Over the sea.

  And thus she roamed

  In the roamings of her fan,

  Partaking of the sea,

  And of the evening,

  As they flowed around

  And uttered their subsiding sound.

  DOMINATION OF BLACK

  At night, by the fire,

  The colors of the bushes

  And of the fallen leaves,

  Repeating themselves,

  Turned in the room,

  Like the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind.

  Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks

  Came striding.

  And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

  The colors of their tails

  Were like the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind,

  In the twilight wind.

  They swept over the room,

  Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks

  Down to the ground.

  I heard them cry—the peacocks.

  Was it a cry against the twilight

  Or against the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind,

  Turning as the flames

  Turned in the fire,

  Turning as the tails of the peacocks

  Turned in the loud fire,

  Loud as the hemlocks

  Full of the cry of the peacocks?

  Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

  Out of the window,

  I saw how the planets gathered

  Like the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind.

  I saw how the night came,

  Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks

  I felt afraid.

  And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

  THE SNOW MAN

  One must have a mind of winter

  To regard the frost and the boughs

  Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

  And have been cold a long time

  To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

  The spruces rough in the distant glitter

  Of the January sun; and not to think

  Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

  In the sound of a few leaves,

  Which is the sound of the land

  Full of the same wind

  That is blowing in the same bare place

  For the listener, who listens in the snow,

  And, nothing himself, beholds

  Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

  THE ORDINARY WOMEN

  Then from their poverty they rose,

  From dry catarrhs, and to guitars

  They flitted

  Through the palace walls.

  They flung monotony behind,

  Turned from their want, and, nonchalant,

  They crowded

  The nocturnal halls.

  The lacquered loges huddled there

  Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay.

  The moonlight

  Fubbed the girandoles.

  And the cold dresses that they wore,

  In the vapid haze of the window-bays,

  Were tranquil

  As they leaned and looked

  From the window-sills at the alphabets,

  At beta b and gamma g,

  To study

  The canting curlicues

  Of heaven and of the heavenly script.

  And there they read of marriage-bed.

  Ti-lill-o!

  And they read right long.

  The gaunt guitarists on the strings

  Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.

  The moonlight

  Rose on the beachy floors.

  How explicit the coiffures became,

  The diamond point, the sapphire point,

  The sequins

  Of the civil fans!

  Insinuations of desire,

  Puissant speech, alike in each,

  Cried quittance

  To the wickless halls.

  Then from their poverty they rose,

  From dry guitars, and to catarrhs

  They flitted

  Through the palace walls.

  THE LOAD OF SUGAR-CANE

  The going of the glade-boat

  Is like water flowing;

  Like water flowing

  Through the green saw-grass,

  Under the rainbows;

  Under the rainbows

  That are like birds,

  Turning, bedizened,

  While the wind still whistles

  As kildeer do,

  When they rise

  At the red turban

  Of the boatman.

  LE MONOCLE DE MON ONCLE

  “Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,

  O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,

  There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,

  Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.”

  And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.

  Or was it that I mocked myself alone?

  I wish that I might be a thinking stone.

  The sea of spuming thought foists up again

  The radiant bubble that she was. And then

  A deep up-pouring from some saltier well

  Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

  II

  A red bird flies across the golden floor.

  It is a red bird that seeks out his choir

  Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.

  A torrent will fall from him when he finds.

  Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?

  I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;

  For it has come that thus I greet the spring.

  These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.

  No spring can follow past meridian.

  Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss

  To make believe a starry connaissance.

  III

  Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese

  Sat tittivating by their mountain pools

  Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards?

  I shall not play the flat historic scale.

  You know how Utamaro’s beauties sought

  The end of love in their all-speaking braids.

  You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.

  Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain

  That not one curl in nature has survived?

  Why, without pity on these studious ghosts,

  Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?

  IV

  This luscious and impeccable fruit of life

  Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.

  When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,

  Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air.

  An apple serves as well as any skull

  To be the book in which to read a round,

  And is as excellent, in that it is composed

  Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.

  But it excels in this, that as the fruit

  Of love, it is a book too mad to read

  Before one merely reads to pass the time.

  V

  In the high west there burns a furious star.

  It is for fiery boys that star was set

  And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.

  The measure of the intensity of love

  Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.

  For me, the firefly’s quick, electric stroke

  Ticks tediously the time of one more year.

  And you? Remember how the crickets came

  Out of their mother grass, like little kin,

  In the pale nights, when your first imagery

  Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

  VI

  If men at forty will be painting lakes

  The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,

  The basic slate, the universal hue.
br />   There is a substance in us that prevails.

  But in our amours amorists discern

  Such fluctuations that their scrivening

  Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.

  When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink

  Into the compass and curriculum

  Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

  It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

  VII

  The mules that angels ride come slowly down

  The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.

  Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.

  These muleteers are dainty of their way.

  Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat

  Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.

  This parable, in sense, amounts to this:

  The honey of heaven may or may not come,

  But that of earth both comes and goes at once.

  Suppose these couriers brought amid their train

  A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

  VIII

  Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,

  An ancient aspect touching a new mind.

  It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.

  This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.

  Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.

  Two golden gourds distended on our vines,

  Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,

  Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.

  We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,

  The laughing sky will see the two of us

  Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains.

  IX

  In verses wild with motion, full of din,

  Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure

  As the deadly thought of men accomplishing

  Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate

  The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.

  Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit

  Is not too lusty for your broadening.

  I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything

  For the music and manner of the paladins

  To make oblation fit. Where shall I find

  Bravura adequate to this great hymn?

  X

  The fops of fancy in their poems leave

  Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,

  Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.

  I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.

  I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,

  No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.

  But, after all, I know a tree that bears

  A semblance to the thing I have in mind.

  It stands gigantic, with a certain tip

  To which all birds come sometime in their time.

  But when they go that tip still tips the tree.

  XI

  If sex were all, then every trembling hand

  Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.

  But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,

  That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout

  Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth

  From madness or delight, without regard

  To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour!

  Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,

  Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,

  Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog

  Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

  XII

  A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,

  On sidelong wing, around and round and round.

  A white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground,

  Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I

  Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,

  In lordly study. Every day, I found

  Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.

  Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,

  And still pursue, the origin and course

  Of love, but until now I never knew

  That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.

  NUANCES OF A THEME BY WILLIAMS

  It’s a strange courage

  you give me, ancient star:

  Shine alone in the sunrise

  toward which you lend no part!

  I

  Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze,

  that reflects neither my face nor any inner part

  of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.

  II

  Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses

  you in its own light.

  Be not chimera of morning,

  Half-man, half-star.

  Be not an intelligence,

  Like a widow’s bird

  Or an old horse.

  METAPHORS OF A MAGNIFICO

  Twenty men crossing a bridge,

  Into a village,

  Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,

  Into twenty villages,

  Or one man

  Crossing a single bridge into a village.

  This is old song

  That will not declare itself…

  Twenty men crossing a bridge,

  Into a village,

  Are

  Twenty men crossing a bridge

  Into a village.

  That will not declare itself

  Yet is certain as meaning…

  The boots of the men clump

  On the boards of the bridge.

  The first white wall of the village

  Rises through fruit-trees.

  Of what was it I was thinking?

  So the meaning escapes.

  The first white wall of the village…

  The fruit-trees.…

  PLOUGHING ON SUNDAY

  The white cock’s tail

  Tosses in the wind.

  The turkey-cock’s tail

  Glitters in the sun.

  Water in the fields.

  The wind pours down.

  The feathers flare

  And bluster in the wind.

  Remus, blow your horn!

  I’m ploughing on Sunday,

  Ploughing North America.

  Blow your horn!

  Tum-ti-tum,

  Ti-tum-tum-tum!

  The turkey-cock’s tail

  Spreads to the sun.

  The white cock’s tail

  Streams to the moon.

  Water in the fields.

  The wind pours down.

  CY EST POURTRAICTE, MADAME STE URSULE, ET LES UNZE MILLE VIERGES

  Ursula, in a garden, found

  A bed of radishes.

  She kneeled upon the ground

  And gathered them,

  With flowers around,

  Blue, gold, pink, and green.

  She dressed in red and gold brocade

  And in the grass an offering made

  Of radishes and flowers.

  She said, “My dear,

  Upon your altars,

  I have placed

  The marguerite and coquelicot,

  And roses

  Frail as April snow;

  But here,” she said,

  “Where none can see,

  I make an offering, in the grass,

  Of radishes and flowers.”

  And then she wept

  For fear the Lord would not accept.

  The good Lord in His garden sought

  New leaf and shadowy tinct,

  And they were all His thought.

  He heard her low accord,

  Half prayer and half ditty,

  And He felt a subtle quiver,

  That was not heavenly love,

  Or pity.

  This is not writ

  In any book.

  HIBISCUS ON THE SLEEPING SHORES

  I say now, Fernando, that on that day

  The mind roamed as a moth roams,

 
Among the blooms beyond the open sand;

  And that whatever noise the motion of the waves

  Made on the sea-weeds and the covered stones

  Disturbed not even the most idle ear.

  Then it was that that monstered moth

  Which had lain folded against the blue

  And the colored purple of the lazy sea,

  And which had drowsed along the bony shores,

  Shut to the blather that the water made,

  Rose up besprent and sought the flaming red

  Dabbled with yellow pollen—red as red

  As the flag above the old café—

  And roamed there all the stupid afternoon.

  FABLIAU OF FLORIDA

  Barque of phosphor

  On the palmy beach,

  Move outward into heaven,

  Into the alabasters

  And night blues.

  Foam and cloud are one.

  Sultry moon-monsters

  Are dissolving.

  Fill your black hull

  With white moonlight.

  There will never be an end

  To this droning of the surf.

  THE DOCTOR OF GENEVA

  The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand

  That lay impounding the Pacific swell,

  Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.

  Lacustrine man had never been assailed

  By such long-rolling opulent cataracts,

  Unless Racine or Bossuet held the like.

  He did not quail. A man so used to plumb

  The multifarious heavens felt no awe

  Before these visible, voluble delugings,