Oh little friend of half my days,
My little friend, who followed me
Along those crooked sullen ways
That only you had eyes to see.
You felt the same. You understood
You too, defensive and morose,
Encloaked your secret puppyhood--
Your secret heart--and hid them close.
For I alone have seen you serve,
Disciple of those early springs,
With ears awry and tail a-curve
You lost yourself in puppy things.
And you saw me. You bore in mind
The clean and sunny things I felt
When, throwing hate along the wind,
I flashed the lantern at my belt.
Swift across the night a little cry,
Against the cold white night a stain of red,
The moon dips down,
The dull winds blow.
My unborn son is dead.
Soft thy feet on the floor of the desert,
In the night —
Running —
Desperate and breathless.
Blood on the sands of the desert drying,
Drops of blood on the hot sand drying,
Blood from the veins of my beloved
Pouring out on the desert.
Soft in the night the rustle of corn leaves
Young men into the cities pouring,
Blood from the veins of young men pouring into the cities.
I SAID, "I will take my life
And throw it away;
I who was fire and song
Will turn to clay."
"I will lie no more in the night
With shaken breath,
I will toss my heart in the air
To be caught by Death."
But out of the night I heard,
Like the inland sound of the sea,
The hushed and terrible sob
Of all humanity.
Then I said, "Oh who am I
To scorn God to his face?
I will bow my head and stay
And suffer with my race."
Now while my lips are living
Their words must stay unsaid,
And will my soul remember
To speak when I am dead?
Yet if my soul remembered
You would not heed it, dear,
For now you must not listen,
And then you could not hear.
Oh, there are eyes that he can see,
And hands to make his hands rejoice,
But to my lover I must be
Only a voice.
Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,
And lips whereon his lips can lie,
But I must be till I am dead
Only a cry.
I CAME from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.
I came at last to the ocean
And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
"Be kind and take me back!"
But the thirsty tide ran inland,
And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
Am bitter as the sea.
I FEEL the Spring far off, far off,
The faint far scent of bud and leaf--
Oh how can Spring take heart to come
To a world in grief,
Deep grief?
The sun turns north, the days grow long,
Later the evening star grows bright--
How can the daylight linger on
For men to fight,
Still fight?
The grass is waking in the ground,
Soon it will rise and blow in waves--
How can it have the heart to sway
Over the graves,
New graves?
Under the boughs where lovers walked
The moon is a charring ember
Dying into the dark;
Off in the crouching mountains
Coyotes bark.
The stars are heavy in heaven,
Too great for the sky to hold--
What if they fell and shattered
The earth with gold?
No lights are over the mesa,
The wind is hard and wild,
I stand at the darkened window
And cry like a child.
Beneath my chamber window
Pierrot was singing, singing;
I heard his lute the whole night thru
Until the east was red.
Alas, alas, Pierrot,
I had no rose for flinging
Save one that drank my tears for dew
Before its leaves were dead.
I found it in the darkness,
I kissed it once and threw it,
The petals scattered over him,
His song was turned to joy;
And he will never know--
Alas, the one who knew it!--
The rose was plucked when dusk was dim
Beside a laughing boy.
I CAME to the crowded Inn of Earth,
And called for a cup of wine,
But the Host went by with averted eye
From a thirst as keen as mine.
Then I sat down with weariness
And asked a bit of bread,
But the Host went by with averted eye
And never a word he said.
While always from the outer night
The waiting souls came in
With stifled cries of sharp surprise
At all the light and din.
"Then give me a bed to sleep," I said,
"For midnight comes apace"--
But the Host went by with averted eye
And I never saw his face.
When the horns wear thin
And the noise, like a garment outworn,
Falls from the night,
The tattered and shivering night,
That thinks she is gay;
When the patient silence comes back,
And retires,
And returns,
Rebuffed by a ribald song,
Wounded by vehement cries,
Fleeing again to the stars--
Ashamed of her sister the night;
Oh, then they steal home,
The blinded, the pitiful ones
With their gew-gaws still in their hands,
Reeling with odorous breath