Sun-Up and Other Poems | Page 7

ears
and
presses all over you
till you scream....
When you scream at the
silence
it goes to jingling pieces
like a silver mirror
broken into
tiny bits.
Perhaps its wings are made of glass--
perhaps it lives
down in a dark, dark cave
and only comes up
to warm its wings in
the sun....
It's cold in the cave--
no matter how you cover yourself
up.
Little girls sit there
dressed in white
and the dolls in their
arms
all have white handkerchiefs
over their faces.
Their shadows
cannot play with them...
their shadows lie down at their feet...
for
the little girls sit stiff as stones
with their backs to the mouth of the
cave
where a little light falls off
the wings of the silence
when it
comes down out of the sun.
: :
Moon catches the flying fish
as they dive in the bay.
Flying fish

spin over and over
slippity-silver
into the water.

Mom bends over
jungles
and touches the foreheads of tigers
as they pass under
openings made by dropped leaves.
Tigers stop on the trail of the deer

while the moon is on their foreheads--
they let the stags go by.
Moon is shining strangely
on the white palings of the fence.
Fence
keeps very still...
most times it moves a little...
everything moves a
little
though you mayn't know it...
but now the little fence

wouldn't change places with the great cross
that stands so stiff and
high
with its back to the moon.
Moon shining strangely
on the
white palings of the fence,
I am shining too
but my light is shut
inside of me
and can't get out.

: :
Old house with black windows--
blind house begging moonlight
to
put out the shadows--
why do you want so much light?
You creak
when the wind steps on you--
you cough up dust
and your beams
ache--
you know you will soon fall,
the moon just pities you!

Don't waste yourself moon--
come on my bed and play with me.

Wrap me up in blue light,
you who are cool.
I am too hot,
I am all
alive
and the shadows are outside of me.
: :
There are different kinds of shadows.
The blind ones
are the
shadows of things.
These are the tame shadows--
they love to play
on the wall with you
and follow you about like cats and dogs.

Sometimes
they hiss at you softly
like snakes that do not bite,
or
swish like women's dresses,
but if you poke a candle at them
they
pull in their heads and disappear.
But there is a shadow
that is not the shadow of a thing...
it is a thing
itself.
When you meet this shadow
you must not look at it too long...

it grows with your looking at it...
till you are all alone
with
nothing around you...
nothing... nothing... nothing...
but a shadow

with its eyes full of black light.
: :
There's a shadow in the corner of the shed,
crouching, lying in wait...

a black coiled shadow,
watching... ready to strike...
but I mustn't
be afraid of it--
I mustn't be afraid of anything.

Poor evil shadow,

the candle would chase it away
only she can't get at it.
Do you think
that every one hates you,
shadow with your back to the wall,
afraid
to lie down and sleep?
But I don't hate you.
Even the moon means
to be kind.
She just treads on you
as I'd tread on a worm that I didn't
see.
Don't be afraid of me, shadow.
See--I've no light in my hand--


nothing to save myself with--
yet I walk right up to you--
if you'll
let me
I'll put my arms around you
and stroke you softly.
Are you
surprised I'd put my arms around you?
Is it your black black sorrow

that nobody loves you?
V
JUDE
When you tell mama
you are going to do something great
she looks
at you
as though you were a window
she were trying to see through,

and says she hopes you will be good
instead of great.
: :
When you are five years old
you spend the day in the Gardens.
The
grass is greener than cabbages,
and orange lilies
stand up very
straight
and will not curtsey to the sun
when the wind tells them.

Only pansies bow down very low.
Pansies make little purple cushions

for queen bees to stand on.
Bees
have brown silk hair on their
bodies.
If you are careful
they will let you stroke them.
The trees over the marble man
catch up all the sunbeams
so the
shadows have it their way--
the shadows swallow him up
like a blue
shark.
When you scoop a sunbeam up on your palm
and offer it to
the marble man,
he does not notice...
he looks into his stone beard.

... When you do something great
people give you a stone face,
so
you do not care any more
when the sun throws gold on you
through
leaf-holes the wind makes
in green bushes....

This thought makes
me very sad.
: :
Jude has eyes like tobacco
with yellow specks on it
and his hair is
red as a red orange.
Jude and I
have made a garden in the field


that no one knows about.
We creep in and out
through a little place

where the barbed wire is down.
We lie in the long grass
and
crush dandelions
between our two cheeks
till the milk comes out on
our faces.
We hold each other tight
and the wind tip-toes all over us

and pelts us with thistle-down.
: :
Jude isn't afraid of shadows--
not even of the ones