Nets to Catch the Wind | Page 2

copper petals
shriveled up with pride,
Hot with a superfluity of heat,
Like a great
brazier borne along the street
By captive leopards, black and burning
pied.
Are there no water-lilies, smooth as cream,
With long stems dripping
crystal? Are there none
Like those white lilies, luminous and cool,

Plucked from some hemlock-darkened northern stream
By fair-haired
swimmers, diving where the sun
Scarce warms the surface of the
deepest pool?
THE CROOKED STICK
First Traveler: What's that lying in the dust?
Second Traveler: A
crooked stick.
First Traveler: What's it worth, if you can trust
To
arithmetic?
Second Traveler: Isn't this a riddle?
First Traveler: No,
a trick.
Second Traveler: It's worthless. Leave it where it lies.
First
Traveler: Wait; count ten;
Rub a little dust upon your eyes;
Now,
look again.
Second Traveler: Well, and what the devil is it, then?

First Traveler: It's the sort of crooked stick that shepherds know.
Second Traveler: Some one's loss!
First Traveler: Bend it, and you
make of it a bow.
Break it, a cross.
Second Traveler: But it's all
grown over with moss!
ATAVISM
I always was afraid of Somes's Pond:
Not the little pond, by which
the willow stands,
Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands

In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond.
There, when the
frost makes all the birches burn
Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky
shines
Like a polished shell between black spruce and pines,
Some
strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.

You'll say I dream it, being the true daughter
Of those who in old
times endured this dread.
Look! Where the lily-stems are showing red

A silent paddle moves below the water,
A sliding shape has stirred
them like a breath;
Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.
WILD PEACHES
1
When the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll
emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;

We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town.
You'll wear a
coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold
color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and
honey till we drown.
The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued,
sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons
sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall

Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
2
The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
Like bloom on grapes of
purple-brown and gold.
The misted early mornings will be cold;

The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
The sun, which burns
from copper into brass,
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys
unfold
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold,
Fat pockets
dribble chestnuts as they pass.
Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted
herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter's over.
By
February you may find the skins
Of garter snakes and water
moccasins
Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.

3
When April pours the colors of a shell
Upon the hills, when every
little creek
Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
In shoals
new-minted by the ocean swell,
When strawberries go begging, and
the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,
We shall live
well--we shall live very well.
The months between the cherries and the peaches
Are brimming
cornucopias which spill
Fruits red and purple, somber-bloomed and
black;
Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
We'll trample
bright persimmons, while we kill
Bronze partridge, speckled quail,
and canvas-back.
4
Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There's something in this
richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of
landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There's something in my very
blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of
water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures
fenced with stones.
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields
sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves;
That spring, briefer than
apple-blossom's breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,

Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the
sleep of death.
SANCTUARY
This is the bricklayer; hear the thud
Of his heavy load dumped down
on stone.
His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,
His smoking
mortar whiter than bone.
Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick
Straight by the plumb-line's

shivering length;
Make my marvelous wall so thick
Dead nor living
may shake its strength.
Full as a crystal cup with drink
Is my cell with dreams, and quiet, and
cool....
Stop, old man! You must leave a chink;
How can I breathe?
You can't, you fool!
THE LION AND THE LAMB
I saw a Tiger's golden flank,
I saw what food he ate,
By a desert
spring he drank;
The Tiger's name was Hate.
Then I saw a placid Lamb
Lying fast asleep;
Like a river from its
dam
Flashed the Tiger's leap.
I saw a Lion tawny-red,
Terrible and brave;
The Tiger's leap
overhead
Broke like a wave.
In sand below or sun above
He faded like a flame.
The Lamb said,
"I am Love";
"Lion, tell your name."
The Lion's voice thundering
Shook his vaulted breast,
"I am Love.
By this spring,
Brother, let us rest."
THE CHURCH-BELL
As I was lying in my bed
I heard the church-bell