HAVE I broken the smaller tabernacles, O Lord?
And in the destruction of these set up the greater and massive, the everlasting tabernacles?
I know nothing today, what I have done and why, O Lord, only I have broken and broken tabernacles.
They were beautiful in a way, these tabernacles torn down by strong hands swearing-
They were beautiful-why did the hypocrites carve their own names on the corner-stones? why did the hypocrites keep on singing their own names in their long noses every Sunday in these tabernacles?
Who lays any blame here among the split cornerstones?

THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Linc-
oln Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
by in long processions going somewhere to keep ap-
pointment for dinner and matinees and buying and
selling
Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are
piling
On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near
by
And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs
and guns of the storm.
I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow
is falling.
Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow,
his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the new-
sies crying forty thousand men are dead along the
Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar
of the city at his bronze feet.
A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with
long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they
hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their
pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight
and into the dawn.

1THERE was a late autumn cricket,
And two smoldering mountain sunsets
Under the valley roads of her eyes.
  
There was a late autumn cricket,
A hangover of summer song,
Scraping a tune
Of the late night clocks of summer,
In the late winter night fireglow,
This in a circle of black velvet at her neck.
  
2In ***** eyes a flash, a thin rim of white light, a beach bonfire ten miles across dunes, a speck of a fool star in night's half circle of velvet.
  
In the corner of the left arm a dimple, a mole, a forget-me-not, and it fluttered a hummingbird wing, a blur in the honey-red clover, in the honey-white buckwheat.

BOY heart of Johnny Jones-aching to-day?
Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town?
Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians?

Some of us know
All about it, Johnny Jones.

Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes,
  A slanting look under a hat on a horse.
He sits on a horse and a passing look is fixed
  On Johnny Jones, you and me, barelegged,
A slanting, passing, careless look under a hat on a horse.

Go clickety-clack, O pony hoofs along the street.
Come on and slant your eyes again, O Buffalo Bill.
Give us again the ache of our boy hearts.
Fill us again with the red love of prairies, dark nights, lonely wagons, and the crack-crack of rifles sputtering flashes into an ambush.

THE BUFFALOES are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.

I have been watching the war map slammed up for
     advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black buttons--
     are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
     inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
     a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
     death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
     inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
     office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
     to us?

IT'S going to come out all right-do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass-they know.
They get along-and we'll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won't come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won't come.

There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents are coming.
Smash-ups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten,
Red and yellow ac-ci-dents.
But somehow and somewhere the end of the run
The train gets put together again
And the caboose and the green tail lights
Fade down the right of way like a new white hope.

I never heard a mockingbird in Kentucky
Spilling its heart in the morning.

I never saw the snow on Chimborazo.
It's a high white Mexican hat, I hear.

I never had supper with Abe Lincoln.
Nor a dish of soup with Jim Hill.

But I've been around.
I know some of the boys here who can go a little.
I know girls good for a burst of speed any time.

I heard Williams and Walker
Before Walker died in the bughouse.

I knew a mandolin player
Working in a barber shop in an Indiana town,
And he thought he had a million dollars.

I knew a hotel girl in Des Moines.
She had eyes; I saw her and said to myself
The sun rises and the sun sets in her eyes.
I was her steady and her heart went pit-a-pat.
We took away the money for a prize waltz at a Brotherhood dance.
She had eyes; she was safe as the bridge over the Mississippi at Burlington; I married her.

Last summer we took the cushions going west.
Pike's Peak is a big old stone, believe me.
It's fastened down; something you can count on.

It's going to come out all right-do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass-they know.
They get along-and we'll get along.

THE KNEES
  of this proud woman
are bone.
  
The elbows
  of this proud woman
are bone.
  
The summer-white stars
  and the winter-white stars
never stop circling
  around this proud woman.
  
The bones
  of this proud woman
answer the vibrations
  of the stars.
  
  In summer
the stars speak deep thoughts
  In the winter
the stars repeat summer speeches.
  
The knees
  of this proud woman
know these thoughts
  and know these speeches
of the summer and winter stars.

PLAY it across the table.
What if we steal this city blind?
If they want any thing let 'em nail it down.
  
Harness bulls, *****, front office men,
And the high goats up on the bench,
Ain't they all in cahoots?
Ain't it fifty-fifty all down the line,
Petemen, dips, boosters, stick-ups and guns-what's to hinder?
  
  Go fifty-fifty.
If they nail you call in a mouthpiece.
Fix it, you gazump, you slant-head, fix it.
  Feed 'em ...
  
Nothin' ever sticks to my fingers, nah, nah, nothin' like that,
But there ain't no law we got to wear mittens-huh-is there?
Mittens, that's a good one-mittens!
There oughta be a law everybody wear mittens.

BECAUSE I have called to you
as the flame flamingo calls,
or the want of a spotted hawk
is called-
  because in the dusk
the warblers shoot the running
waters of short songs to the
homecoming warblers-
  because
the cry here is wing to wing
and song to song-
  
  I am waiting,
waiting with the flame flamingo,
the spotted hawk, the running water
warbler-
  waiting for you.

COUNT these reminiscences like money.
The Greeks had their picnics under another name.
The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors, "What of it?"
The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too
Stuck their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to their noses
And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh eggs broken over a frying pan left by an uncle who killed men with spears and short swords.
Count these reminiscences like money.
  
  Drift, and drift on, white ships.
Sailing the free sky blue, sailing and changing and sailing,
Oh, I remember in the blood of my dreams how they sang before me.
Oh, they were men and women who got money for their work, money or love or dreams.
    Sail on, white ships.
    Let me have spring dreams.
Let me count reminiscences like money; let me count picnics, glad rags and the great bad manners of the Carlovingians breaking fresh eggs in the copper pans of their proud uncles.

I AM making a Cartoon of a Woman. She is the People.
    She is the Great ***** Mother.
And Many Children hang on her Apron, crawl at her
    Feet, snuggle at her *******.

There's Chamfort. He's a sample.
Locked himself in his library with a gun,
Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye.
And this Chamfort knew how to write
And thousands read his books on how to live,
But he himself didn't know
How to die by force of his own hand--see?
They found him a red pool on the carpet
Cool as an April forenoon,
Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams.
Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye,
Drank coffee and chatted many years
With men and women who loved him
Because he laughed and daily dared Death:
"Come and take me."

THE SEA at its worst drives a white foam up,
The same sea sometimes so easy and rocking with green mirrors.
So you were there when the white foam was up
And the salt spatter and the rack and the dulse-
You were done ******* these, and high, higher and higher
Your feet went and it was your voice went, "Hai, hai, hai,"
Up where the rocks let nothing live and the grass was gone,
Not even a hank nor a wisp of sea moss hoping.
Here your feet and your same singing, "Hai, hai, hai."
  
Was there anything else to answer than, "Hai, hai, hai,"?
Did I go up those same crags yesterday and the day before
Scruffing my shoe leather and scraping the tough gnomic stuff
Of stones woven on a cold criss-cross so long ago?
Have I not sat there ... watching the white foam up,
The hoarse white lines coming to curve, foam, slip back?
Didn't I learn then how the call comes, "Hai, hai, hai"?

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman **** and go free to
**** again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

I SALUTED a nobody.
I saw him in a looking-glass.
He smiled-so did I.
He crumpled the skin on his forehead,
  frowning-so did I.
Everything I did he did.
I said, "Hello, I know you."
And I was a liar to say so.

Ah, this looking-glass man!
Liar, fool, dreamer, play-actor,
Soldier, dusty drinker of dust-
Ah! he will go with me
Down the dark stairway
When nobody else is looking,
When everybody else is gone.

He locks his elbow in mine,
I lose all-but not him.

THE CHICK in the egg picks at the shell, cracks open one oval world, and enters another oval world.

"Cheep ... cheep ... cheep" is the salutation of the newcomer, the emigrant, the casual at the gates of the new world.

"Cheep ... cheep" ... from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.

It is at the door of this house, this teeny weeny eggshell exit, it is here men say a riddle and jeer each other: who are you? where do you go from here?

(In the academies many books, at the circus many sacks of peanuts, at the club rooms many cigar butts.)

"Cheep ... cheep" ... from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.

The young child, Christ, is straight and wise
And asks questions of the old men, questions
Found under running water for all children
And found under shadows thrown on still waters
By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled.
Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,
Singing a low song in the loneliness.
And the young child, Christ, goes on asking
And the old men answer nothing and only know love
For the young child. Christ, straight and wise.

THE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers.
All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child's room.
Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, ***** in shoulder-straps.
The 6 and 9 salute as dancing sisters, elder and younger, and 2 is a trapeze actor swinging to handclaps.
All the numbers are well-born, only 3 has a **** on its back and 8 is knock-kneed.
The child Margaret kisses all once and gives two kisses to 3 and 8.
(Each number is a bran-new rag doll ... O in the wishing fingers ... millions of rag dolls, millions and millions of new rag dolls!!)

The child's wonder
At the old moon
Comes back nightly.
She points her finger
To the far silent yellow thing
Shining through the branches
Filtering on the leaves a golden sand,
Crying with her little tongue, "See the moon!"
And in her bed fading to sleep
With babblings of the moon on her little mouth.

The **** shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
     A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
     Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
     Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
     Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The **** shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.

They offer you many things,
     I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk
And a cross-play of loves and adulteries
And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets:
All this they offer you.
I come with:
     salt and bread
     a terrible job of work
     and tireless war;
Come and have now:
     hunger.
     danger
     and hate.

THE single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

IN the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea and adumbrants of rock in her eyes ... horseback in leather boots and leather gauntlets by the sea.
  
In the evening, a Sunday evening, a rope of pearls on her white shoulders ... and a speaking, brooding black velvet, relapsing to the voiceless ... battering Russian marches on a piano ... drive of blizzards across Nebraska.
  
Yes, riding horseback on hills by the sea ... sitting at the ivory keys in black velvet, a rope of pearls on white shoulders.

I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips
And she formed his name on her tongue and sang
And she sent him word she loved him so much,
So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home,
All was nothing if her love for him was not first
Of all; the patter of her lips ran, I love him,
I love him; and he knew the doors that opened
Into doors and more doors, no end of doors,
And full length mirrors doubling and tripling
The apparitions of doors: circling corridors of
Looking glasses and doors, some with knobs, some
With no knobs, some opening slow to a heavy push,
And some jumping open at a touch and a hello.
And he knew if he so wished he could follow her
Swift running through circles of doors, hearing
Sometimes her whisper, I love him, I love him,
And sometimes only a high chaser of laughter
Somewhere five or ten doors ahead or five or ten
Doors behind, or chittering h-st, h-st, among corners
Of the tall full-length dusty looking glasses.
I love, I love, I love, she sang short and quick in
High thin beaten soprano and he knew the meanings,
The high chaser of laughter, the doors on doors
And the looking glasses, the room to room hunt,
The ends opening into new ends always.

Dust of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now...
...Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,
No more dust and wagons.

     Voices of dollars
     And drops of blood
     . . . . .
     Voices of broken hearts,
     ...Voices singing, singing,
     ...Silver voices, singing,
     Softer than the stars,
     Softer than the mist.

NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
  
The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet.
  
One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons.
  
The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust-there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire-dust of police and fire wagons-dust of the winds that circled at midnights and noon listening to no prayers.
  
"O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing the rim of a nun's bonnet-O white curtains-and people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the faded ramshackle at Congress and Green.
  
Dust and the thundering trucks won-the barrages of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way-was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows?

IT is something to face the sun and know you are free.
To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth
And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:
  It is something.
To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands,
Clean for the day book today and the record of the after days,
Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready,
So to have clean hands:
    God, it is something,
    One day of life so
  And a memory fastened till the stars sputter out
  And a love washed as white linen in the noon drying.
Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth.
O yes, clean hands is the chant and only one man knows its sob and its undersong and he dies clenching the secret more to him than any woman or chum.
And O the great brave men, the silent little brave men, proud of their hands-clutching the knuckles of their fingers into fists ready for death and the dark, ready for life and the fight, the pay and the memories-O the men proud of their hands.

I WANDER down on Clinton street south of Polk
And listen to the voices of Italian children quarreling.
It is a cataract of coloratura
And I could sleep to their musical threats and accusations.

HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a ****** or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching ***** eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail.
And of course ... there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France...

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs,
  he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...
  in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street,
  cash and collateral turned ashes...
  in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw
  in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember?...
  in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries,
  cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns...
  tell me if the lovers are losers...
  tell me if any get more than the lovers...
  in the dust...
  in the cool tombs.

WRITE your wishes
  on the door
  and come in.
  
Stand outside
  in the pools of the harvest moon.
  
Bring in
  the handshake of the pumpkins.
  
There's a wish
  for every hazel nut?
There's a hope
  for every corn shock?
There's a kiss
  for every clumsy climbing shadow?
  
Clover and the bumblebees once,
high winds and November rain now.
  
Buy shoes
  for rough weather in November.
Buy shirts
  to sleep outdoors when May comes.
  
  Buy me
something useless to remember you by.
  Send me
a sumach leaf from an Illinois hill.
  
  In the faces marching in the firelog flickers,
In the fire music of wood singing to winter,
Make my face march through the purple and ashes.
Make me one of the fire singers to winter.

SOMEBODY'S little girl-how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.
Somebody's little girl-she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.
  
It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse's Head.
And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went into the house and her mother washed her face and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel voice, "I don't want to."
  
Somebody's little girl-forty little girls of somebodies splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches, pyramids-forty little show girls, ponies, squabs.
How easy a sob story over who she once was and who she is now-and how the crabapple blossoms fell on her dark hair in June.
  
Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter-and the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show is over and the street goes dark.
Let the girls wash off the paint and go for their midnight sandwiches-let 'em dream in the morning sun, late in the morning, long after the morning papers and the milk wagons-
Let 'em dream long as they want to ... of June somewhere on the Erie line ... and crabapple blossoms.

SOMEBODY loses whenever somebody wins.
This was known to the Chaldeans long ago.
And more: somebody wins whenever somebody loses.
This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.
  
They take it heaven's hereafter is an eternity of crap games where they try their wrists years and years and no police come with a wagon; the game goes on forever.
The spots on the dice are the music signs of the songs of heaven here.
God is Luck: Luck is God: we are all bones the High Thrower rolled: some are two spots, some double sixes.
  
The myths are Phoebe, Little Joe, Big ****.
Hope runs high with a: Huh, seven-huh, come seven
This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.

Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold,
Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire.
(A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his
     coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows
     and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)

DID I see a crucifix in your eyes
and nails and Roman soldiers
and a dusk Golgotha?
  
Did I see Mary, the changed woman,
washing the feet of all men,
clean as new grass
when the old grass burns?
  
Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths,
with a flutter of wings that meant:
we can never come again.
  
Did I see No Man's Land in your eyes
and men with lost faces, lost loves,
and you among the stubs crying?
  
Did I see you in the red death jazz of war
losing moths among lost faces,
speaking to the stubs who asked you
to speak of songs and God and dancing,
of bananas, northern lights or Jesus,
any hummingbird of thought whatever
flying away from the red death jazz of war?
  
Did I see your hand make a useless gesture
trying to say with a code of five fingers
something the tongue only stutters?
did I see a dusk Golgotha?

NOW that a crimson rambler
    begins to crawl over the house
    of our two lives-

Now that a red curve
    winds across the shingles-

Now that hands
    washed in early sunrises
    climb and spill scarlet
    on a white lattice weave-

Now that a loop of blood
    is written on our roof
    and reaching around a chimney-

How are the two lives of this house
    to keep strong hands and strong hearts?

Once when I saw a *******
Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,
Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,
Desperately gesturing with wasted hands
In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum,
I said to myself
I would rather have been a tall sunflower
Living in a country garden
Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer,
Rain-washed and dew-misted,
Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks,
And wonderingly watching night after night
The clear silent processionals of stars.

Hot gold runs a winding stream on the inside of a green bowl.

Yellow trickles in a fan figure, scatters a line of skirmishes, spreads a chorus
of dancing girls, performs blazing ochre evolutions, gathers the whole show into
one stream, forgets the past and rolls on.

The sea-mist green of the bowl's bottom is a dark throat of sky crossed by
quarreling forks of umber and ochre and yellow changing faces.

Storms have beaten on this point of land
And ships gone to wreck here
          and the passers-by remember it
          with talk on the deck at night
          as they near it.

Fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter
And his battles have held the sporting pages
          and on the street they indicate him with their
          right fore-finger as one who once wore
          a championship belt.

A hundred stories have been published and a thousand rumored
About why this tall dark man has divorced two beautiful
     young women
And married a third who resembles the first two
               and they shake their heads and say, "There he
          goes,"
     when he passes by in sunny weather or in rain
     along the city streets.

THE HAGGARD woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white
flowers ... in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel.
  
The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones ... and
the woman who sold to many men and saw her ******* shrivel ... in two poems you
pour these like a cup of coffee, Francois.
  
The woman whose lips are a thread of scarlet, the woman whose feet take hold on
hell, the woman who turned to a memorial of salt looking at the lights of a
forgotten city ... in your affidavits, ancient Jews, you pour these like cups of
coffee.
  
The woman who took men as snakes take rabbits, a rag and a bone and a hank of
hair, she whose eyes called men to sea dreams and shark's teeth ... in a poem you
pour this like a cup of coffee, Kip.
  
Marching to the footlights in night robes with spots of blood, marching in white
sheets muffling the faces, marching with heads in the air they come back and
cough and cry and sneer:... in your poems, men, you pour these like cups of coffee.

FELIKSOWA has gone again from our house and this time for good, I hope.
She and her husband took with them the cow father gave them, and they sold it.
She went like a swine, because she called neither on me, her brother, nor on her father, before leaving for those forests.
That is where she ought to live, with bears, not with men.
She was something of an ape before and there, with her wild husband, she became altogether an ape.
No honest person would have done as they did.
Whose fault is it? And how much they have cursed me and their father!
May God not punish them for it. They think only about money; they let the church go if they can only live fat on their money.

EARLY May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind.
Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door, all sun and no wind,
Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull
Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep,
Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off against each other on his paws and head.

THE LADY in red, she in the chile con carne red,
Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,
She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade,
The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music,
  
        I sit in a corner
        watching her dance first with one man
        and then another.

DEATH is stronger than all the governments because
the governments are men and men die and then
death laughs: Now you see 'em, now you don't.

Death is stronger than all proud men and so death
snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of
dice and says: Read 'em and weep.

Death sends a radiogram every day: When I want
you I'll drop in--and then one day he comes with a
master-key and lets himself in and says: We'll
go now.

Death is a nurse mother with big arms: 'Twon't hurt
you at all; it's your time now; just need a
long sleep, child; what have you had anyhow
better than sleep?

Strolling along
By the teeming docks,
I watch the ships put out.
Black ships that heave and lunge
And move like mastodons
Arising from lethargic sleep.

The fathomed harbor
Calls them not nor dares
Them to a strain of action,
But outward, on and outward,
Sounding low-reverberating calls,
Shaggy in the half-lit distance,
They pass the pointed headland,
View the wide, far-lifting wilderness
And leap with cumulative speed
To test the challenge of the sea.

Plunging,
Doggedly onward plunging,
Into salt and mist and foam and sun.

AMONG the grassroots
In the moonlight, who comes circling,
  red tongues and high noses?
Is one of 'em Buck and one of 'em
  White Fang?
  
In the moonlight, who are they, cross-legged,
  telling their stories over and over?
Is one of 'em Martin Eden and one of 'em Larsen the Wolf?
  
Let an epitaph read:
  He loved the straight eyes of dogs and the strong heads of men.

THERE'S a hole in the bottom of the sea.
  Do you want affidavits?
There's a man in the moon with money for you.
  Do you want affidavits?
There are ten dancing girls in a sea-chamber off Nantucket waiting for you.
There are tall candles in Timbuctoo burning penance for you.
There are-anything else?
Speak now-for now we stand amid the great wishing windows-and the law says we are free to be wishing all this week at the windows.
Shall I raise my right hand and swear to you in the monotone of a notary public? this is "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.

                    Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.

Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day's close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day's loss
Wrote in tears the heart's loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.