Selected Poems
Page 5
all sides—
hung with cocoons
it thins
till nothing is left of it
but two
eccentric knotted
twigs
bending forward
hornlike at the top
It Is a Living Coral
a trouble
archaically fettered
to produce
E Pluribus Unum an
island
in the sea a Capitol
surmounted
by Armed Liberty—
painting
sculpture straddled by
a dome
eight million pounds
in weight
iron plates constructed
to expand
and contract with
variations
of temperature
the folding
and unfolding of a lily.
And Congress
authorized and the
Commission
was entrusted was
entrusted!
a sculptured group
Mars
in Roman mail placing
a wreath
of laurel on the brow
of Washington
Commerce Minerva
Thomas
Jefferson John Hancock
at
the table Mrs. Motte
presenting
Indian burning arrows
to Generals
Marion and Lee to fire
her mansion
and dislodge the British—
this scaleless
jumble is superb
and accurate in its
expression
of the thing they
would destroy—
Baptism of Poca-
hontas
with a little card
hanging
under it to tell
the persons
in the picture.
It climbs
it runs, it is Geo.
Shoup
of Idaho it wears
a beard
it fetches naked
Indian
women from a river
Trumbull
Varnum Henderson
Frances
Willard’s corset is
absurd—
Banks White Columbus
stretched
in bed men felling trees
The Hon. Michael
C. Kerr
onetime Speaker of
the House
of Representatives
Perry
in a rowboat on Lake
Erie
changing ships the
dead
among the wreckage
sickly green
The Sun Bathers
A tramp thawing out
on a doorstep
against an east wall
Nov. 1, 1933:
a young man begrimed
and in an old
army coat
wriggling and scratching
while a fat negress
in a yellow-house window
nearby
leans out and yawns
into the fine weather
The Cod Head
Miscellaneous weed
strands, stems, debris—
firmament
to fishes—
where the yellow feet
of gulls dabble
oars whip
ships churn to bubbles—
at night wildly
agitate phospores-
cent midges—but by day
flaccid
moons in whose
discs sometimes a red cross
lives—four
fathom—the bottom skids
a mottle of green
sands backward—
amorphous waver-
ing rocks—three fathom
the vitreous
body through which—
small scudding fish deep
down—and
now a lulling lift
and fall—
red stars—a severed cod—
head between two
green stones—lifting
falling
New England
is a condition—
of bedrooms whose electricity
is brickish or made into
T beams—They dangle them
on wire cables to the tops
of Woolworth buildings
five and ten cents worth—
There they have bolted them
into place at masculine risk—
Or a boy with a rose under
the lintel of his cap
standing to have his picture
taken on the butt of a girder
with the city a mile down—
captured, lonely cock atop
iron girders wears rosepetal
smile—a thought of Indians
on chestnut branches
to end “walking on the air”
Poem
As the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot
On Gay Wallpaper
The green-blue ground
is ruled with silver lines
to say the sun is shining
And on this moral sea
of grass or dreams lie flowers
or baskets of desires
Heaven knows what they are
between cerulean shapes
laid regularly round
Mat roses and tridentate
leaves of gold
threes, threes and threes
Three roses and three stems
the basket floating
standing in the horns of blue
Repeated to the ceiling
to the windows
where the day
Blows in
the scalloped curtains to
the sound of rain
Nantucket
Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow
changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—
Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray
a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which
a key is lying—And the
immaculate white bed
The Attic Which Is Desire
the unused tent
of
bare beams
beyond which
directly wait
the night
and day—
Here
from the street
by
ringed with
running lights
the darkened
pane
exactly
down the center
is
transfixed
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 Sea-Elephant
Trundled from
the strangeness of the sea—
a kind of
heaven—
Ladies and Gentlemen!
the greatest
sea-monster ever exhibited
alive
the gigantic
sea-elephant! O wallow
of flesh were
are
there fish enough for
that
appet
ite stupidity
cannot lessen?
Sick
of April’s smallness
the little
leaves—
Flesh has lief of you
enormous sea—
Speak!
Blouaugh! (feed
me) my
flesh is riven—
fish after fish into his maw
unswallowing
to let them glide down
gulching back
half spittle half
brine
the
troubled eyes—torn
from the sea.
(In
a practical voice) They
ought
to put it back where
it came from.
Gape.
Strange head—
told by old sailors—
rising
bearded
to the surface—and
the only
sense out of them
is that woman’s
Yes
it’s wonderful but they
ought to
put it
back into the sea where
it came from.
Blouaugh!
Swing—ride
walk
on wires—toss balls
stoop and
contort yourselves—
But I
am love. I am
from the sea—
Blouaugh!
there is no crime save
the too-heavy
body
the sea
held playfully—comes
to the surface
the water
boiling
about the head the cows
scattering
fish dripping from
the bounty
of …. and spring
they say
Spring is icummen in—
Death
He’s dead
the dog won’t have to
sleep on his potatoes
any more to keep them
from freezing
he’s dead
the old bastard—
He’s a bastard because
there’s nothing
legitimate in him any
more
he’s dead
He’s sick-dead
he’s
a godforsaken curio
without
any breath in it
He’s nothing at all
he’s dead
shrunken up to skin
Put his head on
one chair and his
feet on another and
he’ll lie there
like an acrobat—
Love’s beaten. He
beat it. That’s why
he’s insufferable—
because
he’s here needing a
shave and making love
an inside howl
of anguish and defeat—
He’s come out of the man
and he’s let
the man go—
the liar
Dead
his eyes
rolled up out of
the light—a mockery
which
love cannot touch—
just bury it
and hide its face
for shame.
The Botticellian Trees
The alphabet of
the trees
is fading in the
song of the leaves
the crossing
bars of the thin
letters that spelled
winter
and the cold
have been illumined
with
pointed green
by the rain and sun—
The strict simple
principles of
straight branches
are being modified
by pinched-out
ifs of color, devout
conditions
the smiles of love—
……
until the stript
sentences
move as a woman’s
limbs under cloth
and praise from secrecy
quick with desire
love’s ascendancy
in summer—
In summer the song
sings itself
above the muffled words—
from The Descent of Winter
9/30
There are no perfect waves—
Your writings are a sea
full of misspellings and
faulty sentences. Level. Troubled
A center distant from the land
touched by the wings
of nearly silent birds
that never seem to rest—
This is the sadness of the sea—
waves like words, all broken—
a sameness of lifting and falling mood.
I lean watching the detail
of brittle crest, the delicate
imperfect foam, yellow weed
one piece like another—
There is no hope—if not a coral
island slowly forming
to wait for birds to drop
the seeds will make it habitable
10/21
In the dead weeds a rubbish heap
aflame: the orange flames
stream horizontal, windblown
they parallel the ground
waving up and down
the flamepoints alternating
the body streaked with loops
and purple stains while
the pale smoke, above
steadily continues eastward—
What chance have the old?
There are no duties for them
no places where they may sit
their knowledge is laughed at
they cannot see, they cannot hear.
A small bundle on the shoulders
weighs them down
one hand is put back under it
to hold it steady.
Their feet hurt, they are weak
they should not have to suffer
as younger people must and do
there should be a truce for them
10/22
that brilliant field
of rainwet orange
blanketed
by the red grass
and oilgreen bayberry
the last yarrow
on the gutter
white by the sandy
rainwater
and a white birch
with yellow leaves
and few
and loosely hung
and a young dog
jumped out
of the old barrel
10/28
in this strong light
the leafless beechtree
shines like a cloud
it seems to glow
of itself
with a soft stript light
of love
over the brittle
grass
But there are
on second look
a few yellow leaves
still shaking
far apart
just one here one there
trembling vividly
11/1
The moon, the dried weeds
and the Pleiades—
Seven feet tall
the dark, dried weedstalks
make a part of the night
a red lace
on the blue milky sky
Write—
by a small lamp
the Pleiades are almost
nameless
and the moon is tilted
and halfgone
And in runningpants and
with ecstatic, aesthetic faces
on the illumined
signboard are leaping
ove
r printed hurdles and
“¼ of their energy comes from bread”
two
gigantic highschool boys
ten feet tall
An Early Martyr
(1935)
An Early Martyr
Rather than permit him
to testify in court
Giving reasons
why he stole from
Exclusive stores
then sent post-cards
To the police
to come and arrest him
—if they could—
They railroaded him
to an asylum for
The criminally insane
without trial
The prophylactic to
madness
Having been denied him
he went close to
The edge out of
frustration and
Doggedness—
Inflexible, finally they
had to release him—
The institution was
“overcrowded”
They let him go
in the custody of
A relative on condition
that he remain
Out of the state—
They “cured” him all
right
But the set-up
he fought against
Remains—
and his youthful deed
Signalizing
the romantic period
Of a revolt
he served well
Is still good—
Let him be
a factory whistle
That keeps blaring—
Sense, sense, sense!
so long as there’s
A mind to remember
and a voice to
carry it on—
Never give up
keep at it!
Unavoided, terrifying
to such bought
Courts as he thought
to trust to but they
Double-crossed him.
Flowers by the Sea
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean
lifts its form—chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone
but color and the movement—or the shape
perhaps—of restlessness, whereas
the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem
Item
This, with a face
like a mashed blood orange
that suddenly
would get eyes
and look up and scream
War! War!
clutching her
thick, ragged coat
A piece of hat
broken shoes
War! War!
stumbling for dread
at the young men
who with their gun-butts
shove her
sprawling—
a note
at the foot of the page
The Locust Tree in Flower
(First version)
Among