Part 1

'SOUR GRAPES'

_A Book of Poems_

BOSTON THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 1921

_Copyright, 1921, by_ THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY

The Four Seas Press Boston, Mass., U. S. A.

To ALFRED KREYMBORG

Certain of the poems in this book have appeared in the magazines: _Poetry_, _a Magazine of Verse_, _The Egoist_, _The Little Review_, _The Dial_, _Others_, and _Contact_.

CONTENTS

Page

THE LATE SINGER 11

MARCH 12

BERKET AND THE STARS 17

A CELEBRATION 18

APRIL 21

A GOODNIGHT 22

OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES 24

ROMANCE MODERNE 26

THE DESOLATE FIELD 30

WILLOW POEM 31

APPROACH OF WINTER 32

JANUARY 33

BLIZZARD 34

TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY 35

WINTER TREES 36

COMPLAINT 37

THE COLD NIGHT 38

SPRING STORM 39

THE DELICACIES 40

THURSDAY 43

THE DARK DAY 44

TIME, THE HANGMAN 45

TO A FRIEND 46

THE GENTLE MAN 47

THE SOUGHING WIND 48

SPRING 49

PLAY 50

LINES 51

THE POOR 52

COMPLETE DESTRUCTION 53

MEMORY OF APRIL 54

EPITAPH 55

DAISY 56

PRIMROSE 57

QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE 58

GREAT MULLEN 59

WAITING 60

THE HUNTER 61

ARRIVAL 62

TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES 63

YOUTH AND BEAUTY 65

THE THINKER 66

THE DISPUTANTS 67

THE TULIP BED 68

THE BIRDS 69

THE NIGHTINGALES 70

SPOUTS 71

BLUEFLAGS 72

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME 73

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM 74

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR 75

THE LONELY STREET 77

THE GREAT FIGURE 78

SOUR GRAPES

THE LATE SINGER

Here it is spring again and I still a young man! I am late at my singing. The sparrow with the black rain on his breast has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past: What is it that is dragging at my heart? The grass by the back door is stiff with sap. The old maples are opening their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers. A moon hangs in the blue in the early afternoons over the marshes. I am late at my singing.

MARCH

I

Winter is long in this climate and spring--a matter of a few days only,--a flower or two picked from mud or from among wet leaves or at best against treacherous bitterness of wind, and sky shining teasingly, then closing in black and sudden, with fierce jaws.

II

March, you remind me of the pyramids, our pyramids-- stript of the polished stone that used to guard them! March, you are like Fra Angelico at Fiesole, painting on plaster!

March, you are like a band of young poets that have not learned the blessedness of warmth (or have forgotten it).

At any rate-- I am moved to write poetry for the warmth there is in it and for the loneliness-- a poem that shall have you in it March.

III

See! Ashur-ban-i-pal, the archer king, on horse-back, in blue and yellow enamel! with drawn bow--facing lions standing on their hind legs, fangs bared! his shafts bristling in their necks!

Sacred bulls--dragons in embossed brickwork marching--in four tiers-- along the sacred way to Nebuchadnezzar's throne hall! They shine in the sun, they that have been marching-- marching under the dust of ten thousand dirt years.

Now-- they are coming into bloom again! See them! marching still, bared by the storms from my calendar --winds that blow back the sand! winds that enfilade dirt! winds that by strange craft have whipt up a black army that by pick and shovel bare a procession to the god, Marduk!

Natives cursing and digging for pay unearth dragons with upright tails and sacred bulls alternately-- in four tiers-- lining the way to an old altar! Natives digging at old walls-- digging me warmth--digging me sweet loneliness-- high enamelled walls.

IV

My second spring-- passed in a monastery with plaster walls--in Fiesole on the hill above Florence.

My second spring--painted a virgin--in a blue aureole sitting on a three-legged stool, arms crossed-- she is intently serious, and still watching an angel with coloured wings half kneeling before her-- and smiling--the angel's eyes holding the eyes of Mary as a snake's holds a bird's. On the ground there are flowers, trees are in leaf.

V

But! now for the battle! Now for murder--now for the real thing! My third springtime is approaching! Winds! lean, serious as a virgin, seeking, seeking the flowers of March.

Seeking flowers nowhere to be found, they twine among the bare branches in insatiable eagerness-- they whirl up the snow seeking under it-- they--the winds--snakelike roar among yellow reeds seeking flowers--flowers.

I spring among them seeking one flower in which to warm myself!

I deride with all the ridicule of misery-- my own starved misery.

Counter-cutting winds strike against me refreshing their fury!

Come, good, cold fellows! Have we no flowers? Defy then with even more desperation than ever--being lean and frozen!

But though you are lean and frozen-- think of the blue bulls of Babylon.

Fling yourselves upon their empty roses-- cut savagely!

But-- think of the painted monastery at Fiesole.

BERKET AND THE STARS

A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones. Berket in high spirits--"Ha, oranges! Let's have one!" And he made to snatch an orange from the vender's cart.

Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed to the full sweep of certain wave summits, that the rumor of the thing has come down through three generations--which is relatively forever!

A CELEBRATION

A middle-northern March, now as always-- gusts from the south broken against cold winds-- but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves--not into April--into a second March, the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping upon the mould: this is the shadow projects the tree upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere.

So we will put on our pink felt hat--new last year! --newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back the seasons--and let us walk to the orchid-house, see the flowers will take the prize to-morrow at the Palace. Stop here, these are our oleanders. When they are in bloom-- You would waste words It is clearer to me than if the pink were on the branch. It would be a searching in a coloured cloud to reveal that which now, huskless, shows the very reason for their being.

And these the orange-trees, in blossom--no need to tell with this weight of perfume in the air. If it were not so dark in this shed one could better see the white. It is that very perfume has drawn the darkness down among the leaves. Do I speak clearly enough? It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings-- not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves its own caretaker. And here are the orchids! Never having seen such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: This is an odd January, died--in Villon's time. Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom.

And this, a certain July from Iceland: a young woman of that place breathed it toward the south. It took root there. The colour ran true but the plant is small.

This falling spray of snowflakes is a handful of dead Februarys prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez of Guatemala. Here's that old friend who went by my side so many years: this full, fragile head of veined lavender. Oh that April that we first went with our stiff lusts leaving the city behind, out to the green hill-- May, they said she was. A hand for all of us: this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem.

June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August the over-heavy one. And here are-- russet and shiny, all but March. And March? Ah, March-- Flowers are a tiresome pastime. One has a wish to shake them from their pots root and stern, for the sun to gnaw.

Walk out again into the cold and saunter home to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze instead which will at least warm our hands and stir up the talk. I think we have kept fair time. Time is a green orchid.

APRIL

If you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together. But there the sun coming up out of the nothing beyond the lake was too low in the sky, there was too great a pushing against him, too much of sumac buds, pink in the head with the clear gum upon them, too many opening hearts of lilac leaves, too many, too many swollen limp poplar tassels on the bare branches! It was too strong in the air. I had no rest against that springtime! The pounding of the hoofs on the raw sods stayed with me half through the night. I awoke smiling but tired.

A GOODNIGHT

Go to sleep--though of course you will not-- to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls' cries in a wind-gust broken by the wind; calculating wings set above the field of waves breaking. Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests, refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food! Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices-- sleep, sleep....

Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby. Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders, hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings-- lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles, the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks: it is all to put you to sleep, to soften your limbs in relaxed postures, and that your head slip sidewise, and your hair loosen and fall over your eyes and over your mouth, brushing your lips wistfully that you may dream, sleep and dream--

A black fungus springs out about lonely church doors-- sleep, sleep. The Night, coming down upon the wet boulevard, would start you awake with his message, to have in at your window. Pay no heed to him. He storms at your sill with cooings, with gesticulations, curses! You will not let him in. He would keep you from sleeping. He would have you sit under your desk lamp brooding, pondering; he would have you slide out the drawer, take up the ornamented dagger and handle it. It is late, it is nineteen-nineteen-- go to sleep, his cries are a lullaby; his jabbering is a sleep-well-my-baby; he is a crackbrained messenger.

The maid waking you in the morning when you are up and dressing, the rustle of your clothes as you raise them-- it is the same tune. At table the cold, greenish, split grapefruit, its juice on the tongue, the clink of the spoon in your coffee, the toast odors say it over and over.

The open street-door lets in the breath of the morning wind from over the lake. The bus coming to a halt grinds from its sullen brakes-- lullaby, lullaby. The crackle of a newspaper, the movement of the troubled coat beside you-- sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.... It is the sting of snow, the burning liquor of the moonlight, the rush of rain in the gutters packed with dead leaves: go to sleep, go to sleep. And the night passes--and never passes--

OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES

I

Men with picked voices chant the names of cities in a huge gallery: promises that pull through descending stairways to a deep rumbling. The rubbing feet of those coming to be carried quicken a grey pavement into soft light that rocks to and fro, under the domed ceiling, across and across from pale earthcoloured walls of bare limestone.

Covertly the hands of a great clock go round and round! Were they to move quickly and at once the whole secret would be out and the shuffling of all ants be done forever.

A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing out at a high window, moves by the clock: disaccordant hands straining out from a center: inevitable postures infinitely repeated--

II

Two--twofour--twoeight! Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms. This way ma'm! --important not to take the wrong train! Lights from the concrete ceiling hang crooked but-- Poised horizontal on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders packed with a warm glow--inviting entry-- pull against the hour. But brakes can hold a fixed posture till-- The whistle!

Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two!

Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating in a small kitchen. Taillights--

In time: twofour! In time: twoeight!

--rivers are tunneled: trestles cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating the same gesture remain relatively stationary: rails forever parallel return on themselves infinitely. The dance is sure.

ROMANCE MODERNE

Tracks of rain and light linger in the spongy greens of a nature whose flickering mountain--bulging nearer, ebbing back into the sun hollowing itself away to hold a lake,-- or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about, churning itself white, drawing green in over it,--plunging glassy funnels fall-- And--the other world-- the windshield a blunt barrier: Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us. --the backs of their heads facing us-- The stream continues its motion of a hound running over rough ground.

Trees vanish--reappear--vanish: detached dance of gnomes--as a talk dodging remarks, glows and fades. --The unseen power of words-- And now that a few of the moves are clear the first desire is to fling oneself out at the side into the other dance, to other music. Peer Gynt. Rip Van Winkle. Diana.

If I were young I would try a new alignment-- alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!-- Childhood companions linked two and two criss-cross: four, three, two, one. Back into self, tentacles withdrawn. Feel about in warm self-flesh. Since childhood, since childhood! Childhood is a toad in the garden, a happy toad. All toads are happy and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana!

Lean forward. Punch the steersman behind the ear. Twirl the wheel! Over the edge! Screams! Crash! The end. I sit above my head-- a little removed--or a thin wash of rain on the roadway --I am never afraid when he is driving,-- interposes new direction, rides us sidewise, unforseen into the ditch! All threads cut! Death! Black. The end. The very end--

I would sit separate weighing a small red handful: the dirt of these parts, sliding mists sheeting the alders against the touch of fingers creeping to mine. All stuff of the blind emotions. But--stirred, the eye seizes for the first time--The eye awake!-- anything, a dirt bank with green stars of scrawny weed flattened upon it under a weight of air--For the first time!-- or a yawning depth: Big! Swim around in it, through it-- all directions and find vitreous seawater stuff-- God how I love you!--or, as I say, a plunge into the ditch. The end. I sit examining my red handful. Balancing --this--in and out--agh.

Love you? It's a fire in the blood, willy-nilly! It's the sun coming up in the morning. Ha, but it's the grey moon too, already up in the morning. You are slow. Men are not friends where it concerns a woman? Fighters. Playfellows. White round thighs! Youth! Sighs--! It's the fillip of novelty. It's--

Mountains. Elephants humping along against the sky--indifferent to light withdrawing its tattered shreds, worn out with embraces. It's the fillip of novelty. It's a fire in the blood.

Oh get a flannel shirt, white flannel or pongee. You'd look so well! I married you because I liked your nose. I wanted you! I wanted you in spite of all they'd say--

Rain and light, mountain and rain, rain and river. Will you love me always? --A car overturned and two crushed bodies under it.--Always! Always! And the white moon already up. White. Clean. All the colors. A good head, backed by the eye--awake! backed by the emotions--blind-- River and mountain, light and rain--or rain, rock, light, trees--divided: rain-light counter rocks-trees or trees counter rain-light-rocks or--

Myriads of counter processions crossing and recrossing, regaining the advantage, buying here, selling there --You are sold cheap everywhere in town!-- lingering, touching fingers, withdrawing gathering forces into blares, hummocks, peaks and rivers--river meeting rock --I wish that you were lying there dead and I sitting here beside you.-- It's the grey moon--over and over. It's the clay of these parts.

THE DESOLATE FIELD

Vast and grey, the sky is a simulacrum to all but him whose days are vast and grey, and-- In the tall, dried grasses a goat stirs with nozzle searching the ground. --my head is in the air but who am I...? And amazed my heart leaps at the thought of love vast and grey yearning silently over me.

WILLOW POEM

It is a willow when summer is over, a willow by the river from which no leaf has fallen nor bitten by the sun turned orange or crimson. The leaves cling and grow paler, swing and grow paler over the swirling waters of the river as if loath to let go, they are so cool, so drunk with the swirl of the wind and of the river-- oblivious to winter, the last to let go and fall into the water and on the ground.

APPROACH OF WINTER

The half stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine,-- like no leaf that ever was-- edge the bare garden.

JANUARY

Again I reply to the triple winds running chromatic fifths of derision outside my window: Play louder. You will not succeed. I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you. And the wind, as before, fingers perfectly its derisive music.

BLIZZARD

Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down-- the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes-- Hairy looking trees stand out in long alleys over a wild solitude. The man turns and there-- his solitary track stretched out upon the world.

TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffetted by a dark wind-- But what? On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested, the snow is covered with broken seedhusks and the wind tempered by a shrill piping of plenty.

WINTER TREES

All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.

COMPLAINT

They call me and I go It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and shake off the cold. Here is a great woman on her side in the bed. She is sick, perhaps vomiting, perhaps laboring to give birth to a tenth child. Joy! Joy! Night is a room darkened for lovers, through the jalousies the sun has sent one gold needle! I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.

THE COLD NIGHT

It is cold. The white moon is up among her scattered stars-- like the bare thighs of the Police Seargent's wife--among her five children.... No answer. Pale shadows lie upon the frosted grass. One answer: It is midnight, it is still and it is cold...! White thighs of the sky! a new answer out of the depths of my male belly: In April.... In April I shall see again--In April! the round and perfect thighs of the Police Sergent's wife perfect still after many babies. Oya!

SPRING STORM

The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass-stems of the overhanging embankment.

THE DELICACIES

The hostess, in pink satin and blond hair--dressed high--shone beautifully in her white slippers against the great silent bald head of her little-eyed husband! Raising a glass of yellow Rhine wine in the narrow space just beyond the light-varnished woodwork and the decorative column between dining-room and hall, she smiled the smile of water tumbling from one ledge to another.

We began with a herring salad: delicately flavoured saltiness in scallops of lettuce-leaves.

The little owl-eyed and thick-set lady with masses of grey hair has smooth pink cheeks without a wrinkle. She cannot be the daughter of the little red-faced fellow dancing about inviting lion-headed Wolff the druggist to play the piano! But she is. Wolff is a terrific smoker: if the telephone goes off at night--so his curled-haired wife whispers--he rises from bed but cannot answer till he has lighted a cigarette.

Sherry wine in little conical glasses, dull brownish yellow, and tomatoes stuffed with finely cut chicken and mayonnaise!

The tall Irishman in a Prince Albert and the usual striped trousers is going to sing for us. (The piano is in a little alcove with dark curtains.) The hostess's sister--ten years younger than she--in black net and velvet, has hair like some filmy haystack, cloudy about the eyes. She will play for her husband.