The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (88 page)

            
Of men that perish and of summer morn—

            
And whence they came and whither they shall go,

            
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

S
OURCE:
Poetry
(November 1915).

The
Worms at Heaven's Gate
(1916)

                
Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour,

                
Within our bellies, we her chariot,

                
Here is an eye. And here are, one by one,

                
The lashes of that eye and its white lid.

                
Here is the cheek on which that lid declined,

                
And, finger after finger, here, the hand,

                
The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips,

                
The bundle of the body and the feet.

* * * *

                
Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour.

Source:
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse
(July 1916).

Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
(1917)

I

                
Among twenty snowy mountains,

                
The only moving thing

                
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

                
I was of three minds,

                
Like a tree

                
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

                
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds,

                
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

                
A man and a woman

                
Are one.

                
A man and a woman and a blackbird

                
Are one.

V

                
I do not know which to prefer—

                
The beauty of inflections

                
Or the beauty of innuendoes,

                
The blackbird whistling

                
Or just after.

VI

                
Icicles filled the long window

                
With barbaric glass.

                
The shadow of the blackbird

                
Crossed
it, to and fro.

                
The mood

                
Traced in the shadow

                
An indecipherable cause.

VII

                
O thin men of Haddam,

                
Why do you imagine golden birds?

                
Do you not see how the blackbird

                
Walks around the feet

                
Of the women about you?

VIII

                
I know noble accents

                
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

                
But I know, too,

                
That the blackbird is involved

                
In what I know.

IX

                
When the blackbird flew out of sight,

                
It marked the edge

                
Of one of many circles.

X

                
At the sight of blackbirds

                
Flying in a green light,

                
Even the bawds of euphony

                
Would cry out sharply.

XI

                
He rode over Connecticut

                
In a glass coach.

                
Once, a fear pierced him,

                
In that he mistook

                
The
shadow of his equipage

                
For blackbirds.

XII

                
The river is moving.

                
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

                
It was evening all afternoon.

                
It was snowing

                
And it was going to snow.

                
The blackbird sat

                
In the cedar-limbs.

S
OURCE:
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse
(October 1917).

The
Wind Shifts
(1917)

                
This is how the wind shifts:

                
Like the thoughts of an old human,

                
Who still thinks eagerly

                
And despairingly.

                
The wind shifts like this:

                
Like a human without illusions,

                
Who still feels irrational things within her.

                
The wind shifts like this:

                
Like humans approaching proudly,

                
Like humans approaching angrily.

                
This is how the wind shifts:

                
Like a human, heavy and heavy,

                
Who does not care.

S
OURCE:
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse
(October 1917).

Le
Monocle de Mon Oncle
(1918)

I

        
“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,

        
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,

        
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,

        
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.”

        
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.

        
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?

        
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.

        
The sea of spuming thought foists up again

        
The radiant bubble that she was. And then

        
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well

        
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

II

        
A red bird flies across the golden floor.

        
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir

        
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.

        
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.

        
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?

        
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;

        
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.

        
These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.

        
No spring can follow past meridian.

        
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss

        
To make believe a starry
connaissance
.

III

        
Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese

        
Sat tittivating by their mountain pools

        
Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards?

        
I shall not play the flat historic scale.

        
You know how Utamaro's beauties sought

        
The end of love in their all-speaking braids.

        
You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.

        
Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain

        
That not one curl in nature has survived?

        
Why,
without pity on these studious ghosts,

        
Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?

IV

        
This luscious and impeccable fruit of life

        
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.

        
When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,

        
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air—

        
An apple serves as well as any skull

        
To be the book in which to read a round,

        
And is as excellent, in that it is composed

        
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.

        
But it excels in this that as the fruit

        
Of love, it is a book too mad to read

        
Before one merely reads to pass the time.

V

        
In the high West there burns a furious star.

        
It is for fiery boys that star was set

        
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.

        
The measure of the intensity of love

        
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.

        
For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke

        
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.

        
And you? Remember how the crickets came

        
Out of their mother grass, like little kin

        
In the pale nights, when your first imagery

        
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

VI

        
If men at forty will be painting lakes

        
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,

        
The basic slate, the universal hue.

        
There is a substance in us that prevails.

        
But in our amours amorists discern

        
Such fluctuations that their scrivening

        
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.

        
When
amorists grow bald, then amours shrink

        
Into the compass and curriculum

        
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

        
It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

VII

        
The mules that angels ride come slowly down

        
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.

        
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.

        
These muleteers are dainty of their way.

        
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat

        
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.

        
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:

        
The honey of heaven may or may not come,

        
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.

        
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train