Nets to Catch the Wind | Page 4

jagged?Over sharp stones:?Your body's too ragged?To cover your bones.
The wind scatters?Tears upon dust;?Your soul's in tatters?Where the spears thrust.
Your race is ended--?See, it is run:?Nothing is mended?Under the sun.
Straight as an arrow?You fall to a sleep?Not too narrow?And not too deep.
BLOOD FEUD
Once, when my husband was a child, there came?To his father's table, one who called him kin,?In sunbleached corduroys paler than his skin.?His look was grave and kind; he bore the name?Of the dead singer of Senlac, and his smile.?Shyly and courteously he smiled and spoke;?"I've been in the laurel since the winter broke;?Four months, I reckon; yes, sir, quite a while."
He'd killed a score of foemen in the past,?In some blood-feud, a dark and monstrous thing;?To him it seemed his duty. At the last?His enemies found him by a forest spring,?Which, as he died, lay bright beneath his head,?A silver shield that slowly turned to red.
SEA LULLABY
The old moon is tarnished?With smoke of the flood,?The dead leaves are varnished?With color like blood,
A treacherous smiler?With teeth white as milk,?A savage beguiler?In sheathings of silk,
The sea creeps to pillage,?She leaps on her prey;?A child of the village?Was murdered to-day.
She came up to meet him?In a smooth golden cloak,?She choked him and beat him?To death, for a joke.
Her bright locks were tangled,?She shouted for joy,?With one hand she strangled?A strong little boy.
Now in silence she lingers?Beside him all night?To wash her long fingers?In silvery light.
NANCY
You are a rose, but set with sharpest spine;?You are a pretty bird that pecks at me;?You are a little squirrel on a tree,?Pelting me with the prickly fruit of the pine;?A diamond, torn from a crystal mine,?Not like that milky treasure of the sea?A smooth, translucent pearl, but skilfully?Carven to cut, and faceted to shine.
If you are flame, it dances and burns blue;?If you are light, it pierces like a star?Intenser than a needlepoint of ice.?The dexterous touch that shaped the soul of you,?Mingled, to mix, and make you what you are,?Magic between the sugar and the spice.
A PROUD LADY
Hate in the world's hand?Can carve and set its seal?Like the strong blast of sand?Which cuts into steel.
I have seen how the finger of hate?Can mar and mold?Faces burned passionate?And frozen cold.
Sorrowful faces worn?As stone with rain,?Faces writhing with scorn?And sullen with pain.
But you have a proud face?Which the world cannot harm,?You have turned the pain to a grace?And the scorn to a charm.
You have taken the arrows and slings?Which prick and bruise?And fashioned them into wings?For the heels of your shoes.
From the world's hand which tries?To tear you apart?You have stolen the falcon's eyes?And the lion's heart.
What has it done, this world,?With hard finger tips,?But sweetly chiseled and curled?Your inscrutable lips?
THE TORTOISE IN ETERNITY
Within my house of patterned horn?I sleep in such a bed?As men may keep before they're born?And after they are dead.
Sticks and stones may break their bones,?And words may make them bleed;?There is not one of them who owns?An armor to his need.
Tougher than hide or lozenged bark,?Snow-storm and thunder proof,?And quick with sun, and thick with dark,?Is this my darling roof.
Men's troubled dreams of death and birth?Pulse mother-o'-pearl to black;?I bear the rainbow bubble Earth?Square on my scornful back.
INCANTATION
A white well?In a black cave;?A bright shell?In a dark wave.
A white rose?Black brambles hood;?Smooth bright snows?In a dark wood.
A flung white glove?In a dark fight;?A white dove?On a wild black night.
A white door?In a dark lane;?A bright core?To bitter black pain.
A white hand?Waved from dark walls;?In a burnt black land?Bright waterfalls.
A bright spark?Where black ashes are;?In the smothering dark?One white star.
SILVER FILIGREE
The icicles wreathing?On trees in festoon?Swing, swayed to our breathing:?They're made of the moon.
She's a pale, waxen taper;?And these seem to drip?Transparent as paper?From the flame of her tip.
Molten, smoking a little,?Into crystal they pass;?Falling, freezing, to brittle?And delicate glass.
Each a sharp-pointed flower,?Each a brief stalactite?Which hangs for an hour?In the blue cave of night.
THE FALCON
Why should my sleepy heart be taught?To whistle mocking-bird replies??This is another bird you've caught,?Soft-feathered, with a falcon's eyes.
The bird Imagination,?That flies so far, that dies so soon;?Her wings are colored like the sun,?Her breast is colored like the moon.
Weave her a chain of silver twist,?And a little hood of scarlet wool,?And let her perch upon your wrist,?And tell her she is beautiful.
BRONZE TRUMPETS AND SEA WATER--?ON TURNING LATIN INTO ENGLISH
Alembics turn to stranger things?Strange things, but never while we live?Shall magic turn this bronze that sings?To singing water in a sieve.
The trumpeters of Caesar's guard?Salute his rigorous bastions?With ordered bruit; the bronze is hard?Though there is silver in the bronze.
Our mutable tongue is like the sea,?Curled wave and shattering thunder-fit;?Dangle in strings of sand shall be?Who smooths the ripples out of it.
SPRING PASTORAL
Liza, go steep your long white hands?In the cool waters of that spring?Which bubbles up through shiny sands?The color of a wild-dove's wing.
Dabble your