Have the shapes and the shadows been swallowed up In your recesses without depth, You drinkers of life, Twinkling maliciously Your golden yellow eyes, Mirrors winking in the sunshine?

PENELOPE

Gray old spinners, Weaving with the crafty fibers of your souls; Nothing was given you but those impalpable threads.

Yet you have bound the race, Stranglers, With your silver spun mysteries.

All the cruel, All the mad, The foolish, And the beautiful, too: It all belongs to you Since the first time That you began to drop the filmy threads When the world was half asleep.

Sometimes you are young girls; Sometimes there are roses in your hair.

But I know you-- Sitting back there in the hollow shadows of your wombs.

The crafty fibers of your souls Are woven in and out With the fibers of life.

POOR PEOPLE'S DREAMS

Sometimes women with eyes like wet green berries Glide across the slick mirror of their own smiles And vanish through lengths of gold and marble drawing rooms.

The marble smiles, As sensuous as snow; Hips of the Graces;

Shoulders of Clytie; b.r.e.a.s.t.s frozen as foam, Frozen as camelia bloom; Mounds of marble flesh, Inexplicable wonder of white....

I dream about statuesque beauties Who look from the shadows of opera boxes; Or elegant ladies in novels of eighteen thirty, At the hunt ball...

Reflections in a polish floor, A portrait by Renoir, A Degas dancing girl, English country houses, An autumn afternoon in the Bois, Something I have read of...

In sleep one vision retreating through another, Like mirrors being doors to other mirrors, Satin, and lace, and white shoulders, And elegant ladies, Dancing, dancing.

FOR WIVES AND MISTRESSES

Death, Being a woman, Being pa.s.sive like all final things, Being a mother, Waits.

Shining faces Gray and melt into her flesh.

Death envies those asleep in her, Little children who have come back, Fiery faces, Bright for a moment in the darkness, Extinguished softly in her womb.

PORTRAITS

PORTRAIT OF RICH OLD LADY

Old lady talks, Spins from her lips Warp and woof Of teapots, tables, napery, Sanitary toilets, Old bedsteads, pictures on walls, And fine lace, Spins a coc.o.o.n of this secondary life.

Warm and snug is old lady's belly.

Old lady makes Venus Aphrodite Parvenue.

Old lady Arranges places for courtesans In warm outbuildings on back streets.

n.i.g.g.e.r

n.i.g.g.e.r with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips; n.i.g.g.e.r with loose red tongue; Flat browed n.i.g.g.e.r, Your skull peaked at the zenith, The stretched glistening skin Covered with tight coiled springs of hair: I am up here cold.

I am white man.

You are still warm and sweet With the darkness you were born in.

THE MAIDEN MOTHER

He has a squat body, Glowering brows, And bulging eyes.

l.u.s.tful contemplation of the meat pie Is written all over his sweating face.

The thin woman with the meek voice, Who has carried him so long in her body And despairs of giving him birth, Watches over him in secret With bitter and resentful tenderness.

A PIOUS WOMAN

You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting And smell candle wax and church incense.

When she dies she must be burned.

Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture And get soggy, As now she has a way of soaking up tears Never meant for her.

A VERY OLD ROSE JAR

She ran across the lawn after the cat And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow, A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover.

There was clashing of cymbals, And the flash of nereids' arms in autumn leaves.

A sharp high note died out like an ascending light.

Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid's lips-- Something of Pierrot chasing after love, A bacchante dying in her sleep, A shadow, And a gray cat.

THE NIXIE

He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks, His eyes brown stones, Worn smooth and soft, But uncrumbled.

He reaches forth covert child-claws To tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fish As they swim secretly above him.

He laughs-- The school splinters, panic stricken.

As we stare through the lucid gold water He gazes up at us from his shadowy retreat In combative safety.

There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a G.o.d, Water G.o.d, land G.o.d, G.o.d-in-the-sky.

We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie.

We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of his imagination.

OLD LADIES' VALHALLA

I am thinking of a little house, A pretty gray silk dress, And a little maid with a tidy white ap.r.o.n.

I am thinking of thin yellow angels Flying out of Sevres china tea cups, And a cool spirit with slanting green eyes, Who peers at me through the screen of plants I have placed in the corner between the hearth and the window.

I am thinking of the peace in one's own little home When the afternoon sunshine drips on the shiny floor, And the rugs are in order, And the roses in the bowl plunge into shadow Like pink nymphs into a pool, While there is no sound to be heard above the hum of the teakettle Save the benevolent buzzing of flies in the clean sash curtain.

PORTRAITS OF POETS

I

(For L. R.)

To rush over dark waters, A swift bird with cruel talons; To seize life-- Your life for her-- To hold it, Hold it struggling-- To kiss it.

II

Crystal self-containment, Giving out only what is sent.

Startled, The circ.u.mference retreats As it mounts higher, flamelike, Still and clear without radiance, Ascending without self-explanation.

A skeleton falls apart With the dignity of comprehensible pathos, The bones bleached by denial.