Was there a wind? Tap... tap... Night pads upon the snow with moccasined feet... and it is still... so still... an eagle's feather might fall like a stone. Could there have been a storm......
I wonder how it would be here with you, where the wind that has shaken off its dust in low valleys touches one cleanly, as with a new-washed hand, and pain...
I remember The crackle of the palm trees Over the mooned white roofs of the town... The shining town... And the tender fumbling of the surf On the sulphur-yellow beaches...
Warped... gland-dry... With spine askew And body shrunken into half its space... Well-used as some cracked paving-stone... Bearing on his grimed and pitted front A stamp... as of innumerable feet.
Where to-day would a dainty buyer Imbibe your scented juice, Pale ruin with a heart of fire; Drain your succulence with her lips, Grown sapless from much use... Make minister of her desire...
Oh, God did cunningly, there at Babel - Not mere tongues dividing, but soul from soul, So that never again should men be able To fashion one infinite, towering whole.
Radiant notes piercing my narrow-chested room, beating down through my ceiling - smeared with unshapen belly-prints of dreams drifted out of old smokes - trillions of icily peltering notes...
Wind, just arisen - (Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars, Or niche of cliff under the eagles?) You of living things, So gay and tender and full of play -...
I love those spirits That men stand off and point at, Or shudder and hood up their souls - Those ruined ones, Where Liberty has lodged an hour And passed like flame,...
Let me cradle myself back Into the darkness Of the half shapes... Of the cauled beginnings... Let me stir the attar of unused air, Elusive... ironically fragrant As a dead queen's kerchief......
Tender and tremulous green of leaves Turned up by the wind, Twanging among the vines - Wind in the grass Blowing a clear path For the new-stripped soul to pass... ...
Men die... Dreams only change their houses. They cannot be lined up against a wall And quietly buried under ground, And no more heard of... However deep the pit and heaped the clay -...
Dour river Jaded with monotony of lights Diving off mast heads.... Lights mad with creating in a river... turning its sullen back... Heave up, river......