Silverpoints | Page 2

tide,

Muffling their plaintive gurgling jealously.
With gentle nodding of her gracious snout,
One greets her master till
he step aboard;
She flaps her wings, impatient to get out;
She runs
to plunder, straining every cord,
Full-winged and stealthy like a bird of prey,
All tense the muscles of
her seemly flanks;
She, the coy creature that the idle day
Sees idly
riding in the idle ranks.
Backward and forth, over the chosen ground,
Like a young horse, she
drags the heavy trawl,
Tireless; or speeds her rapturous course
unbound,
And passing fishers through the darkness call
Deep greeting, in the jargon of the sea.
Haul upon haul, flounders and
soles and dabs,
And phosphorescent animalcule,
Sand, seadrift,
weeds, thousands of worthless crabs.
Low on the mud the darkling fishes grope.
Cautious to stir, staring
with jewel eyes;
Dogs of the sea, the savage congers mope,

Winding their sulky march Meander-wise.
Suddenly all is light and life and flight,
Upon the sandy bottom, agate
strewn.
The fishers mumble, waiting till the night
Urge on the
clouds, and cover up the moon.
THE BARBER

I
I dreamed I was a barber; and there went
Beneath my hand, oh!
manes extravagant.
Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask
Of
many a pleasant girl. It was my task
To gild their hair, carefully,
strand by strand;
To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand;
To
draw a bodkin, from a vase of kohl,
Through the closed lashes;
pencils from a bowl
Of sepia to paint them underneath;
To blow
upon their eyes with a soft breath.
They lay them back and watched
the leaping bands.
II
The dream grew vague. I moulded with my hands
The mobile breasts,
the valley; and the waist
I touched; and pigments reverently placed

Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains,
Beryls and crysolites
and diaphanes,
And gems whose hot harsh names are never said.
I
was a masseur; and my fingers bled
With wonder as I touched their
awful limbs.
III
Suddenly, in the marble trough, there seems
O, last of my pale,
mistresses, Sweetness!
A twylipped scarlet pansie. My caress

Tinges thy steelgray eyes to violet.
Adown thy body skips the
pit-a-pat
Of treatment once heard in a hospital
For plagues that
fascinate, but half appal.
IV
So, at the sound, the blood of me stood cold.
Thy chaste hair ripened
into sullen gold.
The throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth.

The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth.
And on the belly
pallid blushes crept,
That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.
MISHKA

TO HENRI TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
Mishka is poet among the beasts.
When roots are rotten, and rivers
weep.
The bear is at play in the land of sleep.
Though his head be
heavy between his fists.
The bear is poet among the beasts.
THE DREAM:
Wide and large are the monster's eyes,
Nought saying, save one word
alone:
Mishka! Mishka, as turned to stone,
Hears no word else, nor
in anywise
Can see aught save the monster's eyes.
Honey is under the monster's lips;
And Mishka follows into her lair,

dragged in the net of her yellow hair,
Knowing all things when
honey drips
On his tongue like rain, the song of the hips
Of the honey-child, and of each twin mound.
Mishka! there screamed
a far bird-note,
Deep in the sky, when round his throat
The triple
coil of her hair she wound.
And stroked his limbs with a humming
sound.
Mishka is white like a hunter's son
Tor he knows no more of the
ancient south
When the honey-child's lips are on his mouth,
When
all her kisses are joined in one,
And his body is bathed in grass and
sun.
The shadows lie mauven beneath the trees,
And purple stains, where
the finches pass,
Leap in the stalks of the deep, rank grass.
Flutter
of-wing, and the buzz of bees,
Deepen the silence, and sweeten ease.
The honey-child is an olive tree,
The voice of birds and the voice of
flowers,
Each of them all and all the hours,
The honey-child is a
winged bee,
Her touch is a perfume, a melody.
SUMMER PAST

TO OSCAR WILDE
There was the summer. There
Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
And dripping amber sweat.
O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to
the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
In ecstasy.
Fruit of a quest, despair.
Smart of a sullen wrong.
Where may they
hide them yet?
One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see
the naiads' floating hair, caressed
By fragrant sun.
Beams. Softly lulled the eves
The song-tired birds to sleep,
That
other things might tell
Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves.
Deep
in what hollow do the stern gods keep
Their bitter silence? By what
listening well
Where holy trees,
Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
Of restless green?
THE VINES
TO ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON
"Have you seen the listening snake?"
bramble clutches for his bride,

Lately she was by his side,
Woodbine, with her gummy hands.

In the ground the mottled snake
Listens for the dawn of day;

Listens, listening death away,
Till the day burst winter's bands.
Painted ivy is asleep,
Stretched upon the bank, all torn,
Sinewy
though she be; love-lorn
Convolvuluses cease to creep.
Bramble clutches for his