Nothing else in this song — only your face.
Nothing else here — only your drinking, night-gray eyes.
The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel.
I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings.
It is not your eyes, your face, I remember.
It is not your dancing, race-horse feet.
It is something else I remember you for on the pier mornings.
Your hands are sweeter than nut-brown bread when you touch me.
Your shoulder brushes my arm — a south-west wind crosses the pier.
I forget your hands and your shoulder and I say again :
Nothing else in this song — only your face.
Nothing else here — only your drinking, night-gray eyes.
The high horses of the sea broke their white riders
On the walls that held and counted the hours
The wind lasted.
Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east
Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam
And the evening began.
The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their
Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls
For a wild night like this.
The south and the west looked on and the moon came
When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
And the singing slow.
Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
To tell the how of it.
I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
These are the tawny days : your face comes back.
The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden
early on the trellis.
The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes
of sunrise.
Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome.
Run on, yellow balls on the hills, and you tawny
pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange.
Tawny days: and your face again.
Count these reminiscences like money.
The Greeks had their picnics under another name.
The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors,
"What of it?"
The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too
Stuck their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to
their noses
And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh eggs
broken over a frying pan left by an uncle who
killed men with spears and short swords.
Count these reminiscences like money.
Drift, and drift on, white ships.
Sailing the free sky blue, sailing and changing and
sailing,
Oh, I remember in the blood of my dreams how they
sang before me.
A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.
" I KNEW a real man once," says Agatha in the splendor
of a shagbark hickory tree.
Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold
her in his arms? Did a man only look at her
and pass by?
Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance,
says, " I knew a real man once."
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 ?