Here is a strong young man who killed.There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an automatic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen.Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens, and a jury of his peers, also…
And the time of the wild roseAnd the leaves of the wild roseAnd the dew-shot eyes of the wild roseSing in the air over three violins.Somebody like you was in the heart of MacDowell.Somebody like you is in three violins.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and…
These gardens empty; these fields only flower ghosts; these yards with faces gone; leaves speaking as feet and skirts in slow dances to slow winds; I turn my head and say good-by to no one who hears; I pronounce a useless good-by.
Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flitfrom zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters,scavengers.The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for usand a gang from over the river sang ragtime to a ukelele.The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we huntedthe fog-swept Lincoln…
And gaze long on lines under your eyes.Life writes; men dance.And you know how men pay women.
From such a rag that has wiped the secret sores of kings and overlords across the milleniums of human marches and babblings,From such a rag perhaps I shall wring one reluctant desperate drop of blood, one honest-to-God spot of red speaking a mother-heart.December, 1918.Christiania, Norway
laugh many years ago.Under a peach tree I saw petals scattered.. torn strips of a bride’s dress. I hearda woman laugh many years ago.
And out of a mouth the dollars run.I finger the dollars,Paper and silver,Thousands a day.Some days it’s funto finger the dollars.Some days…the dollars keep onin a sob or a whisper:A flame of rose in the hair,A flame of silk at the throat.
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.Other faces rise on the prairie.They are the unborn. The future.Yesterday and to-morrow cross…
