To rush over dark waters, A swift bird with cruel talons; To seize life-- Your life for her-- To hold it, Hold it struggling-- To kiss it. II Crystal self-containment, Giving out only what is sent. Startled, The circumference retreats As it mounts higher, flamelike, Still and clear without radiance, Ascending without self-explanation. A skeleton falls apart With the dignity of comprehensible pathos, The bones bleached by denial. III With the impalpable lightness of May breezes Begins a battle of flower petals: Cowering in the primrose whirlwind his lips have blown, The little grotesque with the shattered heart, Fearful, Yet sinister in his fearfulness. THEODORE DREISER The man body jumbled out of the earth, half formed, Clay on the feet, Heavy with the lingering might of chaos. The man face so high above the feet As if lonesome for them like a child. The veins that beat heavily with the music they but half understood Coil languidly around the heart And lave it in the death stream Of a grand impersonal benignance. PIETA The child-- Warm chubby thighs, Fat brown arms, An unsurprised face-- Cries for jam. The mother buys him with jam. An old woman, Tottering on lean leather skinned legs, Sucks with glazing eyes The crystal silken milk That flows from the death wound In a young flower-soft, jewel-soft body. BRAZIL THROUGH A MIST THE RANCH TROPICAL LIFE White flower, Your petals float away But I hardly hear them. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS The day is so long and white, A road all dust, Smooth monotony; And the night at the end, A hill to be climbed, Slowly, laboriously, While the stars prick our hands Like thistles. RAINY SEASON A flock of parrakeets Hurled itself through the mist; Harsh wild green And clamor-tongued Through the dim white forest. They vanished, And the lips of Silence Sucked at the roots of Life. MAIL ON THE RANCH The old man on the mule Opens the worn saddle bags, And takes out the papers. From the outer world The thoughts come stabbing, To taunt, baffle, and stir me to revolt. I beat against the sky, Against the winds of the mountain, But my cries, grown thin in all this space, Are diluted with emptiness... Like the air, Thin and wide, Touching everything, Touching nothing. THE VAMPIRE BAT What was it that came out of the night? What was it that went away in the night? The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner, Eyes already glazing. How should she know what came out of the night, Or what was taken away in the night? A shadow passed across the moon. The wind rustled in the mango trees. And now, in the morning, The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner, Eyes already glazing; Because a shadow passed across the moon, And the wind rustled in the mango trees. CONSERVATISM