Precipitations | Page 7

WALL OF NIGHT
SPRINGTIME TOO SOON
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 wind?Are gray hair she has wound about her neck.?The water is an old gray face that mirrors the springtime.
STARS
Like naked maidens?Dancing with no thought of lovers,?Blinking stars with dewy silver breasts?Pass through the darkness.?White and eager,?They glide on?Toward the gray meshed web of dawn
And the mystery of morning.?Then,?About me,?The white cloud walls?Stand as sternly as sepulchers,?And from all sides?Peer and linger the startled faces,?Pale in the harshness of the sunlight.
NIGHT MUSIC
Through the blue water of night?Rises 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 sound?Beyond the horizon.
NOCTURNE OF WATER
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 velvet?On the horizon.
THE LONG MOMENT
A white sigh clouds the fields?Into quietness.?Above the billowed snow?I drift,?One year,?Two years,?Three years.?Hurt eyes mist in the blue behind me.?The moon uncoils in glistening ropes?And I glide downward along the dripping rays?To a marble lake.
DESIGNS
I
Night
Fields of black tulips?And swarms of gold bees?Drinking their bitter honey.
II
New Moon
Above the gnarled old tree?That clings to the bleakest side of the mountain,?A torch of ivory and gold;?And across the sky,?The silver print?Of spirit feet,?Fled from the wonder.
III
Tropic Moon
The glowing anvil,?Beaten by the winds;?Star sparks,?Burning and dying in the heavens;?The furnace glare?Red?On the polished palm leaves.
IV
Winter Moon
A little white thistle moon?Blown over the cold crags and fens:?A little white thistle moon?Blown across the frozen heather.
ARGO
White sails?Unbillowed 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.
JAPANESE MOON
Thick clustered wistaria clouds,?A young girl moon in a mist of almond flowers,?Boughs and boughs of light;?Then a round-faced ivory lady?Nodding among fading chrysanthemums.
HOT MOON
Moon rise.?Great gong sounds, shining--?Little feet run away.?Loud and solemn, the funeral gong.?Little feet run away.
THE NAIAD
The moon rises,?Glistening,?Naked white,?Out of her stream.
Wet marble shoulders?Shake star drops on the clouds.
FLOODTIDE
Across the shadows of the surf?The lights of the ship?Twinkle despondently.?The clinging absorbent gray darkness?Sucks them into itself:?Drinks the pale golden tears greedily.
MOUNTAIN PASS IN AUGUST
Night scatters grapes for the harvest.?The moon burns like a leaf.?Along the mountain path?A thin streak of light?Creeps hungrily with its silver belly to the earth.?The old hound laps up the shadows.?Her teats drip the brighter darkness.
CONTEMPORARIES
HARMONICS
YOUNG MEN
Fauns,?Eternal pagans,?Beautiful and obscene,?Leaping through the street?With a flicker of hoofs,?And a flash of tails,
You want dryads?And they give you prostitutes.
YOUNG GIRLS
Your souls are wet flowers,?Bathed in kisses and blood.?Golden Clyties,?The wheel of light?Rushes over your breasts.
HOUSE SPIRITS
Women are flitting around in their shells.?Pale dilutions of the waters of the world?Come 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?
AT THE MEETING HOUSE
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 leaves?After autumn is past.
CHRISTIANS
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.
DEVIL'S CRADLE
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 stems?Across an endless field?To the music of a blood white face?And a tired little devil child?Rocked to sleep on a rope.
WOMEN
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 up?In your recesses without depth,?You drinkers of life,?Twinkling maliciously?Your golden yellow eyes,?Mirrors winking in the sunshine?
PENELOPE
Gray old spinners,?Weaving with the crafty fibers of your souls;?Nothing