at the third floor window of the tenement, the street looks shiny. It has been washed and rinsed by rain. Beyond the silver streaks of the streetcar tracks a single streetlight stands in a pool of wet light. It is night. St. Louis. Nineteen forty-seven. I have just come home from the orphanage
At supper time an ondine’s narrow feet made dark tracks on the hearth. Like the heart of a yellow fruit was the fire’s heat, but they rubbed together quite blue with the cold. The sandy hem of her skirt dripped on the floor. She sat there with a silvered cedar knot for a low stool; and I sat opposite, my lips and eyelids hot
See, Winter comes to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train— Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme, These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms! Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot, Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life, When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain; Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure; Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst; Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time, Till through the lucid chambers of the south
As rising from the vegetable World My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend, My panting Muse; and hark, how loud the Woods Invite you forth in all your gayest Trim. Lend me your Song, ye Nightingales! oh pour The mazy-running Soul of Melody Into my varied Verse! while I deduce, From the first Note the hollow Cuckoo sings,
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.— Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
HAil holy Light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born, Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun, Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing, Escap't the Stygian Pool, though long detain'd In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σίβυλλα τίθέλεις; respondebat illa:άποθανεîνθέλω.’ For Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro. I. The Burial of the Dead
In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat
What of her glass without her? The blank gray There where the pool is blind of the moon’s face. Her dress without her? The tossed empty space Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away. Her paths without her? Day’s appointed sway Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place Without her? Tears, ah me! for love’s good grace, And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart, Of thee what word remains ere speech be still? A wayfarer by barren ways and chill, Steep ways and weary, without her thou art, Where the long cloud, the long wood’s counterpart, Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
I have sat here happy in the gardens, Watching the still pool and the reeds And the dark clouds Which the wind of the upper air Tore like the green leafy boughs Of the divers-hued trees of late summer; But though I greatly delight In these and the water-lilies, That which sets me nighest to weeping Is the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones, And the pale yellow grasses Among them.
The birds have flown their summer skies to the south, And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion, Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.
A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea, A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping An aging whiskey of distances and departures.
I am leading a quiet life in Mike’s Place every day watching the champs of the Dante Billiard Parlor and the French pinball addicts. I am leading a quiet life on lower East Broadway. I am an American.
From the beginning, the egg cradled in pebbles, The drive thick with fledglings, to the known last Riot of the senses, is only a short pass. Earth to be forked over is more patient, Bird hungers more, flower dies sooner.
But if not grasped grows quickly, silently. We are restless, not remembering much. The pain is slow, original as laughter,
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