If I go meeting her on the corner some damned fool will go blabbing it to the old man and she’ll get hell. He’s a queer old bastard! Every time he sees me you’d think I wanted to kill him. But I figure it out it’s best to let things stay as they are-- for a while at least. It’s hard giving up the thing you want most in the world, but with this damned pump of mine liable to give out ... She’s a good kid and I’d hate to hurt her but if she can get over it-- it’d be the best thing. KELLER GEGEN DOM Witness, would you-- one more young man in the evening of his love hurrying to confession: steps down a gutter crosses a street goes in at a doorway opens for you-- like some great flower-- a room filled with lamplight; or whirls himself obediently to the curl of a hill some wind-dancing afternoon; lies for you in the futile darkness of a wall, sets stars dancing to the crack of a leaf-- and--leaning his head away-- snuffs (secretly) the bitter powder from his thumb’s hollow, takes your blessing and goes home to bed? Witness instead whether you like it or not a dark vinegar smelling place from which trickles the chuckle of beginning laughter It strikes midnight. SMELL! Oh strong ridged and deeply hollowed nose of mine! what will you not be smelling? What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose, always indiscriminate, always unashamed, and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth beneath them. With what deep thirst we quicken our desires to that rank odor of a passing spring-time! Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors for something less unlovely? What girl will care for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways? Must you taste everything? Must you know everything? Must you have a part in everything? BALLET Are you not weary, great gold cross shining in the wind-- are you not weary of seeing the stars turning over you and the sun going to his rest and you frozen with a great lie that leaves you rigid as a knight on a marble coffin? --and you, higher, still, robin, untwisting a song from the bare top-twigs, are you not weary of labor, even the labor of a song? Come down--join me for I am lonely. First it will be a quiet pace to ease our stiffness but as the west yellows you will be ready! Here in the middle of the roadway we will fling ourselves round with dust lilies till we are bound in their twining stems! We will tear their flowers with arms flashing!