| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Lake | | By Emanuel Carnevali |
| | From “Neuriade”
SITTING on a bench facing God’s beautiful lake, | |
| A poem to God beautiful. | |
| |
| Lake Michigan, | |
| The love a poor sick body held | |
| (Sifted by the sift of a hundred nights of pain), | 5 |
| A poor sick body gave it all to you. | |
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| Your absinthe | |
| Has intoxicated me. | |
| |
| Having risen out of your waters, | |
| In front of my great eyes now | 10 |
| There is a mad blur of sunlight, | |
| And the City spread out before me calling from a great curve: | |
| “Come, enter, conquistador!” | |
| |
| The line of your horizon, pure and long, hitched to the infinite both ways, | |
| Where the mist lies like Peace. | 15 |
| |
| Swimming, I flirted with Death; | |
| Saw death running over the shadow-laced ripples; | |
| And turned around, as you threw water in my eyes, | |
| And laughed at Death, as Death’s brother, the devil, would. | |
| You slammed open the doors of the sky, | 20 |
| And there stood the tremendous sun. | |
| |
| Lake, gilded in the morning, | |
| I have come out of you, | |
| A fresh-water Neptune; | |
| And the water rang little bells | 25 |
| Trickling down | |
| Along my flesh. | |
| Lake, garden of the colors, | |
| Sweet-breathing mouth of Chicago, | |
| Words die in the fingers of a sick man, | 30 |
| As children dying on a poor father. | |
| Take my promise, lake. | | | | |
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