Toward the Gulf | Page 5

dock at Holland
And back again."
One time I went to Grand Haven
On the Alabama with Charley
Shippey.
It was dawn, but white dawn only,
Under the reign of
Leucothea,
As we volplaned, so it seemed, from the lake
Past the
lighthouse into the river.
And afterward laughing and talking

Hurried to Van Dreezer's restaurant
For breakfast.
(Charley knew
him and 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!

EXCLUDED MIDDLE
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