Toward the Gulf | Page 5

talked of things?Unknown to me as he cooked the breakfast.)?Then we fished the mile's length of the pier?In a gale full of warmth and moisture?Which blew the gulls about like confetti,?And flapped like a flag the linen duster?Of a fisherman who paced the pier--?(Charley called him Rip Van Winkle).?The only thing that could be better?Than this day on the pier?Would be its counterpart in heaven,?As Swedenborg would say--?Charley is fishing somewhere now, I think.
There is a grove of oaks on a bluff by the river?At Berrien Springs.?There is a cottage that eyes the lake?Between pines and silver birches?At South Haven.?There is the inviolable wonder of wooded shore?Curving for miles at Saugatuck.?And at Holland a beach like Scheveningen's.?And at Charlevoix the sudden quaintness?Of an old-world place by the sea.?There are the hills around Elk Lake?Where the blue of the sky is so still and clear?It seems it was rubbed above them?By the swipe of a giant thumb.?And beyond these the little Traverse Bay?Where the roar of the breeze goes round?Like a roulette ball in the groove of the wheel,?Circling the bay,?And beyond these Mackinac and the Cheneaux Islands--?And beyond these a great mystery!--
Neither ice floes, nor winter's palsy?Stays the tide in the river.
LAKE BOATS
And under the shadows of cliffs of brick?The lake boats?Huddled like swans?Turn and sigh like sleepers----?They are longing for the Spring!
CITIES OF THE PLAIN
Where are the cabalists, the insidious committees,?The panders who betray the idiot cities?For miles and miles toward the prairie sprawled,?Ignorant, soul-less, rich,?Smothered in fumes of pitch?

Rooms of mahogany in tall sky scrapers?See the unfolding and the folding up?Of ring-clipped papers,?And letters which keep drugged the public cup.?The walls hear whispers and the semi-tones?Of voices in the corner, over telephones?Muffled by Persian padding, gemmed with brass spittoons.?Butts of cigars are on the glass topped table,?And through the smoke, gracing the furtive Babel,?The bishop's picture blesses the picaroons,?Who start or stop the life of millions moving?Unconscious of obedience, the plastic?Yielders to satanic and dynastic?Hands of reproaching and approving.

Here come knights armed,?But with their arms concealed,?And rubber heeled.?Here priests and wavering want are charmed.?And shadows fall here like the shark's?In messages received or sent.?Signals are flying from the battlement.?And every president?Of rail, gas, coal and oil, the parks,?The receipt of custom knows, without a look,?Their meaning as the code is in no book.?The treasonous cracksmen of the city's wealth?Watch for the flags of stealth!

Acres of coal lie fenced along the tracks.?Tracks ribbon the streets, and beneath the streets?Wires for voices, fire, thwart the plebiscites,?And choke the counsels and symposiacs?Of dreamers who have pity for the backs?That bear and bleed.?All things are theirs: tracks, wires, streets and coal,?The church's creed,?The city's soul,?The city's sea girt loveliness,?The merciless and meretricious press.

Far up in a watch-tower, where the news is printed,?Gray faces and bright eyes, weary and cynical?Discuss fresh wonders of the old cabal.?But nothing of its work in type is hinted:?Taxes are high! The mentors of the town?Must keep their taxes down?On buildings, presses, stocks?In gas, oil, coal and docks.?The mahogany rooms conceal a spider man?Who holds the taxing bodies through the church,?And knights with arms concealed. The mentors search?The spider man, the master publican,?And for his friendship silence keep,?Letting him herd the populace like sheep?For self and for the insatiable desires?Of coal and tracks and wires,?Pick judges, legislators,?And tax-gatherers.?Or name his favorites, whom they name:?The slick and sinistral,?Servitors of the cabal,?For praise which seems the equivalent of fame:?Giving to the delicate handed crackers?Of priceless safes, the spiritual slackers,?The flash and thunder of front pages!?And the gulled millions stare and fling their wages?Where they are bidden, helpless and emasculate.?And the unilluminate,?Whose brows are brass,?Who weep on every Sabbath day?For Jesus riding on an ass,?Scarce know the ass is they,?Now ridden by his effigy,?The publican with Jesus' painted mask,?Along a way where fumes of odorless gas?First spur then fell them from the task.

Through the parade runs swift the psychic cackle?Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle.?And the angels say to Yahveh looking down?From the alabaster railing, on the town,?O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack?We wish we had our little Sodom back!
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Out of the mercury shimmer of glass?Over these daguerreotypes?The balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emerges?With its little figure of flowers.?And the enameled glair of parted hair?Lies over the oval brow,?From under which eyes of fiery blackness?Look through you.?And the only repose of spirit shown?Is in the hands?Lying loosely one in the other,?Lightly clasped somewhat below the breast. ...?And in the companion folder of this case?Of gutta percha?Is the shape of a man.?His brow is oval too, but broader.?His nose is long, but thick at the tip.?His eyes are blue?Wherein faith burns her signal lights,?And flashes her convictions.?His mouth is tense, almost a slit.?And his face is a massive Calvinism?Resting on a stock tie.
They were married, you