jostling
half-turned edge
side by side
until compact, tense
evenly stained
to the last fine edge
an ecstasy
from the empurpled ring
climbs up (though
firm there still)
each petal
by excess of tensions
in its own flesh
all rose—
rose red
standing until it
bends backward
upon the rest, above,
answering
ecstasy with excess
all together
acrobatically
not as if bound
(though still bound)
but upright
as if they hung
from above
to the streams
with which
they are veined and glow—
the frail fruit
by its frailty supreme
opening in the tense moment
to no bean
no completion
no root
no leaf and no stem
but color only and a form—
It is passion
earlier and later than thought
that rises above thought
at instant peril—peril
itself a flower
that lifts and draws it on—
Frailer than level thought
more convolute
rose red
highest
the soonest to wither
blacken
and fall upon itself
formless—
And the flowers
grow older and begin
to change, larger now
less tense, when at the full
relaxing, widening
the petals falling down
the color paling
through violaceous to
tinted white—
The structure of the petal
that was all red
beginning now to show
from a deep central vein
other finely scratched veins
dwindling to that edge
through which the light
more and more shows
fading through gradations
immeasurable to the eye—
The day rises and swifter
briefer
more frailly relaxed
than thought that still
holds good—the color
draws back while still
the flower grows
the rose of it nearly all lost
a darkness of dawning purple
paints a deeper afternoon—
The day passes
in a horizon of colors
all meeting
less severe in loveliness
the petals fallen now well back
till flower touches flower
all round
at the petal tips
merging into one flower—
The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938
(1938)
Classic Scene
A power-house
in the shape of
a red brick chair
90 feet high
on the seat of which
sit the figures
of two metal
stacks—aluminum—
commanding an area
of squalid shacks
side by side—
from one of which
buff smoke
streams while under
a grey sky
the other remains
passive today—
Autumn
A stand of people
by an open
grave underneath
the heavy leaves
celebrates
the cut and fill
for the new road
where
an old man
on his knees
reaps a basket-
ful of
matted grasses for
his goats
The Term
A rumpled sheet
of brown paper
about the length
and apparent bulk
of a man was
rolling with the
wind slowly over
and over in
the street as
a car drove down
upon it and
crushed it to
the ground. Unlike
a man it rose
again rolling
with the wind over
and over to be as
it was before.
The Sun
lifts heavily
and cloud and sea
weigh upon the
unwaiting air—
Hasteless
the silence is
divided
by small waves
that wash away
night whose wave
is without
sound and gone—
Old categories
slacken
memoryless—
weed and shells where
in the night
a high tide left
its mark
and block of half
burned wood washed
clean—
The slovenly bearded
rocks hiss—
Obscene refuse
charms
this modern shore—
Listen!
it is a sea-snail
singing—
Relax, relent—
the sun has climbed
the sand is
drying—Lie
by the broken boat—
the eel-grass
bends
and is released
again—Go down, go
down past knowledge
shelly lace—
among the rot
of children
screaming
their delight—
logged
in the penetrable
nothingness
whose heavy body
opens
to their leaps
without a wound—
A Bastard Peace
—where a heavy
woven-wire fence
topped with jagged ends, encloses
a long cinder-field by the river—
A concrete disposal tank at
one end, small wooden
pit-covers scattered about—above
sewer intakes, most probably—
Down the center’s a service path
graced on one side by
a dandelion in bloom—and a white
butterfly—
The sun parches still
the parched grass. Along
the fence, blocked from the water
leans the washed-out street—
Three cracked houses—
a willow, two chickens, a
small boy, with a home-made push cart,
walking by, waving a whip—
Gid ap! No other traffic or
like to be.
There to rest, to improvise and
unbend! Through the fence
beyond the field and shining
water, 12 o’clock blows
but nobody goes
other than the kids from school—
The Poor
It’s the anarchy of poverty
delights me, the old
yellow wooden house indented
among the new brick tenements
Or a cast-iron balcony
with panels showing oak branches
in full leaf. It fits
the dress of the children
reflecting every stage and
custom of necessity—
Chimneys, roofs, fences of
wood and metal in an unfenced
age
and enclosing next to
nothing at all: the old man
in a sweater and soft black
hat who sweeps the sidewalk—
his own ten feet of it
in a wind that fitfully
turning his corner has
overwhelmed the entire city
The Defective Record
Cut the bank for the fill.
Dump sand
pumped out of the river
into the old swale
killing whatever was
there before—including
even the muskrats. Who did it?
There’s the guy.
Him in the blue shirt and
turquoise skullcap.
Level it down
for him to build a house
on to build a
house on to build a house on
to build a house
on to build a house on to …
These
are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.
The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night
to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought
that spins a dark fire—
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles
to make a man aware of nothing
that he knows, not loneliness
itself—Not a ghost but
would be embraced—emptiness,
despair—(They
whine and whistle) among
the flashes and booms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,
the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused—
Hide it away somewhere
out of the mind, let it get roots
and grow, unrelated to jealous
ears and eyes—for itself.
In this mine they come to dig—all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest
music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped
that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing—that is now stone.
Morning
on the hill is cool! Even the dead
grass stems that start with the wind along
the crude board fence are less than harsh.
—a broken fringe of wooden and brick fronts
above the city, fading out,
beyond the watertank on stilts,
an isolated house or two here and there,
into the bare fields.
The sky is immensely
wide! No one about. The houses badly
numbered.
Sun benches at the curb bespeak
another season, truncated poplars
that having served for shade
served also later for the fire. Rough
cobbles and abandoned car rails interrupted
by precipitous cross streets.
Down-hill
in the small, separate gardens (Keep out
you) bare fruit trees and among tangled
cords of unpruned grapevines low houses
showered by unobstructed light.
Pulley lines
to poles, on one a blue
and white tablecloth bellying easily.
Feather beds from windows and swathed in
old linoleum and burlap, fig trees. Barrels
over shrubs.
Level of
the hill, two old men walking and talking
come on together.
—Firewood, all lengths
and qualities stacked behind patched
out-houses. Uses for ashes.
And a church spire sketched on the sky,
of sheet-metal and open beams, to resemble
a church spire—
—These Wops are wise
—and walk about
absorbed among stray dogs and sparrows,
pigeons wheeling overhead, their
feces falling—
or shawled and jug in hand
beside a concrete wall down which,
from a loose water-pipe, a stain descends,
the wall descending also, holding up
a garden—On its side the pattern of
the boards that made the forms is still
discernible.—to the oil-streaked
highway—
Whence, turn and look where,
at the crest, the shoulders of a man
are disappearing gradually below the worn
fox-fur of tattered grasses—
And round again, the
two old men in caps crossing a
a gutter now, Pago, Pago! still absorbed.
—a young man’s face staring
from a dirty window—Women’s Hats—and
at the door a cat, with one fore-foot on
the top step, looks back—
Scatubitch!
Sacks of flour
piled inside the bakery window, their
paley trade-marks flattened to
the glass—
And with a stick,
scratching within the littered field—
old plaster, bits of brick—to find what
coming? In God’s name! Washed out, worn
out, scavengered and rescavengered—
Spirit of place rise from these ashes
repeating secretly an obscure refrain:
This is my house and here I live.
Here I was born and this is my office—
—passionately leans examining, stirring
with the stick, a child following.
Roots, salads? Medicinal, stomachic?
Of what sort? Abortifacient? To be dug,
split, submitted to the sun, brewed
cooled in a teacup and applied?
Kid Hot
Jock, in red paint, smeared along
the fence.—and still remains, of—
if and if, as the sun rises, rolls and
comes again.
But every day, every day
she goes and kneels—
died of tuberculosis
when he came back from the war, nobody
else in our family ever had it except a
baby once after that—
alone on the cold
floor beside the candled altar, stifled
weeping—and moans for his lost
departed soul the tears falling
and wiped away, turbid with her grime.
Covered, swaddled, pinched and saved
shrivelled, broken—to be rewetted and
used again.
The Broken Span
(1941)
The Last Words of My English Grandmother
(A shortened version of a poem first published in 1920)
There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed—
Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,
Gimme something to eat—
They’re starving me—
I’m all right I won’t go
to the hospital. No, no, no
Give me something to eat
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well
you can do as you please.
She smiled, Yes
you do what you please first
then I can do what I please—
Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher—
Is this what you call
making me comfortable?
By now her mind was clear—
Oh you think you’re smart
you young people,
she said, but I’ll tell you
you don’t know anything.
Then we started.
On the way
we passed a long row
of elms. She looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,
What are all those
fuzzy-looking things out there?
Trees? Well, I’m tired
of them and rolled her head away.
The Predicter of Famine
White day, black river
corrugated and swift—
as the stone of the sky
on the prongy ring
of the tarnished city
is smooth and without motion:
A gull flies low
upstream, his beak tilted
sharply, his eye
alert to the providing water.
A Portrait of the Times
Two W. P. A. men
stood in the new
sluiceway
overlooking
the river—
One was pissing
while the other
showed
by his red
jagged face the
immemorial tragedy
of lack-love
while an old
squint-eyed woman
in a black
dress
and clutching
a bunch of
late chrysanthemums
to her
fatted bosoms
turned her back
on them
at the corner
Against the Sky
Let me not forget at least,
after the three day rain,
beaks raised aface, the two starlings
at and near the top twig
of the white-oak, dwarfing
the barn, completing the minute
green of the sculptured foliage, their
bullet heads bent back, their horny
lips chattering to the morning
sun! Praise! while the
wraithlike warblers, all but unseen
in looping flight dart from
pine to spruce, spruce to pine
southward. Southward! where
new mating warms the wit and cold
does not strike, for respite.
The Wedge
(1944)
A Sort of a Song
Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
—through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Selected Poems Page 7