Two hours before dawn your eyes open
and you tiptoe across cold linoleum
to check the thermometer outside: the thin,
red capillary’s clipped down to thirty-one.
After breakfast you glance at your father’s garden:
it’s going underground: carrots and a few potatoes
duck the frost. After last night’s freezing, leaves
of tomato vines curl and harden like arthritic hands.
From the kitchen in late afternoon, you watch
your father in his dying garden, oak boughs already
yellowing. They toss all around him in northerly gusts.
He patiently surveys the damage.
When you see his cotton shirt pulled taut across his back
as he stoops to pull a carrot, you try to steel yourself
against a quickened fear—perhaps
In Oklahoma and everywhere, despair
only makes life seem more unyielding.
A better tactic is to signify that life
is what it is: If you practice law, fly
a pirate-flag atop your office-building.
If you run a tattoo parlor, arrange for
your phone number to be 435-OUCH.
If you’ve owned a used-book store for
twenty years and are going out of
business, hire a temporary laborer,
and when he announces he’s fixin’
to get sick, tell him, “Use the bathroom.”
When sounds of his retching drive
browsers out, say, “Thanks for coming
in,” and resume the final inventory.
Wait for the man to return from his
I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content--
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent--
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.
I SAW her in a Broadway car,
The woman I might grow to be;
I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me.
Her hair was dull and drew no light
And yet its color was as mine;
Her eyes were strangely like my eyes
Tho' love had never made them shine.
Her body was a thing grown thin,
Hungry for love that never came;
Her soul was frozen in the dark
Unwarmed forever by love's flame.
I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me,--
His eyes were magic to defy
The woman I shall never be.
When I was one and twenty.
My ills were in their prime.
With aches and pains aplenty.
And gout before my time;
I had the pyorrhea,
And fever turned me blue—
They said that I would be a
Dead man at twenty-two.
Now I am two and twenty.
The aches and pains I thought
Were miseries aplenty,
Compared to these, are naught;
And even these are bubbles,
That scarce can worry me,
When I regard the troubles
I'll have at twenty-three.
Here in the shade of the tree
The hours go by
Silent and swift,
Lightly as birds fly.
Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,
Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.
Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,
And the day that he dreamed was gone
Is gone.
In those old days you were called beautiful,
But I have worn the beauty from your face;
The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek
With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes
Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on
Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.
Even your voice is altered when you speak,
Or is grown mute with old anxiety
For me.
Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns
Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight,
And then under the flame a glowing dome
Deepens slowly into blood-like light:--
So did you flame and in flame take delight,
So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.
But I still warm me and make there my home,
In the Cafe where I sit
The four old men who look like bards
Are playing at a game of cards ;
And they are enjoying it.
They are so eager at their play,
They shout together joyously,
They laugh with all their voices, they
Are like the little boys you see
Playing in your nursery.
But they'd be angry, they would rave
And swear and take it quite amiss,
If you walked across and gave
Each a penny and a kiss.
The driver rubbed at his nettly chin
With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black,
And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in,
And puffed out again and hung down slack :
One fang shone through his lop-sided smile,
In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.
And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked,
And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old,
And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked
It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold
Its big, skinny head up — then I stepped in,
And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.
God help the horse and the driver too,
And the people and beasts who have never a friend,
For the driver easily might have been you,
We grow more reconciled to Nature's ways,
And more responsive, with the passing years,
Finding in them a solace for the fears
Engendered by the thought of lessening days;
There comes a sense of comradeship that stays
The lonely questioning heart, and more endears
The deep and changeful beauty that appears
More deep and beautiful with every phase.
The brooding tenderness of earth and sky
Becomes more palpable and to our need,
As if some friendly consciousness were nigh —
Some mother element but dimly guessed,
That, gathering nearer, gently sought to lead
Weary and wandering children back to rest.
When I was young
I used to say:
Romance will come riding by
And I shall surely smile
And play with him awhile.
When I grew older
then I said:
Romance may come riding by
I wonder shall I smile
And play with him awhile?
But now—
Alas! I only say:
Romance ever will come by
And I shall never smile
He has been dead the while!
Say, is it dim and grim and all full of fear?
Not at all, not at all, my pretty dear.
Will there be no hope? Nothing to desire?
You shall be comforted sitting by the fire.
Will no one look at me? love me, if I please?
You shall doze happy with a little bread and cheese.
Even the springing grass--will it look pale?
You shall be gladdened with a little warm ale.
Shall I be trembling and querulous of tongue?
You shall be wiser than anybody young.
When the first thrushes sing, shall I not hear?
Not at all, not at all, my pretty dear.