I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
If I saw a soul that was strong
I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
The shelters of friendship knew my cunning
For where I could steal a friend I did so.
And wherever I could enlarge my power
By undermining ambition, I did so,
Thus to make smooth my own.
And to triumph over other souls,
Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
Was with me a delight,
The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,
With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
I lost my patronage in Spoon River
From trying to put my mind in the camera
To catch the soul of the person.
The very best picture I ever took
Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.
He sat upright and had me pause
Till he got his cross-eye straight.
Then when he was ready he said “all right.”
And I yelled “overruled” and his eye turned up.
And I caught him just as he used to look
When saying “I except.”
I CLOSED my hands upon a moth
And when I drew my palms apart,
Instead of dusty, broken wings,
I found a bleeding human heart.
I crushed my foot upon a worm
That had my garden for its goal,
But when I drew my foot aside
I found a dying human soul.
Gently descending dark--
Curtain of silence
From heaven to earth;
The drama of day over,
Empty the seats of life,
Dead the twilight fire.
Curtains of black
Woven from threads of purple
By the hands of a star,
That lone soul weeping
Over the dead hours
Laid by mute time in the eternal's grave.
In the night of my soul
Not even a ray,
Nor a mourner present;
But a deep dark hollow
The Milky Way,
That silver shadow,
Binds the heaven and earth
Like the chain of love.
The star-hosts, smiling guests of night,
Witness this meeting of love;
And my soul, in a silver stream
Like "the Way,"
Flows to meet them all
Across the ocean of night's silence,
Beyond the Universe's wall.
Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps
contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.
And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of
life,
What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,
Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,
A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever
the same.
Soul: There is no stronger thing than song;
In sun and rain and leafy trees
It wafts the timid soul along
On crested waves of melodies.
Body: But leaves the body bare to feed
Its hunger with its very need.
Soul: Although the frenzied belly writhes,
Yet render up in song your tithes;
Song is the weakling’s oaken rod,
His Jacob’s ladder dropped from God.
Body: Song is not drink; song is not meat,
Nor strong, thick shoes for naked feet.
Soul: Who sings by unseen hands is fed
With honeyed milk and warm, white bread;
His ways in pastures green are led,
And perfumed oil illumes his head;
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
My shirt is a token and symbol,
more than a cover for sun and rain,
my shirt is a signal,
and a teller of souls.
I can take off my shirt and tear it,
and so make a ripping razzly noise,
and the people will say,
" Look at him tear his shirt."
I can keep my shirt on.
I can stick around and sing like a little bird
and look 'em all in the eye and never be fazed.
I can keep my shirt on.
I watched the workers in steel,
The Pit-like glow of the furnace,
The rivers of molten metal,
The tremulous rumble of cranes,
The throb of the Thor-like hammers
On sullen and resonant anvils!
I saw the half-clad workers
Twisting earth's iron to their use,
Shaping the steel to their thoughts;
And, in some way, out of the fury
And the fires of mortal passion,
It seemed to me,
In some way, out of the torture
And tumult of inchoate Time,
The hammer of sin is shaping
The soul of man!
Ah, you are cruel;
You ask too much;
Offered a hand, a finger-tip,
You must have a soul to clutch.
A MAN can build a bridge of wood and stone;
Exterior forces his trained powers control;
But the material of the Singer is his own,
He cuts his songs from the raw texture of his soul.