winds take the city in their arms.

    NORTH ATLANTIC

               When the sea is everywhere
               from horizon to horizon ..
                  when the salt and blue
                  fill a circle of horizons ..
               I swear again how I know
               the sea is older than anything else
               and the sea younger than anything else.


               My first father was a landsman.
               My tenth father was a sea-lover,
                a gipsy sea-boy, a singer of chanties.
                (Oh Blow the Man Down!)


             The sea is always the same:
             and yet the sea always changes.


                   The sea gives all,
                   and yet the sea keeps something back.


             The sea takes without asking.
             The sea is a worker, a thief and a loafer.
                   Why does the sea let go so slow?
                   Or never let go at all?


                The sea always the same
                day after day,
                the sea always the same
                night after night,
                fog on fog and never a star,
                wind on wind and running white sheets,
                bird on bird always a sea-bird—
                so the days get lost:
                it is neither Saturday nor Monday,
                it is any day or no day,
                it is a year, ten years.


                Fog on fog and never a star,
                what is a man, a child, a woman,
                to the green and grinding sea?
             The ropes and boards squeak and groan.


             On the land they know a child they have named Today.
             On the sea they know three children they have named:
                             Yesterday, Today, To-morrow.


             I made a song to a woman:—it ran:
                   I have wanted you.
                   I have called to you
                   on a day I counted a thousand years.


             In the deep of a sea-blue noon
             many women run in a man's head,
             phantom women leaping from a man's forehead
                   .. to the railings .... into the sea ... to the
                   sea rim ...
                   .. a man's mother ... a man's wife ... other
                   women ...
             I asked a sure-footed sailor how and he said:
                I have known many women but there is only one sea.


             I saw the North Star once
             and our old friend, The Big Dipper,
                only the sea between us:
                "Take away the sea
                and I lift The Dipper,
                swing the handle of it,
                drink from the brim of it."


             I saw the North Star one night
             and five new stars for me in the rigging ropes,
             and seven old stars in the cross of the wireless
                             plunging by night,
                             plowing by night—
             Five new cool stars, seven old warm stars.


             I have been let down in a thousand graves
                             by my kinfolk.
             I have been left alone with the sea and the sea's
                wife, the wind, for my last friends
             And my kinfolk never knew anything about it at all.


             Salt from an old work of eating our graveclothes is
                   here.
                The sea-kin of my thousand graves,
                The sea and the sea's wife, the wind,
             They are all here to-night
                             between the circle of horizons,
                             between the cross of the wireless
                             and the seven old warm stars.


             Out of a thousand sea-holes I came yesterday.
             Out of a thousand sea-holes I come to-morrow.


             I am kin of the changer.
                             I am a son of the sea
                             and the sea's wife, the wind.

    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; a taffrail ... and a
                     woman's steel face ... looking ... looking.
               Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull's
                     wing in the storm's vortex; miles of white horses
                     plow through a stony beach; stars, clear sky, and
                   everywhere free climbers calling; and a woman's
                   steel face ... looking ... looking ...

    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 fur-
                     rows carved by the plowing keel.


               I leaned so ... and you fluttered struggling between
                     two waves in the air now ... and then under
                     the water and out again ... a fish ... a bird
                     ... a fin thing ... a wing thing.


             Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing
                   ... I have lived in many half worlds myself ...
                   and so I know you.

    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.


               Speak to me of the drag on your heart,
               The iron drag of the long days.


               I know hours empty as a beggar's tin cup on a rainy
                     day, empty as a soldier's sleeve with an arm lost.


             Speak to me ...

    IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE

               Let us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy per-
                     sistent drizzle on the streets of Stockhom, let
                     us put down the collars of our raincoats, take
                     off our hats and sit in the newspaper office.


               Let us sit among the telegrams—clickety-click—the
                     kaiser's crown goes into the gutter and the Hohen-
                     zollern throne of a thousand years falls to pieces
                     a one-hoss shay.


               It is a fog night out and the umbrellas are up and
                   the collars of the raincoats—and all the steam-
                   boats up and down the Baltic sea have their lights
                   out and the wheelsmen sober.


             Here the telegrams come—one king goes and another
                   —butter is costly: there is no butter to buy for
                   our bread in Stockholm—and a little patty of
                   butter costs more than all the crowns of Germany.


             Let us go out in the fog, John, let us roll up our
                   raincoat collars and go on the streets where men
                   are sneering at the kings.

    TWO ITEMS

               Strong rocks hold up the riksdag bridge ... always
                     strong river waters shoving their shoulders against
                     them ...
               In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking
                     to each other about more potatoes and bread for
                     the Swedish people to eat this winter.
               In a boat among calm waters next to the running
                     waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning
                     at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down
                   ... he waits ... the waters run ... the
                   riksdag talks ... he lifts the net and lets it
                   down ...
             Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over
                   the sky saying yes-yes.

                                



             Every afternoon at four o'clock fifteen apple women
                   who have sold their apples in Christiania meet
                   at a coffee house and gab.
             Every morning at nine o'clock a girl wipes the win-
                   dows of a hotel across the street from the post-
                   office in Stockholm.
             I have pledged them when I go to California next
                   summer and see the orange groves splattered with
                   yellow balls
             I shall remember other people half way round the
                   world.

    STREETS TOO OLD


               I walked among the streets of an old city and the
                     streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish
                     soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years.
               How old, how old, we are:—the walls went
                     on saying, street walls leaning toward each other
                     like old women of the people, like old midwives
                     tired and only doing what must be done.
               The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was
                     statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of
                   kings—ancient bearded kings who wrote books
                   and spoke of God's love for all people—and young
                   kings who took forth armies out across the fron-
                   tiers splitting the heads of their opponents and
                   enlarging their kingdoms.
             Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was
                   the murmur always whistling on the winds twist-
                   ing out of the armpits and fingertips of the kings
                   in bronze:—Is there no loosening? Is this for
                   always?
             In an early snowflurry one cried:—Pull me down
                   where the tired old midwives no longer look at
                   me, throw the bronze of me to a fierce fire and
                   make me into neckchains for dancing children.

    SAVOIR FAIRE

    Cast a bronze of my head and legs and put them on
                     the king's street.
               Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making
                     two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders
                     to look at between the palace and the Grand
                     Hotel.
               The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and
                     November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall
                     leather boots, one in wool leggins.
               Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may
                   name boats after me or change the name of a
                   long street and give it one of my nicknames.
             The old men who beset the soil of Sweden and own
                   the titles to the land—the old men who enjoy a
                   silken shimmer to their chin whiskers when they
                   promenade the streets named after old kings—
                   if they forget me—the old men whose varicose
                   veins stand more and more blue on the calves of
                   their legs when they take their morning baths
                   attended by old women born to the bath service
                   of old men and young—if these old men say
                   another King Carl should have a bronze on the
                   king's street rather than a Fool Carl—
             Then I would hurl them only another fool's laugh—
             I would remember last Sunday when I stood on a
                   jutland of fire-born red granite watching the
                   drop of the sun in the middle of the afternoon and
                   the full moon shining over Stockholm four o'clock
                   in the afternoon.
             If the young men will read five lines of one of my
                   poems I will let the kings have all the bronze—
                   I ask only that one page of my writings be a
                   knapsack keepsake of the young men who are the
                   bloodkin of those who laughed nine hundred years
                   ago: We are afraid of nothing—only—the sky
                   may fall on us.

    MOHAMMED BEK HADJETLACHE


               This Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells
                     with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
               The interpreter translates, "I was a friend of Korni-
                     lov, he asks me what to do and I tell him."
               A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel ... a
                     projectile shape ... a bald head hammered ...
               "Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and
                     shoot him at the enemy?"
               This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows every-
                   body.
             "I write forty books, history of Islam, history of
                   Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am
                   the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America
                   and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,-
                   000, you get $50,000 ..."
             "I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove
                   factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from
                   me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old
                   family friend of Clemenceau ..."
             These hands strangled three fellow workers for the
                   czarist restoration, took their money, sent them
                   in sacks to a river bottom ... and scandalized
                   Stockholm with his gang of strangler women.
             Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a
                   wish, "I ride horses for the moving pictures in
                   America, $500,000 and you get ten per cent ..."
             This rider of fugitive dawns....

    HIGH CONSPIRATORIAL PERSONS

               Out of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of
                     the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars,
                     out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to
                     the white sun before all men,


               Out of a rag saturated with smears and smuts gath-
                     ered from the footbaths of kings and the loin
                     cloths of whores, from the scabs of Babylon and
                     Jerusalem to the scabs of London and New York,


               From such a rag that has wiped the secret sores of
                   kings and overlords across the milleniums of
                   human marches and babblings,


             From such a rag perhaps I shall wring one reluctant
                   desperate drop of blood, one honest-to-God spot
                   of red speaking a mother-heart.

    December, 1918.
    Christiania, Norway



    BALTIC FOG NOTES

    (Bergen)

               Seven days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pound-
                     ing 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, moon.
               Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled
                     in granite languages on a gray sky,
               A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against
                     a night sky,
             And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand
                   people here.
                      Among the Wednesday night thousands in
                           goloshes and coats slickered for rain,
                      I learned how hungry I was for streets and
                           people.

                                                      



             I would rather be water than anything else.
             I saw a drive of salt fog and mist in the North Atlantic
                   and an iceberg dusky as a cloud in the gray of
                   morning.
             And I saw the dream pools of fjords in Norway ...
                   and the scarf of dancing water on the rocks and
                   over the edges of mountain shelves.

                                                      




             Bury me in a mountain graveyard in Norway.
             Three tongues of water sing around it with snow
                   from the mountains.


             Bury me in the North Atlantic.
             A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray
                   over me and a long deep wind sob always.


             Bury me in an Illinois cornfield.
             The blizzards loosen their pipe organ voluntaries in
                   winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall
                   rains bring letters from the sea.

    CIRCLES OF DOORS


    CIRCLES OF DOORS


               I love him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips
               And she formed his name on her tongue and sang
               And she send him word she loved him so much,
               So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home,
               All was nothing if her love for him was not first
               Of all; the patter of her lips ran, I love him,
               I love him; and he knew the doors that opened
               Into doors and more doors, no end of doors,
               And full length mirrors doubling and tripling
             The apparitions of doors: circling corridors of
             Looking glasses and doors, some with knobs, some
             With no knobs, some opening slow to a heavy push,
             And some jumping open at a touch and a hello.
             And he knew if he so wished he could follow her
             Swift running through circles of doors, hearing
             Sometimes her whisper, I love him, I love him,
             And sometimes only a high chaser of laughter
             Somewhere five or ten doors ahead or five or ten
             Doors behind, or chittering h-st, h-st, among corners
             Of the fall full-length dusty looking glasses.
             I love, I love, I love, she sang short and quick in
             High thin beaten soprano and he knew the meanings,
             The high chaser of laughter, the doors on doors
             And the looking glasses, the room to room hunt,
             The ends opening into new ends always.

    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 sorry. It was a shot
                     in one second of hate out of ten years of love.


               Why is the sun a red ball in the six o'clock mist?
               Why is the moon a tumbling chimney? ... tumbling
                     ... tumbling ... "I'd give you the shirt off
                     my back" ... And I'll kill you if my head
                   goes wrong.

    TWO STRANGERS BREAKFAST


               The law says you and I belong to each other, George.
               The law says you are mine and I am yours, George.
               And there are a million miles of white snowstorms, a
                     million furnaces of hell,
               Between the chair where you sit and the chair where
                     I sit.
               The law says two strangers shall eat breakfast together
                     after nights on the horn of an Arctic moon.

    SNOW

               Snow took us away from the smoke valleys into white
                     mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a
                     vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.


               Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught
                     by the wind and spelled into many dances.


               Six bits for a sniff of snow in the old days bought
                     us bubbles beautiful to forget floating long arm
                     women across sunny autumn hills.


               Our bones cry and cry, no let-up, cry their telegrams:
             More, more—a yen is on, a long yen and God only
                   knows when it will end.


             In the old days six bits got us snow and stopped the
                   yen—now the government says: No, no, when our
                   bones cry their telegrams: More, more.


             The blue cows are dying, no more pink milk, no more
                   floating long arm women, the hills are empty—
                   us for the smoke valleys—sneeze and shiver and
                   croak, you dopes—the government says: No, no.

    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 dancer of all in this mas-
                     querade,
               The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow,
                     crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of
                     music,


                             I sit in a corner
                             watching her dance first with one man
                             and then another.

    PLASTER

               "I knew a real man once," says Agatha in the splen-
                     dor of a shagbark hickory tree.


               Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold
                     her in his arms? Did a man only look at her
                     and pass by?


               Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance,
                     says, "I knew a real man once."

    CURSE OF A RICH POLISH PEASANT ON HIS SISTER WHO RAN AWAY WITH A WILD MAN


               Feliksowa has gone again from our house and this
                     time for good, I hope.
               She and her husband took with them the cow father
                     gave them, and they sold it.
               She went like a swine, because she called neither on
                     me, her brother, nor on her father, before leaving
                     for those forests.
               That is where she ought to live, with bears, not with
                     men.
             She was something of an ape before and there, with
                   her wild husband, she became altogether an ape.
             No honest person would have done as they did.
             Whose fault is it? And how much they have cursed
                   me and their father!
             May God not punish them for it. They think only
                   about money; they let the church go if they can
                   only live fat on their money.

    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 short words
               And quit a life that was old to her
               For a life that was new.


               There was a woman swore an oath
               And gave hoarse whisper to a prayer
               And it was all over.


             She was a thief and a whore and a kept woman,
             She was a thing to be used and played with.
             She wore an ancient scarlet sash.


             The story is thin and wavering,
             White as a face in the first apple blossoms,
             White as a birch in the snow of a winter moon.


             The story is never told.
             There are white lips whisper alone.
             There are red lips whisper alone.


             In the cool of the old walls,
             In the white of the old walls,
             The red song is over.

    WHITE HANDS


               For the second time in a year this lady with the white
                     hands is brought to the west room second floor
                     of a famous sanatorium.
               Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa
                     town and the lady has often read papers on Vic-
                     torian poets before the local literary club.
               Yesterday she washed her hands forty seven times
                     during her waking hours and in her sleep moaned
                     restlessly attempting to clean imaginary soiled
                   spots off her hands.
             Now the head physician touches his chin with a
                   crooked forefinger.

    AN ELECTRIC SIGN GOES DARK

               Poland, France, Judea ran in her veins,
               Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a
                     fizz at the pop of a bottle's cork.


               "Won't you come and play wiz me" she sang ... and
                     "I just can't make my eyes behave."
               "Higgeldy-Piggeldy," "Papa's Wife," "Follow Me"
                     were plays.


               Did she was her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand
                     of pearls sneaked from her trunk? The news-
                   papers asked.
             Cigarettes, tulips, pacing horses, took her name.


             Twenty years old ... thirty ... forty ...
             Forty-five and doctors fathom nothing, the doctors
                   quarrel, the doctors use silver tubes feeding
                   twenty-four quarts of blood into the veins, the
                   respect of a prize-fighter, a cab driver.
             And a little mouth moans: It is easy to die when they
                   are dying so many grand deaths in France.


             A voice, a shape, gone.
             A baby bundle from Warsaw ... legs, torso, head
                   ... on a hotel bed at the Savoy.


             The white chiselings of flesh that flung themselves in
                   somersaults, straddles, for packed houses:
             A memory, a stage and footlights out, an electric sign
                   on Broadway dark.


             She belonged to somebody, nobody.
             No one man owned her, no ten nor a thousand.
             She belonged to many thousand men, lovers of the
                   white chiseling of arms and shoulders, the ivory
                   of a laugh, the bells of song.


             Railroad brakemen taking trains across Nebraska
                   prairies, lumbermen jaunting in pine and tamarack
                   of the Northwest, stock ranchers in the middle
                   west, mayors of southern cities
             Say to their pals and wives now: I see by the papers
                   Anna Held is dead.

    THEY BUY WITH AN EYE TO LOOKS


               The fine cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt,
               Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers,
               Something a traveler with plenty of money might
                     pick up
               And bring home and stick on the walls and say:
               "There's a little thing made a hit with me
               When I was in Cairo—I think I must see Cairo again
                     some day."
               So there are cornice manufacturers, chewing gum
                   kings,
             Young Napoleons who corner eggs or corner cheese,
             Phenoms looking for more worlds to corner,
             And still other phenoms who lard themselves in
             And make a killing in steel, copper, permaganese,
             And they say to random friends in for a call:
               "Have you had a look at my wife? Here she is.
               Haven't I got her dolled up for fair?"
             O-ee! the fine cloth of your love might be a fabric of
                   Egypt.

    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 fingers have worn out all they
                     have and know and can hope to have and know
                     for the sake of making you what that people on
                     the streets call proud and beautiful,
               After there is absolutely nothing more to be done for
                   the sake of staging you as a great enigmatic bird
                   of paradise and they must all declare you to be
                   proud and beautiful,
             After you have become the last word in good looks,
                   insofar as good looks may be fixed and formu-
                   lated, then, why then, there is nothing more to
                   it then, it is then you listen and see how voices
                   and eyes declare you to be proud and beautiful.

    TELEGRAM

               I saw a telegram handed a two hundred pound man
                     at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged
                     the air like a set of crystals in a chemist's tube
                     to a whispering pinch of salt.
               Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just
                     cracked a joke about a new hat he got his wife,
                     when the messenger boy slipped in and asked
                     him to sign. He gave the boy a nickel, tore the
                     envelope and read.
             Then he yelled "Good God," jumped for his hat and
                   raincot, ran for the elevator and took a taxi
                   to a railroad depot.


             As I say, it was like a set of crystals in a chemist's
                   tube and a whispering pinch of salt.
             I wonder what Diogenes who live in a tube in the
                   sun would have commented on the affair.
             I know a shoemaker who works in a cellar slamming
                   half-soles onto shoes, and went I told him, he
                   said: "I pay my bills, I love my wife, and I am
                   not afraid of anybody."

    GLIMMER


               Let down your braids of hair, lady.
               Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass
               And gaze long on lines under your eyes.
               Life writes; men dance.
                           And you know how men pay women.

    WHITE ASH

               There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a
               parrot and goldfish and two white mice.


               She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and
               three pushbuttons on the front door.


               Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two
               white mice ... but these are some of her thoughts:


               The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore
               leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.


               The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a
             thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.


             The love of a young man whose sweetheart married
             an older man for money burns with a sputtering un-
             certain flame.


             And there is a love ... one in a thousand ...
             burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash....


             And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot
             and goldfish and two white mice.

    TESTIMONY REGARDING A GHOST

                     The roses slanted crimson sobs
               On the night sky hair of the women,
               And the long light-fingered men
               Spoke to the dark-haired women,
               "Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier."
               How could he sit there among us all
               Guzzling blood into his guts,
               Goblets, mugs, buckets—
               Leaning, toppling, laughing
             With a slobber on his mouth,
             A smear of red on his strong raw lips,
             How could he sit there
             And only two or three of us see him?
                   There was nothing to it.
             He wasn't there at all, of course.


                   The roses leaned from the pots.
             The sprays snot roses gold and red
             And the roses slanted crimson sobs
                      In the night sky hair
             And the voices chattered on the way
             To the frappe, speaking of pictures,
             Speaking of a strip of black velvet
             Crossing a girlish woman's throat,
             Speaking of the mystic music flash
             Of pots and sprays of roses,
             "Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier."

    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 knock a nail in every day."
               So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a
                     high impetuous moment for you to look on before
                     the final farewells were spoken.
               You who assumed the farewells in the manner of
                   people buying newspapers and reading the head-
                   lines—and all peddlers of gossip who buttonhole
                   each other and wag their heads saying, "Yes, I
                   heard all about it last Wednesday."


             I considered several apothegms.
             "There is no love but service," of course, would only
                   initiate a quarrel over who has served and how
                   and when.
             "Love stands against fire and flood and much bitter-
                   ness," would only initiate a second misunderstand-
                   ing, and bickerings with lapses of silence.
             What is there in the Bible to cover our case, or Shake-
                   spere? What poetry can help? Is there any left
                   but Epictetus?


             Since you have already chosen to interpret silence for
                   language and silence for despair and silence for
                   contempt and silence for all things but love,
             Since you have already chosen to read ashes where
                   God knows there was something else than ashes,
             Since silence and ashes are two identical findings for
                   your eyes and there are no apothegms worth
                   handing out like a hung jury's verdict for a record
                   in our own hearts as well as the community at
                   large,
             I can only remember a Russian peasant who told me
                   his grandfather warned him: If you ride too good
                   a horse you will not take the straight road to
                   town.


             It will always come back to me in the blur of that
                   hokku: The heart of a woman of thirty is like
                   the red ball of the sun seen through a mist.
             Or I will remember the witchery in the eyes of a girl
                   at a barn dance one winter night in Ilinois saying:
                          Put off the wedding five times and nobody
                               comes to it.

    BABY VAMPS


               Baby vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
               Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time
                     saloons?
                   Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time
                               or is this all you do?
                               do you come out only at night?
               In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the
                               roller coaster parks,
               Wherever figure eights are carved, by skates in winter,
                   by roller coasters in summer,
             Wherever the whirligigs are going and chicken spanish
                   and hot dog are sold,
             There you come, giggling baby vamp, there you come
                   with your blue baby eyes, saying:
                            Take me along.

    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 ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother
               over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father
               came with the locomotor ataxia shuffle.


               It is long ago, Elsie, and now they spell your name
               with an electric sign.


             Then you were a little thing in checked gingham
             and your mother wiped your nose and said: You
             little fool, keep off the streets.


             Now you are a big girl at last and streetfuls of
             people read your name and a line of people shaped
             like a letter S stand at the box office hoping to
             see you shimmy.

    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 faces sifting white over the tuxedoes.
               Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smart-
                   alecks discussing "educated jackasses," here they
                   put crabs into their balloon faces.
             Here sit the heavy balloon face women lifting crimson
                   lobsters into their crimson faces, lobsters out of
                   Sargossa sea bottoms.
             Here sits a man cross-examining a woman, "Where
                   were you last night? What do you do with all
                   your money? Who's buying your shoes now,
                   anyhow?"
             So they sit eating whitefish, two balloon faces swept
                   on God's night wind.
             And all the time the balloon spots on the wires, a little
                   mile of festoons, they play their own silence play
                   of film yellow and film gold, bubble blue and bub-
                   ble red.
             The wind crosses the town, the wind from the west
                   side comes to the banks of marigolds boxed in the
                   Marigold Gardens.
             Night moths fly an fix their feet in the leaves and
                   eat and are seen by the eaters.
             The jazz outfit sweats and the drums and the saxo-
                   phones reach for the ears of the eaters.
             The chorus brought from Broadway works at the fun
                   and the slouch of their shoulders, the kick of their
                   ankles, reach for the eyes of the eaters.
             These girls from Kokomo and Peoria, these hungry
                   girls, since they are paid-for, let us look on and
                   listen, let us get their number.


             Why do I go again to the balloons on the wires, some-
                   thing for nothing, kin women of the half-moon,
                   dream women?
             And the half-moon swinging on the wind crossing the
                   town—these two, the half-moon and the wind—
                   this will be about all, this will be about all.


             Eaters, go to it; your mazuma pays for it all; it's a
                   knockout, a classy knockout—and payday always
                   comes.
             The moths in the marigolds will do for me, the half-
                   moon, the wishing wind and the little mile of
                   balloon spots on wires—this will be about all, this
                   will be about all.

    HAZE


    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 cool memories on storm paths.


               Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
               They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.


               Other faces rise on the prairie.
                                          They are the unborn. The future.


             Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the sky-
                    line
             The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One
                    waits.


             In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of
                   vermilion eight o'clock June nights ... the
                   dead men and the unborn children speak to me
                   ... I can not tell you what they say ... you
                   listen and you know.


             I don't care who you are, man:
             I know a woman is looking for you
             and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind.


             (The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust,
                   is calling the cows; he will form the letter X with
                   crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will
                   beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X's
                   of milk.)


             I don't care who you are, man:
             I know sons and daughters looking for you
             And they are gray dust working toward star paths
             And you see them from a garret window when you
                   laugh
             At your luck and murmur, "I don't care."


             I don't care who you are, woman:
             I know a man is looking for you
             And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-
                tassel.


             (The kitchen girl on the farm is throwing oats to the
                   chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello
                   to the sunset's late maroon.)


             I don't care who you are, woman:
             I know sons and daughters looking for you
             And they are next year's wheat or the year after
                   hidden in the dark and loam.


             My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio,
                   Indiana. My love is a redbird shooting flights
                   in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. My
                   love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper
                   on her shoulders in March and April. My love
                   is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan
                   house all winter. Why is my love always a crying
                   thing of wings?


             On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I
                   have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
             Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in
                   the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes?
                   Is the flame of it all a white light switched off
                   and the power house wires cut?


             Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why
                   do the changing repeating rains come back out
                   of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars
                   keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the
                   sky rock new babies?

    CADENZA

               The knees
                  of this proud woman
               are bone.


               The elbows
                  of this proud woman
               are bone.


               The summer-white stars
                  and the winter-white stars
               never stop circling
               around this proud woman.


             The bones
                of this proud woman
             answer the vibrations
                of the stars.


                In summer
             the stars speak deep thoughts
                In the winter
             the stars repeat summer speeches.


             The knees
                of this proud woman
             know these thoughts
                and know these speeches
             of the summer and winter stars.

    MEMORANDA

               This handful of grass, brown, says little. This quar-
                     ter 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 sides of
                     a road ditch. In the clear pool they find their
                     faces along stiff knives of grass, and cat-tails
                     who speak and keep thoughts in beaver brown.

                                                      



               These gardens empty; these fields only flower ghosts;
                     these yards with faces gone; leaves speaking as
                   feet and skirts in slow dances to slow winds; I
                   turn my head and say good-by to no one who
                   hears; I pronounce a useless good-by.

    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; around, under, over,
                     I go on.
               A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they
                     nearly got me last year.
               A sliver of moon slides by on a high wind calling: I
                   know why; I'll see you to-morrow; I'll tell you
                   everything to-morrow.

    BUFFALO DUSK


               The buffaloes are gone.
               And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
               Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how
                     they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their
                     hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a
                     great pageant of dusk,
               Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
               And the buffaloes are gone.

    CORN HUT TALK

               Write your wishes
                  on the door
                  and come in.


               Stand outside
                  in the pools of the harvest moon.


               Bring in
                  the handshake of the pumpkins.


               There's a wish
                  for every hazel nut?
             There's a hope
                for every corn shock?
             There's a kiss
                for every clumsy climbing shadow?


                Clover and the bumblebees once,
                high winds and November rain now.


             Buy shoes
                for rough weather in November.
             Buy shirts
                to sleep outdoors when May comes.


                Buy me
             something useless to remember you by.
                Send me
             a sumach leaf from an Illinois hill.


                   In the faces marching in the firelog flickers,
                In the fire music of wood singing to winter,
                Make my face march through the purple and ashes.
                Make me one of the fire singers to winter.

    BRANCHES


               The dancing girls here ... after a long night of
                     it ...
               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 partner, to the
                     rain for a partner.
               What is the humming, swishing thing they sing in
                     the morning now?
             The rain, the wind, the swishing whispers of the long
                   slim curve so little and so dark on the western
                   morning sky ... these dancing girls here on an
                   April early morning ...
             They have had a long cool beautiful night of it with
                   they partners learning this year's song of April.

    RUSTY CRIMSON

    (Christmas Day, 1917)


               The five o'clock prairie sunset is a strong man going
                     to sleep after a long day in a cornfield.


               The red dust of a rusty crimson is fixed with two
                     fingers of lavender. A hook of smoke, a woman's
                     nose in charcoal and ... nothing.


               The timberline turns in a cover of purple. A grain
                     elevator humps a shoulder. One steel star whisks
                     out a pointed fire. Moonlight comes on the
                     stubble.

                                                      



             "Jesus in an Illinois barn early this morning, the
                   baby Jesus ... in flannels ..."

    LETTER S


               The river is gold under a sunset of Illinois.
               It is a molten gold someone pours and changes.
               A woman mixing a wedding cake of butter and eggs
               Knows what the sunset is pouring on the river here.
               The river twists in a letter S.
                     A gold S now speaks to the Illinois sky.

    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 shall be killed.
               The weeds say life is a white and lovely thing
               And the weeds come on and on in irrepressible regi-
                     ments.
               Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes; and the village law
                   uttering a ban on weeds is unchangeable law.

    NEW FARM TRACTOR

               Snub nose, the guts of twenty mules are in your
                     cylinder and transmission.


               The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri
                     jackasses.


               It is in the records of the patent office and the ads
                     there is twenty horse power pull here.


               The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty
                     mules—he sings to you instead of ten span of
                     mules.


             A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and
                   oats.


             Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere
                   in the fields with the stars for a roof.


             I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel
                   —it's good-by now to leather reins and the songs
                   of the old mule skinners.

    PODS


               Pea pods cling to stems
               Neponset, the village,
               Clings to the Burlington railway main line.
               Terrible midnight limiteds roar through
               Hauling sleepers to the Rockies and Sierras.
               The earth is slightly shaken
               And Neponset trembles slightly in its sleep.

    HARVEST SUNSET

               Red gold of pools,
               Sunset furrows six o'clock,
               And the farmer done in the fields
               And the cows in the barns with bulging udders.


               Take the cows and the farmer,
               Take the barns and bulging udders.
               Leave the red gold of pools
               And sunset furrows six o'clock.
               The farmer's wife is singing.
             The farmer's boy is whistling.
             I wash my hands in red gold of pools.

    NIGHT'S NOTHINGS AGAIN

               Who knows what I know
               when I have asked the night questions
               and the night has answered nothing
               only the old answers?


               Who picked a crimson cryptogram,
               the tail light of a motor car turning a corner,
               or the midnight sign of a chile con carne place,
               or a man out of the ashes of false dawn muttering
                     "hot-dog" to the night watchmen:
             Is there a spieler who has spoken the word or taken
                   the number of night's nothings? am I the spieler?
                   or you?


             Is there a tired head
             the night has not fed and rested
             and kept on its neck and shoulders?


             Is there a wish
             of man to woman
             and woman to man
             the night has not written
             and signed its name under?


             Does the night forget
             as a woman forgets?
             and remember
             as a woman remembers?


             Who gave the night
             this head of hair,
             this gipsy head
             calling: Come-on?


             Who gave the night anything at all
             and asked the night questions
             and was laughed at?


             Who asked the night
             for a long soft kiss
             and lost the half-way lips?
             who picked a red lamp in a mist?


             Who saw the night
             fold its Mona Lisa hands
             and sit half-smiling, half-sad,
             nothing at all,
             and everything,
             all the world?


             Who saw the night
             let down its hair
             and shake its bare shoulders
             and blow out the candles of the moon,
             whispering, snickering,
             cutting off the snicker ... and sobbing ...
             out of pillow-wet kisses and tears?


             Is the night woven of anything else
             than the secret wishes of women,
             the stretched empty arms of women?
             the hair of women with stars and roses?


             I asked the night these questions.
             I heard the night asking me these questions.


             I saw the night
             put these whispered nothings
             across the city dust and stones,
             across a single yellow sunflower,
             one stalk strong as a woman's wrist;


             And the play of a light rain,
             the jig-time folly of a light rain,
             the creepers of a drizzle on the sidewalks
             for the policemen and the railroad men,
             for the home-goers and the homeless,
             silver fans and funnels on the asphalt,
             the many feet of a fog mist that crept away;


             I saw the night
             put these nothings across
             and the night wind came saying: Come-on:
             and the curve of sky swept off white clouds
             and swept on white stars over Battery to Bronx,
             scooped a sea of stars over Albany, Dobbs Ferry, Cape
                   Horn, Constantinople.


             I saw the night's mouth and lips
             strange as a face next to mine on a pillow
             and now I know ... as I knew always ...
             the night is a lover of mine ...
             I know the night is ... everything.
             I know the night is ... all the world.


             I have seen gold lamps in a lagoon
             play sleep and murmur
             with never an eyelash,
             never a glint of an eyelid,
             quivering in the water-shadows.


             A taxi whizzes by, an owl car clutters, passengers yawn
                   reading street signs, a bum on a park bench shifts,
                   another bum keeps his majesty of stone stillness,
                   the forty-foot split rocks of Central Park sleep
                   the sleep of stone whalebacks, the cornices of the
                   Metropolitan Art mutter their own nothings to the
                   men with rolled-up collars on the top of a bus:
             Breaths of the sea salt Atlantic, breaths of two rivers,
                   and a heave of hawsers and smokestacks, the
                   swish of multiplied sloops and war dogs, the hesi-
                   tant hoo-hoo of coal boats: among these I listen
                   to Night calling:
             I give you what money can never buy: all other lovers
                   change: all others go away and come back and go
                   away again:
                        I am the one you slept with last night.
                        I am the one you sleep with tonight and
                             tomorrow night.
                        I am the one whose passion kisses
                                 keep your head wondering
                                 and your lips aching
                                 to sing one song
                                 never sung before
                                 at night's gipsy head
                                 calling: Come-on.


           These hands that slid to my neck and held me,
           these fingers that told a story,
           this gipsy head of hair calling: Come-on:
           can anyone else come along now
           and put across night's nothings again?


           I have wanted kisses my heart stuttered at asking,
           I have pounded at useless doors and called my people
                 fools.
           I have staggered alone in a winter dark making
                 mumble songs
           to the sting of a blizzard that clutched and swore.


                     It was the night in my blood:
                        open dreaming night,
                        night of tireless sheet-steel blue:
                     The hands of God washing something,
                        feet of God walking somewhere.

    PANELS


    PANELS


               The west window is a panel of marching onions.
               Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards.
               The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes,
                         heliograph a peace.
               (How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard
                         howling at the knot holes,
                         whistling winter war drums?

    DAN


               Early May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind.
               Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door,
                                         all sun and no wind,
               Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull
               Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep,
               Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off
                                         against each other on his paws
                                         and head.

    WHIFFLETREE


               Give me your anathema.
               Speak new damnations on my head.
               The evening mist in the hills is soft.
               The boulders on the road say communion.
               The farm dogs look out of their eyes and keep thoughts
                      from the corn cribs.
               Dirt of the reeling earth holds horseshoes.
               The rings in the whiffletree count their secrets.
               Come on, you.

    MASCOTS


                  I will keep you and bring hands to hold you against
                     a great hunger.
               I will run a spear in you for a great gladness to die
                     with.
               I will stab you between the ribs of the left side with
                     a great love worth remembering.

    THE SKYSCRAPER LOVES NIGHT

               One by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checker-
                     ing cross work on the velvet gown of night.
               I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and
                     brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a
                     velvet gown,
               And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under
                     the dark feel of it all.


               The masonry of steel looks to the night for somebody
                     it loves,
             He is a little dizzy and almost dances ... waiting
                   ... dark ...

    NEVER BORN


               The time has gone by.
               The child is dead.
               The child was never even born.
               Why go on? Why so much is begin?
               How can we turn the clock back now
               And not laugh at each other
               As ashes laugh at ashes?

    THIN STRIPS

               In a jeweler's shop I saw a man beating
               out thin sheets of gold. I heard a woman
               laugh many years ago.


               Under a peach tree I saw petals scattered
               .. torn strips of a bride's dress. I heard
               a woman laugh many years ago.

    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.

    MY PEOPLE


               My people are gray,
                     pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray.
               I call them beautiful.
                     and I wonder where they are going.

    SWIRL


               A swirl in the air where your head was once, here.
               You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
               I might almost stand here and believe you alive.

    WISTFUL


               Wishes left on your lips
               The mark of their wings.
               Regrets fly kites in your eyes.

    BASKET


               Speak, sir, and be wise.
               Speak choosing your words, sir,
                      like an old woman over a bushel
                      of apples.

    FIRE PAGES


               I will read ashes for you, if you ask me.
               I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes
               And out of the red and black tongues and stripes,
               I will tell how fire comes
               And how fire runs far as the sea.

    FINISH

               Death comes once, let it be easy.
               Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that.
               Or ring no bell at all, better yet.


               Sing one song if I die.
               Sing John Brown's Body or Shout All Over God's
                     Heaven.
               Or sing nothing at all, better yet.


               Death comes once, let it be easy.

    FOR YOU

               The peace of great doors be for you.
               Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
               Wait for the great hinges.


               The peace of great churches be for you,
               Where the players of loft pipe organs
               Practice old lovely fragments, alone.


               The peace of great books be for you,
               Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
               Bleach of the light of years held in leather.


             The peace of great prairies be for you.
             Listen among wind players in cornfields,
             The wind learning over its oldest music.


             The peace of great seas be for you.
             Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
             For you, wait in the salt wash.


             The peace of great mountains be for you,
             The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
             Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.


             The peace of great hearts be for you,
             Valves of the blood of the sun,
             Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.


             The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
             Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
             Alive and crying, "Let us out, let us out."


             The peace of great changes be for you.
             Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.
             Tumble, Oh cubs—to-morrow belongs to you.


             The peace of great loves be for you.
             Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
             Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.


             The peace of great ghosts be for you,
             Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go.
             To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.


             Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
             Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
             Keepers of the lean clean breeds.