1. SLOW SEASON

(a) The ravages of wind and rain are healed. The haze of harvest drifts along the field Until clear eyes put on the look of sleep.

(b) The garden spider weaves a silken pear To keep inclement weather from its young. Straight from the oak, the gossamer is hung. At dusk our slow breath thickens on the air.

(c) Lost hues of birds the trees take as their own. Long since, bronze wheat was gathered into sheaves. The walker trudges ankle-deep in leaves; The feather of the milkweed flutters down.

(d) The shoots of spring have mellowed with the year. Buds, long unsealed, obscure the narrow lane. The blood slows trance-like in the altered vein; Our vernal wisdom moves through ripe to sere.

2. MID-COUNTRY BLOW

(a) All night and all day the wind roared in the trees Until I could think there were waves rolling high as my bedroom floor; When I stood at the window, an elm bough swept to my knees; The blue spruce lashed like a surf at the door.

(b) The second dawn I could not have believed; The oak stood with each stiff as a bell. When I looked at the altered scene, my eye was undeceived, But my ear still kept the sound of the sea like a shell.

4. THE SOUL (Continued)

(b) When she [dropped] She dropped as if shot. "I've only one wing," she said, "The other's gone dead."

(d) When I raged, when I wailed, And my reason failed, That delicate thing Grew back a new wing,

(e) And danced, at high noon, On a hot, dusty stone, In the still point of light Of my last midnight.

5. THE TREE, THE BIRD

(a) Uprose, uprose, the stony fields uprose, And every snail dipped toward me its pure horn. The sweet light met me as I walked toward A small voice calling from a drifting cloud. I was a finger pointing at the moon, At ease with joy, a self-enchanted man. Yet when I sighed, I stood outside my life, A leaf unaltered by the midnight scene, Part of a tree still dark, still, deathly still, Riding the air, a willow with its kind, Bearing its life and more, a double sound, Kin to the wind, and the bleak whistling rain.

(b) The willow with its bird grew loud, grew louder still— I could not bear its song, that altering With every shift of air, those beating wings, The lonely buzz behind my midnight eyes;— How deep the mother-root of that still cry!

(c) The present falls, the present falls away; How pure the motions of the rising day, The white sea widening on a farther shore. The bird, the beating bird, extending wings— Thus I endure this last pure stretch of joy, The dire dimension of a final thing.

6. A WAITED

(a) I waited for the wind to move the dust; But no wind came. I seemed to eat the air. The meadow insects made a level noise. I rose, a heavy bulk, above the field.

(b) It was as if I tried to walk in hay, Deep in the mow, and each step deeper down, Or floated on the surface of a pond, The slow long ripples winking in my eyes. I saw all things through water, magnified, And shimmering. The sun burned through a haze, And I became all that I looked upon. I dazzled in the dazzle of a stone.

(c) I heard a jackass brayed. A lizard leaped my foot. Slowly I came back to the rusty road; And when I walked, my feet seemed deep in sand. I moved like some heat-weary animal. I went, not looking back. I was afraid.

(d) The way grew steeper between stony walls, Then lost itself down through a rocky gorge. A donkey path led to a small plateau, Below, the bright sea was, the level waves, And all the winds came toward me. I was glad.

7. THE DECISION

1(a) What shakes the eye but the invisible? Running from God is the longest race of all. A bird kept haunting me when I was young— The phoebe's slow retreating from its song, Nor could I put that sound out of my mind, The sleepy sound of leaves in a light wind.

2(a) Rising or falling's all one discipline! The line of my horizon's growing thin! Which is the way? I cry to the dread black, The shifting shade, the cinders at my back. Which is the way? I ask, and turn to go, As a man turns to face on-coming snow.

(Continuing from previous page) Against the faultiness of things And learned that compromises wait Behind each hardly opened gate, When I can look life in the eyes, Grown calm and very coldly wise, Life will have given me the truth, And taken in exchange—my youth.

5. IN A BURYING GROUND

(a) This is the spot where I will lie When life has had enough of me, These are the grasses that will flow Above me like a living sea.

(b) These gay old lilies will not shrink To draw their life from death of mine, And I will give my body's fire To make blue flowers on this vine.

(c) "O Soul," I said, "have you no tears? Was not the body dear to you?" I heard my soul say carelessly, "The myrtle flowers will grow more blue."

6. WOOD SONG

(a) I heard a wood thrush in the dusk Twirl three notes and make a star— My heart that walked with bitterness Came back from very far.

(b) Three shining notes were all he had, And yet they made a starry call— I caught life back against my breast And kissed it, scars and all.

7. REFUGE

(a) From my spirit's gray defeat, From my pulse's flagging beat, From my hopes that turned to sand Sifting through my close-clenched hand, From my own fault's slavery, If I can sing, I still am free.

(b) For with my singing I can make A refuge for my spirit's sake, A house of shining words, to be My fragile immortality.

1. DEW

(a) As dew leaves the cobweb lightly Threaded with stars, Scattering jewels on the fence And the pasture bars; As dawn leaves the dry grass bright And the tangled weeds Bearing a rainbow gem On each of their seeds; So has your love, my lover, Fresh as the dawn, Made me a shining road To travel on, Set every common sight Of tree or stone Delicately alight For me alone.

2. TO-NIGHT

(a) The moon is a curving flower of gold, The sky is still and blue; The moon was made for the sky to hold, And I for you.

(b) The moon is a flower without a stem, The sky is luminous; Eternity was made for them, To-night for us.

3. BECAUSE

(a) Oh, because you never tried To bow my will or break my pride, And nothing of the cave-man made You want to keep me half afraid, Nor even with a conquering air You thought to draw me unaware— Take me, for I love you more Than I ever loved before.

(b) And since the body's maidenhood Alone were neither rare nor good Unless with it gave to you A spirit still untrammeled, too, Take my dreams and take my mind That were masterless as wind; And "Master!" I shall say to you Since you never asked me to.

7. ORDERS FOR THE DAY

(a) Hands, hard and veined all over, Perform your duties well, For carelessness can smother Decision's smoking fuse; The flesh-bound sighing lover, His clumsy fingers bruise The spirit's tender cover.

(b) Feet, bear the thin bones over The stile of innocence, Skirt hatred's raging river, The dangerous flooded plain Where snake and vulture hover, And, stalking like a crane, Cross marshland into clover.

(c) Eyes, staring past another Whose boggy-haunted look Reveals a foolish mother, Those barriers circumvent And charity discover Among the virulent Breath, turn the old blood over.

8. PRAYER

(a) If I must of my senses lose, I pray Thee, Lord, that I may choose Which of the five I shall retain Before oblivion clouds the brain. My tongue is generations dead, My nose defiles a comely head; For hearkening to carnal evils My ears have been the very devil's

(Continued) And some have held the eye to be The instrument of lechery. More furtive than the hand in love And vicious venery—not so! To rape is gentle, never more Violent than a metaphor. In truth, the eye's the abettor of The holiest platonic love: Lip, breast and thigh cannot possess So singular a blessedness. Therefore, O Lord, let me preserve The sense that does so fitly serve, Take tongue and ear—all else I have— Let light attend me to the grave!

9. THE SIGNALS

(a) Often I meet, on walking from a door, A flash of objects never seen before. (b) As known particulars come wheeling by, They dart across a corner of the eye. (c) They flicker faster than a blue-tailed swift, Or when dark follows dark in lightning rift. (d) They slip between the fingers of my sight: I cannot put my glance upon them tight. (e) Sometimes the floor is privileged to guess The things the eye or hand cannot possess.

10. THE ADAMANT

(a) Thought does not crush to stone. The great sledge drops in vain. Truth never is undone; Its shafts remain.

11. THE REMINDER

(a) I remember the coming—tender, geranium-border That blossomed in sun; a black cat licking its paws; The bronze wheat arranged in strict and formal order; And the precision that for you was ultimate law.

(b) The handkerchief tucked in the left-hand pocket Of a man-tailored blouse, the bit of dropping lace, You with the watch in an old-fashioned locket And pulled the green shade against intense sun.

(c) Now in the misery of bed-sitting room confusion, With no hint of your presence in a jungle of masculine toys, In the dirt and disorder I cherish one scrap of illusion— A cheap clock ticking in ghostly cicada voice.

12. THE GENTLE

(a) Delicate the syllables that release the repression; Hysteria masks in the studied inane. Horace the hiker on a dubious mission Pretends his leaf bunion gives exquisite pain. (b) The son of misfortune long, long has been waiting The visit of vision, luck years overdue, His laughter reduced the sing-song of prating, A hitch by the EXIT his room with a view. (c) O cursed be the work that gets honorable mention! Though home is not happy, where else can he go? Necessity starves on the scrap of invention. The sleep was not deep, but the waking is slow.

13. [SONGS]

(a) I sang my songs for the rest, For you I am still; The tree of my song is bare On its shining hill.

(b) For you come like a lordly wind, And the leaves were whirled Far as forgotten things Past the rims of the world.

15. RICHES

(a) I have no riches but my thoughts, Yet these are wealth enough for me; My thoughts of you are golden coins Stamped in the mint of memory;

(b) And I must spend them all in song, For thoughts, as well as gold, must be Left on the hither side of death To gain their immortality.

16. HOUSE OF DREAMS

(a) You took my empty dreams And filled them every one With tenderness and nobleness, Spirit and the sun.

(b) The old empty dreams Where my thoughts would throng Were far too full of happiness To ever hold a song.

(c) Oh, the empty dreams were dim And the empty dreams were wide, There were sweet and shadowy houses Where my thoughts could hide.

(d) But you took my dreams away And you made them all come true— My thoughts have no place now to play, And nothing now to do.

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