Then mutterings shook our skies! Another war, France, Germany and England, so it seemed Best to return here to America. I gathered up the children--all but one, The boy eighteen escaped me, ran away And joined the English army. Now I saw One self of me repeated, that which went To free the Cubans! Curse these freedom wars! They shipped him off to India, soon he had His fill of liberty. But I came back And here I am. "They'd never know me now!" For what is left of me, what ever was To be peeled off to realest core? The soldier Gone out of me entirely; long ago, The dreamer of a better world; the self That said I'm on the pinnacle, took arms To free the Cubans; self of me that hungered For pyramids and mountains, ancient streams, Nile and the Ganges; self of me that turned To be a father holding on his knees A romping bevy; self of me that dreamed One heart, one hand enough, oh even the self That dreamed there is a hand a heart for me, Who found in truth no solace in the wife But only a teasing, torturing recollection That I had missed the one, or missed the many. So I was in America again, Had fled the war and plunged into the war:-- The waves roared yonder, but the shores were here Where wreckage, putrid monsters were thrown up, Corpses of ancient liberties and bones Of treasured beauty; and I saw the Land Don every despot weapon, as it did When I fought for the Cubans, even worse. They shipped my boy to Africa; in spite Of censorship I pieced the picture out, Knew what he suffered, how they took his faith And dimmed its flame with ordure. Then came forth That father self of me. I brooded on His blue eyes, gentle ways, sat terrified And tried to trace the days through and the years When he had slipped from just a little boy Into a stripling, soldier finally-- While I--what was I doing? Oh, my God, Living these other selves, oblivious That this boy was. I'd jump from soundest sleep Thinking of him in Africa, and seized With dreams that I must fly to him. O years Wherein I lost that boy. How could I live So many lives and not lose out of some, Some precious thing? Well, then I broke at last, They brought me here: "They'd never know me now." NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN You call this a world! Cloud cuckoo town, Nephelo coccygia, warp and woof, Now at the last I write it down, Since I no longer have the proof To show it isn't opera bouffe, A moving picture film and scene; Stage world, with the glue between The angels' feathers, the devil's hoof Neither violent nor venene. * * * * *