Chapter 1

Produced by Catherine Daly

Evelyn Scott

PRECIPITATIONS

1920

The author acknowledges the courtesy of the editors of THE POETRY JOURNAL; OTHERS; THE EGOIST (London); POETRY: A MAGAZINE OF VERSE; PLAYBOY; THE DIAL; THE LIBERATOR; OTHERS: An ANTHOLOGY OF THE NEW VERSE; THE NATION (New York); and THE LYRIC, from all of which poems in this volume have been reprinted.

Contents

Manhattan

The Unpeopled City

Midnight Worship: Brooklyn Bridge Ascension: Autumn Dusk in Central Park Startled Forest: Hudson River Winter Streets February Springtime The Assumption of Columbine From Brooklyn Snow Dance Potter's Field Lights at Night Midnight

Crowds

Summer Night New York Sunset: Battery Park Crowds Riots The City at Night

Vanities

Bread Poems

Lullaby Embarkation of Cythera Christian Luxuries Narrow Flowers Eyes After Youth The Shadow that Walks Alone Bible Truth The Maternal Breast Air for G String Destiny

The Red Cross

Hectic I-II Isolation Ward The Red Cross Hospital Night

Domestic Canticle

Spring Song Home Again To a Sick Child Love Song Quarrel My Child The Tunnel I-V

Bruised Sunlight

Water Moods

Rain on the Seashore Ship Masts Monochrome Antique Echo Looks at Herself Spell

Hungry Seasons

Rainy Twilight The Storm Nymphs Winter Dawn

The Wall of Night

Springtime Too Soon Stars Night Music Nocturne of Water The Long Moment Designs I-IV Argo Japanese Moon The Naiad Floodtide Mountain Pass in August

Contemporaries

Harmonics

Young Men Young Girls House Spirits At the Meeting House Christians Devil's Cradle Women Penelope Poor People's Dreams For Wives and Mistresses

Portraits

Portrait of Rich Old Lady Nigger The Maiden Mother A Pious Woman A Very Old Rose Jar The Nixie Old Ladies' Valhalla Portraits of Poets I-III Theodore Dreiser Pieta

Brazil Through A Mist

The Ranch

Tropical Life Twenty-four Hours Rainy Season Mail on the Ranch The Vampire Bat Conservatism Little Pigs The Silly Ewe The Snake The Years Burning Mountains I-III Tropical Winter Talk on the Ranch

Les Malades des Pays Chauds

Pride of Race Don Quixote Sojourns in Rio de Janeiro Convent Musings Guitarra November

The Coming of Christ

The Death of Columbine

Duet From a Man Dying on a Cross Lagniappe Hail Mary! The Death of Columbine Pierrot Laughs The Transmigration of Caliban Gundry Viennese Waltz

Resurrection

Immortality Autumn Night Venus' Fly Trap Suicide Leaves I-IV Allegro

MANHATTAN

THE UNPEOPLED CITY

MIDNIGHT WORSHIP: BROOKLYN BRIDGE

In the rain Rows of street lamps are saints in bright garments That flow long with the bend of knees. They lift pale heads nimbussed with golden spikes.

Up the lanes of liquid onyx Toward the high fire-laden altars Move the saints of Manhattan In endless pilgrimage to death, Amidst the asphodel and anemones of dawn.

ASCENSION: AUTUMN DUSK IN CENTRAL PARK

Featureless people glide with dim motion through a quivering blue silver; Boats merge with the bronze-gold welters about their keels. The trees float upward in gray and green flames. Clouds, swans, boats, trees, all gliding up a hillside After some gray old women who lift their gaunt forms From falling shrouds of leaves.

Thin fingered twigs clutch darkly at nothing. Crackling skeletons shine. Along the smutted horizon of Fifth Avenue The hooded houses watch heavily With oily gold eyes.

STARTLED FORESTS: HUDSON RIVER

The thin hill pushes against the mist. Its fading defiance sounds in the umber and red of autumn leaves. Like a dead arm around a warm throat Is the sagging embrace of the river Laid grayly about the shore.

The train passes. We emerge from a tunnel into a sky of thin blue morning glories Where yellow lily bells tinkle down. The paths run swiftly away under the lamp glow Like green and blue lizards Mottled with light.

WINTER STREETS

The stars, escaping, Evaporate in acrid mists. The houses, rearing themselves higher, Assemble among the clouds. Night blows through me. I am clear with its bitterness. I tinkle along brick canyons Like a crystal leaf.

FEBRUARY SPRINGTIME

The trees hold out pale gilded branches Stiff and high in the wind. On the lawns Patches of gray-lilac snow Melt in the hollows of the terraces. The park is an ocean of fawn-colored plush, Ridged and faded. Sharp and delicate, My shadow moves after me on the rumpled grass-- Grass like a pillow worn by a dear head. Joy!

THE ASSUMPTION OF COLUMBINE

The lights trickle grayly down from the hoary palisades And drip into the river. Leaden reflections flow into the water. Framed in your window, Your little face glows deceptively In a rigid ecstasy, As the wide-winged morning Folds back the mist.

FROM BROOKLYN

Along the shore A black net of branches Tangles the pulpy yellow lamps. The shell-colored sky is lustrous with the fading sun. Across the river Manhattan floats-- Dim gardens of fire-- And rushing invisible toward me through the fog, A hurricane of faces.

SNOW DANCE

Black brooms of trees sweep the sky clean; Sweep the house fronts, And leave them bleak in sleep. High up the empty moon Spills her vacuity.

I dance. My long black shadow

Weaves an invisible pattern of pain. The snow Is embroidered with my happiness.

POTTER'S FIELD

Golden petals, honey sweet, Crushed beneath fear-hastened feet...

Silver paper lanterns glow and shudder in flat patterns On a gray eternal face Stained with pain.

LIGHTS AT NIGHT

In the city, Storms of light Surge against the clouds, Pushing up the darkness.

In the country, Is the faint pressure of oil lamps, That sputter, Smothered with earth-- Extinguished in silence.

MIDNIGHT

The golden snow of the stars Drifts in mounds of light, Melts against the hot sides of the city, Cool cheek against burning breast, Cold golden snow, Falling all night.

CROWDS

SUMMER NIGHT

The bloated moon Has sickly leaves glistening against her Like flies on a fat white face.

The thick-witted drunkard on the park bench Touches a girl's breast That throbs with its own ruthless and stupid delight. The new-born child crawls in his mother's filth. Life, the sleep walker, Lifts toward the skies An immense gesture of indecency.

NEW YORK

With huge diaphanous feet, March the leaden velvet elephants, Pressing the bodies back into the earth.

SUNSET: BATTERY PARK

From cliffs of houses, Sunlit windows gaze down upon me Like undeniable eyes, Millions of bronze eyes, Unassailable, Obliterating all they see: The warm contiguous crowd in the street below Chills, Mists, Drifts past those hungry eyes of Eternity, Melts seaward and deathward To the ocean.

CROWDS

The sky along the street a gauzy yellow: The narrow lights burn tall in the twilight.

The cool air sags, Heavy with the thickness of bodies. I am elated with bodies. They have stolen me from myself. I love the way they beat me to life, Pay me for their cruelties. In the close intimacy I feel for them There is the indecency I like.

I belong to them, To these whom I hate; And because we can never know each other, Or be anything to each other, Though we have been the most, I sell so much of me that could bring a better price.

RIOTS

As if all the birds rushed up in the air, Fluttering; Hoots, calls, cries. I never knew such a monster even in child dreams.

It grows: Glass smashed; Stores shut; Windows tight closed; Dull, far-off murmurs of voices.

Blood-- The soft, sticky patter of falling drops in the silence. Everything inundated. Faces float off in a red dream. Still the song of the sweet succulent patter.

Blood-- I think it oozes from my finger tips. --Or maybe it drips from the brow of Jesus.

THE CITY AT NIGHT

Life wriggles in and out Through the narrow ways And circuitous passages: Something monstrous and horrible, A passion without any master, Male sexual fluid trickling through the darkness And setting fire to whatever it touches.

That is the master Bestowing a casual caress on a slave. Quiver under it!

VANITIES

BREAD POEMS

LULLABY

I lean my heart against the soft bosomed night: A white globed breast, And warm and silent flowing, The milk of the moon.

EMBARKATION OF CYTHERA

Like jellied flowers My inflated curves Melt in the peaceful stagnance of the bath. If I were to die I would resist the final agony With only a faint quiver From my escaping thighs.

CHRISTIAN LUXURIES

The red fountain of shame gushes up from my heart. I throw back my long hair and the fountain floats it out Like a fiery fan. My wide stretched arms are white coral branches. The liquid shadows seek between my amber breasts.

But the fire is cool. It cannot burn me.

NARROW FLOWERS

I am a gray lily. My roots are deep. I cannot lift my hands For one thin yellow butterfly. Yet last night I grew up to a star. My shade swirled mistily Seven mountains high. I lifted my face to another face. The moon made a burning shadow on my brow. Washed by the light, My sharp breasts silvered. My dance was an arc of mist From west to east.

EYES

There are arms of ice around me, And a hand of ice on my heart. If they should come to bury me I would not flinch or start. For eyes are freezing me-- Eyes too cold for hate. I think the ground, Because it is dark, A warmer place to wait.

AFTER YOUTH

Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth! Exotic colors in the lamplit darkness of wet streets, Musk and roses in the twilight, The moon in the park like a golden balloon...

Then to awaken and find the shadows fled, The music gone... Empty, bleak! My soul has grown very small and shriveled in my body. It no longer looks out. It rattles around, And inside my body it begins to look, Staring all around inside my body, Like a crab in a crevice, Staring with bulging eyes At the strange place in which it finds itself.

THE SHADOW THAT WALKS ALONE

The silence tugs at my breast With formless lips, Like a heavy baby, Attenuates me, Draws me through myself into it. I sit in the womb of an idiot, Helpless before its mouthing tenderness. The huge flap ears are attentive, And the soundless face bends toward me In horrible lovingness.

BIBLE TRUTH

To die... Oh, cool river! To float there with nothing to resist--

One ripple of silence spreads out from another. My spirit widens so, Circle beyond circle. I hold up the stars no longer with the pupils of my eyes. Hands, legs, arms float off from me. I melt like flakes of snow.

I am no more opposed. I am no more.

THE MATERNAL BREAST

I walked straight and long, But I never found you. I was looking for a hill of a hundred breasts, A hill modeled after the statues of Diana of the Ephesians. I was looking for a hill of mounds hairy with grass, And a place to lie down.

AIR FOR G STRING

White hands of God With fingers like strong twigs flowering Rock me in leaves of iron, Leaves of blue.

Hands of God Fashioned of clouds Have finger tips that balance the almond white moon. The pale sky is a flower White tipped and pink tipped with dawn. White hands of God gather the blossoms with fingers that hold me, Cloud fingers like milk in the azure night, Weaving strong chords.

DESTINY

I am lost in the vast cave of night. No sound but the far-off tinkle of stars, And the cry of a bird Muffled in shadows.

The light flows in remotely Through the hollow moon, Dim strange brilliance From waters beyond the sky. Groping, I listen to the harsh tinkle of the far-off stars, Feel the clammy shadows about my shoulders.

THE RED CROSS

HECTIC

I

Ruby winged pains flash through me, Jewel winged agonies: They vanish, Carrying me with them Without my knowing it.

II

Pain sends out long tentacles And sucks. When I have given up struggling He takes me into his arms.

ISOLATION WARD

We are the separate centers of consciousness Of all the universes. We vibrate statically on a trillion golden wires. Our trillion golden fingers twine in the weltering darkness, And grasp tremblingly, Aware in agony Of the things we can never know.

THE RED CROSS

Antiseptic smells that corrode the nostrils Crumble me, Eat me deep; And my garments disintegrate: First my nightgown, Leaving my naked arms and legs disjointed, Sprawled about the bed in postures meaningless to the point of obscenity.

My breasts shrivel, The nipples drawn like withered plums To the eyes of the bright young nurse. I am nothing but a dull eye myself, An eye out of a socket, Bursting, Contorted with hideous wisdom.

Eye to eye We fight in the death throes, Myself and the young nurse. Her firm, crisp aproned bosom Leans toward the bed, As she smooths the rumpled pillow back With long cool fingers.

HOSPITAL NIGHT

I am Will-o'-the-Wisp. I float in a little pool of delirium, Phosphorescent velvet. My fire is like a breath That blows my illness in circles, Widening it so far That I cannot see the edge. It is one with the night sky. My fire has blown this vastness, But I strain and flicker trying to escape from it. I want to exist without the darkness That makes my breath so bright. I want the morning to thin my light.

DOMESTIC CANTICLE

SPRING SONG

Sap crashes suddenly through dead roots: Sap that bites, Harsh, Impatient, Bitter as gold.

My God, my sisters, how dark, how silent, how heavy is earth! Shoulders strain against this eternity, Against the trickling loam. Earth dropped on the heart like a nerveless hand: On the red mouth Earth coils, Heavy as a serpent. Light has come back to the darkness, To the shadow, To the coolness of blackened leaves.

HOME AGAIN

Where I used to be I could hear the sea. The black ragged palm fronds flung themselves against the twilight sky. The moon stared up from the water like a fish's eye. I had the loneliness that sings. It made me light and gave me wings.

Is it the dust and the iron railings and the blank red brick That makes me sick? There is no space to be lonely any more And crumbling feet on a city street Sound past the door.

TO A SICK CHILD

At the end of the day The sun rusts. The street is old and quiet. The houses are of iron. The shadows are iron. Shrill screams of children scrape the iron sky. Let us lock ourselves in the light. Let the sun nail us to the hot earth with his spikes of fire, And perhaps when the darkness rushes past It will forget us.

LOVE SONG

(To C. K. S.)

Little father, Little mother, Little sister, Little brother, Little lover, How can I go on living With you away from me?

How can I get up in the morning And go to bed at night, And you not here? How can I bear the sunrise and the sunset, And the moonrise and the moonset, And the flowers in the garden?

How can I bear them, You, My little father, Little mother, Little sister, Little brother, Little lover?

QUARREL

Abruptly, from a wall of clear cold silence Like an icy glass, Myself looked out at me And would not let me pass. I wanted to reach you Before it was too late; But my frozen image barred the way With vacant hate.

MY CHILD

Tentacles thrust imperceptibly into the future Helplessly sense the fire. A serpentine nerve Impelled to lengthen itself generation after generation Pierces the labyrinth of flames To rose-colored extinction.

THE TUNNEL

I

I have made you a child in the womb, Holding you in sweet and final darkness. All day as I walk out I carry you about. I guard you close in secret where Cold eyed people cannot stare. I am melted in the warm dear fire, Lover and mother in the same desire. Yet I am afraid of your eyes And their possible surprise. Would you be angry if I let you know That I carried you so?

II

I could kiss you to death Hoping that, your protest obliterated, You would be Utterly me. Yet I know--how well!-- Like a shell, Hollow and echoing, Death would be, With a roar of the past Like the roar of the sea. And what is lifeless I cannot kill! So you would make death work your will.

III

In most intimate touch we meet, Lip to lip, Breast to breast, Sweet. Suddenly we draw apart And start. Like strangers surprised at a road's turning We see, I, the naked you; You, the naked me. There was something of neither of us That covered the hours, And we have only touched each other's bodies Through veils of flowers. But let us smile kindly, Like those already dead, On the warm flesh And the marriage bed.

IV

The blanched stars are withered with light. The moon is pale with trying to remember something. Light, straining for a stale birth, Distends the darkness.

I, in the midst of this travail, Bring forth-- The solitude is so vast I am glad to be freed of it. Is it the moon I see there, Or does my own white face Hang in blank agony against the sky As if blinded with giving?

V

Little inexorable lips at my breast Drink me out of me In a fine sharp stream. Little hands tear me apart To find what they need.

I am weak with love of you, Little body of hate!

BRUISED SUNLIGHT

WATER MOODS

RAIN ON THE SEASHORE

Curling petals of rain lick silver tongues. Fluffy spray is blown loosely up between thin silver lips And slithers, tinkling in hard green ice, down the gray rocks.

White darkness-- An expressionless horizon stares with stone eyes. The sea lifts its immense self heavily And falls down in sickly might.

The emptiness is like a death of which no one shall ever know.

SHIP MASTS

They stand Stark as church spires; Bare stalks That will blossom (Tomorrow perhaps) Into flowers of the wind.

MONOCHROME

Gray water, Gray sky drifting down to the sea. The night, Old, ugly, and stern, Lies upon the water, Quivering in the twilight Like a tortured belly.

ANTIQUE

Clouds flung back Make fan-shaped rays of faded crimson Brocaded on dim blue satin; Through the wrinkled dust-blue water The little boat Glides above its sunken shadow.

ECHO LOOKS AT HERSELF

The ship passes in the night And drags jagged reflections Like gilded combs Through the obscure water. Spun glass daisies float on a gold-washed mirror.

SPELL

In the dark I can hear the patter. Bare white feet are running across the water. White feet as bright as silver Are flashing under dull blue dresses. Wet palms beat, Impatiently, Petulantly, Slapping the wet rocks.

HUNGRY SHADOWS

RAINY TWILIGHT

Dim gold faces float in the windows. Dim gold faces and gilded arms... They are clinging along the silver ladders of rain; They are climbing with ivory lamps held high, Starry lamps Over which the silver ladders Thicken into nets of twilight.

THE STORM

Herds of black elephants, Rushing over the plains, Trample the stars. The ivory tusk of the leader (Or is it the moon?) Flashes, and is gone. Tree tops bend; Crash; Fire from hoofs; And still they rush on, Trampling the stars, Bellowing, Roaring.

NYMPHS

The drift of shadows on the mountainside, Blue and purple gold! Purple dust sifting through fingers of ivory: Cool purple on ivory breasts. I see arms and breasts, Upturned chins, Slanting through the dust of purple leaves: Ivory and gold, Bare breasts and laughing eyes, That drift on the shadowy surf And surge against the side of the mountain.

WINTER DAWN

Cloudy dawn flower unfolds; Moon moth gyrates slowly; Snow maiden lets down her hair, And in one shining silence, It slips to earth.

THE WALL OF NIGHT

SPRINGTIME TOO SOON

The moon is a cool rose in a blue bowl. There are no more birds. The last leaf has fallen. The trees in the twilight are naked old women.

The moon is an old woman at the door of her tomb. Clouds combed out in the wind Are gray hair she has wound about her neck. The water is an old gray face that mirrors the springtime.

STARS

Like naked maidens Dancing with no thought of lovers, Blinking stars with dewy silver breasts Pass through the darkness. White and eager, They glide on Toward the gray meshed web of dawn

And the mystery of morning. Then, About me, The white cloud walls Stand as sternly as sepulchers, And from all sides Peer and linger the startled faces, Pale in the harshness of the sunlight.

NIGHT MUSIC

Through the blue water of night Rises the white bubble of silence-- Rises, And breaks: The shivered crystal bell of the moon, Dying away in star splinters. The still mists bear the sound Beyond the horizon.

NOCTURNE OF WATER

A shining bird plunges to the deep, Becomes entangled with seaweed, And never more emerges. Pale golden feathers drift across the sky, Fire feathered clouds, Riding the weightless billows of back velvet On the horizon.

THE LONG MOMENT

A white sigh clouds the fields Into quietness. Above the billowed snow I drift, One year, Two years, Three years. Hurt eyes mist in the blue behind me. The moon uncoils in glistening ropes And I glide downward along the dripping rays To a marble lake.

DESIGNS

I

Night

Fields of black tulips And swarms of gold bees Drinking their bitter honey.

II

New Moon

Above the gnarled old tree That clings to the bleakest side of the mountain, A torch of ivory and gold; And across the sky, The silver print Of spirit feet, Fled from the wonder.

III

Tropic Moon

The glowing anvil, Beaten by the winds; Star sparks, Burning and dying in the heavens; The furnace glare Red On the polished palm leaves.

IV

Winter Moon

A little white thistle moon Blown over the cold crags and fens: A little white thistle moon Blown across the frozen heather.

ARGO

White sails Unbillowed by any wind, The moon ship, Among shoals of cloud, Stranded stars, Bare bosoms, And netted hair of light, On the shores of the world.

JAPANESE MOON

Thick clustered wistaria clouds, A young girl moon in a mist of almond flowers, Boughs and boughs of light; Then a round-faced ivory lady Nodding among fading chrysanthemums.

HOT MOON

Moon rise. Great gong sounds, shining-- Little feet run away. Loud and solemn, the funeral gong. Little feet run away.

THE NAIAD

The moon rises, Glistening, Naked white, Out of her stream.

Wet marble shoulders Shake star drops on the clouds.

FLOODTIDE

Across the shadows of the surf The lights of the ship Twinkle despondently. The clinging absorbent gray darkness Sucks them into itself: Drinks the pale golden tears greedily.

MOUNTAIN PASS IN AUGUST

Night scatters grapes for the harvest. The moon burns like a leaf. Along the mountain path A thin streak of light Creeps hungrily with its silver belly to the earth. The old hound laps up the shadows. Her teats drip the brighter darkness.

CONTEMPORARIES

HARMONICS

YOUNG MEN

Fauns, Eternal pagans, Beautiful and obscene, Leaping through the street With a flicker of hoofs, And a flash of tails,

You want dryads And they give you prostitutes.

YOUNG GIRLS

Your souls are wet flowers, Bathed in kisses and blood. Golden Clyties, The wheel of light Rushes over your breasts.

HOUSE SPIRITS