and free I fare, half-heedless of her fate:
no faith, no flag I owe—then why not seek
this last loop-hole of life? Why hesitate?
I will deny … and yet I do not speak.
“Deny your God!” their spears are poised on high,
and tense and terrible they wait the word;
and dark and darker glooms the dreary sky,
and in that hush of horror no thing stirred.
Then, through the ringing terror and sheer hate
leaped there a vision to me—Oh, how far!
A face, Her face … through all my stormy fate
a joy, a strength, a glory and a star.
Beneath the pines, where lonely camp-fires gleam,
in seas forlorn, amid the deserts drear,
how I had gladdened to that face of dream!
And never, never had it seemed so dear.
O silken hair that veils the sunny brow!
O eyes of grey, so tender and so true!
O lips of smiling sweetness! must I now
for ever and for ever go from you?
Ah, yes, I must … for if I do this thing,
how can I look into your face again?
Knowing you think me more than half a king,
I with my craven heart, my honor slain.
No! no! my mind’s made up. I gaze above,
into that sky insensate as a stone;
not for my creed, my country, but my Love
will I stand up and meet my death alone.
Then though it be to utter dark I sink,
the God that dwells in me is not denied;
“Best” triumphs over “Beast,”—and so I think
humanity itself is glorified … .
“And now, my butchers, I embrace my fate.
Come! let my heart’s blood slake the thirsty sod.
Curst be the life you offer! Glut your hate!
Strike! Strike, you dogs! I’ll not deny my God.”
I saw the spears that seemed a-leap to slay,
all quiver earthward at the headman’s nod;
and in a daze of dream I heard him say:
“Go, set him free who serves so well his God!”
The Wee Shop1
She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking
the pinched economies of thirty years;
and there the little shop was, meek and shrinking,
the sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears.
Ere it was opened I would see them in it,
the gray-haired dame, the daughter with her crutch;
so fond, so happy, hoarding every minute,
like artists, for the final tender touch.
The opening day! I’m sure that to their seeming
was never shop so wonderful as theirs;
with pyramids of jam-jars rubbed to gleaming;
such vivid cans of peaches, prunes and pears;
and chocolate, and biscuits in glass cases,
and bon-bon bottles, many-hued and bright;
yet nothing half so radiant as their faces,
their eyes of hope, excitement and delight.
I entered: how they waited all a-flutter!
How awkwardly they weighed my acid-drops!
And then with all the thanks a tongue could utter
they bowed me from the kindliest of shops.
I’m sure that night their customers they numbered;
discussed them all in happy, breathless speech;
and though quite worn and weary, ere they slumbered,
sent heavenward a little prayer for each.
And so I watched with interest redoubled
that little shop, spent in it all I had;
and when I saw it empty I was troubled,
and when I saw them busy I was glad.
And when I dared to ask how things were going,
they told me, with a fine and gallant smile:
“Not badly … slow at first … There’s never knowing …
‘Twill surely pick up in a little while.”
I’d often see them through the winter weather,
behind the shutters by a light’s faint speck,
poring o’er books, their faces close together,
the lame girl’s arm around her mother’s neck.
They dressed their windows not one time but twenty,
each change more pinched, more desperately neat;
alas! I wondered if behind that plenty
the two who owned it had enough to eat.
Ah, who would dare to sing of tea and coffee?
The sadness of a stock unsold and dead;
the petty tragedy of melting toffee,
the sordid pathos of stale gingerbread.
Ignoble themes! And yet—those haggard faces!
Within that little shop … . Oh, here I say
one does not need to look in lofty places
for tragic themes, they’re round us every day.
And so I saw their agony, their fighting,
their eyes of fear, their heartbreak, their despair;
and there the little shop is, black and blighting,
and all the world goes by and does not care.
They say she sought her old employer’s pity,
content to take the pittance he would give.
The lame girl? yes, she’s working in the city;
she coughs a lot—she hasn’t long to live.
Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)
from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,
A Very Valentine1
Very fine is my valentine.
Very fine and very mine.
Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.
Very fine is my valentine and mine,
very fine very mine and mine is my valentine.
Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)
Last Answers1
I wrote a poem on the mist
and a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
and change the drab shanties
with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.
I answered:
the whole world was mist once long ago and some day
it will all go back to mist,
our skulls and lungs
are more water than bone and tissue
and all poets love dust and mist because
all the last answers
go running back to dust and mist.
The Junk Man2
I am glad God saw Death
and gave Death a job
taking care of all who are tired of living:
when all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow
and the connections loose
and the clock goes on ticking
and telling the wrong time from hour to hour
and people around the house joke
about what a bum clock it is,
how glad the clock is when
the big Junk Man drives his wagon
up to the house
and puts his arms around the clock and says:
“You don’t belong here,
you gotta come
along with me,”
how glad the clock is then,
when it feels the arms of the Junk Man
close around it and carry it away.
To Know Silence Perfectly1
There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always.
If the music dies down there is a silence
almost the same as the movement of music.
To know silence perfectly is to know music.
Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931)
The Horrid Voice of Science2
“There’s machinery in the butterfly;
there’s a mainspring to the bee;
there’s hydraulics
to a daisy,
and contraptions to a tree.
If we could see the birdie
that makes the chirping sound
with x-ray, scientific eyes,
we could see the wheels go round.”
And I hope all men
who think like this
will soon lie
underground.
Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)
The Snow Man1
One must have a mind of winter
to regard the frost and the boughs
of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
and have been cold a long time
to behold the junipers shagged with ice,
the spruces rough in the distant glitter
of the January sun; and not to think
of any misery in the sound of the wind,
in the sound of a few leaves,
which is the sound of the land
full of the same wind
that is blowing in the same bare place
for the listener, who listens in the snow,
and, nothing himself, beholds
nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird2
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
the only moving thing
was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
like a tree
in which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
the beauty of inflections
or the beauty of innuendoes,
the blackbird whistling
or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
with barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
traced in the shadow
an indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
walks around the feet
of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
and lucid, inescapable rhythms;
but I know, too,
that the blackbird is involved
in what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
it marked the edge
of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
flying in a green light,
even the bawds of euphony
would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
in a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
in that he mistook
the shadow of his equipage
for blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
and it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
in the cedar-limbs.
Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1881 – 1968)
Cubist Portrait1
She is purposeless as a cyclone; she must move
either by chance or in a predestined groove,
following a whim not her own, unable to shape
her course. From chance or God even she cannot escape!
Think of a cyclone sitting far-off with its head in its hands, motionless,
drearily longing for distant lands
where every lonely hurricane may at last discover
its own transcendent, implacable, indestructible lover!
What is a cyclone? Only thin air moving fast
from here to yonder, to become silent emptiness at last.
William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)
Danse Russe2
If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
The Act1
There were the roses, in the rain.
Don’t cut them, I pleaded.
They won’t last, she said.
But they’re so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said.
And cut them and gave them to me
in my hand.
The Last Words of My English Grandmother1
There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed—
Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,
Gimme something to eat—
they’re starving me—
I’m all right I won’t go
to the hospital. No, no, no
Give me something to eat
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well
you can do as you please.
She smiled, Yes
you do what you please first
then I can do what I please—
Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher—
Is this what you call
making me comfortable?
By now her mind was clear—
Oh you think you’re smart
you young people,
she said, but I’ll tell you
you don’t know anything.
Then we started.
On the way
we passed a long row
of elms. She looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,
What are all those
fuzzy-looking things out there?
Trees? Well, I’m tired
of them and rolled her head away.
The Red Wheelbarrow1
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
The Three Graces2
We have the picture of you in mind,
when you were young, posturing
(for a photographer) in scarves
(if you could have done it) but now,
for none of you is immortal, ninety-three,
the three, ninety and three,
Mary, Ellen and Emily, what
beauty is it clings still about you?
Undying? Magical? For there is still
no answer, why we live or why
you will not live longer than I
or that there should be an answer why
any should live and whatever other
should die. Yet you live. You l
ive
and all that can be said is that
you live, time cannot alter it—
and as I write this Mary has died.
To Mark Anthony in Heaven1
This Quiet morning light
reflected, how many times
from grass and trees and clouds
enters my north room
touching the walls with
grass and clouds and trees.
Anthony,
trees and grass and clouds.
Why did you follow
that beloved body
with your ships at Actium?
I hope it was because
you knew her inch by inch
from slanting feet upward
to the roots of her hair
and down again and that
you saw her
above the battle’s fury—
clouds and trees and grass—
For then you are
listening in heaven.
This is Just to Say1
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Tract2
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral—
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black—
nor white either—and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.
Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
how well he is housed or to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
The Giant Book of Poetry (2006) Page 31
