The Project Gutenberg eBook ofPrecipitationsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: PrecipitationsAuthor: Evelyn ScottRelease date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4530]Most recently updated: December 28, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Catherine Daly*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRECIPITATIONS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: PrecipitationsAuthor: Evelyn ScottRelease date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4530]Most recently updated: December 28, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Catherine Daly
Title: Precipitations
Author: Evelyn Scott
Author: Evelyn Scott
Release date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4530]Most recently updated: December 28, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Catherine Daly
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRECIPITATIONS ***
Produced by Catherine Daly
Evelyn Scott
1920
The author acknowledges the courtesy of the editors of THE POETRYJOURNAL; OTHERS; THE EGOIST (London); POETRY: A MAGAZINE OF VERSE;PLAYBOY; THE DIAL; THE LIBERATOR; OTHERS: An ANTHOLOGY OF THE NEWVERSE; THE NATION (New York); and THE LYRIC, from all of which poemsin this volume have been reprinted.
Contents
Manhattan
The Unpeopled City
Midnight Worship: Brooklyn BridgeAscension: Autumn Dusk in Central ParkStartled Forest: Hudson RiverWinter StreetsFebruary SpringtimeThe Assumption of ColumbineFrom BrooklynSnow DancePotter's FieldLights at NightMidnight
Crowds
Summer NightNew YorkSunset: Battery ParkCrowdsRiotsThe City at Night
Vanities
Bread Poems
LullabyEmbarkation of CytheraChristian LuxuriesNarrow FlowersEyesAfter YouthThe Shadow that Walks AloneBible TruthThe Maternal BreastAir for G StringDestiny
The Red Cross
Hectic I-IIIsolation WardThe Red CrossHospital Night
Domestic Canticle
Spring SongHome AgainTo a Sick ChildLove SongQuarrelMy ChildThe Tunnel I-V
Bruised Sunlight
Water Moods
Rain on the SeashoreShip MastsMonochromeAntiqueEcho Looks at HerselfSpell
Hungry Seasons
Rainy TwilightThe StormNymphsWinter Dawn
The Wall of Night
Springtime Too SoonStarsNight MusicNocturne of WaterThe Long MomentDesigns I-IVArgoJapanese MoonThe NaiadFloodtideMountain Pass in August
Contemporaries
Harmonics
Young MenYoung GirlsHouse SpiritsAt the Meeting HouseChristiansDevil's CradleWomenPenelopePoor People's DreamsFor Wives and Mistresses
Portraits
Portrait of Rich Old LadyNiggerThe Maiden MotherA Pious WomanA Very Old Rose JarThe NixieOld Ladies' ValhallaPortraits of Poets I-IIITheodore DreiserPieta
Brazil Through A Mist
The Ranch
Tropical LifeTwenty-four HoursRainy SeasonMail on the RanchThe Vampire BatConservatismLittle PigsThe Silly EweThe SnakeThe YearsBurning Mountains I-IIITropical WinterTalk on the Ranch
Les Malades des Pays Chauds
Pride of RaceDon Quixote Sojourns in Rio de JaneiroConvent MusingsGuitarraNovember
The Coming of Christ
The Death of Columbine
DuetFrom a Man Dying on a CrossLagniappeHail Mary!The Death of ColumbinePierrot LaughsThe Transmigration of CalibanGundryViennese Waltz
Resurrection
ImmortalityAutumn NightVenus' Fly TrapSuicideLeaves I-IVAllegro
In the rainRows of street lamps are saints in bright garmentsThat flow long with the bend of knees.They lift pale heads nimbussed with golden spikes.
Up the lanes of liquid onyxToward the high fire-laden altarsMove the saints of ManhattanIn endless pilgrimage to death,Amidst the asphodel and anemones of dawn.
Featureless people glide with dim motion through a quiveringblue silver;Boats merge with the bronze-gold welters about their keels.The trees float upward in gray and green flames.Clouds, swans, boats, trees, all gliding up a hillsideAfter some gray old women who lift their gaunt formsFrom falling shrouds of leaves.
Thin fingered twigs clutch darkly at nothing.Crackling skeletons shine.Along the smutted horizon of Fifth AvenueThe hooded houses watch heavilyWith oily gold eyes.
The thin hill pushes against the mist.Its fading defiance sounds in the umber and red of autumn leaves.Like a dead arm around a warm throatIs the sagging embrace of the riverLaid grayly about the shore.
The train passes.We emerge from a tunnel into a sky of thin blue morning gloriesWhere yellow lily bells tinkle down.The paths run swiftly away under the lamp glowLike green and blue lizardsMottled with light.
The stars, escaping,Evaporate in acrid mists.The houses, rearing themselves higher,Assemble among the clouds.Night blows through me.I am clear with its bitterness.I tinkle along brick canyonsLike a crystal leaf.
The trees hold out pale gilded branchesStiff and high in the wind.On the lawnsPatches of gray-lilac snowMelt in the hollows of the terraces.The park is an ocean of fawn-colored plush,Ridged and faded.Sharp and delicate,My shadow moves after me on the rumpled grass—Grass like a pillow worn by a dear head.Joy!
The lights trickle grayly down from the hoary palisadesAnd drip into the river.Leaden reflections flow into the water.Framed in your window,Your little face glows deceptivelyIn a rigid ecstasy,As the wide-winged morningFolds back the mist.
Along the shoreA black net of branchesTangles the pulpy yellow lamps.The shell-colored sky is lustrous with the fading sun.Across the river Manhattan floats—Dim gardens of fire—And rushing invisible toward me through the fog,A hurricane of faces.
Black brooms of trees sweep the sky clean;Sweep the house fronts,And leave them bleak in sleep.High up the empty moonSpills her vacuity.
I dance.My long black shadow
Weaves an invisible pattern of pain.The snowIs embroidered with my happiness.
Golden petals, honey sweet,Crushed beneath fear-hastened feet…
Silver paper lanterns glow and shudderin flat patternsOn a gray eternal faceStained with pain.
In the city,Storms of lightSurge against the clouds,Pushing up the darkness.
In the country,Is the faint pressure of oil lamps,That sputter,Smothered with earth—Extinguished in silence.
The golden snow of the starsDrifts in mounds of light,Melts against the hot sides of the city,Cool cheek against burning breast,Cold golden snow,Falling all night.
The bloated moonHas sickly leaves glistening against herLike flies on a fat white face.
The thick-witted drunkard on the park benchTouches a girl's breastThat throbs with its own ruthless and stupid delight.The new-born child crawls in his mother's filth.Life, the sleep walker,Lifts toward the skiesAn immense gesture of indecency.
With huge diaphanous feet,March the leaden velvet elephants,Pressing the bodies back into the earth.
From cliffs of houses,Sunlit windows gaze down upon meLike undeniable eyes,Millions of bronze eyes,Unassailable,Obliterating all they see:The warm contiguous crowd in the street belowChills,Mists,Drifts past those hungry eyes of Eternity,Melts seaward and deathwardTo the ocean.
The sky along the street a gauzy yellow:The narrow lights burn tall in the twilight.
The cool air sags,Heavy with the thickness of bodies.I am elated with bodies.They have stolen me from myself.I love the way they beat me to life,Pay me for their cruelties.In the close intimacy I feel for themThere is the indecency I like.
I belong to them,To these whom I hate;And because we can never know each other,Or be anything to each other,Though we have been the most,I sell so much of me that could bring a better price.
As if all the birds rushed up in the air,Fluttering;Hoots, calls, cries.I never knew such a monster even in child dreams.
It grows:Glass smashed;Stores shut;Windows tight closed;Dull, far-off murmurs of voices.
Blood—The soft, sticky patter of falling drops in the silence.Everything inundated.Faces float off in a red dream.Still the song of the sweet succulent patter.
Blood—I think it oozes from my finger tips.—Or maybe it drips from the brow of Jesus.
Life wriggles in and outThrough the narrow waysAnd circuitous passages:Something monstrous and horrible,A passion without any master,Male sexual fluid trickling through the darknessAnd setting fire to whatever it touches.
That is the masterBestowing a casual caress on a slave.Quiver under it!
I lean my heart against the soft bosomed night:A white globed breast,And warm and silent flowing,The milk of the moon.
Like jellied flowersMy inflated curvesMelt in the peaceful stagnance of the bath.If I were to dieI would resist the final agonyWith only a faint quiverFrom my escaping thighs.
The red fountain of shame gushes up from my heart.I throw back my long hair and the fountain floats it outLike a fiery fan.My wide stretched arms are white coral branches.The liquid shadows seek between my amber breasts.
But the fire is cool.It cannot burn me.
I am a gray lily.My roots are deep.I cannot lift my handsFor one thin yellow butterfly.Yet last night I grew up to a star.My shade swirled mistilySeven mountains high.I lifted my face to another face.The moon made a burning shadow on my brow.Washed by the light,My sharp breasts silvered.My dance was an arc of mistFrom west to east.
There are arms of ice around me,And a hand of ice on my heart.If they should come to bury meI would not flinch or start.For eyes are freezing me—Eyes too cold for hate.I think the ground,Because it is dark,A warmer place to wait.
Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth!Exotic colors in the lamplit darkness of wet streets,Musk and roses in the twilight,The moon in the park like a golden balloon…
Then to awaken and find the shadows fled,The music gone…Empty, bleak!My soul has grown very small and shriveled in my body.It no longer looks out.It rattles around,And inside my body it begins to look,Staring all around inside my body,Like a crab in a crevice,Staring with bulging eyesAt the strange place in which it finds itself.
The silence tugs at my breastWith formless lips,Like a heavy baby,Attenuates me,Draws me through myself into it.I sit in the womb of an idiot,Helpless before its mouthing tenderness.The huge flap ears are attentive,And the soundless face bends toward meIn horrible lovingness.
To die…Oh, cool river!To float there with nothing to resist—
One ripple of silence spreads out from another.My spirit widens so,Circle beyond circle.I hold up the stars no longer with the pupils of my eyes.Hands, legs, arms float off from me.I melt like flakes of snow.
I am no more opposed.I am no more.
I walked straight and long,But I never found you.I was looking for a hill of a hundred breasts,A hill modeled after the statues of Diana of the Ephesians.I was looking for a hill of mounds hairy with grass,And a place to lie down.
White hands of GodWith fingers like strong twigs floweringRock me in leaves of iron,Leaves of blue.
Hands of GodFashioned of cloudsHave finger tips that balance the almond white moon.The pale sky is a flowerWhite tipped and pink tipped with dawn.White hands of God gather the blossoms with fingers that hold me,Cloud fingers like milk in the azure night,Weaving strong chords.
I am lost in the vast cave of night.No sound but the far-off tinkle of stars,And the cry of a birdMuffled in shadows.
The light flows in remotelyThrough the hollow moon,Dim strange brillianceFrom waters beyond the sky.Groping,I listen to the harsh tinkle of the far-off stars,Feel the clammy shadows about my shoulders.
Ruby winged pains flash through me,Jewel winged agonies:They vanish,Carrying me with themWithout my knowing it.
Pain sends out long tentaclesAnd sucks.When I have given up strugglingHe takes me into his arms.
We are the separate centers of consciousnessOf all the universes.We vibrate statically on a trillion golden wires.Our trillion golden fingers twine in the weltering darkness,And grasp tremblingly,Aware in agonyOf the things we can never know.
Antiseptic smells that corrode the nostrilsCrumble me,Eat me deep;And my garments disintegrate:First my nightgown,Leaving my naked arms and legs disjointed,Sprawled about the bed in postures meaningless to the point ofobscenity.
My breasts shrivel,The nipples drawn like withered plumsTo the eyes of the bright young nurse.I am nothing but a dull eye myself,An eye out of a socket,Bursting,Contorted with hideous wisdom.
Eye to eyeWe fight in the death throes,Myself and the young nurse.Her firm, crisp aproned bosomLeans toward the bed,As she smooths the rumpled pillow backWith long cool fingers.
I am Will-o'-the-Wisp.I float in a little pool of delirium,Phosphorescent velvet.My fire is like a breathThat blows my illness in circles,Widening it so farThat I cannot see the edge.It is one with the night sky.My fire has blown this vastness,But I strain and flicker trying to escape from it.I want to exist without the darknessThat makes my breath so bright.I want the morning to thin my light.
Sap crashes suddenly through dead roots:Sap that bites,Harsh,Impatient,Bitter as gold.
My God, my sisters, how dark, how silent, how heavy is earth!Shoulders strain against this eternity,Against the trickling loam.Earth dropped on the heart like a nerveless hand:On the red mouthEarth coils,Heavy as a serpent.Light has come back to the darkness,To the shadow,To the coolness of blackened leaves.
Where I used to beI could hear the sea.The black ragged palm fronds flung themselves againstthe twilight sky.The moon stared up from the water like a fish's eye.I had the loneliness that sings.It made me light and gave me wings.
Is it the dust and the iron railings and the blank red brickThat makes me sick?There is no space to be lonely any moreAnd crumbling feet on a city streetSound past the door.
At the end of the dayThe sun rusts.The street is old and quiet.The houses are of iron.The shadows are iron.Shrill screams of children scrape the iron sky.Let us lock ourselves in the light.Let the sun nail us to the hot earth with his spikes of fire,And perhaps when the darkness rushes pastIt will forget us.
(To C. K. S.)
Little father,Little mother,Little sister,Little brother,Little lover,How can I go on livingWith you away from me?
How can I get up in the morningAnd go to bed at night,And you not here?How can I bear the sunrise and the sunset,And the moonrise and the moonset,And the flowers in the garden?
How can I bear them,You,My little father,Little mother,Little sister,Little brother,Little lover?
Abruptly, from a wall of clear cold silenceLike an icy glass,Myself looked out at meAnd would not let me pass.I wanted to reach youBefore it was too late;But my frozen image barred the wayWith vacant hate.
Tentacles thrust imperceptibly into the futureHelplessly sense the fire.A serpentine nerveImpelled to lengthen itself generation after generationPierces the labyrinth of flamesTo rose-colored extinction.
I have made you a child in the womb,Holding you in sweet and final darkness.All day as I walk outI carry you about.I guard you close in secret whereCold eyed people cannot stare.I am melted in the warm dear fire,Lover and mother in the same desire.Yet I am afraid of your eyesAnd their possible surprise.Would you be angry if I let you knowThat I carried you so?
I could kiss you to deathHoping that, your protest obliterated,You would beUtterly me.Yet I know—how well!—Like a shell,Hollow and echoing,Death would be,With a roar of the pastLike the roar of the sea.And what is lifeless I cannot kill!So you would make death work your will.
In most intimate touch we meet,Lip to lip,Breast to breast,Sweet.Suddenly we draw apartAnd start.Like strangers surprised at a road's turningWe see,I, the naked you;You, the naked me.There was something of neither of usThat covered the hours,And we have only touched each other's bodiesThrough veils of flowers.But let us smile kindly,Like those already dead,On the warm fleshAnd the marriage bed.
The blanched stars are withered with light.The moon is pale with trying to remember something.Light, straining for a stale birth,Distends the darkness.
I, in the midst of this travail,Bring forth—The solitude is so vastI am glad to be freed of it.Is it the moon I see there,Or does my own white faceHang in blank agony against the skyAs if blinded with giving?
Little inexorable lips at my breastDrink me out of meIn a fine sharp stream.Little hands tear me apartTo find what they need.
I am weak with love of you,Little body of hate!
Curling petals of rain lick silver tongues.Fluffy spray is blown loosely up between thin silver lipsAnd slithers, tinkling in hard green ice, down the gray rocks.
White darkness—An expressionless horizon stares with stone eyes.The sea lifts its immense self heavilyAnd falls down in sickly might.
The emptiness is like a death of which no one shall ever know.
They standStark as church spires;Bare stalksThat will blossom(Tomorrow perhaps)Into flowers of the wind.
Gray water,Gray sky drifting down to the sea.The night,Old, ugly, and stern,Lies upon the water,Quivering in the twilightLike a tortured belly.
Clouds flung backMake fan-shaped rays of faded crimsonBrocaded on dim blue satin;Through the wrinkled dust-blue waterThe little boatGlides above its sunken shadow.
The ship passes in the nightAnd drags jagged reflectionsLike gilded combsThrough the obscure water.Spun glass daisies float on a gold-washed mirror.
In the dark I can hear the patter.Bare white feet are running across the water.White feet as bright as silverAre flashing under dull blue dresses.Wet palms beat,Impatiently,Petulantly,Slapping the wet rocks.
Dim gold faces float in the windows.Dim gold faces and gilded arms…They are clinging along the silver ladders of rain;They are climbing with ivory lamps held high,Starry lampsOver which the silver laddersThicken into nets of twilight.
Herds of black elephants,Rushing over the plains,Trample the stars.The ivory tusk of the leader(Or is it the moon?)Flashes, and is gone.Tree tops bend;Crash;Fire from hoofs;And still they rush on,Trampling the stars,Bellowing,Roaring.
The drift of shadows on the mountainside,Blue and purple gold!Purple dust sifting through fingers of ivory:Cool purple on ivory breasts.I see arms and breasts,Upturned chins,Slanting through the dust of purple leaves:Ivory and gold,Bare breasts and laughing eyes,That drift on the shadowy surfAnd surge against the side of the mountain.
Cloudy dawn flower unfolds;Moon moth gyrates slowly;Snow maiden lets down her hair,And in one shining silence,It slips to earth.
The moon is a cool rose in a blue bowl.There are no more birds.The last leaf has fallen.The trees in the twilight are naked old women.
The moon is an old woman at the door of her tomb.Clouds combed out in the windAre gray hair she has wound about her neck.The water is an old gray face that mirrors the springtime.
Like naked maidensDancing with no thought of lovers,Blinking stars with dewy silver breastsPass through the darkness.White and eager,They glide onToward the gray meshed web of dawn
And the mystery of morning.Then,About me,The white cloud wallsStand as sternly as sepulchers,And from all sidesPeer and linger the startled faces,Pale in the harshness of the sunlight.
Through the blue water of nightRises the white bubble of silence—Rises,And breaks:The shivered crystal bell of the moon,Dying away in star splinters.The still mists bear the soundBeyond the horizon.
A shining bird plunges to the deep,Becomes entangled with seaweed,And never more emerges.Pale golden feathers drift across the sky,Fire feathered clouds,Riding the weightless billows of back velvetOn the horizon.
A white sigh clouds the fieldsInto quietness.Above the billowed snowI drift,One year,Two years,Three years.Hurt eyes mist in the blue behind me.The moon uncoils in glistening ropesAnd I glide downward along the dripping raysTo a marble lake.
Night
Fields of black tulipsAnd swarms of gold beesDrinking their bitter honey.
New Moon
Above the gnarled old treeThat clings to the bleakest side of the mountain,A torch of ivory and gold;And across the sky,The silver printOf spirit feet,Fled from the wonder.
Tropic Moon
The glowing anvil,Beaten by the winds;Star sparks,Burning and dying in the heavens;The furnace glareRedOn the polished palm leaves.
Winter Moon
A little white thistle moonBlown over the cold crags and fens:A little white thistle moonBlown across the frozen heather.
White sailsUnbillowed by any wind,The moon ship,Among shoals of cloud,Stranded stars,Bare bosoms,And netted hair of light,On the shores of the world.
Thick clustered wistaria clouds,A young girl moon in a mist of almond flowers,Boughs and boughs of light;Then a round-faced ivory ladyNodding among fading chrysanthemums.
Moon rise.Great gong sounds, shining—Little feet run away.Loud and solemn, the funeral gong.Little feet run away.
The moon rises,Glistening,Naked white,Out of her stream.
Wet marble shouldersShake star drops on the clouds.
Across the shadows of the surfThe lights of the shipTwinkle despondently.The clinging absorbent gray darknessSucks them into itself:Drinks the pale golden tears greedily.
Night scatters grapes for the harvest.The moon burns like a leaf.Along the mountain pathA thin streak of lightCreeps hungrily with its silver belly to the earth.The old hound laps up the shadows.Her teats drip the brighter darkness.
Fauns,Eternal pagans,Beautiful and obscene,Leaping through the streetWith a flicker of hoofs,And a flash of tails,
You want dryadsAnd they give you prostitutes.
Your souls are wet flowers,Bathed in kisses and blood.Golden Clyties,The wheel of lightRushes over your breasts.
Women are flitting around in their shells.Pale dilutions of the waters of the worldCome through the windows.Back and forth the women glide in their little waters;Cellar to garret and garret to cellar,Winding in and out under door arches and down passages,They and their spawn,In the shell,In the cavern.
You may come in the shell to overpower her,Males,But in the shell, in the shell.She cannot be torn from the shell without dying;And what is the pleasure of intercourse with the dead?
Souls as dry as autumn leaves,The color long since out.
The organ plays.The leaves crackle and rustle a little;Then sink down.
Old ladies with gray moss on their chins,Old men with camphor and cotton packed around their heads,Thin child spirits, sharp and shrill as whistles.
Gray old trees;Gaunt old woods;Souls as dry as leavesAfter autumn is past.
Blind, they storm up from the pit.You gave them the force,You, when You poured the measure of agony into them.Didn't You know what it would be,Giving blind people fire?Not gold and red and amber fire,But marsh fire.Fire of ice,Suffering forged into suffering!
They are coming up now.The sword is uplifted in the hands of the monster.
My valiant little puppets,Did you think you could stand out against this?Pierrot and Columbine breeding in the flowers….
There must be no flowers.
Black man hanged on a silver tree;(Down by the river,Slow river,White breast,White face with blood on it.)Black man creaks in the wind,Knees slack.Brown poppies, melting in moonlight,Swerve on glistening stemsAcross an endless fieldTo the music of a blood white faceAnd a tired little devil childRocked to sleep on a rope.
Crystal columns,When they bend they crack;Brittle souls,Conforming, yet not conforming—Mirrors.
Masculine souls pass across the mirrors:Whirling, gliding ecstasies—Retreating, retreating,Dimly, dimly,Like dreams fading across the mirrors.
Then the mirrors,Stark and brilliant in the sunshine,Blank as the desert,Blank as the Sphinx,Winking golden eyes in the twinkles of light,Silent, immutable, vacuous infinity,Illimitable capacity for absorption,Absorbing nothing.
Have the shapes and the shadows been swallowed upIn your recesses without depth,You drinkers of life,Twinkling maliciouslyYour golden yellow eyes,Mirrors winking in the sunshine?
Gray old spinners,Weaving with the crafty fibers of your souls;Nothing was given you but those impalpable threads.
Yet you have bound the race,Stranglers,With your silver spun mysteries.All the cruel,All the mad,The foolish,And the beautiful, too:It all belongs to youSince the first timeThat you began to drop the filmy threadsWhen the world was half asleep.
Sometimes you are young girls;Sometimes there are roses in your hair.But I know you—Sitting back there in the hollow shadows of your wombs.The crafty fibers of your soulsAre woven in and outWith the fibers of life.
Sometimes women with eyes like wet green berriesGlide across the slick mirror of their own smilesAnd vanish through lengths of gold and marble drawing rooms.The marble smiles,As sensuous as snow;Hips of the Graces;
Shoulders of Clytie;Breasts frozen as foam,Frozen as camelia bloom;Mounds of marble flesh,Inexplicable wonder of white….
I dream about statuesque beautiesWho look from the shadows of opera boxes;Or elegant ladies in novels of eighteen thirty,At the hunt ball…Reflections in a polish floor,A portrait by Renoir,A Degas dancing girl,English country houses,An autumn afternoon in the Bois,Something I have read of…In sleep one vision retreating through another,Like mirrors being doors to other mirrors,Satin, and lace, and white shoulders,And elegant ladies,Dancing, dancing.
Death,Being a woman,Being passive like all final things,Being a mother,Waits.
Shining facesGray and melt into her flesh.Death envies those asleep in her,Little children who have come back,Fiery faces,Bright for a moment in the darkness,Extinguished softly in her womb.
Old lady talks,Spins from her lipsWarp and woofOf teapots, tables, napery,Sanitary toilets,Old bedsteads, pictures on walls,And fine lace,Spins a cocoon of this secondary life.
Warm and snug is old lady's belly.Old lady makes Venus AphroditeParvenue.Old ladyArranges places for courtesansIn warm outbuildings on back streets.
Nigger with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips;Nigger with loose red tongue;Flat browed nigger,Your skull peaked at the zenith,The stretched glistening skinCovered with tight coiled springs of hair:I am up here cold.I am white man.You are still warm and sweetWith the darkness you were born in.
He has a squat body,Glowering brows,And bulging eyes.Lustful contemplation of the meat pieIs written all over his sweating face.
The thin woman with the meek voice,Who has carried him so long in her bodyAnd despairs of giving him birth,Watches over him in secretWith bitter and resentful tenderness.
You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton battingAnd smell candle wax and church incense.When she dies she must be burned.Laid in the ground she would only soak up moistureAnd get soggy,As now she has a way of soaking up tearsNever meant for her.
She ran across the lawn after the catAnd I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow,A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover.There was clashing of cymbals,And the flash of nereids' arms in autumn leaves.A sharp high note died out like an ascending light.Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid's lips—Something of Pierrot chasing after love,A bacchante dying in her sleep,A shadow,And a gray cat.
He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks,His eyes brown stones,Worn smooth and soft,But uncrumbled.He reaches forth covert child-clawsTo tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fishAs they swim secretly above him.He laughs—The school splinters, panic stricken.
As we stare through the lucid gold waterHe gazes up at us from his shadowy retreatIn combative safety.There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a god,Water god, land god, god-in-the-sky.We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie.We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of hisimagination.
I am thinking of a little house,A pretty gray silk dress,And a little maid with a tidy white apron.
I am thinking of thin yellow angelsFlying out of Sevres china tea cups,And a cool spirit with slanting green eyes,Who peers at me through the screen of plantsI have placed in the corner between the hearth and the window.I am thinking of the peace in one's own little homeWhen the afternoon sunshine drips on the shiny floor,And the rugs are in order,And the roses in the bowl plunge into shadowLike pink nymphs into a pool,While there is no sound to be heard above the humof the teakettleSave the benevolent buzzing of flies in the clean sash curtain.
(For L. R.)
To rush over dark waters,A swift bird with cruel talons;To seize life—Your life for her—To hold it,Hold it struggling—To kiss it.
Crystal self-containment,Giving out only what is sent.Startled,The circumference retreatsAs it mounts higher, flamelike,Still and clear without radiance,Ascending without self-explanation.
A skeleton falls apartWith the dignity of comprehensible pathos,The bones bleached by denial.
With the impalpable lightness of May breezesBegins a battle of flower petals:Cowering in the primrose whirlwind his lips have blown,The little grotesque with the shattered heart,Fearful,Yet sinister in his fearfulness.
The man body jumbled out of the earth, half formed,Clay on the feet,Heavy with the lingering might of chaos.The man face so high above the feetAs if lonesome for them like a child.The veins that beat heavily with the music they but halfunderstoodCoil languidly around the heartAnd lave it in the death streamOf a grand impersonal benignance.
The child—Warm chubby thighs,Fat brown arms,An unsurprised face—Cries for jam.The mother buys him with jam.
An old woman,Tottering on lean leather skinned legs,Sucks with glazing eyesThe crystal silken milkThat flows from the death woundIn a young flower-soft, jewel-soft body.
White flower,Your petals float awayBut I hardly hear them.
The day is so long and white,A road all dust,Smooth monotony;And the night at the end,A hill to be climbed,Slowly, laboriously,While the stars prick our handsLike thistles.
A flock of parrakeetsHurled itself through the mist;Harsh wild greenAnd clamor-tonguedThrough the dim white forest.They vanished,And the lips of SilenceSucked at the roots of Life.
The old man on the muleOpens the worn saddle bags,And takes out the papers.
From the outer worldThe thoughts come stabbing,To taunt, baffle, and stir me to revolt.I beat against the sky,Against the winds of the mountain,But my cries, grown thin in all this space,Are diluted with emptiness…Like the air,Thin and wide,Touching everything,Touching nothing.
What was it that came out of the night?What was it that went away in the night?The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner,Eyes already glazing.How should she know what came out of the night,Or what was taken away in the night?A shadow passed across the moon.The wind rustled in the mango trees.And now, in the morning,The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner,Eyes already glazing;Because a shadow passed across the moon,And the wind rustled in the mango trees.
The turkeys,Like hoop-skirted old ladiesOut walking,Display their solemn propriety.
A terrible force,Hungry and destructive,Emanates from their mistily blinking eyes.
Little tail quivering,Wrinkled snout thrusting up the mud:He will find GodIf he keeps on like that.
The silly ewe comes smelling up to me.Her tail wriggles without hinges,Both ends of it at once and equal.Yesterday the parrot bit her;Last week the jaguar ate her young one;But experience teaches her nothing.
The chickens are at home in the barnyard,The pigs in the swill,And the flowers in the garden;But where do you belong,With your lacquered coils,O snake?
Days and days float by.On the sides of the mountainsBlue shadows shiftAnd sift into silence.Morning…The cock crows.There is that rosy glow on the mountain's edge;Jose in the door of his hut;Maria's lace bobbinsTapping, tapping.Evening…The parrot's shrill cry;Pale silver green stars.Night…The ghosts of dead JosesAnd dead MariasSitting in the moonlight.Peace—Depressing,InterminablePeace.
A herder set fire to the grassOn the other side of the valley,And now a beautiful Indian womanBends, whirls, undulates,Tosses her gold braceleted arms into the air—Then sinks into her gray veil.
Fire, dying in smoke,You stir behind the hazeLike a warriorWho threatens in his sleep.
The mountains are as dull and soddenAs drunkards' faces,And the white forgetfulness of rainIs like a delirium.Along the filthy crooked streets of the little town,Street lamps float in pools of mist—The eyes of children being beaten.
Like inexorable peace,The mists march through the mountains.One by one the grim peaks sink into the cold armsof the unspoken.The little town with the pink and white housesLooses its hold on the ridge of hillsAnd floats among cloud tops.A shaggy donkey, cropping grass in the sequestered church yard,Walks, with a leisurely air,Into a wind driven abyss.
The afternoon is frozen with memories,Radiant as ice.The sun sets amidst the agued trembling of the leaves,Sinking right down through the gold airInto the arms of the sea.The enameled wings of the palm treesKeep shivering, shivering,Beating the gold air thin….
It is cold in the circle of mountains,A fireless hearth.The stars drift by like autumn leaves.Only the rustle—Then, close together,Our talk,For and counter,One grating against the other,Rubs a little fireAnd we warm each otherThere in the midst of the hollow clammy circle.
I saw his young Anglo-Saxon formIn its white sailor clothesCleave through the scampering yellow Latin crowd,As white and clean as the blade of an archangel;And, as he reeled along, gloriously drunk,Those little black and gold dung beetlesSeemed to be pushing and racing over his body.
White roses climb the wall of night.A pale face looks from a window in the sky.O Moon, is it because you have seen her that you are beautiful?Is she happy among the saints?I placed white flowers in the coffin.Are they the blossoms that lie scattered along the horizon,Tangled in your light?Dim stars drop into the sea.So you give my flowers back to me, do you, Bella Dona?I might gather the petals and carry them to Antonietta to trimher hats.So much for life with a little negro millinerIn the Rua Chile!
Eleven thousand white-faced virgins in the sky.The eyes of Our LadySmiling through a rift of cloud.
I see Sister Maria da Gloria's fat shadowPass across the whitewashed wall by the window….
Eleven thousand white-faced virgins—Stars from a broken rosary—The Southern Cross—Thrum, thrum, my fingers on the bench.I sometimes think of GodAs an enormous emptinessInto which we must all enter at last,Our Lady forgive me.
"An orange tree without fruit,So am I without loves,"His heavy lidded eyes sang up to her.Her glance dropped on her golden globe of breast,And on the baby.
Foreign sailors in the streetsAre as sad a sight as wild geese in the winter—
There was one boy with those strange young blue eyesWho looked at me;And a long, long time after he had passedThe light of his soul got to me—So long on the way—Like the light of a dead star.
What makes you look so lonesome, Blue Eyes?
Pierrot sings.The moon, a clown like himself,Stares down upon himWith vacuous tenderness.For a moment the night is filled with rice powderAnd spangled gauze.Then two shades embracing each otherFind in their armsOnly the darkness.
The pains in my palms are threads of sightless fireDrawn like fiery veins through blackened marble walls,Crashing with a dull roarTo the ends of the earth.
Winey peace….My sick blood purrs.Milky bosoms float through red hair,Gaunt faces and sick eyesBeside her face.I debauch them with my forgiveness.Only her, I cannot forgive.
Moonlight trembles as the silk of her garment,Perfumed silk.The cross makes a long harsh shadowRigid on the sand.Her white feet stir across the shadow.
You in the quiet garden,You with the death sweet smile,Before you speak of love to meGo out and hate awhile.
The kind devilHas a tolerant grin.He flings the golden gates out wideAnd lets poor people in.He warms them in his bosomAnd guards their pain.He shows them hell fields that are brightAnd skies gentle with rain.
But up in paradiseThe stern Lord is wise,And Michael with his flaming swordPuts out the angels' eyes.
Pierrette is dead!Between her narrow little breastsThey have laid a cross of lead.Her tight pale lips are sunken.Her fleshless fingers clutch the pall.Why did she have to die like that,And she so small?
White breast beaten in sea waves,Hair tangled in foam,Lonely sky,Desolate horizon,Pale and shining clouds:All this desolate and shining sea is no place for you,My dead Columbine.
And the waves will bite your breast;And the wind, that does not know death from life,Will leap upon you and leer into your eyesAnd suck at your dead lips.
Oh, my little Columbine,You go farther and farther away from me,Out where there are no shipsAnd the solemn cloudsSoar across the somber horizon.
You are old, Pierrot,But I do not laughAs in harlequinadeYou totter down the path.Now you are old, Pierrot,And drool to your guitar,I do not cast you off.Though your love songs are as feeble as a winter fly'sI do not scoff.ExultantI cast back on youWhat you gave me,And bind you with the unasked loveThat has kept me from being free!
Once I had a little brother,An ugly little brother that was I.I was still in the nurseryWhen they nailed him to a clean white cross,And said he was dead.He flapped there all day,Thin and stiff as a jumping jack.
But when I had gone to bed,And the lights were out,And the muslin curtains rustled in white secrecy,And through the thin brown glass like onion skinI could see the bright moon sag to the tree topsWith a heaviness I dimly understood,While the haggard branches gauntly strained,As useless to the moon as she to them,I was rocked in an orange and umber cradle,A rosy bubble light with fireshineFloating atop the cold,And my little brother was burning merrily,His twisted figureA writhing grotesque.
Yet his face never movedAnd never burnt up.And when I had drifted asleepI still saw itLike a reflection trapped in a mirror.And I couldn't brush it out!I couldn't brush it out!
There are little blood flecks on the snow.There is blood in the heart of the white hyacinth.I saw her pale body harsh as a flash of lightningBetween the gray torsos of the trees.She had a little child.She held a little child in her breast.She went quickly through the dim forest.I have seen her feet.They are as white as ivory.Where she ran there are little red tracks.And it is not yet springtime!
Dresden china shepherdessesWhirl in the silver sunshine:Columbine starsFloat in gauze petticoats of light….Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old,Smelling of jasmine and camphor:Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts….
The pirouetting tune dies….Stars and little faded faces,Waltzing, waltzing,Shoot slowly downwardOn tinkling music,Dusty little flowersSinking into oblivion.
After the music,Quiet,The glacial period renewed,Monsters on earth,A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights—
These too vanishing—Silence unending.
Death is a child of stone.Death is a little white stone goat.The little goat child dances motionless.Little kid feet make a circle around the world:Bas-relief of Death,Little stone goats capering across the clouds.
Perhaps Death is nearest in the spring.Then Her flower clouds the woods with white blossoms,Apple blossoms, quince blossoms,Pear snow.These are the flowers that drift in the hair of the dead.The sun shines on stone eyelidsThat melt with light.This smile is a pale happiness;It glows motionlessOn the rocky hillside and the long stems of trees.There are no shadows in this happy light:The glow beat by little goat hoofsChiseled across the clouds in motionless delight,While suns fade behind crumbling hillsidesAnd hungry illusions vanishIn generation after generation.
The moon is as complacent as a frog.She sits in the sky like a blind white stone,And does not even see LoveAs she caresses his face with her contemptuous light.She reaches her long white shivering fingersInto the bowels of men.Her tender superfluous probing into all that pollutesIs like the immodesty of the mad.She is a mad woman holding up her dressSo that her white belly shines.Haughty,Impregnable,Ridiculous,Silent and white as a debauched queen,Her ecstasy is that of a cold and sensual child.
She is Death enjoying Life,Innocently,Lasciviously.
A wax bubble moon trembles on the honey-blue horizon.Softly heated by your breastPearl wax languorously unfolds her lily lips of mist,Swells about you,Weaves you into herself through each moist pore,Absorbs you deliciously,Destroys you.
A dirty little beetlePeers into motionless eyesTransfixed to their depthsAs by shining needles.Limbs are taut in ultimate resentment.A bare sky confronts an upturned face.Like a wheel vanishing in speedThe corpse, containing everything,Has swallowed itself.