|
FABLIAU OF FLORIDA BARQUE of phosphor | |
On the palmy beach, | |
|
Move outward into heaven, | |
Into the alabasters | |
And night blues. | 5 |
|
Foam and cloud are one. | |
Sultry moon-monsters | |
Are dissolving. | |
|
Fill your black hull | |
With white moonlight. | 10 |
|
There will never be an end | |
To this droning of the surf. | |
|
HOMUNCULUS ET LA BELLE ETOILE In the sea, Biscayne, there prinks | |
The young emerald, evening star | |
Good light for drunkards, poets, widows, | 15 |
And ladies soon to be married. | |
|
By this light the salty fishes | |
Arch in the sea like tree-branches, | |
Going in many directions | |
Up and down. | 20 |
|
This light conducts | |
The thoughts of drunkards, the feelings | |
Of widows and trembling ladies, | |
The movements of fishes. | |
|
How pleasant an existence it is | 25 |
That this emerald charms philosophers, | |
Until they become thoughtlessly willing | |
To bathe their hearts in later moonlight, | |
|
Knowing that they can bring back thought | |
In the night that is still to be silent, | 30 |
Reflecting this thing and that, | |
Before they sleep. | |
|
It is better that, as scholars, | |
They should think hard in the dark cuffs | |
Of voluminous cloaks, | 35 |
And shave their heads and bodies. | |
|
It might well be that their mistress | |
Is no gaunt fugitive phantom. | |
She might, after all, be a wanton, | |
Abundantly beautiful, eager. | 40 |
|
Fecund, | |
From whose being by starlight, on sea-coast, | |
The innermost good of their seeking | |
Might come in the simplest of speech. | |
|
It is a good light, then, for those | 45 |
That know the ultimate Plato, | |
Tranquillizing with this jewel | |
The torments of confusion. | |
|
EXPOSITION OF THE CONTENTS OF A CAB Victoria Clementina, negress, | |
Took seven white dogs | 50 |
To ride in a cab. | |
|
Bells of the dog chinked. | |
Harness of the horses shuffled | |
Like brazen shells. | |
|
Oh-hé-hé! Fragrant puppets | 55 |
By the green lake-pallors, | |
She too is flesh, | |
|
And a breech-cloth might wear, | |
Netted of topaz and ruby | |
And savage blooms; | 60 |
|
Thridding the squawkiest jungle | |
In a golden sedan, | |
White dogs at bay. | |
|
What breech-cloth might you wear | |
Except linen, embroidered | 65 |
By elderly women? | |
|
PLOUGHING ON SUNDAY The white cocks tail | |
Tosses in the wind. | |
The turkey-cocks tail | |
Glitters in the sun. | 70 |
|
Water in the fields. | |
The wind pours down. | |
The feathers flare | |
And bluster in the wind. | |
|
Remus, blow your horn! | 75 |
Im ploughing on Sunday, | |
Ploughing North America. | |
Blow your horn! | |
|
Tum-ti-tum, | |
Ti-tum-tum-tum! | 80 |
The turkey-cocks tail | |
Spreads to the sun. | |
|
The white cocks tail | |
Streams to the moon. | |
Water in the fields. | 85 |
The wind pours down. | |
|
BANAL SOJOURN Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps. | |
The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black. | |
The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air. | |
Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom. | 90 |
Pardie! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew, | |
Our old bane, green and bloated, serene, who cries, | |
That bliss of stars, that princox of evening heaven! reminding of seasons, | |
When radiance came running down, slim through the bareness. | |
And so it is one damns that green shade at the bottom of the land. | 95 |
For who can care at the wigs despoiling the Satan ear? | |
And who does not seek the sky unfuzzed, soaring to the princox? | |
One has a malady here, a malady. One feels a malady. | |
|
OF THE SURFACE OF THINGS
I In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; | |
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. | 100 |
|
II From my balcony, I survey the yellow air, | |
Reading where I have written, | |
The spring is like a belle undressing. | |
|
III The gold tree is blue. | |
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head. | 105 |
The moon is in the folds of the cloak. | |
|
THE CURTAINS IN THE HOUSE OF THE METAPHYSICIAN It comes about that the drifting of these curtains | |
Is full of long motions; as the ponderous | |
Deflations of distance or as clouds | |
Inseparable from their afternoons; | 110 |
Or the changing of light, the dropping | |
Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude | |
Of night, in which all motion | |
Is beyond us, as the firmament, | |
Up-rising and down-falling, bares | 115 |
The last largeness, bold to see. | |
|
THE PALTRY NUDE STARTS ON A SPRING VOYAGE But not on a shell, she starts, | |
Archaic, for the sea. | |
But on the first-found weed | |
She scuds the glitters, | 120 |
Noiselessly, like one more wave. | |
|
She too is discontent | |
And would have purple stuff upon her arms, | |
Tired of the salty harbors, | |
Eager for the brine and bellowing | 125 |
Of the high interiors of the sea. | |
|
The wind speeds her, | |
Blowing upon her hands | |
And watery back. | |
She touches the clouds, where she goes, | 130 |
In the circle of her traverse of the sea. | |
|
Yet this is meagre play | |
In the scurry and water-shine, | |
As her heels foam | |
Not as when the goldener nude | 135 |
Of a later day | |
Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp, | |
In an intenser calm, | |
Scullion of fate, | |
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly, | 140 |
Upon her irretrievable way. | |
|