Chapter 2

Women are flitting around in their shells. Pale dilutions of the waters of the world Come through the windows. Back and forth the women glide in their little waters; Cellar to garret and garret to cellar, Winding in and out under door arches and down passages, They and their spawn, In the shell, In the cavern.

You may come in the shell to overpower her, Males, But in the shell, in the shell. She cannot be torn from the shell without dying; And what is the pleasure of intercourse with the dead?

AT THE MEETING HOUSE

Souls as dry as autumn leaves, The color long since out.

The organ plays. The leaves crackle and rustle a little; Then sink down.

Old ladies with gray moss on their chins, Old men with camphor and cotton packed around their heads, Thin child spirits, sharp and shrill as whistles.

Gray old trees; Gaunt old woods; Souls as dry as leaves After autumn is past.

CHRISTIANS

Blind, they storm up from the pit. You gave them the force, You, when You poured the measure of agony into them. Didn't You know what it would be, Giving blind people fire? Not gold and red and amber fire, But marsh fire. Fire of ice, Suffering forged into suffering!

They are coming up now. The sword is uplifted in the hands of the monster.

My valiant little puppets, Did you think you could stand out against this? Pierrot and Columbine breeding in the flowers....

There must be no flowers.

DEVIL'S CRADLE

Black man hanged on a silver tree; (Down by the river, Slow river, White breast, White face with blood on it.) Black man creaks in the wind, Knees slack. Brown poppies, melting in moonlight, Swerve on glistening stems Across an endless field To the music of a blood white face And a tired little devil child Rocked to sleep on a rope.

WOMEN

Crystal columns, When they bend they crack; Brittle souls, Conforming, yet not conforming-- Mirrors.

Masculine souls pass across the mirrors: Whirling, gliding ecstasies-- Retreating, retreating, Dimly, dimly, Like dreams fading across the mirrors.

Then the mirrors, Stark and brilliant in the sunshine, Blank as the desert, Blank as the Sphinx, Winking golden eyes in the twinkles of light, Silent, immutable, vacuous infinity, Illimitable capacity for absorption, Absorbing nothing.

Have the shapes and the shadows been swallowed up In your recesses without depth, You drinkers of life, Twinkling maliciously Your golden yellow eyes, Mirrors winking in the sunshine?

PENELOPE

Gray old spinners, Weaving with the crafty fibers of your souls; Nothing was given you but those impalpable threads.

Yet you have bound the race, Stranglers, With your silver spun mysteries. All the cruel, All the mad, The foolish, And the beautiful, too: It all belongs to you Since the first time That you began to drop the filmy threads When the world was half asleep.

Sometimes you are young girls; Sometimes there are roses in your hair. But I know you-- Sitting back there in the hollow shadows of your wombs. The crafty fibers of your souls Are woven in and out With the fibers of life.

POOR PEOPLE'S DREAMS

Sometimes women with eyes like wet green berries Glide across the slick mirror of their own smiles And vanish through lengths of gold and marble drawing rooms. The marble smiles, As sensuous as snow; Hips of the Graces;

Shoulders of Clytie; Breasts frozen as foam, Frozen as camelia bloom; Mounds of marble flesh, Inexplicable wonder of white....

I dream about statuesque beauties Who look from the shadows of opera boxes; Or elegant ladies in novels of eighteen thirty, At the hunt ball... Reflections in a polish floor, A portrait by Renoir, A Degas dancing girl, English country houses, An autumn afternoon in the Bois, Something I have read of... In sleep one vision retreating through another, Like mirrors being doors to other mirrors, Satin, and lace, and white shoulders, And elegant ladies, Dancing, dancing.

FOR WIVES AND MISTRESSES

Death, Being a woman, Being passive like all final things, Being a mother, Waits.

Shining faces Gray and melt into her flesh. Death envies those asleep in her, Little children who have come back, Fiery faces, Bright for a moment in the darkness, Extinguished softly in her womb.

PORTRAITS

PORTRAIT OF RICH OLD LADY

Old lady talks, Spins from her lips Warp and woof Of teapots, tables, napery, Sanitary toilets, Old bedsteads, pictures on walls, And fine lace, Spins a cocoon of this secondary life.

Warm and snug is old lady's belly. Old lady makes Venus Aphrodite Parvenue. Old lady Arranges places for courtesans In warm outbuildings on back streets.

NIGGER

Nigger with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips; Nigger with loose red tongue; Flat browed nigger, Your skull peaked at the zenith, The stretched glistening skin Covered with tight coiled springs of hair: I am up here cold. I am white man. You are still warm and sweet With the darkness you were born in.

THE MAIDEN MOTHER

He has a squat body, Glowering brows, And bulging eyes. Lustful contemplation of the meat pie Is written all over his sweating face.

The thin woman with the meek voice, Who has carried him so long in her body And despairs of giving him birth, Watches over him in secret With bitter and resentful tenderness.

A PIOUS WOMAN

You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting And smell candle wax and church incense. When she dies she must be burned. Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture And get soggy, As now she has a way of soaking up tears Never meant for her.

A VERY OLD ROSE JAR

She ran across the lawn after the cat And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow, A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover. There was clashing of cymbals, And the flash of nereids' arms in autumn leaves. A sharp high note died out like an ascending light. Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid's lips-- Something of Pierrot chasing after love, A bacchante dying in her sleep, A shadow, And a gray cat.

THE NIXIE

He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks, His eyes brown stones, Worn smooth and soft, But uncrumbled. He reaches forth covert child-claws To tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fish As they swim secretly above him. He laughs-- The school splinters, panic stricken.

As we stare through the lucid gold water He gazes up at us from his shadowy retreat In combative safety. There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a god, Water god, land god, god-in-the-sky. We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie. We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of his imagination.

OLD LADIES' VALHALLA

I am thinking of a little house, A pretty gray silk dress, And a little maid with a tidy white apron.

I am thinking of thin yellow angels Flying out of Sevres china tea cups, And a cool spirit with slanting green eyes, Who peers at me through the screen of plants I have placed in the corner between the hearth and the window. I am thinking of the peace in one's own little home When the afternoon sunshine drips on the shiny floor, And the rugs are in order, And the roses in the bowl plunge into shadow Like pink nymphs into a pool, While there is no sound to be heard above the hum of the teakettle Save the benevolent buzzing of flies in the clean sash curtain.

PORTRAITS OF POETS

I

(For L. R.)

To rush over dark waters, A swift bird with cruel talons; To seize life-- Your life for her-- To hold it, Hold it struggling-- To kiss it.

II

Crystal self-containment, Giving out only what is sent. Startled, The circumference retreats As it mounts higher, flamelike, Still and clear without radiance, Ascending without self-explanation.

A skeleton falls apart With the dignity of comprehensible pathos, The bones bleached by denial.

III

With the impalpable lightness of May breezes Begins a battle of flower petals: Cowering in the primrose whirlwind his lips have blown, The little grotesque with the shattered heart, Fearful, Yet sinister in his fearfulness.

THEODORE DREISER

The man body jumbled out of the earth, half formed, Clay on the feet, Heavy with the lingering might of chaos. The man face so high above the feet As if lonesome for them like a child. The veins that beat heavily with the music they but half understood Coil languidly around the heart And lave it in the death stream Of a grand impersonal benignance.

PIETA

The child-- Warm chubby thighs, Fat brown arms, An unsurprised face-- Cries for jam. The mother buys him with jam.

An old woman, Tottering on lean leather skinned legs, Sucks with glazing eyes The crystal silken milk That flows from the death wound In a young flower-soft, jewel-soft body.

BRAZIL THROUGH A MIST

THE RANCH

TROPICAL LIFE

White flower, Your petals float away But I hardly hear them.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

The day is so long and white, A road all dust, Smooth monotony; And the night at the end, A hill to be climbed, Slowly, laboriously, While the stars prick our hands Like thistles.

RAINY SEASON

A flock of parrakeets Hurled itself through the mist; Harsh wild green And clamor-tongued Through the dim white forest. They vanished, And the lips of Silence Sucked at the roots of Life.

MAIL ON THE RANCH

The old man on the mule Opens the worn saddle bags, And takes out the papers.

From the outer world The thoughts come stabbing, To taunt, baffle, and stir me to revolt. I beat against the sky, Against the winds of the mountain, But my cries, grown thin in all this space, Are diluted with emptiness... Like the air, Thin and wide, Touching everything, Touching nothing.

THE VAMPIRE BAT

What was it that came out of the night? What was it that went away in the night? The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner, Eyes already glazing. How should she know what came out of the night, Or what was taken away in the night? A shadow passed across the moon. The wind rustled in the mango trees. And now, in the morning, The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner, Eyes already glazing; Because a shadow passed across the moon, And the wind rustled in the mango trees.

CONSERVATISM

The turkeys, Like hoop-skirted old ladies Out walking, Display their solemn propriety.

A terrible force, Hungry and destructive, Emanates from their mistily blinking eyes.

LITTLE PIGS

Little tail quivering, Wrinkled snout thrusting up the mud: He will find God If he keeps on like that.

THE SILLY EWE

The silly ewe comes smelling up to me. Her tail wriggles without hinges, Both ends of it at once and equal. Yesterday the parrot bit her; Last week the jaguar ate her young one; But experience teaches her nothing.

THE SNAKE

The chickens are at home in the barnyard, The pigs in the swill, And the flowers in the garden; But where do you belong, With your lacquered coils, O snake?

THE YEAR

Days and days float by. On the sides of the mountains Blue shadows shift And sift into silence. Morning... The cock crows. There is that rosy glow on the mountain's edge; Jose in the door of his hut; Maria's lace bobbins Tapping, tapping. Evening... The parrot's shrill cry; Pale silver green stars. Night... The ghosts of dead Joses And dead Marias Sitting in the moonlight. Peace-- Depressing, Interminable Peace.

BURNING MOUNTAINS

I

A herder set fire to the grass On the other side of the valley, And now a beautiful Indian woman Bends, whirls, undulates, Tosses her gold braceleted arms into the air-- Then sinks into her gray veil.

II

Fire, dying in smoke, You stir behind the haze Like a warrior Who threatens in his sleep.

VILLA NOVA DA SERRA

The mountains are as dull and sodden As drunkards' faces, And the white forgetfulness of rain Is like a delirium. Along the filthy crooked streets of the little town, Street lamps float in pools of mist-- The eyes of children being beaten.

RAIN IN THE MOUNTAINS

Like inexorable peace, The mists march through the mountains. One by one the grim peaks sink into the cold arms of the unspoken. The little town with the pink and white houses Looses its hold on the ridge of hills And floats among cloud tops. A shaggy donkey, cropping grass in the sequestered church yard, Walks, with a leisurely air, Into a wind driven abyss.

TROPICAL WINTER

The afternoon is frozen with memories, Radiant as ice. The sun sets amidst the agued trembling of the leaves, Sinking right down through the gold air Into the arms of the sea. The enameled wings of the palm trees Keep shivering, shivering, Beating the gold air thin....

TALK ON THE RANCH

It is cold in the circle of mountains, A fireless hearth. The stars drift by like autumn leaves. Only the rustle-- Then, close together, Our talk, For and counter, One grating against the other, Rubs a little fire And we warm each other There in the midst of the hollow clammy circle.

LES MALADIES DES PAYS CHAUDS

PRIDE OF RACE

I saw his young Anglo-Saxon form In its white sailor clothes Cleave through the scampering yellow Latin crowd, As white and clean as the blade of an archangel; And, as he reeled along, gloriously drunk, Those little black and gold dung beetles Seemed to be pushing and racing over his body.

DON QUIXOTE SOJOURNS IN RIO DE JANEIRO

White roses climb the wall of night. A pale face looks from a window in the sky. O Moon, is it because you have seen her that you are beautiful? Is she happy among the saints? I placed white flowers in the coffin. Are they the blossoms that lie scattered along the horizon, Tangled in your light? Dim stars drop into the sea. So you give my flowers back to me, do you, Bella Dona? I might gather the petals and carry them to Antonietta to trim her hats. So much for life with a little negro milliner In the Rua Chile!

CONVENT MUSINGS

Eleven thousand white-faced virgins in the sky. The eyes of Our Lady Smiling through a rift of cloud.

I see Sister Maria da Gloria's fat shadow Pass across the whitewashed wall by the window....

Eleven thousand white-faced virgins-- Stars from a broken rosary-- The Southern Cross-- Thrum, thrum, my fingers on the bench. I sometimes think of God As an enormous emptiness Into which we must all enter at last, Our Lady forgive me.

GUITARRA

"An orange tree without fruit, So am I without loves," His heavy lidded eyes sang up to her. Her glance dropped on her golden globe of breast, And on the baby.

NOVEMBER

Foreign sailors in the streets Are as sad a sight as wild geese in the winter--

There was one boy with those strange young blue eyes Who looked at me; And a long, long time after he had passed The light of his soul got to me-- So long on the way-- Like the light of a dead star.

What makes you look so lonesome, Blue Eyes?

THE COMING OF CHRIST

THE DEATH OF COLUMBINE

DUET

Pierrot sings. The moon, a clown like himself, Stares down upon him With vacuous tenderness. For a moment the night is filled with rice powder And spangled gauze. Then two shades embracing each other Find in their arms Only the darkness.

FROM A MAN DYING ON A CROSS

The pains in my palms are threads of sightless fire Drawn like fiery veins through blackened marble walls, Crashing with a dull roar To the ends of the earth.

Winey peace.... My sick blood purrs. Milky bosoms float through red hair, Gaunt faces and sick eyes Beside her face. I debauch them with my forgiveness. Only her, I cannot forgive.

Moonlight trembles as the silk of her garment, Perfumed silk. The cross makes a long harsh shadow Rigid on the sand. Her white feet stir across the shadow.

LAGNIAPPE

You in the quiet garden, You with the death sweet smile, Before you speak of love to me Go out and hate awhile.

The kind devil Has a tolerant grin. He flings the golden gates out wide And lets poor people in. He warms them in his bosom And guards their pain. He shows them hell fields that are bright And skies gentle with rain.

But up in paradise The stern Lord is wise, And Michael with his flaming sword Puts out the angels' eyes.

HAIL MARY!

Pierrette is dead! Between her narrow little breasts They have laid a cross of lead. Her tight pale lips are sunken. Her fleshless fingers clutch the pall. Why did she have to die like that, And she so small?

THE DEATH OF COLUMBINE

White breast beaten in sea waves, Hair tangled in foam, Lonely sky, Desolate horizon, Pale and shining clouds: All this desolate and shining sea is no place for you, My dead Columbine.

And the waves will bite your breast; And the wind, that does not know death from life, Will leap upon you and leer into your eyes And suck at your dead lips.

Oh, my little Columbine, You go farther and farther away from me, Out where there are no ships And the solemn clouds Soar across the somber horizon.

PIERROT LAUGHS

You are old, Pierrot, But I do not laugh As in harlequinade You totter down the path. Now you are old, Pierrot, And drool to your guitar, I do not cast you off. Though your love songs are as feeble as a winter fly's I do not scoff. Exultant I cast back on you What you gave me, And bind you with the unasked love That has kept me from being free!

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF CALIBAN

Once I had a little brother, An ugly little brother that was I. I was still in the nursery When they nailed him to a clean white cross, And said he was dead. He flapped there all day, Thin and stiff as a jumping jack.

But when I had gone to bed, And the lights were out, And the muslin curtains rustled in white secrecy, And through the thin brown glass like onion skin I could see the bright moon sag to the tree tops With a heaviness I dimly understood, While the haggard branches gauntly strained, As useless to the moon as she to them, I was rocked in an orange and umber cradle, A rosy bubble light with fireshine Floating atop the cold, And my little brother was burning merrily, His twisted figure A writhing grotesque.

Yet his face never moved And never burnt up. And when I had drifted asleep I still saw it Like a reflection trapped in a mirror. And I couldn't brush it out! I couldn't brush it out!

GUNDRY

There are little blood flecks on the snow. There is blood in the heart of the white hyacinth. I saw her pale body harsh as a flash of lightning Between the gray torsos of the trees. She had a little child. She held a little child in her breast. She went quickly through the dim forest. I have seen her feet. They are as white as ivory. Where she ran there are little red tracks. And it is not yet springtime!

VIENNESE WALTZ

Dresden china shepherdesses Whirl in the silver sunshine: Columbine stars Float in gauze petticoats of light.... Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old, Smelling of jasmine and camphor: Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts....

The pirouetting tune dies.... Stars and little faded faces, Waltzing, waltzing, Shoot slowly downward On tinkling music, Dusty little flowers Sinking into oblivion.

After the music, Quiet, The glacial period renewed, Monsters on earth, A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights--

These too vanishing-- Silence unending.

RESURRECTION

IMMORTALITY

Death is a child of stone. Death is a little white stone goat. The little goat child dances motionless. Little kid feet make a circle around the world: Bas-relief of Death, Little stone goats capering across the clouds.

Perhaps Death is nearest in the spring. Then Her flower clouds the woods with white blossoms, Apple blossoms, quince blossoms, Pear snow. These are the flowers that drift in the hair of the dead. The sun shines on stone eyelids That melt with light. This smile is a pale happiness; It glows motionless On the rocky hillside and the long stems of trees. There are no shadows in this happy light: The glow beat by little goat hoofs Chiseled across the clouds in motionless delight, While suns fade behind crumbling hillsides And hungry illusions vanish In generation after generation.

AUTUMN NIGHT

The moon is as complacent as a frog. She sits in the sky like a blind white stone, And does not even see Love As she caresses his face with her contemptuous light. She reaches her long white shivering fingers Into the bowels of men. Her tender superfluous probing into all that pollutes Is like the immodesty of the mad. She is a mad woman holding up her dress So that her white belly shines. Haughty, Impregnable, Ridiculous, Silent and white as a debauched queen, Her ecstasy is that of a cold and sensual child.

She is Death enjoying Life, Innocently, Lasciviously.

VENUS' FLY TRAP

A wax bubble moon trembles on the honey-blue horizon. Softly heated by your breast Pearl wax languorously unfolds her lily lips of mist, Swells about you, Weaves you into herself through each moist pore, Absorbs you deliciously, Destroys you.

SUICIDE

A dirty little beetle Peers into motionless eyes Transfixed to their depths As by shining needles. Limbs are taut in ultimate resentment. A bare sky confronts an upturned face. Like a wheel vanishing in speed The corpse, containing everything, Has swallowed itself.

LEAVES

I

The women hold a child up for a shield, And speak of it tenderly, Seeing it bloody.

II

The lovers throw back the scented coverlet And are afraid. Seeing Death in their own nakedness, They shroud it with flowers.

III

The corpse was stiff like an arrow. As they carried it past the onlookers It pierced the crowd with its life. Blank white faces floated back In terror of its vividness.

IV

The man was dead. It was seen to that he was buried. Again and again they dug the bones up, But when they could no longer find the bones They groped for the proof of death In fear of the resurrection.

ALLEGRO

(At the Cemetery)

The mounds stir in the sunshine. Bones clack a light staccato. Bare wrist bones, Thigh bones, Ankle bones, Kick the soil loose.

Moldy draperies flutter back and forth through the light. The trees have put on a thin green pretense. Even the soil pretends to fecundity. Toothless jaws widen in a smile of real mirth. Bones lightened of flesh Flash in the sunshine.

And afterward The dead rest in the spring night, Each in a silence molded to him, Each in his own night, A casket with a spangled lining. The dead rest deep in their happiness.