| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Wild Duck | | By Lola Ridge |
| | I THAT was a great night we spied upon, | |
| See-sawing home, | |
| Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars, | |
| Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze … | |
| Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river … | 5 |
| Lights dwindling to shining slits | |
| In the wet asphalt … | |
| Purring light … red and green and golden-whiskered, | |
| Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud. | |
| |
| But you did not know, | 10 |
| As the trains made golden augurs | |
| Boring in the darkness, | |
| How my heart kept racing out along the rails. | |
| As a spider runs along a thread | |
| And hauls him in again | 15 |
| To some drawing point. | |
| You did not know | |
| How wild ducks’ wings | |
| Itch at dawn … | |
| How at dawn the necks of wild ducks | 20 |
| Arch to the sun, | |
| And how sweet in their gullets | |
| Trickles new-mown air. | |
| |
II As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird | |
| That has swiftly flown across it, | 25 |
| Yet trembles with the beating of its wings … | |
| So my soul, emptied of the known you … utterly … | |
| Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song | |
| you might have been … | |
| |
| But ’twas a great night— | 30 |
| With never a spoiling look over the shoulder, | |
| Curved to the crook of the wind. | |
| And a great word we threw | |
| For memory to play knuckles with … | |
| A word the waters of the world have washed, | 35 |
| Leaving it stark and without smell … | |
| A word that rattles well in emptiness: | |
| Good-by. | | | | |
|
|
