Under a Hat Rim

WHILE the hum and the hurry
Of passing footfalls
Beat in my ear like the restless surf
Of a wind-blown sea,
A soul came to me
Out of the look on a face.

Read More

To a Dead Man

Over the dead line we have called to you

To come across with a word to us,

Some beaten whisper of what happens

Where you are over the dead line

Deaf to our calls and voiceless.



The flickering shadows have not answered

Nor your lips sent a signal

Whether love talks and roses grow

And the sun breaks at morning

Splattering the sea with crimson.

Read More

Wilderness

THERE is a wolf in me � fangs pointed for tearing gashes � a red tongue for raw meat � and the hot lapping of blood�I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.



There is a fox in me � a silver-gray fox � I sniff and guess � I pick things out of the wind and air � I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers � I circle and loop and double-cross.



There is a hog in me � a snout and a belly � a machinery for eating and grunting � a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun�I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.



There is a fish in me � I know I came from saltblue water-gates � I scurried with shoals of herring � I blew waterspouts with porpoises � before land was � before the water went down � before Noah � before the first chapter of Genesis.



There is a baboon in me � clambering-clawed � dog-faced � yawping a galoot�s hunger � hairy under the armpits � here are the hawk-eyed hankering men � here are the blond and blue-eyed women � here they hide curled asleep waiting � ready to snarl and kill � ready to sing and give milk � waiting�I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.



There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird � and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want � and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes�And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.



O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart�and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where�For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

Read More

Whitelight

YOUR whitelight flashes the frost to-night

Moon of the purple and silent west.

Remember me one of your lovers of dreams.

Read More

White Hands

FOR the second time in a year this lady with the white hands is brought to the west room second floor of a famous sanatorium.

Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa town and the lady has often read papers on Victorian poets before the local literary club.

Read More

Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,

When the soft silver

Drips shimmering

Over the garden nights,

Death, the gray mocker,

Comes and whispers to you

As a beautiful friend

Who remembers.

Read More

Work Gangs

BOX cars run by a mile long.

And I wonder what they say to each other

When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack.

Maybe their chatter goes:

I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line.

I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered my boards.

Read More

Wind Song

LONG ago I learned how to sleep,

In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,

In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,

In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, Who, who are you?

Read More