Nigger with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips; Nigger with loose red tongue; Flat browed nigger, Your skull peaked at the zenith, The stretched glistening skin Covered with tight coiled springs of hair: I am up here cold. I am white man. You are still warm and sweet With the darkness you were born in. THE MAIDEN MOTHER He has a squat body, Glowering brows, And bulging eyes. Lustful contemplation of the meat pie Is written all over his sweating face. The thin woman with the meek voice, Who has carried him so long in her body And despairs of giving him birth, Watches over him in secret With bitter and resentful tenderness. A PIOUS WOMAN You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting And smell candle wax and church incense. When she dies she must be burned. Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture And get soggy, As now she has a way of soaking up tears Never meant for her. A VERY OLD ROSE JAR She ran across the lawn after the cat And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow, A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover. There was clashing of cymbals, And the flash of nereids' arms in autumn leaves. A sharp high note died out like an ascending light. Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid's lips-- Something of Pierrot chasing after love, A bacchante dying in her sleep, A shadow, And a gray cat. THE NIXIE He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks, His eyes brown stones, Worn smooth and soft, But uncrumbled. He reaches forth covert child-claws To tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fish As they swim secretly above him. He laughs-- The school splinters, panic stricken. As we stare through the lucid gold water He gazes up at us from his shadowy retreat In combative safety. There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a god, Water god, land god, god-in-the-sky. We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie. We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of his imagination. OLD LADIES' VALHALLA I am thinking of a little house, A pretty gray silk dress, And a little maid with a tidy white apron. I am thinking of thin yellow angels Flying out of Sevres china tea cups, And a cool spirit with slanting green eyes, Who peers at me through the screen of plants I have placed in the corner between the hearth and the window. I am thinking of the peace in one's own little home When the afternoon sunshine drips on the shiny floor, And the rugs are in order, And the roses in the bowl plunge into shadow Like pink nymphs into a pool, While there is no sound to be heard above the hum of the teakettle Save the benevolent buzzing of flies in the clean sash curtain. PORTRAITS OF POETS I (For L. R.)