The Archer is wake! The Swan is flying! Gold against blue An Arrow is lying. There is hunting in heaven⁠— Sleep safe till to-morrow. The Bears are abroad! The Eagle is screaming! Gold against blue The...

Now that I have cooled to you Let there be gold of tarnished masonry, Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly. Give me hand for the dances, Ripples at Philae, in and out, And lips, my Le...

Lady of dusk wood fastnesses, Thou art my Lady. I have known the crisp splintering leaf-tread with thee on before, White, slender through green saplings; I have lain by thee on the grey forest floor B...

Elvira, by love’s grace There goeth before you A clear radiance Which maketh all vain souls Candles when noon is. The loud clangour of pretenders Melteth before you Like the roll of carts passing, But...

I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage! And when I had the bird in the cage, O fool that I am! Why, it broke my ...

Come with us and play! See, we have breasts as women! From your tents by the sea Come play with us: it is forbidden! Come with us and play! Lo, bare, straight legs in the water! By our boats we stay, ...

Yes, there is one thing braver than all flowers; Richer than clear gems; wider than the sky; Immortal and unchangeable; whose powers Transcend reason, love and sanity! And thou, beloved, art that godl...

Take that, damn you; and that! And here’s a rose To make it right again! God knows I’m sorry, Grace; but then, It’s not my fault if you will be a cat....

So art thou broken in upon me, Apollo, Through a splendour of purple garments⁠— Held by the yellow-haired Clymène To clothe the white of thy shoulders⁠— Bare from the day’s leaping of horses. This is ...

Mother of flames, The men that went ahunting Are asleep in the snow drifts. You have kept the fire burning! Crooked fingers that pull Fuel from among the wet leaves, Mother of flames You have kept the...

O Crimson salamander, Because of love’s whim sacred! Swim the winding flame Predestined to disman him And bring our fellow home to us again. Swim in with watery fang, Gnaw out and drown The fire roots...

It is useless, good woman, useless: the spark fails me. God! yet when the might of it all assails me It seems impossible that I cannot do it. Yet I cannot. They were right, and they all knew it Years ...

Red cradle of the night, In you The dusky child Sleeps fast till his might Shall be piled Sinew on sinew. Red cradle of the night, The dusky child Sleeping sits upright. Lo how The winds blow now! He ...

Miserly, is the best description of that poor fool Who holds Lancelot to have been a morose fellow, Dolefully brooding over the events which had naturally to follow The high time of his deed with Guin...

Still I bring flowers Although you fling them at my feet Until none stays That is not struck across with wounds: Flowers and flowers That you may break them utterly As you have always done. Sure happi...

Although you do your best to regard me With an air seeming offended, Never can you deny, when all’s ended, Calm eyes, that you did regard me. However much you’re at pains to Offend me, by which I may ...

Although you do your best to regard me With an air seeming offended, Never can you deny, when all’s ended, Calm eyes, that you did regard me. However much you’re at pains to Offend me, by which I may ...

Ah, little green eyes, Ah, little eyes of mine, Ah, Heaven be willing That you think of me somewise. The day of departure You came full of grieving And to see I was leaving The tears ’gan to start sur...

Poplars of the meadow, Fountains of Madrid, Now I am absent from you All are slandering me. Each of you is telling How evil my chance is The wind among the branches, The fountains in their welling To ...

The day draweth nearer, And morrow ends our meeting, Ere they take thee sleeping Be up⁠—away, my treasure! Soft, leave her breasts all unheeded, Far hence though the master still remaineth! For soon u...

The coroner’s merry little children Have such twinkling brown eyes. Their father is not of gay men And their mother jocular in no wise, Yet the coroner’s merry little children Laugh so easily. They la...

The corner of a great rain Steamy with the country Has fallen upon my garden. I go back and forth now And the little leaves follow me Talking of the great rain, Of branches broken, And the farmer’s cu...

On the day when youth is no more upon me I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top! I will sing then the song, long in the making⁠— When the stress of youth is put away from me. How can I ...

Where shall I find you, you my grotesque fellows that I seek everywhere to make up my band? None, not one with the earthy tastes I require; the burrowing pride that rises subtly as on a bush in May. W...

When I was younger it was plain to me I must make something of myself. Older now I walk back streets admiring the houses of the very poor: roof out of line with sides the yards cluttered with old chic...

Lift your flowers on bitter stems chickory! Lift them up out of the scorched ground! Bear no foliage but give yourself wholly to that! Strain under them you bitter stems that no beast eats⁠— and scorn...

Lift your flowers on bitter stems chickory! Lift them up out of the scorched ground! Bear no foliage but give yourself wholly to that! Strain under them you bitter stems that no beast eats⁠— and scorn...

I saw a child with daisies for weaving into the hair tear the stems with her teeth!...

There is a bird in the poplars! It is the sun! The leaves are little yellow fish swimming in the river. The bird skims above them, day is on his wings. Phoebus! It is he that is making the great gleam...

An oblique cloud of purple smoke across a milky silhouette of house sides and tiny trees⁠— a little village⁠— that ends in a saw edge of mist-covered trees on a sheet of grey sky. To the right, juttin...

My townspeople, beyond in the great world, are many with whom it were far more profitable for me to live than here with you. These whirr about me calling, calling! and for my own part I answer them, l...

You who are so mighty, crimson salamander, hear me once more. I lay among the half burned sticks at the edge of the fire. The fiend was creeping in. I felt the cold tips of fingers⁠— O crimson salaman...

Surely there, among the great docks, is peace, my mind; there with the ships moored in the river. Go out, timid child, and snuggle in among the great ships talking so quietly. Maybe you will even fall...

Then I raised my head and stared out over the blue February waste to the blue bank of hill with stars on it in strings and festoons⁠— but above that: one opaque stone of a cloud just on the hill left ...

Why do I write today? The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentities stirs me to it: colored women day workers⁠— old and experienced⁠— returning home at dusk in cast off clothing faces like old F...

The little sparrows hop ingenuously about the pavement quarreling with sharp voices over those things that interest them. But we who are wiser shut ourselves in on either hand and no one knows whether...

Daisies are broken petals are news of the day stems lift to the grass tops they catch on shoes part in the middle leave root and leaves secure. Black branches carry square leaves to the wood’s top. Th...

Winter has spent this snow out of envy, but spring is here! He sits at the breakfast table in his yellow hair and disdains even the sun walking outside in spangled slippers: He looks out: there is a g...

I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral⁠— for you have it over a troop of artists⁠— unless one should scour the world⁠— you have the ground sense necessary. See! the hearse leads. I b...

Well, mind, here we have our little son beside us: a little diversion before breakfast! Come, we’ll walk down the road till the bacon will be frying. We might better be idle? A poem might come of it? ...

Well, mind, here we have our little son beside us: a little diversion before breakfast! Come, we’ll walk down the road till the bacon will be frying. We might better be idle? A poem might come of it? ...

So. We’ll sit here now and throw pebbles into this water-trickle. Splash the water up! (Splash it up, Sonny!) Laugh! Hit it there deep under the grass. See it splash! Ah, mind, see it splash! It is al...

Oh then, a wreath! Let’s refresh something they used to write well of. Two fern plumes. Strip them to the mid-rib along one side. Bind the tips with a grass stem. Bend and intertwist the stalks at the...

It’s a strange courage you give me ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise toward which you lend no part!...

Fool, put your adventures into those things which break ships⁠— not female flesh. Let there pass over the mind the waters of four oceans, the airs of four skies! Return hollow-bellied, keen-eyed, hard...

You sullen pig of a man you force me into the mud with your stinking ash-cart! Brother! —if we were rich we’d stick our chests out and hold our heads high! It is dreams that have destroyed us. There i...

The old black-man showed me how he had been shocked in his youth by six women, dancing a set-dance, stark naked below the skirts raised round their breasts: bellies flung forward knees flying! —while ...

Oh, black Persian cat! Was not your life already cursed with offspring? We took you for rest to that old Yankee farm⁠—so lonely and with so many field mice in the long grass⁠— and you return to us in ...

Wanderer moon smiling a faintly ironical smile at this brilliant, dew-moistened summer morning,⁠— a detached sleepily indifferent smile, a wanderer’s smile,⁠— if I should buy a shirt your color and pu...

Sweep the house clean, hang fresh curtains in the windows put on a new dress and come with me! The elm is scattering its little loaves of sweet smells from a white sky! Who shall hear of us in the tim...

Artsybashev is a Russian. I am an American. Let us wonder, my townspeople, if Artsybashev tends his own fires as I do, gets himself cursed for the baby’s failure to thrive, loosens windows for the wom...

I know only the bare rocks of today. In these lies my brown sea-weed,⁠— green quartz veins bent through the wet shale; in these lie my pools left by the tide⁠— quiet, forgetting waves; on these stiffe...

A wind might blow a lotus petal over the pyramids⁠—but not this wind. Summer is a dried leaf. Leaves stir this way then that on the baked asphalt, the wheels of motor cars rush over them,⁠— gas smells...

A wind might blow a lotus petal over the pyramids⁠—but not this wind. Summer is a dried leaf. Leaves stir this way then that on the baked asphalt, the wheels of motor cars rush over them,⁠— gas smells...

This sarcophagus contained the body of Uresh-Nai, priestess to the goddess Mut, Mother of All⁠— Run your finger against this edge! —here went the chisel!⁠—and think of an arrogance endured six thousan...

The priestess has passed into her tomb. The stone has taken up her spirit! Granite over flesh: who will deny its advantages? Your death?⁠—water spilled upon the ground⁠— though water will mount again ...

“My flesh is turned to stone. I have endured my summer. The flurry of falling petals is ended. Lay the finger upon this granite. I was well desired and fully caressed by many lovers but my flesh withe...

But it is five o’clock. Come! Life is good⁠—enjoy it! A walk in the park while the day lasts. I will go with you. Look! this northern scenery is not the Nile, but⁠— these benches⁠—the yellow and purpl...

Limb to limb, mouth to mouth with the bleached grass silver mist lies upon the back yards among the outhouses. The dwarf trees pirouette awkwardly to it⁠— whirling round on one toe; the big tree smile...

Ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings⁠— beating color up into it at a far edge⁠—beating it, beating it with rising, triumphant ardor,⁠— stirring it into warm...

In brilliant gas light I turn the kitchen spigot and watch the water plash into the clean white sink. On the grooved drain-board to one side is a glass filled with parsley⁠— crisped green. Waiting for...

If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,⁠— if I in my north room danse naked, grotesquely before my m...

There’s my things drying in the corner: that blue skirt joined to the grey shirt⁠— I’m sick of trouble! Lift the covers if you want me and you’ll see the rest of my clothes⁠— though it would be cold l...

Now? Why⁠— whirl-pools of orange and purple flame feather twists of chrome on a green ground funneling down upon the steaming phallus-head of the mad sun himself⁠— blackened crimson! Now? Why⁠— it is ...

Hard, chilly colors: straw grey, frost grey the grey of frozen ground: and you, O sun, close above the horizon! It is I holds you⁠— half against the sky half against a black tree trunk icily resplende...

Have I seen her? Only through the window across the street. If I go meeting her on the corner some damned fool will go blabbing it to the old man and she’ll get hell. He’s a queer old bastard! Every t...

Witness, would you⁠— one more young man in the evening of his love hurrying to confession: steps down a gutter crosses a street goes in at a doorway opens for you⁠— like some great flower⁠— a room fil...

Oh strong ridged and deeply hollowed nose of mine! what will you not be smelling? What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose, always indiscriminate, always unashamed, and now it is the souring ...

Are you not weary, great gold cross shining in the wind⁠— are you not weary of seeing the stars turning over you and the sun going to his rest and you frozen with a great lie that leaves you rigid as ...

The murderer’s little daughter who is barely ten years old jerks her shoulders right and left so as to catch a glimpse of me without turning round. Her skinny little arms wrap themselves this way then...

Sweet child, little girl with well shaped legs you cannot touch the thoughts I put over and under and around you. This is fortunate for they would burn you to an ash otherwise. Your petals would be qu...

Love is like water or the air my townspeople; it cleanses, and dissipates evil gases. It is like poetry too and for the same reasons. Love is so precious my townspeople that if I were you I would have...

Old men who have studied every leg show in the city Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music⁠— polished or fleeced skulls that stand before the whole theater in silent attitudes of attention,⁠— ol...

If I say I have heard voices who will believe me? “None has dipped his hand in the black waters of the sky nor picked the yellow lilies that sway on their clear stems and no tree has waited long enoug...

In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds crowded erect with desire against the sky⁠— tense blue-grey twigs slenderly anchoring them down, drawing them in⁠— two blue-grey birds chasing a third strug...

Crooked, black tree on your little grey-black hillock, ridiculously raised one step toward the infinite summits of the night: even you the few grey stars draw upward into a vague melody of harsh threa...

Will it never be possible to separate you from your greyness? Must you be always sinking backward into your grey-brown landscapes⁠—and trees always in the distance, always against a grey sky? Must I b...

You who had the sense to choose me such a mother, you who had the indifference to create me, you who went to some pains to leave hands off me in the formative stages,⁠— (I thank you most for that perh...

Miserable little woman in a brown coat⁠— quit whining! My hand for you! We’ll skip down the tin cornices of Main Street flicking the dull roof-line with our toe-tips! Hop clear of the bank! A pin-whee...

I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them: the domes of the Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken against a smoky dawn⁠—the heart stir...

I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them: the domes of the Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken against a smoky dawn⁠—the heart stir...

Though the operation was postponed I saw the tall probationers in their tan uniforms hurrying to breakfast!...

—and from basement entrys neatly coiffed, middle aged gentlemen with orderly moustaches and well brushed coats...

—and the sun, dipping into the avenues streaking the tops of the irregular red houselets, and the gay shadows dropping and dropping....

—and a young horse with a green bed-quilt on his withers shaking his head: bared teeth and nozzle high in the air!...

—and a semicircle of dirt colored men about a fire bursting from an old ash can,...

—and the worn, blue car rails (like the sky!) gleaming among the cobbles!...

—and the rickety ferry-boat “Arden”! What an object to be called “Arden” among the great piers,⁠—on the ever new river! “Put me a Touchstone at the wheel, white gulls, and we’ll follow the ghost of th...

Exquisite brown waves⁠—long circlets of silver moving over you! enough with crumbling ice-crusts among you! The sky has come down to you, lighter than tiny bubbles, face to face with you! His spirit i...

The young doctor is dancing with happiness in the sparkling wind, alone at the prow of the ferry! He notices the curdy barnacles and broken ice crusts left at the slip’s base by the low tide and think...

Who knows the Palisades as I do knows the river breaks east from them above the city⁠—but they continue south —under the sky⁠—to bear a crest of little peering houses that brighten with dawn behind th...

Long yellow rushes bending above the white snow patches; purple and gold ribbon of the distant wood: what an angle you make with each other as you lie there in contemplation....

Work hard all your young days and they’ll find you too, some morning staring up under your chiffonier at its warped bass-wood bottom and your soul⁠— out! —among the little sparrows behind the shutter....

—and the flapping flags are at half mast for the dead admiral....

All this⁠— was for you, old woman. I wanted to write a poem that you would understand. For what good is it to me if you can’t understand it? But you got to try hard⁠— But⁠— Well, you know how the youn...

Rather notice, mon cher, that the moon is tilted above the point of the steeple than that its color is shell-pink. Rather observe that it is early morning than that the sky is smooth as a turquoise. R...

This plot of ground facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Richardson Wellcome who was born in England; married; lost her husband and with her five year old son s...

You exquisite chunk of mud Kathleen⁠—just like any other chunk of mud! —especially in April! Curl up round their shoes when they try to step on you, spoil the polish! I shall laugh till I am sick at t...

I lie here thinking of you:⁠— the stain of love is upon the world! Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branches that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky...

Even in the time when as yet I had no certain knowledge of her She sprang from the nest, a young crow, Whose first flight circled the forest. I know now how then she showed me Her mind, reaching out t...

Even in the time when as yet I had no certain knowledge of her She sprang from the nest, a young crow, Whose first flight circled the forest. I know now how then she showed me Her mind, reaching out t...

“Come!” cried my mind and by her might That was upon us we flew above the river Seeking her, grey gulls among the white⁠— In the air speaking as she had willed it: “I am given,” cried I, “now I know i...

It was then she struck⁠—from behind, In mid air, as with the edge of a great wing! And instantly down the mists of my eyes There came crowds walking⁠—men as visions With expressionless, animate faces;...

At the first peep of dawn she roused me! I rose trembling at the change which the night saw! For there, wretchedly brooding in a corner From which her old eyes glittered fiercely⁠— “Go!” she said, and...

Never, even in a dream, Have I winged so high nor so well As with her, she leading me by the hand, That first day on the Jersey mountains! And never shall I forget The trembling interest with which I ...

Eight days went by, eight days Comforted by no nights, until finally: “Would you behold yourself old, beloved?” I was pierced, yet I consented gladly For I knew it could not be otherwise. And she⁠—“Be...

And so it came to that last day When, she leading by the hand, we went out Early in the morning, I heavy of heart For I knew the novitiate was ended The ecstasy was over, the life begun. In my woolen ...

Here it is spring again and I still a young man! I am late at my singing. The sparrow with the black rain on his breast has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past: What is it that is dragging at my h...

Winter is long in this climate and spring⁠—a matter of a few days only⁠—a flower or two picked from mud or from among wet leaves or at best against treacherous bitterness of wind, and sky shining teas...

Winter is long in this climate and spring⁠—a matter of a few days only⁠—a flower or two picked from mud or from among wet leaves or at best against treacherous bitterness of wind, and sky shining teas...

March, you remind me of the pyramids, our pyramids⁠— stript of the polished stone that used to guard them! March, you are like Fra Angelico at Fiesole, painting on plaster! March, you are like a band ...

See! Ashur-ban-i-pal, the archer king, on horse-back, in blue and yellow enamel! with drawn bow⁠—facing lions standing on their hind legs, fangs bared! his shafts bristling in their necks! Sacred bull...

My second spring⁠— passed in a monastery with plaster walls⁠—in Fiesole on the hill above Florence. My second spring⁠—painted a virgin⁠—in a blue aureole sitting on a three-legged stool, arms crossed⁠...

But! now for the battle! Now for murder⁠—now for the real thing! My third springtime is approaching! Winds! lean, serious as a virgin, seeking, seeking the flowers of March. Seeking flowers nowhere to...

A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones. Berket in high spirits⁠—“Ha, oranges! Let’s have one!” And he made to snatch an orange from the v...

A middle-northern March, now as always⁠— gusts from the south broken against cold winds⁠— but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves⁠—not into April⁠—into a second March, the old skin o...

If you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together. But there the sun coming up out of the nothing beyond the lake was too low in the sky, there was too great a pushing against...

Go to sleep⁠—though of course you will not⁠— to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered an...

Men with picked voices chant the names of cities in a huge gallery: promises that pull through descending stairways to a deep rumbling. The rubbing feet of those coming to be carried quicken a grey pa...

Men with picked voices chant the names of cities in a huge gallery: promises that pull through descending stairways to a deep rumbling. The rubbing feet of those coming to be carried quicken a grey pa...

Two⁠—twofour⁠—twoeight! Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms. This way ma’m! —important not to take the wrong train! Lights from the concrete ceiling hang crooked but⁠— Poised horizontal on gli...

Tracks of rain and light linger in the spongy greens of a nature whose flickering mountain⁠—bulging nearer, ebbing back into the sun hollowing itself away to hold a lake⁠— or brown stream rising and f...

Vast and grey, the sky is a simulacrum to all but him whose days are vast and grey, and⁠— In the tall, dried grasses a goat stirs with nozzle searching the ground. —my head is in the air but who am I⁠...

It is a willow when summer is over, a willow by the river from which no leaf has fallen nor bitten by the sun turned orange or crimson. The leaves cling and grow paler, swing and grow paler over the s...

The half stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmi...

Again I reply to the triple winds running chromatic fifths of derision outside my window: Play louder. You will not succeed. I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you. An...

Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down⁠— the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes⁠— Hair...

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffetted by a dark wind⁠— But what? On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested, the snow...

All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees ...

They call me and I go It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and shake off the cold. Here is a great woman on her side in the...

It is cold. The white moon is up among her scattered stars⁠— like the bare thighs of the Police Sergeant’s wife⁠—among her five children⁠ ⁠… No answer. Pale shadows lie upon the frosted grass. One ans...

The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand ...

The hostess, in pink satin and blond hair⁠—dressed high⁠—shone beautifully in her white slippers against the great silent bald head of her little-eyed husband! Raising a glass of yellow Rhine wine in ...

I have had my dream⁠—like others⁠— and it has come to nothing, so that I remain now carelessly with feet planted on the ground and look up at the sky⁠— feeling my clothes about me, the weight of my bo...

A three-day-long rain from the east⁠— an interminable talking, talking of no consequence⁠—patter, patter, patter. Hand in hand little winds blow the thin streams aslant. Warm. Distance cut off. Seclus...

Poor old Abner, old white-haired nigger! I remember when you were so strong you hung yourself by a rope round the neck in Doc Hollister’s barn to prove you could beat the faker in the circus⁠—and it d...

Well, Lizzie Anderson! seventeen men⁠—and the baby hard to find a father for! What will the good Father in Heaven say to the local judge if he do not solve this problem? A little two pointed smile and...

I feel the caress of my own fingers on my own neck as I place my collar and think pityingly of the kind women I have known....

Some leaves hang late, some fall before the first frost⁠—so goes the tale of winter branches and old bones....

O my grey hairs! You are truly white as plum blossoms....

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am, by what devious means do you contrive to remain idle? Teach me, O master....

Leaves are greygreen, the glass broken, bright green....

By constantly tormenting them with reminders of the lice in their children’s hair, the School Physician first brought their hatred down on him, But by this familiarity they grew used to him, and so, a...

It was an icy day. We buried the cat, then took her box and set fire to it in the back yard. Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold....

You say love is this, love is that: Poplar tassels, willow tendrils the wind and the rain comb, tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip⁠— branches drifting apart. Hagh! Love has not even visited this country...

An old willow with hollow branches slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils and sang: Love is a young green willow shimmering at the bare wood’s edge....

The dayseye hugging the earth in August, ha! Spring is gone down in purple, weeds stand high in the corn, the rainbeaten furrow is clotted with sorrel and crabgrass, the branch is black under the heav...

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow! It is not a color. It is summer! It is the wind on a willow, the lap of waves, the shadow under a bush, a bird, a bluebird, three herons, a dead hawk rotting on a pole⁠...

Her body is not so white as anemony petals nor so smooth⁠—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of w...

One leaves his leaves at home being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse to peer from: I will have my way, yellow⁠—A mast with a lantern, ten fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller as they grow more⁠—Lia...

When I am alone I am happy. The air is cool. The sky is flecked and splashed and wound with color. The crimson phalloi of the sassafrass leaves hang crowded before me in shoals on the heavy branches. ...

In the flashes and black shadows of July the days, locked in each other’s arms, seem still so that squirrels and colored birds go about at ease over the branches and through the air. Where will a shou...

And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom⁠— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges ...

You know there is not much that I desire, a few crysanthemums half lying on the grass, yellow and brown and white, the talk of a few people, the trees, an expanse of dried leaves perhaps with ditches ...

I bought a dishmop⁠— having no daughter⁠— for they had twisted fine ribbons of shining copper about white twine and made a tousled head of it, fastened it upon a turned ash stick slender at the neck s...

My wife’s new pink slippers have gay pom-poms. There is not a spot or a stain on their satin toes or their sides. All night they lie together under her bed’s edge. Shivering I catch sight of them and ...

Upon the table in their bowl in violent disarray of yellow sprays, green spikes of leaves, red pointed petals and curled heads of blue and white among the litter of the forks and crumbs and plates the...

The May sun⁠—whom all things imitate⁠— that glues small leaves to the wooden trees shone from the sky through bluegauze clouds upon the ground. Under the leafy trees where the suburban streets lay cro...

The world begins again! Not wholly insufflated the blackbirds in the rain upon the dead topbranches of the living tree, stuck fast to the low clouds, notate the dawn. Their shrill cries sound announci...

My shoes as I lean unlacing them stand out upon flat worsted flowers under my feet. Nimbly the shadows of my fingers play unlacing over shoes and flowers....

In this world of as fine a pair of breasts as ever I saw the fountain in Madison Square spouts up of water a white tree that dies and lives as the rocking water in the basin turns from the stonerim ba...

I stopped the car to let the children down where the streets end in the sun at the marsh edge and the reeds begin and there are small houses facing the reeds and the blue mist in the distance with gra...

Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is whit...

Light hearted William twirled his November moustaches and, half dressed, looked from the bedroom window upon the spring weather. Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily leaning out to see up and down the street whe...

The birches are mad with green points the wood’s edge is burning with their green, burning, seething⁠—No, no, no. The birches are opening their leaves one by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold and...

School is over. It is too hot to walk at ease. At ease in light frocks they walk the streets to while the time away. They have grown tall. They hold pink flames in their right hands. In white from hea...

Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving with weight and urgency tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city....