Sun-Up and Other Poems

Lola Ridge

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  • DEDICATION
  • SUN-UP
  • I. CELIA
  • II. THE ALLEY
  • III. MAMA
  • IV. BETTY
  • V. JUDE
  • MONOLOGUES
  • WINDOWS
  • SECRETS
  • PORTRAITS
  • SONS OF BELIAL
  • REVEILLE

  • This etext was produced by Catherine Daly.



    DEDICATION


    (To my Mother)

    Let me cradle myself back
    Into the darkness
    Of the half shapes...
    Of the cauled beginnings...
    Let me stir the attar of unused air,
    Elusive... ironically fragrant
    As a dead queen's kerchief...
    Let me blow the dust from off you...
    Resurrect your breath
    Lying limp as a fan
    In a dead queen's hand.

    Thanks is due to THE NEW REPUBLIC, POETRY, A MAGAZINE OF VERSE, PLAY-BOY, and
    OTHERS for permission to reprint some of these poems.


    SUN-UP



    (Shadows over a cradle...
    fire-light craning....
    A hand
    throws something in the fire
    and a smaller hand
    runs into the flame and out again,
    singed and empty....
    Shadows
    settling over a cradle...
    two hands
    and a fire.)

    I. CELIA



    Cherry, cherry,
    glowing on the hearth,
    bright red cherry....
    When you try to pick up cherry
    Celia's shriek
    sticks in you like a pin.


         : :

    When God throws hailstones
    you cuddle in Celia's shawl
    and press your feet on her belly
    high up like a stool.
    When Celia makes umbrella of her hand.
    Rain falls through
    big pink spokes of her fingers.
    When wind blows Celia's gown up off her legs
    she runs under pillars of the bank—
    great round pillars of the bank
    have on white stockings too.


         : :

    Celia says my father
    will bring me a golden bowl.
    When I think of my father
    I cannot see him
    for the big yellow bowl
    like the moon with two handles
    he carries in front of him.


         : :

    Grandpa, grandpa...
    (Light all about you...
    ginger... pouring out of green jars...)
    You don't believe he has gone away and left his great coat...
    so you pretend... you see his face up in the ceiling.
    When you clap your hands and cry, grandpa, grandpa, grandpa,
    Celia crosses herself.


         : :

    It isn't a dream....
    It comes again and again....
    You hear ivy crying on steeples
    the flames haven't caught yet
    and images screaming
    when they see red light on the lilies
    on the stained glass window of St. Joseph.
    The girl with the black eyes holds you tight,
    and you run... and run
    past the wild, wild towers...
    and trees in the gardens tugging at their feet
    and little frightened dolls
    shut up in the shops
    crying... and crying... because no one stops...
    you spin like a penny thrown out in the street.
    Then the man clutches her by the hair....
    He always clutches her by the hair....
    His eyes stick out like spears.
    You see her pulled-back face
    and her black, black eyes
    lit up by the glare....
    Then everything goes out.
    Please God, don't let me dream any more
    of the girl with the black, black eyes.


         : :

    Celia's shadow rocks and rocks...
    and mama's eyes stare out of the pillow
    as though she had gone away
    and the night had come in her place
    as it comes in empty rooms...
    you can't bear it—
    the night threshing about
    and lashing its tail on its sides
    as bold as a wolf that isn't afraid—
    and you scream at her face, that is white as a stone on a grave
    and pull it around to the light,
    till the night draws backward... the night that walks alone
    and goes away without end.
    Mama says, I am cold, Betty, and shivers.
    Celia tucks the quilt about her feet,
    but I run for my little red cloak
    because red is hot like fire.


         : :

    I wish Celia
    could see the sea climb up on the sky
    and slide off again...
    ...Celia saying
    I'd beg the world with you....
    Celia... holding on to the cab...
    hands wrenched away...
    wind in the masts... like Celia crying....
    Celia never minded if you slapped her
    when the comb made your hairs ache,
    but though you rub your cheek against mama's hand
    she has not said darling since....
    Now I will slap her again....
    I will bite her hand till it bleeds.

    It is cool by the port hole.
    The wet rags of the wind
    flap in your face.

    II. THE ALLEY



    Because you are four years old
    the candle is all dressed up in a new frill.
    And stars nod to you through the hole in the curtain,
    (except the big stiff planets
    too fat to move about much,)
    and you curtsey back to the stars
    when no one is looking.
    You feel sorry for the poor wooden chair
    that knows it isn't nice to sit on,
    and no one is sad but mama.
    You don't like mama to be sad
    when you are four years old,
    so you pretend
    you like the bitter gold-pale tea—
    you pretend
    if you don't drink it up pretty quick
    a little gold-fish
    will think it is a pond
    and come and get born in it.


         : :

    It's hot in our street
    and the breeze is a dirty little broom
    that sweeps dust into our room
    and bits of paper out of the alley.
    You are not let to play
    with the children in the alley
    But you must be very polite—
    so you pass them and say good day
    and when they fling banana skins
    you fling them back again.


         : :

    There is no one to play with
    and the flies on the window
    buzz and buzz...
    ...you can pull out their legs
    and stick pins in their bodies
    but still they buzz...
    and mama says:
    When Nero was a little boy
    he caught flies on his mama's window
    and pulled out their legs
    and stuck pins in their bodies
    and nobody loved him.
    Buzz, blue-bellied flies—
    buzz, nasty black wheel
    of mama's machine—
    you are the biggest fly of all—
    you have the loudest buzz.
    I hear you at dawn before the locusts.
    But I like the picture of the Flood
    and the little babies getting drowned....
    If I were there I would save them,
    but as I can't save them
    I like to watch them
    getting drowned.


         : :

    When mama buys of Ling Ho,
    he smiles very wide
    and picks her the largest loquots.
    The greens-man gave her a cabbage
    and she held it against her black bodice
    and said what a beautiful green it was
    and put it on the table
    as though it had been a flower.
    But next day we boiled and ate it with salt.
    It was our dinner.


         : :

    Christmas day
    I found Janie on my pillow.
    Janie is made of rubber.
    Her red and blue jacket won't come off.
    Christmas dinner was green and white
    chicken and lettuce and peas
    and drops of oil on the salad
    smiley and full of light
    like the gold on the lady's teeth.

    But mama said politely
    Thank you, we are dining out.
    She wouldn't let you take one pea
    to put in the hole where the whistle was
    at the back of Janie's head,
    so Janie should have some dinner
    So you went to the park with biscuits
    and black tea in a bottle.


         : :

    You feel very sad
    when you climb on the fence
    to watch mama out of sight.
    The women in the alley
    poke their heads out of doorways
    and watch her too.
    You know her
    by the way she holds her shoulders
    till she is only a speck
    in a chain of specks—
    till she is swallowed up.
    But suppose
    that day after day
    you were to watch for her face
    and it didn't come back?
    Suppose
    it were to drop out of the string of white faces
    like the pearl out of my chain
    I never found again?


         : :

    Mabel minds you while mama is out,
    she washes while she sings
    Three blind mice!
    they all run away from the farmer's wife
    who cut off their tails
    with a carving knife—
    Wind blows out Mabel's sheets,
    way you blow in a bag before you burst it.
    Wind has a soapy smell.
    It's heavier'n sun
    that lies all over you without any weight
    and makes you feel happy
    and crinkly like bubbling water.
    There's no sun on the empty house—
    sly-looking house—
    you can't see in its windows
    that watch you out of their corners.
    Perhaps there's a big spider there
    spinning gray threads over the windows
    till they look like dead people's faces....
    Jimmie says:
    Jimmie's hair is white as a white mouse.
    His lashes are gold as mama's wedding ring
    and his mouth feels cool and smooth
    like a flower wet with rain.
    You wouldn't believe Jimmie was different...
         till he showed you....


         : :

    Blind wet sheets
    flapping on the lines...
    sun in your eyes,
    dark gold sun
    full of little black spots,
    you have to blink and blink...
    round eyes of Jimmie....
    Jimmie's blue jumper...
    blue shadow of wall...
    all the world holding still
    as when a clock stops...
    streets still... people still...
    no streets... no people...
    only sky and wall...
    sun glaring bright as God
    down at you and Jimmie...
    shadow like a purple cloth
    trailing off the wall...

    Wild wet sheets
    flapping in the wind...
    big slippered feet flapping too...
    big-balloon-face
    rushing up the alley...
    houses closing up again...
    windows looking round...
    ... Mabel pulls you in the gate and shakes you
    and tells you not to tell your mama...
    And you wonder
    if God has spoiled Jimmie.

    III. MAMA



    Mama's face
    is smooth and pale as tea-rose leaves.
    That ivory oval of aunt Gem
    you sucked the miniature off
    had black black hair like mama.


         : :

    Pit-it-ty-pat,
    Mama walks so fast,
    street lamps jig
    without bending a leg...
    lights in the windows
    play twinkling tunes
    on crimson and blue
    bottles like bubbles
    big as balloons...
    Faster and faster...
    and pink light spurts
    over cakes doing polkas
    in little white shirts,
    with cake-princesses
    in flounced white skirts.

    Pit-pat—
    mama walks slower...
    slower and... slower...
    Eyes... lamps... stars...
    acres and acres of stars...
    bells... and sleepily
    flapping feet....
    You're glad mama walks slow.
    It's nice to be carried along
    up high near the stars
    that look at you with a grave, great look.


         : :

    Every night
    mama sings you to sleep.
    When she sings, O for the light of thine eyes Dolores,
    there's a castle on a cliff
    and the sea roars like lions.
    It leaps at the castle
    and the cliff knocks it down
    but always the sea
    shakes its flattened head
    and gets up again.
    The castle has no roof
    so the rain spins silvery webs in it,
    and Dolores' face
    floats dim and beautiful
    the way flowers do when they are drowned.
    Step by white step
    she goes up the castle stairs,
    but the stair goes up into the sky
    and the sky keeps going up too,
    and none of them ever get there.

    When mama sings Ba ba black sheep,
    the stars seem to shine through her voice
    so everything has to be still,
    and when she has finished singing
    her song goes up off the earth,
    higher and higher...
    till it is only as big as a tiny silver bird
    with nothing but moonlight around it.

    IV. BETTY



    You can see the sandhills from our new room.
    Butterflies
    live in the sandhills
    and lizards
    and centipedes.
    If you keep very still
    lizards will think you a stone
    and run over your lap.
    Butterflies' liveries
    are scarlet and black.
    They drive chariots in air.
    People in the chariots
    are pale as dew—
    you can see right through them—
    but the chariots
    are made of gold of the sun.
    They go up to heaven
    and never catch fire.
    There are green centipedes
    and brown centipedes
    and black centipedes,
    because green and brown and black
    are the colors in hell's flag.
    Centipedes
    have hundreds of feet
    because it is so far from hell
    to come up for air.
    Centipedes
    do not hurry.
    They are waiting for the last day
    when they will creep over the false prophets
    who will have their hands tied.


         : :

    Night calls to the sandhills
    and gathers them under her.
    she pushes away cities
    because their sharp lights
    hurt her soft breast.
    Even candles make a sore place
    when they stick in the night.

    There are things in the sandhills
    that no one knows about...
    they come out at dark when the young snakes play
    and tell each other secrets
    in the deaf logs.

    Sometimes... before rain...
    when the stars have gone inside...
    the night comes close to your window
    and sniffs at the light....
    But you must not run away—
    you must keep your face to the night
    and walk backward.


         : :

    When it rains
    and you are pulling off flies' legs...
    mama lets you play houses
    with Lizzie and Clara.
    Because you are the Only One—
    and because Only Ones have to live alone
    while sisters stay together,
    Lizzie and Clara
    give you the dry house
    and take the one with the leaking roof.

    Rain like curly hairpins
    blows on Lizzie and Clara's two heads
    turned like one head—
    two mouths
    spread into one laugh.
    Lizzie is saying:
    why don't you want to play—
    when you feel you'd like to braid
    the crinkled-silver rain
    into a shining rope
    to climb up... and up... and up... into the wet sky
    and never see any one again.

    Our gate doesn't hang right.
    It must have pawed at the wind
    and gotten a kick
    as the wind passed over.
    The sitting sky
    puffs out a gray smoke
    and the wind makes a red-striped sound
    blowing out straight,
    but our gate drags its foot
    and whines to itself on one hinge.


         : :

    What do you think I've found—
    two wee knickers of fairy brass,
    or two gold sovereigns folded up
    in a bit of green silk,
    or two gold bugs
    in little green shirts?
    If you want to know,
    you must walk tip-toe
    so your feet just whisper in the grass—
    you must carry them careful
    and very proud,
    for their stems bleed drops of milk—
    but Lizzie and Clara shout in glee:
    Pee-a-bed, pee-a-bed—
    dandelions!
    You look in the eyes of grown-up people
    to see if they feel
    the way you feel...
    but they hide inside of themselves,
    and so you do not find out.
    Grown-up people say:
    The stars are bright to-night,
    but they do not say
    what you are thinking about stars—
    not even mama says what you are thinking about stars.
    This makes you feel very lonely.


         : :

    It's strange about stars....
    You have to be still when they look at you.
    They push your song inside of you with their song.
    Their long silvery rays
    sink into you and do not hurt.
    It is good to feel them resting on you
    like great white birds...
    and their shining whiteness
    doesn't burn like the sun—
    it washes all over you
    and makes you feel cleaner'n water.


         : :

    My doll Janie has no waist
    and her body is like a tub with feet on it.
    Sometimes I beat her
    but I always kiss her afterwards.
    When I have kissed all the paint off her body
    I shall tie a ribbon about it
    so she shan't look shabby.
    But it must be blue—
    it mustn't be pink—
    pink shows the dirt on her face
    that won't wash off.


         : :

    I beat Janie
    and beat her...
    but still she smiled...
    so I scratched her between the eyes with a pin.
    Now she doesn't love me anymore...
    she scowls... and scowls...
    though I've begged her to forgive me
    and poured sugar in the hole at the back of her head.


         : :

    Mama says Janie is a fairy doll
    and she has forgiven me—
    that she's gone to the market
    to buy me some sweets.
    —Now she's at the door
    and a little bag tied to her neck—
    I run to Janie
    and kiss her all over....
    Ah... she is still frowning.
    I let the sweets drop on the floor—
    mama
    has told you a lie.


         : :

    Chinaman
    singing in street:
    gleen ledd-ish-es, gleen ledd-ish-es—
    hot sun
    shining on your face—
    it must be a new day.
    But why aren't you happy
    if it's a new day?
    Because something has happened...
    something sad and terrible....
    Now I remember... it's Janie.
    Yesterday
    I took Janie out
    and tied my handkerchief over her face
    and put sand in it
    and threw her into the ditch
    down in the black water
    under the dock leaves...
    and when mama asked me where Janie was
    I said I had lost her.


         : :

    I'm glad it is night-time
    so I'll be able to go to sleep
    and forget all about it....
    But mama looks at my tongue
    and says she will give me senna tea.
    When you smell the tea
    you shut your eyes tight
    and pretend not to hear
    the soft, cool voice of mama
    that goes over your forehead
    like a little wind.
    And then you lie in the dark
    and stare... and stare...
    till the faces come...
    yellow faces with leering eyes
    drifting in a greeny mist....
    I wonder
    if Janie sees faces
    out there... alone in the dark....
    I wonder
    if she has got the handkerchief off
    or if the water has gone in the hole
    where the whistle was
    at the back of her head
    and drowned her...
    or if the stars
    can see her under the dock leaves?


         : :

    It's smoky-blue and still
    over the red road.
    Wind must be lying down with its tail under it—
    doesn't even flick off the flies.
    And you can hear the silence
    buzzing in the gum trees,
    the way the angels buzzed
    when they flew through the cedars of Lebanon
    with thin gauze wings
    you could see through.
    Nice to hear the silence buzzing—
    till it comes too close
    and booms in your ears
    and presses all over you
    till you scream....
    When you scream at the silence
    it goes to jingling pieces
    like a silver mirror
    broken into tiny bits.
    Perhaps its wings are made of glass—
    perhaps it lives down in a dark, dark cave
    and only comes up
    to warm its wings in the sun....
    It's cold in the cave—
    no matter how you cover yourself up.
    Little girls sit there
    dressed in white
    and the dolls in their arms
    all have white handkerchiefs
    over their faces.
    Their shadows cannot play with them...
    their shadows lie down at their feet...
    for the little girls sit stiff as stones
    with their backs to the mouth of the cave
    where a little light falls off
    the wings of the silence
    when it comes down out of the sun.


         : :

    Moon catches the flying fish
    as they dive in the bay.
    Flying fish
    spin over and over
    slippity-silver
    into the water.
    Mom bends over jungles
    and touches the foreheads of tigers
    as they pass under openings made by dropped leaves.
    Tigers stop on the trail of the deer
    while the moon is on their foreheads—
    they let the stags go by.

    Moon is shining strangely
    on the white palings of the fence.
    Fence keeps very still...
    most times it moves a little...
    everything moves a little
    though you mayn't know it...
    but now the little fence
    wouldn't change places with the great cross
    that stands so stiff and high
    with its back to the moon.
    Moon shining strangely
    on the white palings of the fence,
    I am shining too
    but my light is shut inside of me
    and can't get out.


         : :

    Old house with black windows—
    blind house begging moonlight
    to put out the shadows—
    why do you want so much light?
    You creak when the wind steps on you—
    you cough up dust
    and your beams ache—
    you know you will soon fall,
    the moon just pities you!
    Don't waste yourself moon—
    come on my bed and play with me.
    Wrap me up in blue light,
    you who are cool.
    I am too hot,
    I am all alive
    and the shadows are outside of me.


         : :

    There are different kinds of shadows.
    The blind ones
    are the shadows of things.
    These are the tame shadows—
    they love to play on the wall with you
    and follow you about like cats and dogs.
    Sometimes
    they hiss at you softly
    like snakes that do not bite,
    or swish like women's dresses,
    but if you poke a candle at them
    they pull in their heads and disappear.

    But there is a shadow
    that is not the shadow of a thing...
    it is a thing itself.
    When you meet this shadow
    you must not look at it too long...
    it grows with your looking at it...
    till you are all alone
    with nothing around you...
    nothing... nothing... nothing...
    but a shadow
    with its eyes full of black light.


         : :

    There's a shadow in the corner of the shed,
    crouching, lying in wait...
    a black coiled shadow,
    watching... ready to strike...
    but I mustn't be afraid of it—
    I mustn't be afraid of anything.
    Poor evil shadow,
    the candle would chase it away
    only she can't get at it.
    Do you think that every one hates you,
    shadow with your back to the wall,
    afraid to lie down and sleep?
    But I don't hate you.
    Even the moon means to be kind.
    She just treads on you
    as I'd tread on a worm that I didn't see.
    Don't be afraid of me, shadow.
    See—I've no light in my hand—
    nothing to save myself with—
    yet I walk right up to you—
    if you'll let me
    I'll put my arms around you
    and stroke you softly.
    Are you surprised I'd put my arms around you?
    Is it your black black sorrow
    that nobody loves you?

    V. JUDE



    When you tell mama
    you are going to do something great
    she looks at you
    as though you were a window
    she were trying to see through,
    and says she hopes you will be good
    instead of great.


         : :

    When you are five years old
    you spend the day in the Gardens.
    The grass is greener than cabbages,
    and orange lilies
    stand up very straight
    and will not curtsey to the sun
    when the wind tells them.
    Only pansies bow down very low.
    Pansies make little purple cushions
    for queen bees to stand on.
    Bees
    have brown silk hair on their bodies.
    If you are careful
    they will let you stroke them.

    The trees over the marble man
    catch up all the sunbeams
    so the shadows have it their way—
    the shadows swallow him up
    like a blue shark.
    When you scoop a sunbeam up on your palm
    and offer it to the marble man,
    he does not notice...
    he looks into his stone beard.
    ... When you do something great
    people give you a stone face,
    so you do not care any more
    when the sun throws gold on you
    through leaf-holes the wind makes
    in green bushes....
    This thought makes me very sad.


         : :

    Jude has eyes like tobacco
    with yellow specks on it
    and his hair is red as a red orange.
    Jude and I
    have made a garden in the field
    that no one knows about.
    We creep in and out
    through a little place
    where the barbed wire is down.
    We lie in the long grass
    and crush dandelions
    between our two cheeks
    till the milk comes out on our faces.
    We hold each other tight
    and the wind tip-toes all over us
    and pelts us with thistle-down.


         : :

    Jude isn't afraid of shadows—
    not even of the ones that have eyes in them.
    And he can look in the face of the sun
    without blinking at all.
    Hush! don't say sun so loud.
    The sun gets angry when you stare at him.
    If you peek in his glory-windows
    he spreads into a great white flame
    like God out of his Burning Bush...
    till you put your hands up on your face
    and tremble like a drop of rain upon a flower
    that some one throws into the fire...
    and then
    the sun makes himself small,
    the sun swings down out of the sky—
    littler'n a star,
    little as a spark
    little as a fierce red spider
    on a burning thread...
    and then
    the light goes out...
    shivers into blackened bits....
    You hold on to a wall that whirls around
    and the gate is a black hole.
    You grope your way in like a toad
    that's blinded by a stone...
    and mama puts on cold wet rags
    that get hot soon....
    Hush! don't let's talk about the sun.


         : :

    When you pass by the ditch where Janie is
    You run very fast
    and look at the other side.
    Jude says Janie did love me
    only she couldn't forgive me,
    and that you can love people very much
    and never, never, never forgive them....
    so we poked a stick in the bottle-green water.
    But only weeds came up
    and an old top with the paint washed off.


         : :

    Jude and I
    wave to the new moon
    curled right up like one gold hair
    on the bald-head sandhill.
    Mama peeps out the window and smiles.
    She thinks
    I am playing with myself...
    Run, Jude, run with the wind—
    but hold my hand tight
    or the wind,
    looking for some one to play with,
    will take me away from you!
    Wind with no one to play with
    cooees the orange-trees—
    stay-at-home orange trees,
    have to nurse oranges,
    greeny-gold.
    Wind shouts to the grass—
    run-away-grass
    tugs at its roots,
    but the earth holds tight
    and the grass falls down
    and wind boos over it.
    Wind whistles the bees—
    bees too busy
    with taking home stuff out of flowers
    won't look back—
    bees always going somewhere.
    Only Jude and I—
    heads over shoulders
    watching all roads at one time—
    run with the wind,
    going to nowhere.


         : :

    Jude and I
    were weeding our garden
    when we heard his whip—
    must have been a new whip
    to cut off dandelion-heads at one swing....
    He was the kind of boy you knew when you had Celia....
    with nice clothes on and curls
    crawling about his collar
    like little golden slugs,
    and his man was leading his horse.
    I wish I hadn't run to meet him....
    If you hadn't run to meet him
    he mightn't have trod on your garden and said:
    Get out of my field you dirty little beggar...
    he mightn't have struck you with his whip....
    How the daisies stared....
    I hate daisies—
    stupid white faces—
    skinny necks
    craning over the grass!
    I said It is not your field,
    and he struck me again.
    But he didn't make me run.
    His hand
    smelled of sweet soap...
    he couldn't shake me off,
    but his man did....
    Funny—how the sky fell down
    and turned over and over
    like a blue carpet rolling you up,
    and the grass caught at your face—
    it couldn't have been spiteful—
    it must have been saving itself.
    Hot road... silly wind playing with your hair....
    The road smelled of horses.
    I only got up
    when I heard a dray.


         : :

    Mama has sung ba ba black sheep,
    and put a chair with a cloth on it
    between me and the light.
    But the clock keeps saying:
    Dirty little beggar,
    dirty little beggar....
    Some day
    I will get that boy.
    I will pull off his arms and legs
    and put him in a box
    and hide the box
    under the bed....
    I wonder
    will he buzz
    when I take him out to look at his body
    that will have no arms to whip me?

    Mama drew my cot to the window
    so I can look at the stars.
    I will not look at the stars.
    There is a black chimney
    throwing up sparks
    and one tall flame
    like gold hair in a blaze....
    I know now
    what I shall do....
    I will set fire to him
    and he will burn up into a tall flame—
    he will scream into the sky
    and sparks will fly out of him—
    he will burn and burn...
    and his blazing hair
    shall light up the world.


         : :

    Before he hit me—
    I knew he was going to—
    I thought about Jude....
    I thought if he'd fight...
    but he shriveled all up...
    he lay down like a fear.

    Mama never knew about Jude.
    You always wanted to tell her,
    but somehow you never did.
    You were afraid she'd smile
    and say he wasn't real—
    that he was only a little dream-boy,
    because the grass didn't fall down under his feet....
    He is fading now....
    He is just lines... like a drawing....
    You can see mama in between.
    When she moves
    she rubs some of him out.


    MONOLOGUES



    JAGUAR



    Nasal intonations of light
    and clicking tongues...
    publicity of windows
    stoning me with pent-up cries...
    smells of abattoirs...
    smells of long-dead meat.

    Some day-end—
    while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket
    off the warm body of a squaw,
    and the jaguars are out to kill...
    with a blue-black night coming on
    and a painted cloud
    stalking the first star—
    I shall go alone into the Silence...
    the coiled Silence...
    where a cry can run only a little way
    and waver and dwindle
    and be lost.

    And there...
    where tiny antlers clinch and strain
    as life grapples in a million avid points,
    and threshing things
    strike and die,
    letting their hate live on
    in the spreading purple of a wound...
    I too
    will make covert of a crevice in the night,
    and turn and watch...
    nose at the cleft's edge.

    WILD DUCK



    I

    That was a great night we spied upon
    See-sawing home,
    Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars
    Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze...
    Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river...
    Lights dwindling to shining slits
    In the wet asphalt...
    Purring lights... red and green and golden-whiskered...
    Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud...
    ... But you did not know...
    As the trains made golden augers
    Boring in the darkness...
    How my heart kept racing out along the rails,
    As a spider runs along a thread
    And hauls him in again
    To some drawing point...
    You did not know
    How wild ducks' wings
    Itch at dawn...
    How at dawn the necks of wild ducks
    Arch to the sun
    And new-mown air
    Trickles sweet in their gullets.

    II



    As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird
    That has lately flown across it,
    Yet trembles with the beating of its wings,
    So my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly...
    Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song
    You might have been....
    'Twas a great night...
    With never a waste look over a shoulder
    Curved to the crook of the wind...
    And a great word we threw
    For memory to play knuckles with...
    A word the waters of the world have washed,
    Leaving it stark and without smell...
    A world that rattles well in emptiness: Good-by.

    THE DREAM



    I have a dream
    to fill the golden sheath
    of a remembered day....
    (Air
    heavy and massed and blue
    as the vapor of opium...
    domes
    fired in sulphurous mist...
    sea
    quiescent as a gray seal...
    and the emerging sun
    spurting up gold
    over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
    But the day is an up-turned cup
    and its sun a junk of red iron
    guttering in sluggish-green water—
    where shall I pour my dream?

    ALTITUDE



    I wonder
    how it would be here with you,
    where the wind
    that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
    touches one cleanly,
    as with a new-washed hand,
    and pain
    is as the remote hunger of droning things,
    and anger
    but a little silence
    sinking into the great silence.

    COMRADES



    Life
    You have been good to me....
    You have not made yourself too dear
    to juggle with.

    NOCTURNE



    Indigo bulb of darkness
    Punctured by needle lights
    Through a fissure of brick canyon shutting out stars,
    And a sliver of moon
    Spigoting two high windows over the West river....

    Boy, I met to-night,
    Your eyes are two red-glowing arcs shifting with my vision....
    They reflect as in a fading proof
    The deadened eyes of a woman,
    And your shed virginity,
    Light as the withered pod of a sweet pea,
    Moist and fragrant
    Blows against my soul.
    What are you to me, boy,
    That I, who have passed so many lights,
    Should carry your eyes
    Like swinging lanterns?

    CACTUS SEED



    Radiant notes
    piercing my narrow-chested room,
    beating down through my ceiling—
    smeared with unshapen
    belly-prints of dreams
    drifted out of old smokes—
    trillions of icily
    peltering notes
    out of just one canary,
    all grown to song
    as a plant to its stalk,
    from too long craning at a sky-light
    and a square of second-hand blue.

    Silvery-strident throat—
    so assiduously serenading my brain,
    flinching under
    the glittering hail of your notes—
    were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall...
    I might fathom
    your golden delirium
    with throttle of finger and thumb
    shutting valve of bright song.

    II



    But if... away off... on a fork of grassed earth
    socketing an inlet reach of blue water...
    if canaries (do they sing out of cages?)
    flung such luminous notes,
    they would sink in the spirit...
    lie germinal...
    housed in the soul as a seed in the earth...
    to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles
         on the mouth.
    Or glancing off buoyantly,
    radiate notes in one key
    with the sparkle of rain-drops
    on the petal of a cactus flower
    focusing the just-out sun.

    Cactus... why cactus?
    God... God...
    somewhere... away off...
    cactus flowers, star-yellow
    ray out of spiked green,
    and empties of sky
    roll you over and over
    like a mother her baby in long grass.
    And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees,
    pricking multiple leaves
    at his amazing story.


    WINDOWS



    TIME-STONE



    Hallo, Metropolitan—
    Ubiquitous windows staring all ways,
    Red eye notching the darkness.
    No use to ogle that slip of a moon.
    This midnight the moon,
    Playing virgin after all her encounters,
    Will break another date with you.
    You fuss an awful lot,
    You flight of ledger books,
    Overrun with multiple ant-black figures
    Dancing on spindle legs
    An interminable can-can.
    But I'd rather... like the cats in the alley... count time
    By the silver whistle of a moonbeam
    Falling between my stoop-shouldered walls,
    Than all your tally of the sunsets,
    Metropolitan, ticking among stars.

    TRAIN WINDOW



    Small towns
    Crawling out of their green shirts...
    Tubercular towns
    Coughing a little in the dawn...
    And the church...
    There is always a church
    With its natty spire
    And the vestibule—
    That's where they whisper:
    Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz...
    How many codes for a wireless whisper—
    And corn flatter than it should be
    And those chits of leaves
    Gadding with every wind?
    Small towns
    From Connecticut to Maine:
    Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz...tzz-tzz...

    SCANDAL



    Aren't there bigger things to talk about
    Than a window in Greenwich Village
    And hyacinths sprouting
    Like little puce poems out of a sick soul?
    Some cosmic hearsay—
    As to whom—it can't be Mars! put the moon—that way....
    Or what winds do to canyons
    Under the tall stars...
    Or even
    How that old roué, Neptune,
    Cranes over his bald-head moons
    At the twinkling heel of a sky-scraper.

    ELECTRICITY



    Out of fiery contacts...
    Rushing auras of steel
    Touching and whirled apart...
    Out of the charged phallases
    Of iron leaping
    Female and male,
    Complete, indivisible, one,
    Fused into light.

    SKYSCRAPERS



    Skyscrapers... remote, unpartisan...
    Turning neither to the right nor left
    Your imperturbable fronts....
    Austerely greeting the sun
    With one chilly finger of stone....
    I know your secrets... better than all the policemen
         like fat blue mullet along the avenues.

    WALL STREET AT NIGHT



    Long vast shapes... cooled and flushed through with darkness....
    Lidless windows
    Glazed with a flashy luster
    From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow.
    And down among iron guts
    Piled silver
    Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat...
    Like the pallor of dead bodies.

    EAST RIVER



    Dour river
    Jaded with monotony of lights
    Diving off mast heads....
    Lights mad with creating in a river... turning its sullen back...
    Heave up, river...
    Vomit back into the darkness your spawn of light....
    The night will gut what you give her.


    SECRETS



    INTERIM



    The earth is motionless
    And poised in space...
    A great bird resting in its flight
    Between the alleys of the stars.
    It is the wind's hour off....
    The wind has nestled down among the corn....
    The two speak privately together,
    Awaiting the whirr of wings.

    AFTER STORM



    Was there a wind?
    Tap... tap...
    Night pads upon the snow
    with moccasined feet...
    and it is still... so still...
    an eagle's feather
    might fall like a stone.
    Could there have been a storm...
    mad-tossing golden mane on the neck of the wind...
    tearing up the sky...
    loose-flapping like a tent
    about the ice-capped stars?

    Cool, sheer and motionless
    the frosted pines
    are jeweled with a million flaming points
    that fling their beauty up in long white sheaves
    till they catch hands with stars.
    Could there have been a wind
    that haled them by the hair....
    and blinding
    blue-forked
    flowers of the lightning
    in their leaves?
    Tap... tap...
    slow-ticking centuries...
    Soft as bare feet upon the snow...
    faint... lulling as heard rain
    upon heaped leaves....
    Silence
    builds her wall
    about a dream impaled.

    SECRETS



    Secrets
    infesting my half-sleep...
    did you enter my wound from another wound
    brushing mine in a crowd...
    or did I snare you on my sharper edges
    as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up
    carries off spiders on its wings?

    Secrets,
    running over my soul without sound,
    only when dawn comes tip-toeing
    ushered by a suave wind,
    and dreams disintegrate
    like breath shapes in frosty air,
    I shall overhear you, bare-foot,
    scatting off into the darkness....
    I shall know you, secrets
    by the litter you have left
    and by your bloody foot-prints.

    POTPOURRI



    Do you remember
    Honey-melon moon
    Dripping thick sweet light
    Where Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?
    And the faint decayed patchouli—
    Fragrance of New Orleans
    Like a dead tube rose
    Upheld in the warm air...
    Miraculously whole.

    THAW



    Blow through me wind
    As you blow through apple blossoms....
    Scatter me in shining petals over the passers-by....
    Joyously I reunite... sway and gather to myself....
    Sedately I walk by the dancing feet of children—
    Not knowing I too dance over the cobbled spring.
    O, but they laugh back at me,
    (Eyes like daisies smiling wide open),
    And we both look askance at the snowed-in people
    Thinking me one of them.


    PORTRAITS



    I

    MOTHER



    I



    Your love was like moonlight
    turning harsh things to beauty,
    so that little wry souls
    reflecting each other obliquely
    as in cracked mirrors...
    beheld in your luminous spirit
    their own reflection,
    transfigured as in a shining stream,
    and loved you for what they are not.

    You are less an image in my mind
    than a luster
    I see you in gleams
    pale as star-light on a gray wall...
    evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
    shimmering in broken water.

    II



    (To E. S.)

    You inevitable,
    Unwieldy with enormous births,
    Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
    Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths...
    Filth... worms... flowers...
    Green and succulent pods...
    Tremulous gestation
    Of dark water germinal with lilies...
    All in you from the beginning...
    Nothing buried or thrown away...
    Only the moon like a white sheet
    Spread over the dead you carry.

    III



    (To H.)

    Speeding gull
    Passing under a cloud
    Caught on his white back
    You... drop of crystal rain.
    Now you gleam softly triumphant
    Folding immensities of light.

    IV



    (To O. F. T.)

    You have always gotten up after blows
    And smiled... and shaken off the dust...
    Only you could not shake the darkness
    From off the bruised brown of your eyes.

    V



    (To E. A. R.)

    Centuries shall not deflect
    nor many suns
    absorb your stream,
    flowing immune and cold
    between the banks of snow.
    Nor any wind
    carry the dust of cities
    to your high waters
    that arise out of the peaks
    and return again into the mountain
    and never descend.

    SONS OF BELIAL



    I



    We are old,
    Old as song.
    Before Rome was
    Or Cyrene.
    Mad nights knew us
    And old men's wives.
    We knew who spilled the sacred oil
    For young-gold harlots of the town....
    We knew where the peacocks went
    And the white doe for sacrifice.

    II



    We were the Sons of Belial.
    One black night
    Centuries ago
    We beat at a door
    In Gilead....
    We took the Levite's concubine
    We plucked her hands from off the door....
    We choked the cry into her throat
    And stuck the stars among her hair....
    We glimpsed the madly swaying stars
    Between the rhythms of her hair
    And all our mute and separate strings
    Swelled in a raging symphony....
    Our blood sang paeans
    All that night
    Till dawn fell like a wounded swan
    Upon the fields of Gilead.

    III



    We are old....
    Old as song....
    We are dumb song.
    (Epics tingled
    In our blood
    When we haled Hypatia
    Over the stones
    In Alexandria.)

    Could we loose
    The wild rhythms clinched in us....
    March in bands of troubadours....
    We would be of gentle mood.
    When Christ healed us
    Who were dumb—
    When he freed our shut-in song—
    We strewed green palms
    At his pale feet...
    We sang hosannas
    In Jerusalem.
    And all our fumbling voices blent
    In a brief white harmony.
    (But a mightier song
    Was in us pent
    When we nailed Christ
    To a four-armed tree.)

    IV



    We are young.
    When we rise up with singing roots,
    (Warm rains washing
    Gutters of Berlin
    Where we stamped Rosa... Luxemburg
    On a night in spring.)
    Rhythms skurry in our blood.
    Little nimble rats of song
    In our feet run crazily
    And all is dust... we trample... on.

    Mad nights when we make ritual
    (Feet running before the sleuth-light...
    And the smell of burnt flesh
    By a flame-ringed hut
    In Missouri,
    Sweet as on Rome's pyre....)
    We make ropes do rigadoons
    With copper feet that jig on air....
    We are the Mob....
    Old as song.
    Tyre knew us
    And Israel.


    REVEILLE



    IN HARNESS



    I



    The foreman's head
    slowly circling...
    White rims
    under yellow disks of eyes....
    Gold hairs
    starting out of a blond scowl...
    Hovering... disappearing... recurring...
    the foreman's head.

    Droning of power-machines...
    droning of girl with adenoids...
    Arms flapping with a fin-like motion
    under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid.
    Light skating on the rims of wheels...
    boring in gimlet points.
    Needles flickering
    fierce white threads of light
    fine as a wasp's sting.
    Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes
    and calico-pallid faces
    and bodies throwing off smells—
    and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls
    and the silence a compressed scream.

    Allons enfants de la patrie—
    Electric... piercing... shrill as a fife
    the voice of a little Russian
    breaks out of the shivered circle.
    Another voice rises... another and another
    leaps like flame to flame.
    And life—surging, clamorous, swarming like a rabble
         crazily fluttering ragged petticoats—
    comes rushing back into torpid eyes
    like suddenly yielded gates.

    The girl with adenoids
    rocks on her hams.
    A torrent of song
    strains at her throat,
    gurgles, rushes, gouges her blocked pipes.
    Her feet beat a wild tattoo—
    head flung back and pelvis lifting
    to the white body of the sun.
    Mates now, these two—
    goddess and god....
    Marchons!

    Only the power machines drone
    with metallic docility
    under the flaxen head of the foreman
    poised like an amazed gull.

    II



    To-day
    little French merchant men
    with pointed beards
    and fat American merchant men
    without any beards
    drive to a feast of buttered squabs.
    The band... accoutered and neatly caparisoned...
         plays the Marseillaise....
    And I think of a wild stallion... newly caught...
    flanks yet taut and nostrils spread
    to the smell of a racing mare,
    hitched to a grocer's cart.

    REVEILLE



    Come forth, you workers!
    Let the fires go cold—
    Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—
    Let the iron run wild
    Like a red bramble on the floors—
    Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine
    And the shrapnel lying on the wharves—
    Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom—
    Come,
    With your ashen lives,
    Your lives like dust in your hands.

    I call upon you, workers.
    It is not yet light
    But I beat upon your doors.
    You say you await the Dawn
    But I say you are the Dawn.
    Come, in your irresistible unspent force
    And make new light upon the mountains.

    You have turned deaf ears to others—
    Me you shall hear.
    Out of the mouths of turbines,
    Out of the turgid throats of engines,
    Over the whistling steam,
    You shall hear me shrilly piping.
    Your mills I shall enter like the wind,
    And blow upon your hearts,
    Kindling the slow fire.

    They think they have tamed you, workers—
    Beaten you to a tool
    To scoop up hot honor
    Till it be cool—
    But out of the passion of the red frontiers
    A great flower trembles and burns and glows
    And each of its petals is a people.

    Come forth, you workers—
    Clinging to your stable
    And your wisp of warm straw—
    Let the fires grow cold,
    Let the iron spill out of the troughs,
    Let the iron run wild
    Like a red bramble on the floors....

    As our forefathers stood on the prairies
    So let us stand in a ring,
    Let us tear up their prisons like grass
    And beat them to barricades—
    Let us meet the fire of their guns
    With a greater fire,
    Till the birds shall fly to the mountains
    For one safe bough.

    TO ALEXANDER BERKMAN



    Can you see me, Sasha?
    I can see you....
    A tentacle of the vast dawn is resting on your face
    that floats as though detached
    in a sultry and greenish vapor.
    I cannot reach my hands to you...
    would not if I could,
    though I know how warmly yours would close about them.
    Why?
    I do not know...
    I have a sense of shame.
    Your eyes hurt me... mysterious openings in the gray stone of your face
    through which your spirit streams out taut as a flag
    bearing strange symbols to the new dawn.

    If I stay... projected, trembling against these bars filtering
         emaciated light...
    will your eyes... that bore their lonely way through mine...
    stop as at a friendly gate...
    grow warm... and luminous?
    ... but I cannot stay... for the smell...
    I know... how the days pass...
    The prison squats
    with granite haunches
    on the young spring,
    battened under with its twisting green...
    and you... socket for every bolt
    piercing like a driven nail.
    Eyes stare you through the bars...
    eyes blank as a graveled yard...
    and the silence shuffles heavy dice of feet in iron corridors...
    until the day... that has soiled herself in this black hole
    to caress the pale mask of your face...
    withdraws the last wizened ray
    to wash in the infinite
    her discolored hands.
    Can you hear me, Sasha,
    in your surrounded darkness?

    EMMA GOLDMAN



    How should they appraise you,
    who walk up close to you
    as to a mountain,
    each proclaiming his own eyeful
    against the other's eyeful.

    Only time
    standing well off
    shall measure your circumference and height.

    AN OLD WORKMAN



    Warped... gland-dry...
    With spine askew
    And body shrunken into half its space...
    Well-used as some cracked paving-stone...
    Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
    A stamp... as of innumerable feet.

    TO LARKIN



    Is it you I see go by the window, Jim Larkin—you not looking
         at me nor any one,
    And your shadow swaying from East to West?
    Strange that you should be walking free—you shut down without light,
    And your legs tied up with a knot of iron.

    One hundred million men and women go inevitably about their affairs,
    In the somnolent way
    Of men before a great drunkenness....
    They do not see you go by their windows, Jim Larkin,
    With your eyes bloody as the sunset
    And your shadow gaunt upon the sky...
    You, and the like of you, that life
    Is crushing for their frantic wines.

    WIND RISING IN THE ALLEYS



    Wind rising in the alleys
    My spirit lifts in you like a banner streaming free of hot walls.
    You are full of unspent dreams....
    You are laden with beginnings....
    There is hope in you... not sweet... acrid as blood in the mouth.
    Come into my tossing dust
    Scattering the peace of old deaths,
    Wind rising in the alleys,
    Carrying stuff of flame.