THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

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 beauty of innuendoes, / The balckbird whistling / Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window / With barbarie glass. / The shadow of the blackbird / Crossed it, to and from / The mood / Traced in the shadow / An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam/ \Vhy do you imagine golden birds? / Do you not see how the blackbird / walks around the feet / Of the women about you?

VIII
1 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 / ln 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 rnust be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon. / It was snowing / And it was going to snow. / The blackbird sat / In the cedar-limbs.

SUNDAY MORNING

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
with rivers like our own that seek for seas,
they neger find, the same receding shores
that never tough with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
the silken weavings of our afternoons,
and pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
within whose burning bosom we devise
our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

OF MODERN POETRY

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
what will suffice. It has not always had
to find: the scene was set; it repeated what
was in the script.
Then the theatre changed
to something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
the women of the time. It has to think about war
and it has to find what will suffice. It has
to construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage
and, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
with meditation, speak words that in the ear,
in the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
of which, an invisible audience listens,
not to the play, but to itself, expressed
in an emotion as of two people, as of two
emotions becoming one. The actor is
a metaphysician in the dark, twanging
an instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

MAN AND BOTTLE

The mind is the great poem of winter, the man,
who, to find what will suffice,
destroys romantic tenements
of rose and ice

in the land of war. More than the man, it is
a man with the fury of a race of men,
a light at the centre of many lights,
a man at the centre of men.

It has to content the reason concerning war,
it has to persuade that war is part of itself,
a manner of thinking, a mode
of destroying as the mind destroys,

an aversion, as the world is averted
from an old delusion an old affair with the sun,
an impossible aberration with the moon,
a grossness of peace.

It is not the snow that is the quill, the page.
The poem lashes more fiercely than the wind,
as the mind, to find what will suffice, destroys
romantic tenements of rose and ice.

A TALISMAN

Under a splintered mast,
torn from the ship and cast
near her hull, a stumbling shepherd found
embedded in the ground,
a sea-gull of lapis lazuli,
a scarab of the sea,
with wings spread - curling its coral feet,
parting its break to greet
men long dead.

HE MADE THIS SCREEN

not of silver nor of cord
but of weather-beaten laurel
here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;
here a big-tree, there a face,
there, a dragon eireling space
designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower

TO A SNAIL

If "compression is the first grace of style",
you have it.  Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.
It is not the acquisition of any one thing
that is able to adorn,
or the incidental quality that occurs
as a concomitant of something well said,
that we value in style,
but the principle that is hid:
in the absence of feet, "a method of conclusions";
"a knowledge of principles",
in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.

POETRY

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand; the bat
holding upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels, a flea, the base
ball fan, the statistician -
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and
school-books": all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination' - above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
geniune, you are interested in poetry.

From  THE DRY SALVAGES

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable,
patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
by the dwellers in cities -ever, however, implacable,
keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
of what men choose to forget.  Unhonoured, unpropitiated
by worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
in the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
in the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
and the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
the sea is the land's edge also, the granite
into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
its hints of earlier and other creation
ihe starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
the pools where it offers to our curiosity
the more delicate algae and the sea anemone,
it tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
the shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
and the gear of foreign dead men.  The sea has many voices,
many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
the fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
and the sea yelp, are different voices
often together heard:  the whine in the rigging,
the menace and carees of wave that breaks on water,
the distant rote in the granite teeth,
and the wailing warning from the approaching headland
are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
rounded homewards, and the seagull:
and under the oppression of the silent fog
the tolling bell
measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
ground swell, a time
older than the time of chronometers, older
that time counted by anxious worried women
lying awake, calculating the future,
trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
and piece together the past and the future,
between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
the future futureless, before the morning watch
when time stops and time is never ending;
and the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
clangs
the bell.

HYSTERIA

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and
being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary
recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the
ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was
hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green
iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in
the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the
garden. . ." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,
some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I
concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

MARINA

What seas what shores gray rocks and what islands
what water lapping the bow
and scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
what images return
o my daughter.
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
death
those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
death
those who sit in the stye of contentment, meaning
death
those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
death
are become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind,
a breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
by this grace dissolved in place
what is this face, less clear and clearer,
the pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger
given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
under sleep, where all the waters meet.
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
and remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
the awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
and woodthrush calling through the fog
my daughter.

THE BEGGAR ON THE BEACH

I have not come here to talk,
I have come to sit; I have been transplanted
from the cornestone of a First National Bank
on a windy street to root myself
in pebbles, shells, and sand;
it is my shadow and not my arm
ihat holds out its fingers in a empty glove
which might so easily be mistaken for a hand.
My silence is
the unheard cries of those who swim
where no raft follows, where sails, mast, funnels
disappear up-ocean into a wave that travels
eastward beyond the thin horizon line;
at my left shoulder there is a cloud
that gathers into a storm
on a beach-crowded Sunday afternoon
the cloud my shadow's twin in the tide's swell
which curns gold waters into lead and silver
at its will.
Tell me my riddle:
I am not a mirage, but a being in flesh
born of a sea that has neither
waves nor shore, nor moon, nor star;
that was my misfortune, Have yoy a better
fortune?  are you forever young, handsome, rich
in friends?  poor in fear? happy in doubt?
sad in nothing? hopeful in dark?
is that what you are?  or do you burn
as my veins burn with ceaseless heat?
whether you answer me or not,
even at noon, the disguise I wear
is the body and rags of legless Kronos
before God walked the sky,  Look at me and his shade
turns boardwalk holidays into a mile
of broken bottles and twisted iron
seen through a gray window in the rain
give it your homage,
the shadow is always here. Now you may drop
your money in my hat.

THE SAGE

The cat is eating the roses:
that’s the way he is.
Don’t stop him, don’t stop
the world going round,
that’s the way things are.
The third of May
was misty; fourth of May
who knows. Sweep
the rosemeat up, throw the bits
out in the rain.
He never eats
every crumb, says
the hearts are bitter.
That’s the way he is, he knows
the world and the weather.

LEAVES OF GRASS

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
and the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
and the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
and the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
and a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
and am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
and have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
but call any thing back again when I desire it.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
in the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
and I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
others will punctually come for ever and ever.

In vain the speeding or shyness,
in vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
in vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones,
in vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
in vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
in vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
in vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
in vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
in vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thounsands of years ago,
not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
they bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens,
did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers

A SONG OF JOYS

O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
the exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.

Know'st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face? Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath'd games?
Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers?
Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse and drinking?

Yet O my soul supreme!
Know'st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow'd yet proud, the suffering and the struggle?
The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day of night?
Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres Time and Space?
Prophetic joys o fbetter, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee O soul.

O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
to me life as a powerful conqueror,
no fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
to these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable,
and nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating - the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons,
myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd to powder, or buried.
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres.
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth.

O to attract by more than attraction!
How is it I know not - yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest,
it is offensive, never defensive - yet how magnetic it draws.

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!

To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!

O to sail the sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land
to leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses,
to leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
to sail and sail and sail!

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
a ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

AUX IMAGISTES

I think I have been so exalted
as I am now by you,
O frost bitten blossoms,
that are unfolding your wings
from out the envious black branches.

Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine
the twigs conspire against you!
Hear them!
They hold you from behind!

You shall not take wing
except wing by wing, brokenly,
and yet-
even they
shall not endure for ever.

THIS IS JUST TO SAY

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

Sorrow is in my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I noticed them
and turned away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees with white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

EXEUNT

Piecemeal the summer dies;
at the field’s edge a daisy lives alone;
a last shawl of burning lies
on the gray field-stone.

All cries are thin and terse;
the field has droned the summer’s final mass;
a cricket like a dwindled hearse
crawls from the dry grass.

A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

The poet’ s eye obscenely seeing
sees the surface of the round world
with its drunk rooftops
and wooden oiseaux on clotheslines
and its clay males and females
with hot legs and rosebud breasts
in rollaway beds  
and its trees full of mysteries
and its sunday parks and speechless statues
and its America
with its ghost towns and empty Ellis Islands
and its surrealistic landscape of
mindless prairies
supermarket suburbs
steamheated cemeteries
cinerama holy days
and protesting cathedrals
a Kissproof world of plastic toiletseats tampax and taxis
drugged store cowboys and las vegas virgins
disowned indians and cinemad matrons
unroman senators and conscientious non-objectors
and all the other fatal shorn-up fragments
of the immigrant’s dream come too true
and mislaid
among the sunbathers

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY (EPITAPHS) - THE HILL

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
the weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

One passed in a fever,
one was burned in a mine,
one was killed in a brawl,
one died in a jail,
one fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife -
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
the tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one? -
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

One died in shameful child-birth,
one of a thwarted love,
one at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
one of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire,
one after life in far-away London and Paris
was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag -
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
and old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
and Major Walker who had talked
with venerable men of the revolution? -
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

They brought them dead sons from the war,
and daughters whom life had crushed,
and their children fatherless, crying -
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where is Old Fiddler Jones
who played with life all his ninety years,
braving the sleet with bared breast,
drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?

Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
of what Abe lincoln said
one time at Springfield.

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY (EPITAPHS) - THE VILLAGE ATHEIST

Ye young debaters over the doctrine
of the soul's immortality,
I who lie here was the village atheist,
talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
of the infidels.
But through a long sickness
coughing myself to death
I read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
and desire which the Shadow,
leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
could not extinguish.
Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
and think through the senses only:
immortality is not a gift,
immortality is an achievement;
and only those who strive mightily
shall possess it.

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY (EPITAPHS) - CARL HAMBLIN

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wreeked,
and I was tarred and feathered,
for publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
"I saw beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
standing on the steps of a ma rble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her
lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword,
sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale -
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
by those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
'She is no respecter of persons.'
Then a youth wearing a red cap
leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
And do,the lashes had been eaten away
from the oozy eye-lids;
the eye-balls were scared with a milky mucus;
the madness of a dying soul
was written on her face -
But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage."

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY (EPITAPHS) - CHANDLER NICHOLAS

Every morning bathing myself and shaving myself,
and dressing myself.
But no one in my life to take delight
in my fastidious appearance.
Every day walking, and deep breathing
for the sake of my health.
But to what use vitality?
Every day improving my mind
with meditation and reading
but no one with whom to exchange wisdom.
No agora, no clearing house
for ideas, Spoon River.
Seeking, but never sought;
ripe, companionable, useful, but useless.
Chained here in Spoon River,
my liver scorned by the vultures,
and self-devoured!

MAN AND WIFE

Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother’s bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
in broad daylight her gilded bed-post shine,
abandoned, almost Dionysian.
At last the trees are green or Marlborough Street,
blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five days’ white
All night I’ve held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad-
its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye-
and dragged me home alive. . . Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God’s creatures, still all air and nerve:
you were in your wenties, and I, once hand on glass
and heart in mouth,
outdrank the Rahys in the heat
of Greenwich Village, fainting at ypor feet-
too boiledand sky
and poker-faced to make a pass,
while the shrill verve
of your invective scorched the traditional south.
Now twelve yers later, you turn your back.
Sleepless, you hold
your pillow to our hollows like a child,
your old-fashioned tirade-
loving, rapid, merciless-
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean my head.

"TO SPEAK OF THE WOE THAT IS IN MARRIAGE"

"The hot night makes us keep onr bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor’s edge,
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust...
It’s the injustice... he is so unjust:
whisky-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick? Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh...
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

From THE GIBBET

My human brothers who live after me,
see how I hang. My bones eat through the skin
and flesh they carried here upon the chin
and lipping clutch of theircupidity;
now here, now there, the starling and the sea
gull splinter the groined eyeballs of my sin,
brothers, more beaks of birds than needles in
the fathoms of the Bayeux Tapestry:
"God wills it, wills it: it is blood".
My brothers, if I call you brothers, see:
the blood of Abel crying from the dead
sticks to my blackened skull and eyes. What good
are lebensraum and bread to Abel dead
and rotten on the cross-beams of the tree?

MUSIC I HEARD

Music I herard with you was than music,
and bread I broke with you was thanbread;
now that I am without you, all is desolate;
all that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
and I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
and yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
and blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
and in my heart they will remember always,
they knew youonce, O beautiful and wise.

THE ROOM

Through that window – all else being extinct
except inself and me – I saw the struggle
of darkness against darkness. Within the room
it turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
how order might – If chaos wished – become:
and saw the darkness crush upon inself,
contracting powerfully; it was as if
it killed iself: sllowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.
What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
to shape a single leaf?. . .
For the leaf came,
alone and shining in the empty room;
after a while the twig shot downward from it;
and from the twig a bough;
and then the truck, 
massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst the window:
the great tree took possession.
Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
to shape the shining leaf. Them turn, have courage,
wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
with grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now. But then the leaf

MEETING

Why do I look at you? Why do I touch you? What do I seek in you, woman,
that I should to meet you again?
Why must I sound once more your abysmal anothingnees,
and draw up only pain?
Hard, hard, I stare at you watery ayes; yet am not convinced, now no more than ever before,
that they are only two mirrors reflecting the sky’s blank light,
that, and nothing more.
And I press my body against your body, as thoungh I hoped to break
clean through to another sphere;
and I strive to speak to you with a speech beyond my speech,
in which all things are clear;
till exhausted I drown once more in your abysmal nothingnees,
and the cold nothignees of me:
You, laughing and crying in this ridiculous room,
with your had upon my knee;
crying because you think me perverse and unhappy; and laughing
to find our love so strange;
our eyes fixed hard on each other in a last blind desperate hope
that the whole world might change.

THE QUARREL

Suddenly, after the quarrel, while we waited,
disheartened, silent, with downcast looks, nor stirred
eyelid nor finger, hopeless both, yet hoping
against all hope to unsay the sundering word:

While the room’s stillness deepened about us,
and each of us crept his thougth;s way to discover
how, with as little sound as the fall of a leaf,
the shadow had fallen, and lover quarrelled with lover;

And while, in the quiet, I marvelled -alas, alas-
at your deep beauty, your tragic beauty, torn
as the pale flower is torn by the wanton sparrow-
this beauty, pitied and loved, and now forsworn;

it was then, when the instant darkened to its darkest,
when faith was lost with hope, and the rain conspired
to strike its gay arpeggios against our heartstrings
when love no longer dared, and scarcely desired:

it was then that suddenly, in the neighbor’s room,
the music started: that brave quartette of strings
breaking out of the stillness, as out of our stillness,
like the indomitable hear of life that sings

When all is lost; and startled from our sorrow,
tranced from our grief by that diviner grief.
We raised remembering eyes, each loked at other.
blinded with tears of joy; and another leaf.

Fell silently as that first: and in the instant
the shadow had gone, our querrel became absurd:
and we rose, to the angelic voices of the music,
and I touched your hand, and we kissed, without a word.