# Is 5/FOUR

FOUR
FOUR I
the moon looked into my window
it touched me with its small hands I and with curling infantile fingers it understood my eyes cheeks mouth its hands(slipping)felt of my necktie wandered against my shirt and into my body the sharp things fingered tinily my heart life
the little hands withdrew, jerkily, themselves quietly they began playing with a button the moon smiled she let go my vest and crept through the window she did not fall she went creeping along the air she went creeping along the air over houses she went creeping along the air over houses roofs
And out of the east toward her a fragile light bent gatheringly
FOUR II
if being morticed with a dream myself speaks
(whispering, suggesting that our souls inhabit whatever is between them) knowing my lips hands the way i move my habits laughter
i say you will perhaps pardon, possibly you will comprehend. and how this has arrived your mind may guess
if at sunset it should, leaning against me, smile; or(between dawn and twilight) giving
your eyes, present me also with the terror of shrines
which noone has suspected (but wherein silently always are kneeling the various deaths which are your lover lady: together with what keen innumerable lives he has not lived.
FOUR III
here’s a little mouse)and
what does he think about, i
wonder as over this floor (quietly with
bright eyes)drifts(nobody can tell because Nobody knows, or why jerks Here &, here, gr(oo)ving the room’s Silence)this like a littlest poem a (with wee ears and see?
tail frisks) can tell because (gonE) “mouse”, “mouse”, We are not the same you and
i, since here’s a little he or is it It ? (or was something we saw in the mirror)?
therefore we’ll kiss;for maybe what was Disappeared into ourselves
who (look). ,startled
FOUR IV
but if i should say goodmorning trouble adds up all sorts of quickly things on the slate of that nigger’s face(but
If i should say thankyouverymuch
mr rosenbloom picks strawberries with beringed hands)but if
i Should say solong my tailor chuckles
like a woman in a dream(but if i should say Now the all saucers but cups if begin to spoons dance every-
should where say over the damned table and we hold lips Eyes everything hands you know what happens)but if i should, Say,
FOUR V
in spite of everything
which breathes and moves, since Doom
(with white longest hands neatening each crease) will smooth entirely our minds
—before leaving my room i turn, and (stooping through the morning)kiss this pillow, dear where our heads lived and were.
FOUR VI
you are not going to, dear. You are not going to and i but that doesn’t in the least matter. The big fear Who held us deeply in His fist is
no longer, can you imagine it i can’t which doesn’t matter and what does is possibly this dear, that we may resume impact with the inutile collide
once more with the imaginable, love, and eat sunlight(do you believe it? j begin to and that doesn’t matter) which
i suggest teach us a new terror always which shall brighten carefully these things we consider life. Dear i put my eyes into you but that doesn’t matter further than of old
because you fooled the doctors,itouch you with hopes and words and with soand so: we are together, we will kiss or smile or move. It’s different too isn’t it
different dear from moving as we, you and i,usedtomovewhen i thoughtyou were going to(but that doesn’t matter) when you thought you were going to America. when you thought you were going to America. Then
moving was a matter of not keeping still;we were two alert lice in the blond hair of nothing
FOUR VII
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world
my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry —the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
FOUR VIII
some ask praise of their fellows but i being otherwise made compose curves and yellows, angles or silences to a less erring end)
myself is sculptor of your body’s idiom: the musician of your wrists; the poet who is afraid only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair, (your fingertips the way you move) the way you move)‍the
painter of your voice— beyond these elements
remarkably nothing is. . . .therefore,lady am i content should any by me carven thing provoke your gesture possibly or
any painting (for its own
reason)in your lips slenderly should create one least smile (shyly if a poem should lift to me the distinct country of your eyes, gifted with green twilight)
FOUR IX
supposing i dreamed this)
only imagine, when day has thrilled
you are a house around which i am a wind—
your walls will not reckon how strangely my life is curved since the best he can do is to peer through windows, unobserved
—listen, for(out of all things)dream is noone’s fool; if this wind who i am prowls carefully around this house of you
love being such, or such, the normal corners of your heart will never guess how much my wonderful jealousy is dark
if light should flower: or laughing sparkle from the shut house(around and around which a poor wind will roam
FOUR X
you are like the snow only purer fleeter, like the rain only sweeter frailer you
whom certain flowers ressemble but trembling(cowards which fear to miss within your least gesture the hurting skill which lives)and since
nothing lingers beyond a little instant, along with rhyme and with laughter O my lady (and every brittle marvelous breathing thing)
since i and you are on our ways to dust
of your fragility (but chiefly of your smile, most suddenly which is of love and death a marriage) you give me
courage so that against myself the sharp days slobber in vain:
Nor am i afraid that this, which we call autumn, cleverly dies and over the ripe world wanders with a near and careful smile in his mouth (making
everything suddenly old and with his awkward eyes pushing sleep under and thoroughly into all beautiful things)
winter, whom Spring shall kill
FOUR XI
because you go away i give roses who will advise even yourself, lady in the most certainly (of what we everywhere do not touch)deep things; things; remembering ever so tinily these, your crisp eyes actually shall contain new faeries
(and if your slim lips are amused, no wisest
painter of fragile Marys will understand how smiling may be made as skilfully.) But carry also, with that indolent and with this flower wholly whom you do not ever fear, not ever fear, me in your heart
softly;not all but the beginning
of mySelf
FOUR XII
you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,
amiseparated from your body smile brain hands merely to become the jumping puppets of a dream? ohimean: entirely having in my careful how careful arms created this at length inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure—you go from several persons: believe me that strangers arrive when i have kissed you into a memory slowly, oh seriously —that since and if you disappear
solemnly myselves ask “life, the question how do i drink dream smile
and how do i prefer this face to another and why do i weep eat sleep—what does the whole intend” they wonder. ohandtheycry “tobe,being,thatiamalive this absurd fraction in its lowest terms with everything cancelled but shadows —what does it all come down to? love? Love if you like and i like, for the reason that i hate people and lean out of this window is love,love and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love.”
FOUR XIII
Nobody wears a yellow flower in his buttonhole he is altogether a queer fellow as young as he is old
when autumn comes, who twiddles his white thumbs and frisks down the boulevards
without his coat and hat
—(and i wonder just why that should please him or i wonder what he does)
and why(at the bottom of this trunk, under some dirty collars) only a moment (or was it perhaps a year)ago i found staring
me in the face a dead yellow small rose
FOUR XIV
it is so long since my heart has been with yours
shut by our mingling arms through a darkness where new lights begin and increase, since your mind has walked into my kiss as a stranger into the streets and colours of a town—
that i have perhaps forgotten how, always (from these hurrying crudities of blood and flesh) Love coins His most gradual gesture,
and whittles life to eternity
—after which our separating selves become museums filled with skilfully stuffed memories
FOUR XV
i am a beggar always who begs in your mind
(slightly smiling, patient, unspeaking with a sign on his breast BLIND)yes i
am this person of whom somehow you are never wholly rid(and who
does not ask for more than just enough dreams to live on) live on) after all, kid
you might as well toss him a few thoughts
a little love preferably, anything which you can’t pass off on other people: for instance a plugged promise—
then he will maybe(hearing something fall into his hat) go wandering after it with fingers;till having
found what was thrown away what was thrown away‍himself taptaptaps out of your brain, hopes, life
to(carefully turning a corner)never bother you any more.
FOUR XVI
if within tonight’s erect
everywhere of black muscles fools
a weightless slowness(deftly
muting the world’s texture with drifted
gifts of featheriest slenderness and how gradually which descending are suddenly received )or by doomfull connivance
accurately thither and hither myself
struts unremembered (rememberingly with in both pockets curled hands moves) why then toward morning he is a ghost whom
assault these whispering fists of hail
(and a few windows awaken certain faces busily horribly blunder through new light hush we are made of the same thing as perhaps
nothing, he murmurs carefully lying down)
FOUR XVII
how this uncouth enchanted person, arising from a restaurant, looks breathes or moves —climbing (past light after light)to turn, disappears
the very swift and invisibly living rhythm of your Heart possibly
will understand; or why (in
this most exquisite of cities all of the long night a fragile imitation of (perhaps)myself carefully wanders streets dark and, deep
with rain. . . .
(he, slightly whom or cautiously this person
and this imitation resemble, descends into the earth with the year a cigarette between his ghost-lips
gradually) remembering badly, softly your kissed thrice suddenly smile
FOUR XVIII
i go to this window
just as day dissolves when it is twilight(and looking up in fear
i see the new moon thinner than a hair)
making me feel how myself has been coarse and dull compared with you, silently who are and cling to my mind always
But now she sharpens and becomes crisper until i smile with knowing —and all about herself
the sprouting largest final air
plunges plunges inward with hurled downward thousands of enormous dreams