Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Wallace Gould

After Tschaikowsky

HURRY. The hardened face of the hardened year is drawn and is set by a fearful thought. The haze deceives. It is merciful.

Hurry. The days shall come when the year will weep obliviously.

The days of oblivious weeping will come too soon, and in those days the year shall not hear you above its sobs.

Hurry. The days are approaching when nothing but memories shall be left. The passive days succeeding the days of weeping, will shimmer with ghosts of all that shall be dead, and the ghosts will wander about by the light of the helpless sun.

When the long floods shall have burst,

it will be too late to speak.

When the passing storms shall have left the meadows torn and sallow,

it will be too late for words.

Hurry. The sun is already dim in the woes that are weaving in the west. It is making its last appeal.

I wait. Except the rustle of laboring squirrels, there is no sound in the ragged woods. The birds have gone, forgetting, singing into another warmth.

Belated crows are flapping away through the yellow hush.

The mountains are confused by the weaving woes of the skies.

As the days go by, I watch the tawn creep over the hillsides.

The leaves are scrawny. Like the skins of old women, the leaves are spotted with brown. The veins of the leaves are coarse.

It is all over with all the flowers.

They grew where they would and they are dying.

They were placed by hands and they are dying.

The clover has long persisted, but now it succumbs. It is withered. It adds to the tawn of the landscape.

I wait. But I do not care.

Some are whispering of changes.

Some are turning away their faces.

Some are thinking of other things.

Some are gathering what is left.

I wait. The pleading sunlight is calling together the hilltops.

It entreats them to be compassionate.

At times I think you will soon return.

The pure blue darkness purges the past. Every night the past is absolved at the priestly approach of the pure white moon.

At times I think you will never return.

I wait. But I do not care.