But it is five o’clock. Come! Life is good--enjoy it! A walk in the park while the day lasts. I will go with you. Look! this northern scenery is not the Nile, but-- these benches--the yellow and purple dusk-- the moon there--these tired people-- the lights on the water! Are not these Jews and--Ethiopians? The world is young, surely! Young and colored like--a girl that has come upon a lover! Will that do? WINTER QUIET Limb to limb, mouth to mouth with the bleached grass silver mist lies upon the back yards among the outhouses. The dwarf trees pirouette awkwardly to it-- whirling round on one toe; the big tree smiles and glances upward! Tense with suppressed excitement the fences watch where the ground has humped an aching shoulder for the ecstasy. DAWN Ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings-- beating color up into it at a far edge,--beating it, beating it with rising, triumphant ardor,-- stirring it into warmth, quickening in it a spreading change,-- bursting wildly against it as dividing the horizon, a heavy sun lifts himself--is lifted-- bit by bit above the edge of things,--runs free at last out into the open--! lumbering glorified in full release upward--songs cease. GOOD NIGHT In brilliant gas light I turn the kitchen spigot and watch the water plash into the clean white sink. On the grooved drain-board to one side is a glass filled with parsley-- crisped green. Waiting for the water to freshen-- I glance at the spotless floor--: a pair of rubber sandals lie side by side under the wall-table, all is in order for the night. Waiting, with a glass in my hand --three girls in crimson satin pass close before me on the murmurous background of the crowded opera-- it is memory playing the clown-- three vague, meaningless girls full of smells and the rustling sound of cloth rubbing on cloth and little slippers on carpet-- high-school French spoken in a loud voice! Parsley in a glass, still and shining, brings me back. I take my drink and yawn deliciously. I am ready for bed. DANSE RUSSE If I 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 danse 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,--