Strong rocks hold up the riksdag bridge . . . always
strong river waters shoving their shoulders against
them . . .
In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking
to each other about more potatoes and bread for
the Swedish people to eat this winter.
In a boat among calm waters next to the running
waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning
at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down
... he waits ... the waters run ... the
riksdag talks ... he lifts the net and lets it
down . . .
Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over
the sky saying yes-yes.
Every afternoon at four o'clock fifteen apple women
who have sold their apples in Christiania meet
The sea rocks have a green moss.
The pine rocks have red berries.
I have memories of you.
Speak to me of how you miss me.
Tell me the hours go long and slow.
Speak to me of the drag on your heart,
The iron drag of the long days.
I know hours empty as a beggar's tin cup on a rainy day, empty as a soldier's sleeve with an arm lost.
Speak to me . . .
There was a wild pigeon came often to Hinkley's
timber.
Gray wings that wrote their loops and triangles on
the walnuts and the hazel.
There was a wild pigeon.
There was a summer came year by year to Hinkley's
timber.
Rainy months and sunny and pigeons calling and one
pigeon best of all who came.
There was a summer.
It is so long ago I saw this wild pigeon and listened.
It is so long ago I heard the summer song of the
pigeon who told me why night comes, why death
and stars come, why the whippoorwill remembers
three notes only and always.
It is so long ago; it is like now and today; the gray
The flutter of blue pigeon's wings
Under a river bridge
Hunting a clean dry arch,
A corner for a sleep —
This flutters here in a woman's hand.
A singing sleep cry,
A drunken poignant two lines of song,
Somebody looking clean into yesterday
And remembering, or looking clean into
To-morrow, and reading, —
This sings here as a woman's sleep cry sings.
Pigeon friend of mine,
Fly on, sing on.
The sunset swept
To the valley's west, you remember.
The frost was on.
A star burnt blue.
We were warm, you remember,
And counted the rings on a moon.
The sunset swept
To the valley's west
And was gone in a big dark door of stars.
Somewhere you and I remember we came.
Stairways from the sea and our heads dripping.
Ladders of dust and mud and our hair snarled.
Rags of drenching mist and our hands clawing, climbing.
You and I that snickered in the crotches and corners,
in the gab of our first talking.
Red dabs of dawn summer mornings and the rain
sliding off our shoulders summer afternoons.
Was it you and I yelled songs and songs in the nights
of big yellow moons ?
The sea is large.
The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs
an early sunset and a last morning star over the
oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men.
Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land . . . five
white dice rolled from a tube.
Not so long ago ... the sea was large . . .
And to-day the sea has lost nothing ... it keeps all.
I am a loon about the sea.
I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I
forget so many sea songs and sea cries.
I am a loon about the sea.
So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper
shack trembling in a sand storm.
The sea knows more about them than they know themselves.
They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go.
The pawn-shop man knows hunger.
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,
Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters,
Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles.
Watches of old gold and silver,
Old coins worn with finger-marks.
They tell stories.
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.
Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city's afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.
Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love,
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker.
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves.
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories.
And asks you
Guns on the battle lines have pounded now a year between
Brussels and Paris.
And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on
the great arches and naves and little whimsical corners
of the Churches of Northern France — Brr-rr!
I'm glad you're a dead man, William Morris, I'm glad
you're down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory
instead of a living man — I'm glad you're gone.
You never lied to us, William Morris, you loved the
shape of those stones piled and carved for you to
dream over and wonder because workmen got joy
of life into them.
Workmen in aprons singing while they hammered, and
praying, and putting their songs and prayers into
the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstones