The centuries sit with hands on their knees, wearing on weary foreheads their iron-crowned destinies. The sun glares, the rain spatters, the thunder tramples his drums, the wind, rushing, hums its scorn; but the being—the thing that will master all the ages—still hesitates to be born. The great derricks, black and frozen, lift their arms in mid air; the locomotives hoot and mutter in despair; the shuttles clatter and clamor and hammer at the woof day and night. The black flight of priceless instants reels and rebounds and shivers and crawls, while without the uproar of the cannon calls like black seas battering the earth, grinding, sweeping, flickering, pounding, pounding, pounding, in the increasing throes of birth. But still the thing will not arrive. Still it refuses at the very gates of life. America—America—blood-stained and torn with choked, convulsive sighs, perhaps too late thou shalt arise, perhaps in vain shalt seek to rule the earth! Poems MAXWELL BODENHEIM Silence The wordless dream of the fire; The white clock dropping gray minutes from its placid lips; The breathing of women, like the birth of little winds; The muttering of the man in the next room, painting a landscape; I threw them together with a jerk of my soul-wrist, And had silence—a swaying sound Made of the death of the others. A Head Her head was a morning in April. Loose, livid mist arose from cold ground And revealed two tired shepherds with lanterns, Standing above the wrinkled red blankets they had lain on... Then came the morning light—her smile. The Operation With eyes of radium, and beard the color of wet sand, The doctor unlocked his instrument case as carelessly As a child opens an old box of blocks, And almost silently whistled something out of “Aida.” And the nurses—bits of sky with thick clouds— Chattered about patients and hummed frayed songs. But when the still body on the little cart came, The lips of the doctor became stiff and trim (Bows of ribbon turning to circles of stone) And the nurses were no longer women: Were sexless, with tapering fingers and metal eyes... The doctor made the incision and checked the blood: And I thought of a miner, half-reverently, half-wearily cutting soft earth, Picking out lumps of dead silver... But the picture changed when the doctor sewed up the wound, And I saw a middle-aged woman gravely mending a limp rag... The little cart disappeared, And the doctor locked his instrument case as carelessly As a child closes an old box of blocks: And the nurses were once more bits of sky with thick clouds. Some Imagist Poets GEORGE LANE