a frame house wobbles.
If houses went on crutches
this house would be
one of the cripples.
A sign on the house:
Church of the Living God
And Rescue Home for Orphan Children.
From a Greek coffee house
Across the street
A cabalistic jargon
Jabbers back.
And men at tables
Spill Peloponnesian syllables
And speak of shovels for street work.
And the new embankments of the Erie Railroad
At Painted Post, Horse’s Head, Salamanca.
Come softOn the dusk and the babble;Little red gamblers,Handfuls that slept in the dust.Summers of rain,Winters of drift,Tell off the years;And they go backWho came soft-Back to the sod,To silence and dust;Gray gamblers,Handfuls again.
It is a child’s handful you are here,The breadth of a man’s finger,And this ivory loin clothSpeaks an interspersal in the day’s work,The carver’s prayer and whimAnd Christ-love.
I sangO reckless free-heartedfree-throated rythms,Even the moon remembers themAnd is kind to me.
And the stars follow the sunsets. One gold star. A shower of blue stars. Blurs of white and gray stars. Vast marching processions of stars arching over you flat lands where frogs sob this April night.‘Lots for Sale-Easy Terms’ run letters painted on a board-and the stars wheel onward, the frogs sob this April night.
Clots of red mess my hairAnd the tiger, the buffalo, know how.I was a killer.Yes, I am a killer.I come from killing.I go to more.I drive red joy ahead of me from killing.Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juicesof my inside bones:The child cries for a suck mother and I cry…
a gipsy man and woman,and a monkey in red flannelall stopping in front of a big housewith a sign “For Rent” on the doorand the blinds hanging looseand nobody home.I never saw this.I hope to God I never will.Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.Hoodle-de -harr-de-hum.Nobody home? Everybody home.Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo.Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night: Eddie Jones died of whooping cough:…
