Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
DAYS of the dead men, Danny.
Drum for the dead, drum on your
    remembering heart.

Jaures, a great love-heart of France,
    a slug of lead in the red valves.
Kitchener of Khartoum, tall, cold, proud,
    a shark's mouthful.
Franz Josef, the old man of forty haunted
    kingdoms, in a tomb with the Hapsburg
    fathers, moths eating a green uniform
    to tatters, worms taking all and leaving
    only bones and gold buttons, bones and
    iron crosses.
Jack London, Jim Riley, Verhaeren, riders to the republic of dreams.

Days of the dead, Danny.
Drum on your remembering heart.
What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white
     moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,
Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying
     scarves around their heads dancing,
Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the
     other of all the dead,
The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one
     piled here in the moon,
Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of
     the wind wanted,
What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men
     beat their heads on,
Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive
     on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for--
     what, Bill?
Here is dust remembers it was a rose
one time and lay in a woman's hair.
Here is dust remembers it was a woman
one time and in her hair lay a rose.
Oh things one time dust, what else now is it
you dream and remember of old days?
CHILD of the Aztec gods,
how long must we listen here,
how long before we go?
  
The dust is deep on the lintels.
The dust is dark on the doors.
If the dreams shake our bones,
  what can we say or do?
  
Since early morning we waited.
Since early, early morning, child.
There must be dreams on the way now.
There must be a song for our bones.
  
The dust gets deeper and darker.
Do the doors and lintels shudder?
  How long must we listen here?
  How long before we go?
I sat with a dynamiter at supper in a German saloon
     eating steak and onions.
And he laughed and told stories of his wife and children
     and the cause of labor and the working class.
It was laughter of an unshakable man knowing life to be
     a rich and red-blooded thing.
Yes, his laugh rang like the call of gray birds filled with
     a glory of joy ramming their winged flight through
     a rain storm.
His name was in many newspapers as an enemy of the
     nation and few keepers of churches or schools would
     open their doors to him.
Over the steak and onions not a word was said of his
     deep days and nights as a dynamiter.
Only I always remember him as a lover of life, a lover
     of children, a lover of all free, reckless laughter
     everywhere--lover of red hearts and red blood the
     world over.
THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west.
A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon.
One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers.
O foxes, baby moon, runners, you are the panel of memory, fire-white writing to-night of the Red Man's dreams.
Who squats, legs crossed and arms folded, matching its look against the moon-face, the star-faces, of the West?
Who are the Mississippi Valley ghosts, of copper foreheads, riding wiry ponies in the night?-no bridles, love-arms on the pony necks, riding in the night a long old trail?
Why do they always come back when the silver foxes sit around the early moon, a silver papoose, in the Indian west?
Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.

     Wilson said, "What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds
it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does
it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another
one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide
for? What use is it besides to look at?"

     Pilcer didn't have any questions; he was murmering to himself, "It's
a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields,
by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like
a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;
I know elephants are good to babies."

     Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, "He's a tough
son-of-a-gun outside and I'll bet he's got a strong heart, I'll bet he's
strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside."

     They didn't put up any arguments.
     They didn't throw anything in each other's faces.
     Three men saw the elephant three ways
     And let it go at that.
     They didn't spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;

"Sunday comes only once a week," they told each other.
THERE is something terrible
about a hurdy-gurdy,
a gipsy man and woman,
and a monkey in red flannel
all stopping in front of a big house
with a sign "For Rent" on the door
and the blinds hanging loose
and nobody home.
I never saw this.
I hope to God I never will.
  
  Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
  Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum.
Nobody home? Everybody home.
  Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
  
Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night: Eddie Jones died of whooping cough: George Hacks got a job on the police force: the Rosenheims bought a brass bed: Lena Hart giggled at a jackie: a pushcart man called tomaytoes, tomaytoes.
  Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.
  Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum.
    Nobody home? Everybody home.
WHAT was the name you called me?-
And why did you go so soon?
  
The crows lift their caw on the wind,
And the wind changed and was lonely.
  
The warblers cry their sleepy-songs
Across the valley gloaming,
Across the cattle-horns of early stars.
  
Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop
Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.
  
What was the name you called me?-
And why did you go so soon?
GOLD of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting the air going south?
Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?
WHAT can we say of the night?
The fog night, the moon night, the fog moon night last night?
  
There swept out of the sea a song.
There swept out of the sea-torn white plungers.
There came on the coast wind drive
In the spit of a driven spray,
On the boom of foam and rollers,
The cry of midnight to morning:
  Hoi-a-loa.
  Hoi-a-loa.
  Hoi-a-loa.
  
Who has loved the night more than I have?
Who has loved the fog moon night last night more than I have?
  
Out of the sea that song
  -can I ever forget it?
Out of the sea those plungers
  -can I remember anything else?
Out of the midnight morning cry: Hoi-a-loa:
  -how can I hunt any other songs now?
I drank musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with
     the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter
     one night
And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker,
     he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had
     a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere.
Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertising
     Association on the trade resources of South America.
And the way he lighted a three-for-a-nickel stogie and
     cocked it at an angle regardless of the manners of
     our best people,
I knew he had a clutch on a real happiness even though
     some of the reporters on his newspaper say he is
     the living double of Jack London's Sea Wolf.
In the mayor's office the mayor himself told me he was
     happy though it is a hard job to satisfy all the office-
     seekers and eat all the dinners he is asked to eat.
Down in Gilpin Place, near Hull House, was a man with
     his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache,
And he had it all over the butter millionaire, Jim Kirch
     and the mayor when it came to happiness.
He is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only
     makes them from start to finish, but plays them
     after he makes them.
And he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut bottom
     he offered for seven dollars and a half if I wanted it,
And another just like it, only smaller, for six dollars,
     though he never mentioned the price till I asked him,
And he stated the price in a sorry way, as though the
     music and the make of an instrument count for a
     million times more than the price in money.
I thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about God.
There was light in his eyes of one who has conquered
     sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or worth
     conquering.
Anyway he is the only Chicago citizen I was jealous of
     that day.
He played a dance they play in some parts of Italy
     when the harvest of grapes is over and the wine
     presses are ready for work.
Red drips from my chin where I have been eating.
Not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth.

Clots of red mess my hair
And the tiger, the buffalo, know how.

I was a killer.
          Yes, I am a killer.

I come from killing.
          I go to more.
I drive red joy ahead of me from killing.
Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices
     of my inside bones:
The child cries for a **** mother and I cry for war.
I HAVE kept all, not one is thrown away, not one given to the ragman, not one ****** in a corner with a "P-f-f."
The red ones and the blue, the long ones in stripes, and each of the little black and white checkered ones.
Keep them: I tell my heart: keep them another year, another ten years: they will be wanted again.
They came once, they came easy, they came like a first white flurry of snow in late October,
Like any sudden, presumptuous, beautiful thing, and they were cheap at the price, cheap like snow.
Here a red one and there a long one in yellow stripes,
O there shall be no ragman have these yet a year, yet ten years.
DEATH comes once, let it be easy.
Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that.
Or ring no bell at all, better yet.
  
Sing one song if I die.
Sing John Brown's Body or Shout All Over God's Heaven.
Or sing nothing at all, better yet.
  
Death comes once, let it be easy.
I REMEMBER here by the fire,
In the flickering reds and saffrons,
They came in a ramshackle tub,
Pilgrims in tall hats,
Pilgrims of iron jaws,
Drifting by weeks on beaten seas,
And the random chapters say
They were glad and sang to God.

And so
Since the iron-jawed men sat down
And said, "Thanks, O God,"
For life and soup and a little less
Than a hobo handout to-day,
Since gray winds blew gray patterns of sleet on Plymouth Rock,
Since the iron-jawed men sang "Thanks, O God,"
You and I, O Child of the West,
Remember more than ever
November and the hunter's moon,
November and the yellow-spotted hills.

And so
In the name of the iron-jawed men
I will stand up and say yes till the finish is come and gone.
God of all broken hearts, empty hands, sleeping soldiers,
God of all star-flung beaches of night sky,
I and my love-child stand up together to-day and sing: "Thanks, O God."
Nancy Hanks dreams by the fire;
Dreams, and the logs sputter,
And the yellow tongues climb.
Red lines lick their way in flickers.
Oh, sputter, logs.
      Oh, dream, Nancy.
Time now for a beautiful child.
Time now for a tall man to come.
I WILL read ashes for you, if you ask me.
I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes
And out of the red and black tongues and stripes,
I will tell how fire comes
And how fire runs far as the sea.
I Know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a
voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble
in January.
He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing
a joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing.
His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish,
terribly glad that God made fish, and customers to
whom he may call his wares, from a pushcart.
PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string.
They flutter and dance pulling Pietro's arm.
A nickel apiece is what they sell for.
  
Wishing children tag Pietro's heels.
  
He sells out and goes the streets alone.
BY day ... tireless smokestacks ... hungry smoky shanties hanging to the slopes ... crooning: We get by, that's all.
By night ... all lit up ... fire-gold bars, fire-gold flues ... and the shanties shaking in clumsy shadows ... almost the hills shaking ... all crooning: By God, we're going to find out or know why.
FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.

"Where is Flanders?" was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.

"Where is Flanders?" was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.

A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it:
This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,
The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
And the raw-***** plowmen took horses with long shanks
Out in the dawn to the sea-breath.

Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,
Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west,
Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,
So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl
Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window.
I SHALL cry God to give me a broken foot.
  
I shall ask for a scar and a slashed nose.
  
I shall take the last and the worst.
  
I shall be eaten by gray creepers in a bunkhouse where no runners of the sun come and no dogs live.
  
And yet-of all "and yets" this is the bronze strongest-
  
I shall keep one thing better than all else; there is the blue steel of a great star of early evening in it; it lives longer than a broken foot or any scar.
  
The broken foot goes to a hole dug with a shovel or the bone of a nose may whiten on a hilltop-and yet-"and yet"-
  
There is one crimson pinch of ashes left after all; and none of the shifting winds that whip the grass and none of the pounding rains that beat the dust, know how to touch or find the flash of this crimson.
  
I cry God to give me a broken foot, a scar, or a lousy death.
  
I who have seen the flash of this crimson, I ask God for the last and worst.
FLAT lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions,
The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat lands-blood and fire of sunsets thousands of years have been pouring over you.
And the stars follow the sunsets. One gold star. A shower of blue stars. Blurs of white and gray stars. Vast marching processions of stars arching over you flat lands where frogs sob this April night.
"Lots for Sale-Easy Terms" run letters painted on a board-and the stars wheel onward, the frogs sob this April night.
Sand of the sea runs red
Where the sunset reaches and quivers.
Sand of the sea runs yellow
Where the moon slants and wavers.
I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself ... and so I know you.
  
I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel.
  
I leaned so ... and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now ... and then under the water and out again ... a fish ... a bird ... a fin thing ... a wing thing.
  
Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing ... I have lived in many half worlds myself ... and so I know you.
Fog
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over the harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman's steel face ... looking ... looking.
Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail ... and a woman's steel face ... looking ... looking.
Cliffs challenge ******; sudden arcs form on a gull's wing in the storm's vortex; miles of white horses plow through a stony beach; stars, clear sky, and everywhere free climbers calling; and a woman's steel face ... looking ... looking ...
Shaken,
The blossoms of lilac,
     And shattered,
The atoms of purple.
Green dip the leaves,
     Darker the bark,
Longer the shadows.

Sheer lines of poplar
Shimmer with masses of silver
And down in a garden old with years
And broken walls of ruin and story,
Roses rise with red rain-memories.
          May!
     In the open world
The sun comes and finds your face,
     Remembering all.
THE PEACE of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
Wait for the great hinges.
  
The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.
  
The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.
  
The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music
  
The peace of great seas be for you.
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.
  
The peace of great mountains be for you,
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.
  
The peace of great hearts be for you,
Valves of the blood of the sun,
Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.
  
The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, "Let us out, let us out."
  
The peace of great changes be for you.
Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, Oh cubs-to-morrow belongs to you.
  
The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.
  
The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.
  
Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.
"The past is a bucket of ashes."

            1

THE WOMAN named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.
  
            2

The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
  We are the greatest city,
  the greatest nation:
  nothing like us ever was.
  
The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
  where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
  We are the greatest city,
  the greatest nation,
  nothing like us ever was.
  
            3

It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
  a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
  to warble: We are the greatest city,
    the greatest nation,
    nothing like us ever was.
  
And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
  there were rats and lizards who listened
  ... and the only listeners left now
  ... are ... the rats ... and the lizards.
  
And there are black crows
crying, "Caw, caw,"
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
  We are the greatest city,
  the greatest nation:
  nothing like us ever was.
  
The only singers now are crows crying, "Caw, caw,"
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are ... the rats ... and the lizards.
  
            4

The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.
  
And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.
A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.
GALOOTS, you hairy, hankering,
Snousle on the bones you eat, chew at the gristle and lick the last of it.
Grab off the bones in the paws of other galoots-hook your claws in their ****** mouths-snap and run.
If long-necks sit on their rumps and sing wild cries to the winter moon, chasing their tails to the flickers of foolish stars ... let 'em howl.
Galoots fat with too much, galoots lean with too little, galoot millions and millions, snousle and snicker on, plug your exhausts, hunt your snacks of fat and lean, grab off yours.
HOW many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?-nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days:
          Love me before I die;
                Love me-love me now.
I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child's dream of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child's dream of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.
HERE in a cage the dollars come down.
      To the click of a tube the dollars tumble.
      And out of a mouth the dollars run.

          I finger the dollars,
          Paper and silver,
          Thousands a day.

      Some days it's fun
              to finger the dollars.
Some days...
              the dollars keep on
              in a sob or a whisper:
      A flame of rose in the hair,
      A flame of silk at the throat.
LET down your braids of hair, lady.
Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass
And gaze long on lines under your eyes.
Life writes; men dance.
  And you know how men pay women.
A goldwing moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle
     on the desk.

Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb
     and a flame wire.

The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated
     initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.
Everybody loved Chick Lorimer in our town.
                    Far off
               Everybody loved her.
So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold
On a dream she wants.
Nobody knows now where Chick Lorimer went.
Nobody knows why she packed her trunk. . a few
     old things
And is gone,
                    Gone with her little chin
                    ****** ahead of her
                    And her soft hair blowing careless
                    From under a wide hat,
Dancer, singer, a laughing passionate lover.

Were there ten men or a hundred hunting Chick?
Were there five men or fifty with aching hearts?
               Everybody loved Chick Lorimer.
                    Nobody knows where she's gone.
MANY ways to spell good night.
  
Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
  
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out.
  
Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.
  
Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill.
It is easy to spell good night.
  
        Many ways to spell good night.
THE Government--I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a
live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw
this was the Government, doing things.
I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of work-
ingmen who were trying to get other workingmen
to stay away from a shop where there was a strike
on. Government in action.

Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
"yes" and "no."

Government dies as the men who form it die and are laid
away in their graves and the new Government that
comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood,
ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all,
money paid and money taken, and money covered
up and spoken of with hushed voices.
A Government is just as secret and mysterious and sensi-
tive as any human sinner carrying a load of germs,
traditions and corpuscles handed down from
fathers and mothers away back.
Tomb of a millionaire,
     A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen,
     Place of the dead where they spend every year
     The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars
     For upkeep and flowers
     To keep fresh the memory of the dead.
     The merchant prince gone to dust
     Commanded in his written will
     Over the signed name of his last testament
     Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside
     For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips,
     For perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance
     Around his last long home.

(A hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies to-night.
In the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at tables
Drinking with men or waiting for men jingling loose
     silver dollars in their pockets.
In a hundred furnished rooms is a girl who sells silk or
     dress goods or leather stuff for six dollars a week wages
And when she pulls on her stockings in the morning she
     is reckless about God and the newspapers and the
     police, the talk of her home town or the name
     people call her.)
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work --
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.
I dreamed one man stood against a thousand,
One man ****** as a wrongheaded fool.
One year and another he walked the streets,
And a thousand shrugs and hoots
Met him in the shoulders and mouths he passed.

     He died alone.
And only the undertaker came to his funeral.

Flowers grow over his grave anod in the wind,
And over the graves of the thousand, too,
The flowers grow anod in the wind.

     Flowers and the wind,
Flowers anod over the graves of the dead,
Petals of red, leaves of yellow, streaks of white,
Masses of purple sagging. . .
I love you and your great way of forgetting.
GRIEG being dead we may speak of him and his art.
Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was any good or not.
Grieg being with Ibsen, Björnson, Lief Ericson and the rest,
Grieg being dead does not care a hell's hoot what we say.
  
  Morning, Spring, Anitra's Dance,
  He dreams them at the doors of new stars.
I asked a gypsy pal
To imitate an old image
And speak old wisdom.
She drew in her chin,
Made her neck and head
The top piece of a Nile obelisk
     and said:
****** off the gag from thy mouth, child,
And be free to keep silence.
Tell no man anything for no man listens,
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.
MONEY is nothing now, even if I had it,
O mooney moon, yellow half moon,
Up over the green pines and gray elms,
Up in the new blue.
  
  Streel, streel,
White lacey mist sheets of cloud,
Streel in the blowing of the wind,
Streel over the blue-and-moon sky,
Yellow gold half moon. It is light
On the snow; it is dark on the snow,
Streel, O lacey thin sheets, up in the new blue.
  
Come down, stay there, move on.
I want you, I don't, keep all.
There is no song to your singing.
I am hit deep, you drive far,
O mooney yellow half moon,
Steady, steady; or will you tip over?
Or will the wind and the streeling
Thin sheets only pass and move on
And leave you alone and lovely?
I want you, I don't, come down,
  Stay there, move on.
Money is nothing now, even if I had it.
Come you, cartoonists,
          Hang on a strap with me here
          At seven o'clock in the morning
          On a Halsted street car.

               Take your pencils
               And draw these faces.

Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,
That pig-sticker in one corner--his mouth--
That overall factory girl--her loose cheeks.

               Find for your pencils
               A way to mark your memory
               Of tired empty faces.

               After their night's sleep,
               In the moist dawn
               And cool daybreak,
               Faces
               Tired of wishes,
               Empty of dreams.
BLOSSOMS of babies
Blinking their stories
Come soft
On the dusk and the babble;
Little red gamblers,
Handfuls that slept in the dust.

  Summers of rain,
Winters of drift,
Tell off the years;
And they go back
Who came soft-
Back to the sod,
To silence and dust;
Gray gamblers,
  Handfuls again.
I Asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
     me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
     thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
     I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
     the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
     their women and children and a keg of beer and an
     accordion.
Next page