When the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks
of direct and cross examinations, hot clashes of
lawyers and cool decisions of the judge,
There are points of high silence — twiddling of thumbs
is at an end — bailiffs near cuspidors take fresh chews
of tobacco and wait — and the clock has a chance for
its ticking to be heard.
A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds
himself ready if the word is " Guilty " to enter motion
for a new trial, speaking in a soft voice, speaking
in a voice slightly colored with bitter wrongs
mingled with monumental patience, speaking with
mythic Atlas shoulders of many preposterous, unjust
circumstances.
Have I told any man to be a liar for my sake?
Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the
poor in winter for the sake of daughters who nursed
brindle bull terriers and led with a leash their dogs
clothed in plaid wool jackets?
Have I given any man an earful too much of my talk —
or asked any man to take a snootful of booze on
my account?
Have I put wool in my own ears when men tried to tell
me what was good for me? Have I been a bum
listener ?
Have I taken dollars from the living and the unborn
while I made speeches on the retributions that
shadow the heels of the dishonest?
Have I done any good under cover? Or have I always
put it in the show windows and the newspapers ?
For a woman's face remembered as a spot of quick light
on the flat land of dark night,
For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go
on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among
the boots and guns.
The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row
of teeth that bite on the flanks of night, the horizon
sings of a new kill and a big kill.
The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a
memory, fixed with a woman's face — they fight on
and on, boots in the mud and heads in the gray
rain — for the women they hate and the women they
love — for the women they left behind, they fight on.
While the hum and the hurry
Of passing footfalls
Beat in my ear like the restless surf
Of a wind-blown sea,
A soul came to me
Out of the look on a face.
Eyes like a lake
Where a storm-wind roams
Caught me from under
The rim of a hat.
I thought of a midsea wreck and bruised fingers clinging to a broken state-room door.
In the white-walled room
Where the white bed waits
Stand banks of meaningless flowers;
In the rain-swept street
Are a ghost-like row of cabs;
And along the corridor-dusk
Phantasmal feet repass.
Through the warm, still air
The odour of ether hangs;
And on this slenderest thread
Of one thin pulse
Hangs and swings
The hope of life--
The life of her
I love!
Quietly I closed the door.
Then I said to my soul:
"I shall never come back,
Back to this haunted room
Where Sorrow and I have slept."
I turned from that hated door
And passed through the House of Life,
Through its ghostly rooms and glad
And its corridors dim with age.
Then lightly I crossed a threshold
Where the casements showed the sun
And I entered an unknown room,--
And my heart went cold,
For about me stood that Chamber of Pain
I had thought to see no more!
This is what my lover said,
" I kissed your hat because it touched your head,
I kissed your shiny shoes, I'll kiss you all,
I love your house, I'll kiss your wall.
I wish that I could kiss that burning coal
Because it's in your fire, dear Soul! "
My little Son is my fond lover —
It seems no time ago since he was born.
I know he will be quick and happy to discover
The world of other women, and leave me forlorn!
Sometimes I think that I'll be scarcely human
If I can brook his chosen woman!
As men whose bones are wind-blown dust, have sung,
Let me sing now!
I'll sing of gourds, and goads, of honey, and the plough.
I am a raw uneasy parvenu,
I am uncertain of my time.
How can I pour the liquor of new days
In the old pipes of Rhyme?
The soul shall be drowned in the flood
Of mounting blood.
Be strong at least
To resist Love,
Except at his feast.
Sometimes it seems as though some puppet player
A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin,
Sits just beyond the border of our seeing,
Twitching the strings with slow sardonic grin.
There is a tree, by day,
That, at night,
Has a shadow,
A hand huge and black,
With fingers long and black.
All through the dark,
Against the white man’s house,
In the little wind,
The black hand plucks and plucks
At the bricks.
The bricks are the color of blood and very small.
Is it a black hand,
Or is it a shadow?
See ! He trails his toes
Through the long streaks of moonlight.
And the nails of his fingers glitter :
They claw and flash among the tree-tops.
His lips suck at my open window.
And his breath creeps about my body
And lies in pools under my knees.
I can see his mouth sway and wobble.
Sticking itself against the window-jambs.
But the moonlight is bright on the floor,
Without a shadow.
Hark ! A hare is strangling in the forest.
And the wind tears a shutter from the wall.