From death of star to new star’s birth,
This ache of limb, this throb of head,
This sweaty shop, this smell of earth,
For this we pray, “Give daily bread.”
Then tenuous with dreams the night,
The feel of soft brown hands in mine,
Strength from your lips for one more fight:
Bread’s not so dry when dipped in wine.
O lonely heart so timid of approach,
Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips
To the faint touch of tender finger tips:
What is your word? What question would you broach?
Your lustrous-warm eyes are too sadly kind
To mask the meaning of your dreamy tale,
Your guarded life too exquisitely frail
Against the daggers of my warring mind.
There is no part of the unyielding earth,
Even bare rocks where the eagles build their nest,
Will give us undisturbed and friendly rest.
No dewfall softens this vast belt of dearth.
But in the socket-chiseled teeth of strife,
That gleam in serried files in all the lands,
We may join hungry, understanding hands,
And drink our share of ardent love and life.
For the second time in a year this lady with the white
hands is brought to the west room second floor
of a famous sanatorium.
Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa
town and the lady has often read papers on Victorian
poets before the local literary club.
Yesterday she washed her hands forty seven times
during her waking hours and in her sleep moaned
restlessly attempting to clean imaginary soiled
spots off her hands.
Now the head physician touches his chin with a
crooked forefinger.
Now that a crimson rambler
begins to crawl over the house
of our two lives —
Now that a red curve
winds across the shingles —
Now that hands
washed in early sunrises
climb and spill scarlet
on a white lattice weave —
Now that a loop of blood
is written on our roof
and reaching around a chimney —
How are the two lives of this house
to keep strong hands and strong hearts?
The policeman buys shoes slow and careful ; the teamster
buys gloves slow and careful; they take care of
their feet and hands; they live on their feet and
hands.
The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one
speaks to him; the city is asleep when he is on the
job; he puts a bottle on six hundred porches and
calls it a day's work; he climbs two hundred
wooden stairways ; two horses are company for him ;
he never argues.
The rolling-mill men and the sheet-steel men are brothers
of cinders; they empty cinders out of their shoes
after the day's work; they ask their wives to fix
burnt holes in the knees of their trousers; their
necks and ears are covered with a smut; they scour
The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose :
For we meet by one or the other.
Ah, you are cruel;
You ask too much;
Offered a hand, a finger-tip,
You must have a soul to clutch.
--I weep--
Not as the young do noisily,
Not as the aged rustily,
But quietly.
Drop by drop the great tears
Splash upon my hands,
And save you saw them shine,
You would not know
I wept.
I love your hands:
They are big hands, firm hands, gentle hands;
Hair grows on the back near the wrist ...
I have seen the nails broken and stained
From hard work.
And yet, when you touch me,
I grow small ....... and quiet ........
....... And happy ..........
If I might only grow small enough
To curl up into the hollow of your palm,
Your left palm,
Curl up, lie close and cling,
So that I might know myself always there,
....... Even if you forgot.
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?
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.