I remember when I wrote The Circus I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else? Fernand Léger lived in our building Well it wasn’t really our building it was the building we lived in Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall
Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,
Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom.
Oh! dost thou flatter falsely, Hope? The day hath scarcely passed that saw thy birth, Yet thy white wings are plumed to all their scope, And hour by hour thine eyes have gathered light, And grown so large and bright, That my whole future life unfolds what seems, Beneath their gentle beams, A path that leads athwart some guiltless earth,
1 Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose, And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
2 The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day, The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme, The similitudes of the past and those of the future, The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river, The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away, The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,— By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
I am the Woman, ark of the law and its breaker, Who chastened her steps and taught her knees to be meek, Bridled and bitted her heart and humbled her cheek, Parcelled her will, and cried "Take more!" to the taker, Shunned what they told her to shun, sought what they bade her seek, Locked up her mouth from scornful speaking: now it is open to speak.
I am she that is terribly fashioned, the creature Wrought in God's perilous mood, in His unsafe hour. The morning star was mute, beholding my feature, Seeing the rapture I was, the shame, and the power, Scared at my manifold meaning; he heard me call "O fairest among ten thousand, acceptable brother!" And he answered not, for doubt; till he saw me crawl And whisper down to the secret worm, "O mother,
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