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Title: Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems

Author: William Carlos Williams

Release date: March 24, 2011 [eBook #35667]

Most recently updated: September 13, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUR GRAPES: A BOOK OF POEMS ***

‘SOUR GRAPES’

A Book of Poems

BOSTON

THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY

1921

Copyright, 1921, by

THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY

The Four Seas Press

Boston, Mass., U. S. A.

To

ALFRED KREYMBORG

Certain of the poems in this book have appeared in the magazines: Poetry, a Magazine of Verse, The Egoist, The Little Review, The Dial, Others, and Contact.

CONTENTS

Page

THE LATE SINGER

11

MARCH

12

BERKET AND THE STARS

17

A CELEBRATION

18

APRIL

21

A GOODNIGHT

22

OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES

24

ROMANCE MODERNE

26

THE DESOLATE FIELD

30

WILLOW POEM

31

APPROACH OF WINTER

32

JANUARY

33

BLIZZARD

34

TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY

35

WINTER TREES

36

COMPLAINT

37

THE COLD NIGHT

38

SPRING STORM

39

THE DELICACIES

40

THURSDAY

43

THE DARK DAY

44

TIME, THE HANGMAN

45

TO A FRIEND

46

THE GENTLE MAN

47

THE SOUGHING WIND

48

SPRING

49

PLAY

50

LINES

51

THE POOR

52

COMPLETE DESTRUCTION

53

MEMORY OF APRIL

54

EPITAPH

55

DAISY

56

PRIMROSE

57

QUEEN-ANN’S-LACE

58

GREAT MULLEN

59

WAITING

60

THE HUNTER

61

ARRIVAL

62

TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES

63

YOUTH AND BEAUTY

65

THE THINKER

66

THE DISPUTANTS

67

THE TULIP BED

68

THE BIRDS

69

THE NIGHTINGALES

70

SPOUTS

71

BLUEFLAGS

72

THE WIDOW’S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

73

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

74

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

75

THE LONELY STREET

77

THE GREAT FIGURE

78

SOUR GRAPES

THE LATE SINGER

Here it is spring again

and I still a young man!

I am late at my singing.

The sparrow with the black rain on his breast

has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past:

What is it that is dragging at my heart?

The grass by the back door

is stiff with sap.

The old maples are opening

their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers.

A moon hangs in the blue

in the early afternoons over the marshes.

I am late at my singing.

MARCH

I

Winter is long in this climate

and spring—a matter of a few days

only,—a flower or two picked

from mud or from among wet leaves

or at best against treacherous

bitterness of wind, and sky shining

teasingly, then closing in black

and sudden, with fierce jaws.

II

March,

you remind me of

the pyramids, our pyramids—

stript of the polished stone

that used to guard them!

March,

you are like Fra Angelico

at Fiesole, painting on plaster!

March,

you are like a band of

young poets that have not learned

the blessedness of warmth

(or have forgotten it).

At any rate—

I am moved to write poetry

for the warmth there is in it

and for the loneliness—

a poem that shall have you

in it March.

III

See!

Ashur-ban-i-pal,

the archer king, on horse-back,

in blue and yellow enamel!

with drawn bow—facing lions

standing on their hind legs,

fangs bared! his shafts

bristling in their necks!

Sacred bulls—dragons

in embossed brickwork

marching—in four tiers—

along the sacred way to

Nebuchadnezzar’s throne hall!

They shine in the sun,

they that have been marching—

marching under the dust of

ten thousand dirt years.

Now—

they are coming into bloom again!

See them!

marching still, bared by

the storms from my calendar

—winds that blow back the sand!

winds that enfilade dirt!

winds that by strange craft

have whipt up a black army

that by pick and shovel

bare a procession to

the god, Marduk!

Natives cursing and digging

for pay unearth dragons with

upright tails and sacred bulls

alternately—

in four tiers—

lining the way to an old altar!

Natives digging at old walls—

digging me warmth—digging me

sweet loneliness—

high enamelled walls.

IV

My second spring—

passed in a monastery

with plaster walls—in Fiesole

on the hill above Florence.

My second spring—painted

a virgin—in a blue aureole

sitting on a three-legged stool,

arms crossed—

she is intently serious,

and still

watching an angel

with coloured wings

half kneeling before her—

and smiling—the angel’s eyes

holding the eyes of Mary

as a snake’s holds a bird’s.

On the ground there are flowers,

trees are in leaf.

V

But! now for the battle!

Now for murder—now for the real thing!

My third springtime is approaching!

Winds!

lean, serious as a virgin,

seeking, seeking the flowers of March.

Seeking

flowers nowhere to be found,

they twine among the bare branches

in insatiable eagerness—

they whirl up the snow

seeking under it—

they—the winds—snakelike

roar among yellow reeds

seeking flowers—flowers.

I spring among them

seeking one flower

in which to warm myself!

I deride with all the ridicule

of misery—

my own starved misery.

Counter-cutting winds

strike against me

refreshing their fury!

Come, good, cold fellows!

Have we no flowers?

Defy then with even more

desperation than ever—being

lean and frozen!

But though you are lean and frozen—

think of the blue bulls of Babylon.

Fling yourselves upon

their empty roses—

cut savagely!

But—

think of the painted monastery

at Fiesole.

BERKET AND THE STARS

A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of

student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones.

Berket in high spirits—“Ha, oranges! Let’s have one!”

And he made to snatch an orange from the vender’s cart.

Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed

to the full sweep of certain wave summits,

that the rumor of the thing has come down through

three generations—which is relatively forever!

A CELEBRATION

A middle-northern March, now as always—

gusts from the south broken against cold winds—

but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide,

it moves—not into April—into a second March,

the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping

upon the mould: this is the shadow projects the tree

upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere.

So we will put on our pink felt hat—new last year!

—newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back

the seasons—and let us walk to the orchid-house,

see the flowers will take the prize to-morrow

at the Palace.

Stop here, these are our oleanders.

When they are in bloom—

You would waste words

It is clearer to me than if the pink

were on the branch. It would be a searching in

a coloured cloud to reveal that which now, huskless,

shows the very reason for their being.

And these the orange-trees, in blossom—no need

to tell with this weight of perfume in the air.

If it were not so dark in this shed one could better

see the white.

It is that very perfume

has drawn the darkness down among the leaves.

Do I speak clearly enough?

It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone

loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings—

not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion

of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves

its own caretaker.

And here are the orchids!

Never having seen

such gaiety I will read these flowers for you:

This is an odd January, died—in Villon’s time.

Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet

grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom.

And this, a certain July from Iceland:

a young woman of that place

breathed it toward the south. It took root there.

The colour ran true but the plant is small.

This falling spray of snowflakes is

a handful of dead Februarys

prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez

of Guatemala.

Here’s that old friend who

went by my side so many years: this full, fragile

head of veined lavender. Oh that April

that we first went with our stiff lusts

leaving the city behind, out to the green hill—

May, they said she was. A hand for all of us:

this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem.

June is a yellow cup I’ll not name; August

the over-heavy one. And here are—

russet and shiny, all but March. And March?

Ah, March—

Flowers are a tiresome pastime.

One has a wish to shake them from their pots

root and stern, for the sun to gnaw.

Walk out again into the cold and saunter home

to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough.

I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze

instead which will at least warm our hands

and stir up the talk.

I think we have kept fair time.

Time is a green orchid.

APRIL

If you had come away with me

into another state

we had been quiet together.

But there the sun coming up

out of the nothing beyond the lake was

too low in the sky,

there was too great a pushing

against him,

too much of sumac buds, pink

in the head

with the clear gum upon them,

too many opening hearts of

lilac leaves,

too many, too many swollen

limp poplar tassels on the

bare branches!

It was too strong in the air.

I had no rest against that

springtime!

The pounding of the hoofs on the

raw sods

stayed with me half through the night.

I awoke smiling but tired.

A GOODNIGHT

Go to sleep—though of course you will not—

to tideless waves thundering slantwise against

strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray

dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind,

scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady

car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls’ cries in a wind-gust

broken by the wind; calculating wings set above

the field of waves breaking.

Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests,

refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food!

Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white

for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild

chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices—

sleep, sleep....

Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby.

Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders,

hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings—

lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles,

the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks:

it is all to put you to sleep,

to soften your limbs in relaxed postures,

and that your head slip sidewise, and your hair loosen

and fall over your eyes and over your mouth,

brushing your lips wistfully that you may dream,

sleep and dream—

A black fungus springs out about lonely church doors—

sleep, sleep. The Night, coming down upon

the wet boulevard, would start you awake with his

message, to have in at your window. Pay no

heed to him. He storms at your sill with

cooings, with gesticulations, curses!

You will not let him in. He would keep you from sleeping.

He would have you sit under your desk lamp

brooding, pondering; he would have you

slide out the drawer, take up the ornamented dagger

and handle it. It is late, it is nineteen-nineteen—

go to sleep, his cries are a lullaby;

his jabbering is a sleep-well-my-baby; he is

a crackbrained messenger.

The maid waking you in the morning

when you are up and dressing,

the rustle of your clothes as you raise them—

it is the same tune.

At table the cold, greenish, split grapefruit, its juice

on the tongue, the clink of the spoon in

your coffee, the toast odors say it over and over.

The open street-door lets in the breath of

the morning wind from over the lake.

The bus coming to a halt grinds from its sullen brakes—

lullaby, lullaby. The crackle of a newspaper,

the movement of the troubled coat beside you—

sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep....

It is the sting of snow, the burning liquor of

the moonlight, the rush of rain in the gutters packed

with dead leaves: go to sleep, go to sleep.

And the night passes—and never passes—

OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES

I

Men with picked voices chant the names

of cities in a huge gallery: promises

that pull through descending stairways

to a deep rumbling.

The rubbing feet

of those coming to be carried quicken a

grey pavement into soft light that rocks

to and fro, under the domed ceiling,

across and across from pale

earthcoloured walls of bare limestone.

Covertly the hands of a great clock

go round and round! Were they to

move quickly and at once the whole

secret would be out and the shuffling

of all ants be done forever.

A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing

out at a high window, moves by the clock:

disaccordant hands straining out from

a center: inevitable postures infinitely

repeated—

II

Two—twofour—twoeight!

Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms.

This way ma’m!

—important not to take

the wrong train!

Lights from the concrete

ceiling hang crooked but—

Poised horizontal

on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders

packed with a warm glow—inviting entry—

pull against the hour. But brakes can

hold a fixed posture till—

The whistle!

Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two!

Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating

in a small kitchen. Taillights—

In time: twofour!

In time: twoeight!

—rivers are tunneled: trestles

cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating

the same gesture remain relatively

stationary: rails forever parallel

return on themselves infinitely.

The dance is sure.

ROMANCE MODERNE

Tracks of rain and light linger in

the spongy greens of a nature whose

flickering mountain—bulging nearer,

ebbing back into the sun

hollowing itself away to hold a lake,—

or brown stream rising and falling

at the roadside, turning about,

churning itself white, drawing

green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels

fall—

And—the other world—

the windshield a blunt barrier:

Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us.

—the backs of their heads facing us—

The stream continues its motion of

a hound running over rough ground.

Trees vanish—reappear—vanish:

detached dance of gnomes—as a talk

dodging remarks, glows and fades.

—The unseen power of words—

And now that a few of the moves

are clear the first desire is

to fling oneself out at the side into

the other dance, to other music.

Peer Gynt. Rip Van Winkle. Diana.

If I were young I would try a new alignment—

alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!—

Childhood companions linked two and two

criss-cross: four, three, two, one.

Back into self, tentacles withdrawn.

Feel about in warm self-flesh.

Since childhood, since childhood!

Childhood is a toad in the garden, a

happy toad. All toads are happy

and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana!

Lean forward. Punch the steersman

behind the ear. Twirl the wheel!

Over the edge! Screams! Crash!

The end. I sit above my head—

a little removed—or

a thin wash of rain on the roadway

—I am never afraid when he is driving,—

interposes new direction,

rides us sidewise, unforseen

into the ditch! All threads cut!

Death! Black. The end. The very end—

I would sit separate weighing a

small red handful: the dirt of these parts,

sliding mists sheeting the alders

against the touch of fingers creeping

to mine. All stuff of the blind emotions.

But—stirred, the eye seizes

for the first time—The eye awake!—

anything, a dirt bank with green stars

of scrawny weed flattened upon it under

a weight of air—For the first time!—

or a yawning depth: Big!

Swim around in it, through it—

all directions and find

vitreous seawater stuff—

God how I love you!—or, as I say,

a plunge into the ditch. The end. I sit

examining my red handful. Balancing

—this—in and out—agh.

Love you? It’s

a fire in the blood, willy-nilly!

It’s the sun coming up in the morning.

Ha, but it’s the grey moon too, already up

in the morning. You are slow.

Men are not friends where it concerns

a woman? Fighters. Playfellows.

White round thighs! Youth! Sighs—!

It’s the fillip of novelty. It’s—

Mountains. Elephants humping along

against the sky—indifferent to

light withdrawing its tattered shreds,

worn out with embraces. It’s

the fillip of novelty. It’s a fire in the blood.

Oh get a flannel shirt, white flannel

or pongee. You’d look so well!

I married you because I liked your nose.

I wanted you! I wanted you

in spite of all they’d say—

Rain and light, mountain and rain,

rain and river. Will you love me always?

—A car overturned and two crushed bodies

under it.—Always! Always!

And the white moon already up.

White. Clean. All the colors.

A good head, backed by the eye—awake!

backed by the emotions—blind—

River and mountain, light and rain—or

rain, rock, light, trees—divided:

rain-light counter rocks-trees or

trees counter rain-light-rocks or—

Myriads of counter processions

crossing and recrossing, regaining

the advantage, buying here, selling there

—You are sold cheap everywhere in town!—

lingering, touching fingers, withdrawing

gathering forces into blares, hummocks,

peaks and rivers—river meeting rock

—I wish that you were lying there dead

and I sitting here beside you.—

It’s the grey moon—over and over.

It’s the clay of these parts.

THE DESOLATE FIELD

Vast and grey, the sky

is a simulacrum

to all but him whose days

are vast and grey, and—

In the tall, dried grasses

a goat stirs

with nozzle searching the ground.

—my head is in the air

but who am I...?

And amazed my heart leaps

at the thought of love

vast and grey

yearning silently over me.

WILLOW POEM

It is a willow when summer is over,

a willow by the river

from which no leaf has fallen nor

bitten by the sun

turned orange or crimson.

The leaves cling and grow paler,

swing and grow paler

over the swirling waters of the river

as if loath to let go,

they are so cool, so drunk with

the swirl of the wind and of the river—

oblivious to winter,

the last to let go and fall

into the water and on the ground.

APPROACH OF WINTER

The half stripped trees

struck by a wind together,

bending all,

the leaves flutter drily

and refuse to let go

or driven like hail

stream bitterly out to one side

and fall

where the salvias, hard carmine,—

like no leaf that ever was—

edge the bare garden.

JANUARY

Again I reply to the triple winds

running chromatic fifths of derision

outside my window:

Play louder.

You will not succeed. I am

bound more to my sentences

the more you batter at me

to follow you.

And the wind,

as before, fingers perfectly

its derisive music.

BLIZZARD

Snow:

years of anger following

hours that float idly down—

the blizzard

drifts its weight

deeper and deeper for three days

or sixty years, eh? Then

the sun! a clutter of

yellow and blue flakes—

Hairy looking trees stand out

in long alleys

over a wild solitude.

The man turns and there—

his solitary track stretched out

upon the world.

TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY

Old age is

a flight of small

cheeping birds

skimming

bare trees

above a snow glaze.

Gaining and failing

they are buffetted

by a dark wind—

But what?

On harsh weedstalks

the flock has rested,

the snow

is covered with broken

seedhusks

and the wind tempered

by a shrill

piping of plenty.

WINTER TREES

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

COMPLAINT

They call me and I go

It is a frozen road

past midnight, a dust

of snow caught

in the rigid wheeltracks.

The door opens.

I smile, enter and

shake off the cold.

Here is a great woman

on her side in the bed.

She is sick,

perhaps vomiting,

perhaps laboring

to give birth to

a tenth child. Joy! Joy!

Night is a room

darkened for lovers,

through the jalousies the sun

has sent one gold needle!

I pick the hair from her eyes

and watch her misery

with compassion.

THE COLD NIGHT

It is cold. The white moon

is up among her scattered stars—

like the bare thighs of

the Police Seargent’s wife—among

her five children....

No answer. Pale shadows lie upon

the frosted grass. One answer:

It is midnight, it is still

and it is cold...!

White thighs of the sky! a

new answer out of the depths of

my male belly: In April....

In April I shall see again—In April!

the round and perfect thighs

of the Police Sergent’s wife

perfect still after many babies.

Oya!

SPRING STORM

The sky has given over

its bitterness.

Out of the dark change

all day long

rain falls and falls

as if it would never end.

Still the snow keeps

its hold on the ground.

But water, water

from a thousand runnels!

It collects swiftly,

dappled with black

cuts a way for itself

through green ice in the gutters.

Drop after drop it falls

from the withered grass-stems

of the overhanging embankment.

THE DELICACIES

The hostess, in pink satin and blond hair—dressed

high—shone beautifully in her white slippers against

the great silent bald head of her little-eyed husband!

Raising a glass of yellow Rhine wine in the narrow

space just beyond the light-varnished woodwork and

the decorative column between dining-room and hall,

she smiled the smile of water tumbling from one ledge

to another.

We began with a herring salad: delicately flavoured

saltiness in scallops of lettuce-leaves.

The little owl-eyed and thick-set lady with masses

of grey hair has smooth pink cheeks without a wrinkle.

She cannot be the daughter of the little red-faced

fellow dancing about inviting lion-headed Wolff the

druggist to play the piano! But she is. Wolff is a

terrific smoker: if the telephone goes off at night—so

his curled-haired wife whispers—he rises from bed but

cannot answer till he has lighted a cigarette.

Sherry wine in little conical glasses, dull brownish

yellow, and tomatoes stuffed with finely cut chicken

and mayonnaise!

The tall Irishman in a Prince Albert and the usual

striped trousers is going to sing for us. (The piano

is in a little alcove with dark curtains.) The hostess’s

sister—ten years younger than she—in black net and

velvet, has hair like some filmy haystack, cloudy about

the eyes. She will play for her husband.

My wife is young, yes she is young and pretty when

she cares to be—when she is interested in a discussion:

it is the little dancing mayor’s wife telling her of the

Day nursery in East Rutherford, ’cross the track,

divided from us by the railroad—and disputes as to

precedence. It is in this town the saloon flourishes,

the saloon of my friend on the right whose wife has

twice offended with chance words. Her English is

atrocious! It is in this town that the saloon is situated,

close to the railroad track, close as may be, this side

being dry, dry, dry: two people listening on opposite

sides of a wall!—The Day Nursery had sixty-five

babies the week before last, so my wife’s eyes shine

and her cheeks are pink and I cannot see a blemish.

Ice-cream in the shape of flowers and domestic

objects: a pipe for me since I do not smoke, a doll

for you.

The figure of some great bulk of a woman disappearing

into the kitchen with a quick look over the

shoulder. My friend on the left who has spent the

whole day in a car the like of which some old fellow

would give to an actress: flower-holders, mirrors,

curtains, plush seats—my friend on the left who is

chairman of the Streets committee of the town council—and

who has spent the whole day studying automobile

fire-engines in neighbouring towns in view of

purchase,—my friend, at the Elks last week at the

breaking-up hymn, signalled for them to let Bill—a

familiar friend of the saloon-keeper—sing out all alone

to the organ—and he did sing!

Salz-rolls, exquisite! and Rhine wine ad libitum.

A masterly caviare sandwich.

The children flitting about above stairs. The

councilman has just bought a National eight—some

car!

For heaven’s sake I mustn’t forget the halves of

green peppers stuffed with cream cheese and whole

walnuts!

THURSDAY

I have had my dream—like others—

and it has come to nothing, so that

I remain now carelessly

with feet planted on the ground

and look up at the sky—

feeling my clothes about me,

the weight of my body in my shoes,

the rim of my hat, air passing in and out

at my nose—and decide to dream no more.

THE DARK DAY

A three-day-long rain from the east—

an interminable talking, talking

of no consequence—patter, patter, patter.

Hand in hand little winds

blow the thin streams aslant.

Warm. Distance cut off. Seclusion.

A few passers-by, drawn in upon themselves,

hurry from one place to another.

Winds of the white poppy! there is no escape!—

An interminable talking, talking,

talking ... it has happened before.

Backward, backward, backward.

TIME THE HANGMAN

Poor old Abner, old white-haired nigger!

I remember when you were so strong

you hung yourself by a rope round the neck

in Doc Hollister’s barn to prove you could beat

the faker in the circus—and it didn’t kill you.

Now your face is in your hands, and your elbows

are on your knees, and you are silent and broken.

TO A FRIEND

Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men—and

the baby hard to find a father for!

What will the good Father in Heaven say

to the local judge if he do not solve this problem?

A little two pointed smile and—pouff!—

the law is changed into a mouthful of phrases.

THE GENTLE MAN

I feel the caress of my own fingers

on my own neck as I place my collar

and think pityingly

of the kind women I have known.

THE SOUGHING WIND

Some leaves hang late, some fall

before the first frost—so goes

the tale of winter branches and old bones.

SPRING

O my grey hairs!

You are truly white as plum blossoms.

PLAY

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,

by what devious means do you contrive

to remain idle? Teach me, O master.

LINES

Leaves are greygreen,

the glass broken, bright green.

THE POOR

By constantly tormenting them

with reminders of the lice in

their children’s hair, the

School Physician first

brought their hatred down on him,

But by this familiarity

they grew used to him, and so,

at last,

took him for their friend and adviser.

COMPLETE DESTRUCTION

It was an icy day.

We buried the cat,

then took her box

and set fire to it

in the back yard.

Those fleas that escaped

earth and fire

died by the cold.

MEMORY OF APRIL

You say love is this, love is that:

Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

the wind and the rain comb,

tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip—

branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.

EPITAPH

An old willow with hollow branches

slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils

and sang:

Love is a young green willow

shimmering at the bare wood’s edge.

DAISY

The dayseye hugging the earth

in August, ha! Spring is

gone down in purple,

weeds stand high in the corn,

the rainbeaten furrow

is clotted with sorrel

and crabgrass, the

branch is black under

the heavy mass of the leaves—

The sun is upon a

slender green stem

ribbed lengthwise.

He lies on his back—

it is a woman also—

he regards his former

majesty and

round the yellow center,

split and creviced and done into

minute flowerheads, he sends out

his twenty rays—a little

and the wind is among them

to grow cool there!

One turns the thing over

in his hand and looks

at it from the rear: brownedged,

green and pointed scales

armor his yellow.

But turn and turn,

the crisp petals remain

brief, translucent, greenfastened,

barely touching at the edges:

blades of limpid seashell.

PRIMROSE

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!

It is not a color.

It is summer!

It is the wind on a willow,

the lap of waves, the shadow

under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,

three herons, a dead hawk

rotting on a pole—

Clear yellow!

It is a piece of blue paper

in the grass or a threecluster of

green walnuts swaying, children

playing croquet or one boy

fishing, a man

swinging his pink fists

as he walks—

It is ladysthumb, forgetmenots

in the ditch, moss under

the flange of the carrail, the

wavy lines in split rock, a

great oaktree—

It is a disinclination to be

five red petals or a rose, it is

a cluster of birdsbreast flowers

on a red stem six feet high,

four open yellow petals

above sepals curled

backward into reverse spikes—

Tufts of purple grass spot the

green meadow and clouds the sky.

QUEEN-ANN’S-LACE

Her body is not so white as

anemony petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over—

or nothing.

GREAT MULLEN

One leaves his leaves at home

being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse

to peer from: I will have my way,

yellow—A mast with a lantern, ten

fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller

as they grow more—Liar, liar, liar!

You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss

on your clothes. Ha, ha! you come to me,

you—I am a point of dew on a grass-stem.

Why are you sending heat down on me

from your lantern—You are cowdung, a

dead stick with the bark off. She is

squirting on us both. She has had her

hand on you!—Well?—She has defiled

ME.—Your leaves are dull, thick

and hairy.—Every hair on my body will

hold you off from me. You are a

dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.—

I love you, straight, yellow

finger of God pointing to—her!

Liar, broken weed, duncake, you have—

I am a cricket waving his antenae

and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!

WAITING

When I am alone I am happy.

The air is cool. The sky is

flecked and splashed and wound

with color. The crimson phalloi

of the sassafrass leaves

hang crowded before me

in shoals on the heavy branches.

When I reach my doorstep

I am greeted by

the happy shrieks of my children

and my heart sinks.

I am crushed.

Are not my children as dear to me

as falling leaves or

must one become stupid

to grow older?

It seems much as if Sorrow

had tripped up my heels.

Let us see, let us see!

What did I plan to say to her

when it should happen to me

as it has happened now?

THE HUNTER

In the flashes and black shadows

of July

the days, locked in each other’s arms,

seem still

so that squirrels and colored birds

go about at ease over

the branches and through the air.

Where will a shoulder split or

a forehead open and victory be?

Nowhere.

Both sides grow older.

And you may be sure

not one leaf will lift itself

from the ground

and become fast to a twig again.

ARRIVAL

And yet one arrives somehow,

finds himself loosening the hooks of

her dress

in a strange bedroom—

feels the autumn

dropping its silk and linen leaves

about her ankles.

The tawdry veined body emerges

twisted upon itself

like a winter wind...!

TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES

You know there is not much

that I desire, a few crysanthemums

half lying on the grass, yellow

and brown and white, the

talk of a few people, the trees,

an expanse of dried leaves perhaps

with ditches among them.

But there comes

between me and these things

a letter

or even a look—well placed,

you understand,

so that I am confused, twisted

four ways and—left flat,

unable to lift the food to

my own mouth:

Here is what they say: Come!

and come! and come! And if

I do not go I remain stale to

myself and if I go—

I have watched

the city from a distance at night

and wondered why I wrote no poem.

Come! yes,

the city is ablaze for you

and you stand and look at it.

And they are right. There is

no good in the world except out of

a woman and certain women alone

for certain things. But what if

I arrive like a turtle

with my house on my back or

a fish ogling from under water?

It will not do. I must be

steaming with love, colored

like a flamingo. For what?

To have legs and a silly head

and to smell, pah! like a flamingo

that soils its own feathers behind.

Must I go home filled

with a bad poem?

And they say:

Who can answer these things

till he has tried? Your eyes

are half closed, you are a child,

oh, a sweet one, ready to play

but I will make a man of you and

with love on his shoulder—!

And in the marshes

the crickets run

on the sunny dike’s top and

make burrows there, the water

reflects the reeds and the reeds

move on their stalks and rattle drily.

YOUTH AND BEAUTY

I bought a dishmop—

having no daughter—

for they had twisted

fine ribbons of shining copper

about white twine

and made a towsled head

of it, fastened it

upon a turned ash stick

slender at the neck

straight, tall—

when tied upright

on the brass wallbracket

to be a light for me—

and naked,

as a girl should seem

to her father.

THE THINKER

My wife’s new pink slippers

have gay pom-poms.

There is not a spot or a stain

on their satin toes or their sides.

All night they lie together

under her bed’s edge.

Shivering I catch sight of them

and smile, in the morning.

Later I watch them

descending the stair,

hurrying through the doors

and round the table,

moving stiffly

with a shake of their gay pom-poms!

And I talk to them

in my secret mind

out of pure happiness.

THE DISPUTANTS

Upon the table in their bowl

in violent disarray

of yellow sprays, green spikes

of leaves, red pointed petals

and curled heads of blue

and white among the litter

of the forks and crumbs and plates

the flowers remain composed.

Cooly their colloquy continues

above the coffee and loud talk

grown frail as vaudeville.

TULIP BED

The May sun—whom

all things imitate—

that glues small leaves to

the wooden trees

shone from the sky

through bluegauze clouds

upon the ground.

Under the leafy trees

where the suburban streets

lay crossed,

with houses on each corner,

tangled shadows had begun

to join

the roadway and the lawns.

With excellent precision

the tulip bed

inside the iron fence

upreared its gaudy

yellow, white and red,

rimmed round with grass,

reposedly.

THE BIRDS

The world begins again!

Not wholly insufflated

the blackbirds in the rain

upon the dead topbranches

of the living tree,

stuck fast to the low clouds,

notate the dawn.

Their shrill cries sound

announcing appetite

and drop among the bending roses

and the dripping grass.

THE NIGHTINGALES

My shoes as I lean

unlacing them

stand out upon

flat worsted flowers

under my feet.

Nimbly the shadows

of my fingers play

unlacing

over shoes and flowers.

SPOUTS

In this world of

as fine a pair of breasts

as ever I saw

the fountain in

Madison Square

spouts up of water

a white tree

that dies and lives

as the rocking water

in the basin

turns from the stonerim

back upon the jet

and rising there

reflectively drops down again.

BLUEFLAGS

I stopped the car

to let the children down

where the streets end

in the sun

at the marsh edge

and the reeds begin

and there are small houses

facing the reeds

and the blue mist

in the distance

with grapevine trellises

with grape clusters

small as strawberries

on the vines

and ditches

running springwater

that continue the gutters

with willows over them.

The reeds begin

like water at a shore

their pointed petals waving

dark green and light.

But blueflags are blossoming

in the reeds

which the children pluck

chattering in the reeds

high over their heads

which they part

with bare arms to appear

with fists of flowers

till in the air

there comes the smell

of calamus

from wet, gummy stalks.

THE WIDOW’S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

Sorrow is 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 notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

Light hearted William twirled

his November moustaches

and, half dressed, looked

from the bedroom window

upon the spring weather.

Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily

leaning out to see

up and down the street

where a heavy sunlight

lay beyond some blue shadows.

Into the room he drew

his head again and laughed

to himself quietly

twirling his green moustaches.

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

The birches are mad with green points

the wood’s edge is burning with their green,

burning, seething—No, no, no.

The birches are opening their leaves one

by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold

and separate, one by one. Slender tassels

hang swaying from the delicate branch tips—

Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word.

Black is split at once into flowers. In

every bog and ditch, flares of

small fire, white flowers!—Agh,

the birches are mad, mad with their green.

The world is gone, torn into shreds

with this blessing. What have I left undone

that I should have undertaken

O my brother, you redfaced, living man

ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon

this same dirt that I touch—and eat.

We are alone in this terror, alone,

face to face on this road, you and I,

wrapped by this flame!

Let the polished plows stay idle,

their gloss already on the black soil.

But that face of yours—!

Answer me. I will clutch you. I

will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face

into your face and force you to see me.

Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest

thing that is in your mind to say,

say anything. I will understand you—!

It is the madness of the birch leaves opening

cold, one by one.

My rooms will receive me. But my rooms

are no longer sweet spaces where comfort

is ready to wait on me with its crumbs.

A darkness has brushed them. The mass

of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken.

Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed.

I am shaken, broken against a might

that splits comfort, blows apart

my careful partitions, crushes my house

and leaves me—with shrinking heart

and startled, empty eyes—peering out

into a cold world.

In the spring I would drink! In the spring

I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things.

Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei!

your hands, your lips to drink!

Give me your wrists to drink—

I drag you, I am drowned in you, you

overwhelm me! Drink!

Save me! The shad bush is in the edge

of the clearing. The yards in a fury

of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror.

Drink and lie forgetting the world.

And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one.

Coldly I observe them and wait for the end.

And it ends.

THE LONELY STREET

School is over. It is too hot

to walk at ease. At ease

in light frocks they walk the streets

to while the time away.

They have grown tall. They hold

pink flames in their right hands.

In white from head to foot,

with sidelong, idle look—

in yellow, floating stuff,

black sash and stockings—

touching their avid mouths

with pink sugar on a stick—

like a carnation each holds in her hand—

they mount the lonely street.

THE GREAT FIGURE

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

firetruck

moving

with weight and urgency

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city.

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Table of Contents

CONTENTS

SOUR GRAPES

THE LATE SINGER

MARCH

BERKET AND THE STARS

A CELEBRATION

APRIL

A GOODNIGHT

OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES

ROMANCE MODERNE

THE DESOLATE FIELD

WILLOW POEM

APPROACH OF WINTER

JANUARY

BLIZZARD

TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY

WINTER TREES

COMPLAINT

THE COLD NIGHT

SPRING STORM

THE DELICACIES

THURSDAY

THE DARK DAY

TIME THE HANGMAN

TO A FRIEND

THE GENTLE MAN

THE SOUGHING WIND

SPRING

PLAY

LINES

THE POOR

COMPLETE DESTRUCTION

MEMORY OF APRIL

EPITAPH

DAISY

PRIMROSE

QUEEN-ANN’S-LACE

GREAT MULLEN

WAITING

THE HUNTER

ARRIVAL

TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES

YOUTH AND BEAUTY

THE THINKER

THE DISPUTANTS

TULIP BED

THE BIRDS

THE NIGHTINGALES

SPOUTS

BLUEFLAGS

THE WIDOW’S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

THE LONELY STREET

THE GREAT FIGURE

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