NEW YORK

Oh wonder steel and stone that make New York
A grandeur such as Egypt knew of old!
The free white mind soared daringly to work,
And obelisks prick the sky with spires of gold!

But oh the city shouts! A thousand signs,
Buildings and lots and shattered businesses,
And stuff too intimate for printed lines,
Clutched in the grip of dragon-clawed distress.

Pell-mell the frightened pawns of modern kings
Scour through the city to the market places,
To sell at any price their little things,
In trembling and with terror in their faces.

Fighting and raging, pressing to the wall
The derilicts against the barriers jammed,
When in the crush there was not room for all,
And some were cursed of men and by God damned.

For Sale! For Sale! Behold the riotous scramble
Of minions for investments safe-and-sound.
The army routed, while the captains gamble,
The bourses crack and crumble to the ground.

NEW YORK

More goods for sale than purchasers can buy.¹
The city's monster advertising cries
Its manufactures spreading piling high,
Weaving Manhattan's glorious fantasies.

The radios spit. The air is charged with selling,
Even the empty puny words we utter:
Who'll take a song, our hoisted signs are yelling,
To save the little poets from the gutter?

Oh we who have sometimes felt as free as air--
Mad poets drunk with sounds of drums and flutes,
Fooling ourselves that words were precious, rare--
Our thoughts, our dreams are little prostitutes.

✓PETROGRAD: MAY DAY, 1923.

The Neva moves majestically on,
The sun-rays playing on her breast at seven,
From her blue bosom all winter's snow-slabs gone.
Now ripples curl where yesterday lay riven
Great silver oblongs chiselled by the hand
Of Spring that bellies through Earth's happy womb,
To glad and flower the long, long pregnant land!
Where yestereven a veil of winter gloom
Shrouded the city's splendid face,-- today
All life rejoices for the First of May.

The Nevsky glows ablaze with regal Red,
Symbolic of the triumph and the rule
Of the new Power now lifting high its head
Above the place where once a sceptered fool
Was mounted by the plunderers of men
To awe the victims while they schemed and robbed.
The marchers shout again, again!! again...!
The stones, where once the hearts of martyrs sobbed
Their blood, are sweet unto their feet today,
In celebration of the First of May.

Cities are symbols of man's onward reach,
Man drawing near to man in close commune,
And mighty cities mighty lessons teach
Of man's decay or progress, late or soon,
And many an iron-towered Babylon,
Beneath the quiet golden breath of Time

2

Has vanished like the snow under the sun,
Leaving no single mark in stone or rhyme
To flame the lifted heart of man today,
As Petrograd upon the First of May.

Oh many a thoughtful romance-seeking boy,
Slow-fingering the leaves of ancient glory,
Is stirred to rapture by the tales of Troy,
And each invigorate, vein-tingling story
Of Egypt and of Athens and of Rome,
Where slaves long toiled for knights and kings to reap.
But in the years, the wondrous years to come,
The heart of youth in every land will leap
For Russia that first made national the day--
The embattled workers' day-- The First of May.

Jerusalem is fading from men's mind,
And sacred cities holding men in thrall,
Are crumbling in the new thought of mankind--
The pagan day, the holy day for all!
And Petrograd, the proud triumphant city,
The gateway to the strange, awakening East,
Where warrior-workers wrestled without pity
Against the power of magnate, monarch, priest--
World Fort of Struggle, holding high today
The flaming standards of the First of May!

MOROCCO

) published May 26, 1953.

Oh wistful and heartrending earth, oh land
Of colors singing symphonies of life!
Myself is like a stone upon my spirit,
Reluctant passing from your sunny shore.

Oh native colors,
Pure colors aglow
With magic light!

Mysterious atmosphere whose elements,
Like hands inspired by a magnetic force,
Touching caressingly my inmost chords,
How strangely I was brought beneath your spell!

But willingly
Captive to be
Within your sphere.

Oh friends, my friends! When Ramadan returns
And daily fast and feasting through the night,
With chants and music honey-dripping sweets
And fatmabs shaking their flamenco feet--

My thoughts will wing
On airy waves
With you to be.

NOTE OF HARLEM

Rich is the flavor of this Harlem street,
The dusk over the dark-warm street is tender,
The murmuring of fruit-ripe throats is sweet
And gladly to the tumult I surrender.

A singular confusion fills my breast,
My feet are happy on this familiar ground
After long years to find a little rest,
My head in dizzy joy goes round and round.

Like veils removed at last from hidden places,
The mists lift from the dear, remembered sights
And I am seeing in their proper places,
The cherished haunts of Harlem days and nights.

The lines and colors are more manifold,
My senses quicken to appreciate
The new landmarks arisen midst the old,
The different signs and sounds that dominate.

But oh! I was reluctant coming back,
I felt like one expelled from heaven to hell,
To the arena packed of white-and-black,
America's heart-breaking spectacle.

NOTE OF HARLEM

Yet though I feared to face this strange return,
Afraid that I could never again recapture,
These accents for which often I did yearn
And in my exile dote upon with rapture:

Returning I discovered happiness,
Though mingled with the thoughts of farewell pain;
Yet any pain was good that brought me this:
The joy of finding voice to sing again.

## LENOX AVENUE

The mummers mass in Lenox Avenue,
A Negro theater by night and day,
In accents strong and colors of every hue,
A race entire enacts its passionate play.
From pool-room and saloon the rich and rude
Vernacular of Harlem takes the air,
The young folk stroll by in contagious mood
Insouciant as if never knowing care
Meanwhile a white-and-black parade deploys
Its banners shouting for Scottsboro boys.

In cloying chords and simple melodies,
Notes old and modern classical and hot,
Duets and quintettes, choirs and symphonies,
The radios spit a language polyglott,
In restaurants and candy shops and bars,
While people take a bite or drink a beer,
A sentimental voice sings of the stars
Into the microphone while thousands cheer:
And Harlem sways its body dark and warm,
Enthralled, enraptured by the medley charm.

Here is a vaudeville that never stops!
The radios sound, the youngsters start to shake
Along the blocks, they execute neat hops,
Taking with music every step they make.

LENOX AVENUE

The subways swallow and disgorge the crowd,
The pavements stream its movement straight along,
The cabarets and dancing halls so loud
Entrancingly with laughter and with song,
Intoxicate my senses with the street,
To take the rhythm of Harlem's moving feet.

BLACK BELT SLUMMERS

One dilettante, a prince of his profession,
Thinks Black Belt is a mine of finest ore,
Pure gold and bronze and copper to explore,
Desires, enamoured of his own obsession,
To write it up, a nice romantic story,
Of leopards loitering along the street,
And jungle maidens, sensuous and sweet,
Crowning the Black Belt in their sable glory.

An amateur praises a Negro maiden,
A kitchen creature of delightful mein,
Who scrubs the parquet like a haughty queen,
And proudly bears her tray with dishes laden.
He loves the background modern and bizarre,
She works against with such engaging spunk,
Comparing it like a great mound of junk
Where wonderfully shines a fallen star.

They're all so exquisite! exclaims milady,
Reminding me of Uncle Tom of old,
Whose burdened body held a heart of gold,
His type made our American Arcady.

I like all things unlike myself and strange,
That's why I think they're agents of the devil,
Who want to bring all folk to the same level--
They love not Beauty who desire such change.

THE YEARS BETWEEN

I have returned, but you will never find,
All the familiar things of me intact,
I am like a classic that a modern mind
Has cut and altered to improve the act.

Now many passions agitate my heart,
For storms have swept the currents of my blood:
The years between have done their cyclic part--
The streams new courses found after the flood.

This mood that seems to you so passing strange,
This that you wrongly call a cynic smile,
Is nothing but a sequence of sea-change--
I have been running round a little while.

Though you may think me tired-minded, blank,
With nought to show since when I wandered hence,
No outward token that I found and drank
Deep of the fountain of experience:

Yet I am richer now by many things,
Such treasures as I found along the way,
Those moments of my flight with golden wings,
Attached a moment to my feet of clay.

## MOON SONG

The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone.

Upon the clothes behind the tenement,
That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,
Linking each flat to each indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

There is no magic from your presence here,
Ho moon! Mad moon, tuck up your trailing robe,
Whose silver seems antique and so severe
Against the glow of the electric globe.

Go spill your beauty on the laughing faces,
Of happy flowers that bloom a thousand hues,
Waiting on tiptoe in the wilding spaces,
To drink your wine mixed with sweet draughts of dews.

HOME SONG

Oh breezes blowing on the red hill-top
By tall fox-tails,
Where through dry twigs and leaves and grasses hop
The dull-brown quails!

Is there no magic floating in the air
To bring to me
A breath of you, when I am homesick here
Across the sea?

Oh black boys holding on the cricket ground
A penny race!
What other black boy frisking round and round,
Plays in my place?

When picnic days come with their yearly thrills
In warm December,
The boy in me romps with you in the hills--
Remember!

TROPICAL RAIN

At the sign of the crows
Poised in the height of the sky,
The weltering south wind blows
And the hail-winging rain is nigh.

Over Mochos' dark-greeny brow,
The white cloud turns soon to gray
And the grey turns dark-darker now -
Spreading black towards Run-a-way Bay.

Now it strikes the hot ground,
Breaking out in singular rills,
Hark! the rivers dark sound
In the hills, far away, in the hills!

DREAMS

They are not bountiful now as before
More often they are horrible nightmares,
So many have been murdered in the roar
And bloody terror of the marring years

Oh for the higher power, the inner light,
To see and hold a while a little one,
They torture me, flitting across my night,
I hear, I see, I touch them! They are gone!

Oh I have even drugged myself to dream
Of dear dead things, trembling with hope to capture
The sunlit ripples laughing on the stream
That bathed my boyhood days in foamy rapture.

NEGRO SPIRITUAL

They have taken thee out of the simple soil.
Where the warm sun made mellowy thy tones,
And voices plaintive from eternal toil,
Thy music spoke in liquid, lyric moans:
They have ravished thee from out the brooding wood.
Where scenting bloodhounds caught thy whispered note,
And birds and trees and flowers all understood
The sorrow sobbing from a choking throat;
And brought thee to this brazen gilded hall,
Of waxen figures garishly arrayed.
Like those paraded at a carnival,
For whom an alien spirit has essayed
To dress thee up in virtuoso wonders,
Drowning thy beauty in orchestral thunders.

TRIBUTE

Where once you worked and dwelt,
Perplexed by doubts and fears,
Unloved by those you felt
Should most love through the years,

Your monument remains-
Unreared of mortal hands,
Compensating your pains -
The legend of a land.

I clearly see you now -
Unshadowed of pain or ill,
Your calm benignant brow -
Lone but more lovely still

Beyond the life-long gloom
Of living you have won,
Above your nameless tomb,
A flame, a world, a sun.

LIKE A STRONG TREE

Like a strong tree that in the virgin earth
Sends far its roots through rock and loam and clay,
And proudly strives in vain or time of dearth,
When the day waves scare rainy sprites away;
Like a strong tree that reaches down, deep, deep,
For sunken water fluid underground,
Where the great-ringed unsightly blind worms creep,
And queer things of the nether world abound:
So would I live in rich imperial growth,
Touching the surface and the depth of things,
Instinctively responsive unto both,
Tasting the sweets of being and the stings,
Sensing the subtle spell of changing forms,
Like a strong tree against a thousand storms.

MY HOUSE

For this peculiar tint that paints my house
Peculiar in an alien atmosphere
Where other houses have the same pale hue,
I have a feeling always very rare
And romane-making in my ardent blood,
That channels through my body like a flood.

I know the dark delight of being strange,
The penalty of difference in the crowd,
The loneliness of wisdom among fools,
Yet never have I felt but very proud,
Though I have suffered agonies in hell,
Of living in my own peculiar cell.

There is an exaltation of man's life,
His inner life that he alone may feel,
The blended fires that heat his veins within,
Shaping his metals into lasting steel,
Are kindled flaming from the secret hearth
That the wise gods bequeathed to him at birth.

MY HOUSE

For each man's mind contains its unknown realm,
Walled in from other men, however near,
Who cannot reach it even in highest flights
Of comprehension or of vision clear;
That realm where one withdraws to contemplate
Infinity to his own finite state.

Thence he may sometimes catch a godlike glimpse
of mysteries that gloom beyond life's bar;
Thence he may hurl his little shaft at heaven,
And bring down accidentally a star,
And drink its foamy dust like sparkling wine
And echo accents of the laugh divine.

Then he may fall into a drunken sleep
And wake up in his own house painted blue,
Or white or green or red or brown or black--
His house, his own, whatever be the hue.
And things for him will not be what they seem
To other men since he has had his dream.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.

The pavements slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
A chafing savage, down the decent street,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.

Oh I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find it in the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!

Oh I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate!

MULATTO

Because I am the white man's son - his own,
Bearing his bastard birth-mark on my face,
I will dispute his title to his throne,
Forever fight him for my rightful place.
There is a searing hate within my soul,
A hate that only kin can feel for kin,
A hate that makes me vigorous and whole,
And spurs me on unceasingly to win.
Because I am my cruel father's child,
My love of justice stirs me up to hate,
A warring Ishmaelite, unreconciled,
When falls the hour I shall not hesitate,
Into my father's heart to plunge the knife
To gain the utmost freedom that is life.

FOR A LEADER

You are a torchlight of humanity,
A flame of Justice burning bright, alone,
Over the miseries of mortality,
Where human hearts are dead and turned to stone.

You are that uttermost crusading part,
The trumpet and the thunder and the storm,
A nerve pulsating of the eternal Heart
That makes the miracle of the human form.

Let me be slave to all experience,
The beautiful, the utter and the strange,
For you the path of high magnificence
Climbing beyond the cloud-topped mountain range.

For you the incandescent fire of duty,
Your life consuming like a holocaust,
For me the world of passion, joy and beauty,
That makes me lover and iconoclast.

FOR A LEADER

Oh take my songs and all the love they breathe
As symbols of my feelings incomplete,
Fashioned into a variegated wreathe---
A poet's homage for your marching feet.

And as you go alone and single-willed,
Among them you may find a simple flower,
Whose perfume underneath your footsteps spilled,
May reach your senses in a lonely hour.

THE INTERNATIONAL SOUL Spirit

As flower dust is driven down the wind,
To touch and quicken the green life of earth,
~~As symbol~~ *swallows* leave cold lands behind,
For regions of sweet warmth and singing mirth:
So shall thy thought be carried surely forth
To the remotest dwelling of mankind,
Breaking down obstacles, to give new birth,
New strength, new purpose to man's boundless mind.

The birds of Time will wing thee down the ways
Of continents. Thy progress will be keen
Against the impeding *mist* of misty days,
As ever progress through the years has been;
Even as strong-winged messengers are seen
In these amazing times with fine amaze,
Threading the tides of space that roll between
The earth and heaven, that ever holds man's gaze.

The nations will take arms against thy power,
The peoples warn against thy conquering spirit,
That conquers like the music of a flower;
Their ruling cliques endeavor to discredit
Thy influence and rail against thy merit,
Thy starry standards war upon to lower:
But the true prophets who thy spark inherit,
Will bear them yet upon life's grandest tower.

RUSSIAN CATHEDRAL

Bow down, my soul, in worship very low,
And in the holy silences be lost...
Bow down before the marble man of woe,
Bow down before the singing angel host.
What jewelled glory fills my spirit's eye!
What golden grandeur moves the depths of me!
The soaring arches lift me up on high,
Taking my breath with their rare symmetry.

Bow down, my soul, and let the wondrous light
Of Beauty bathe thee from her lofty throne...
Bow down before the wonder of man's might,
Bow down in worship, humble and alone,
Bow lowly down, before the sacred sight
Of man's divinity alive in stone.

HONEYMOON

Sweet, be your body a rare figured rug
Upon which I may lay myself full length,
And drink your warm breath as a potent drug,
To make me amorous and increase my strength.
Let me be drunken with your passion's wine,
Our days are foodless, yet I know no pains;
Your subtle presence is an anodyne
That deadens native hungers in my veins.
My heart beats in a wanton mood to move
With the strange rhythm of your spirit's motion.
My soul's a laden boat propelled by love,
And these uplifted days a heaving ocean
Whereon we drift foam-sprinkled, shot with zest,
Desiring not to reach a port of rest.

FIXTURE

All things seem fixed...
The little grass plots in brown repose,
The softly-rustling trees,
Through the paving rooted deep.
The mellow autumn vintage flows
Through life, here yellowing the leaves,
That dance down whirling to their season's sleep,
Stirred by the drunken breeze.

The cots are fixed...
The patients come... and go...
Death conquers or the sap of health returns
To build the wreck and ruin of cities strong.
The doctors and the internes pass along,
The nurses flit, light-footed to and fro
To wet the dry tongue, soothe the flesh that burns.

And he stays fixed,
Like the walls, like the cots.
And yellow is his blood,
Like the grass blades in the plots.
Seven times the brown-ripe season,
Has mellowed round him here,
Where the spirits of Hope and Pity meet and brood.

FIXTURE

He is fixed,
Sans thought or reason.
When first they brought him in,
With the chancre corroding his throat,
The poisons spreading within,
His mind was an oven of fire,
With all of his senses afloat,
In that furnace of victims of sin,
Where the vengeance-crazed gods in their ire
Consign
Their unfortunate wrecks of desire.

There fixed,
But brave with the bravery of madness.
Day breaks, sun shines, rain falls,
Time patterns from season to season,
And he is fixed in those walls,
Without joy, without sadness.

Firmly fixed,
He looks with fixed eyes, empty eyes,
At the bountiful skies,
From the end of the long corridor.
All persons and things he calls friend
Sans difference... One questioned him, when it would end?
And he said with no life in his voice, in his eyes:
Jusqu'au mort!

MUMMY

All of his flesh has fallen away
Between the skin and the bone,
Muscle and blood dried up in decay,
Leaving the skeleton.

And out of that skeleton has leaked
The last reserve of marrow,
The sappers unseen their vengeance have wreaked,
There is nothing left to harrow.

THE VOID

He crouches strangely in the little bed
And earnestly stares blankly into space,
Reason forever more from him has fled,
A child's mind settles sadly on his face.

The classic loveliness of plain white walls,
The shadows softening the long, low ceiling,
Against the low dull lights at evening fall,
Impart to the sick room a holy feeling.

Maybe no hand once trembled with desire,
Sheer love of form, to touch that ugly brow,
But here disease-transformed, scourged by the fire,
Beauty the loftiest has touched it now.

PATIENT

1

The key was turned and opened wide the door,
And he was bidden and compelled to enter,
His spirit like lead within his body sore.
He passed within and to the awful center,
And found the monarch grim upon his throne,
Around which Strength was broken in his place,
And Beauty shrunken to a hollow moan,
And Love unmasked an obscene ugly face.

There Might weakened received the knock-out blows,
After a little triumph in the ropes,
And Beauty hid her horror in the dust,
And the Diety of disease in white repose,
Warned from its purple place against all hopes,
Those stricken with the malady of Lust.

11

IF he had lived in high Renaissance days,
He might have moved a Michel Angelo;
And Raphael might have put angelic rays
Around his golden head and made it glow
With loveliness eternal like a star:
His figure would adorn an altar place,
And women feeling beauty at the bar,
Kneeling to God would dwell upon his face.

But in this Age of Hypocrites afraid
And smug of rank respectabilities,
He chose the dubious freedom of the shade,
The way of easy opportunities,
And mindless following a whim perverse,
Is victim of Desire's scourge and curse.

111

Disease confines you here in this long room
And heavy-handed holds you to your bed,
And circles you an oval ring of gloom,
An aureole of pain around your head.

If ever yet you go out of this place,
Your flesh will no more youthful grow and strong
Nor sorrow say farewell to your sick face,
Disease has held you in his grip so long.

Whether you be with sympathetic friends,
Amidst their joys a warning skeleton,
Or find an anchorage where sorrow blends
With understanding love and peace is won.

Always the shadow-ring will circle you,
Indelibly pain-starred your haunting brow,
Wearing its sombre, never-changing hue,
Ever the same as it is wearing now.

Your heart in its confinement may grow wise,
But oh your flesh will be as dead as dust!
Except the wonder of your burning eyes,
The awful beauty of their austere lust.

IV

Before the noonday meal the final moan
Escaped him and we knew that he was done,
Done with physicians, medicine, Desire
And adolescent Passion just begun.

He should have ended struggle long before,
The doctors said, in four and twenty hours,
But he was very young and fought for life,
Like a brave youth against Death's tigerish powers.

Oh how Death tore and harried at his heart!
And how in fear and fever fought he back,
Trying to walk, to stand, to sit, to talk,
Until he was laid flat upon the rack.

One week before I watched him take the air,
But faltering he could not make the way,
His sinews were too macilent to fight
Tubercular and chronic gonorrhea.

He turned away his tender rolling eyes,
Melting us speechless as our own they met,
When softly he called for, but could not smoke,
Coughing incessantly, a cigarette.

Each woeful moan went through our tortured nerves,
Our hearts puncturing, as a spike a wheel,
Wounding us helpless there who nought could do,
To conjure Fate nor stop his certain seal.

IV (Cont.)

The strong drugs even brought him no relief,
We marvelled that his frame could bear the strain!
Stretched taut and quivering upon the cot,
It seemed a special instrument of pain.

Before the noon he gave the last sad moan,
Succumbing to the fierce assaulting germs,
That harshly finished their foul work to cast
His empty carcase to the waiting worms.

RETREAT

After the fevered days, the restless nights,
Crowded with movement, filled and overflowing,
Whirling like circling birds in aimless flights,
Dipping round gilded dome and steepled heights,
Blessed is being here and without knowing
Aught of the luring cities' ways and sights.

With peace dearer than love within my breast,
Blessed is being here behind the curtain,
Submissive to the soothing spirit of rest,
In this quiet cell where thought with greater zest
Awakes my mind that lay at first uncertain
Like a bird pinioned, folded in his nest.

Beyond the wearing troubles of the street,
The little souls of men complaining woe,
Blessed is being in this calm retreat,
Blessed the sleepy hours so long and sweet,
That shut me in from life, my friend and foe,
With kindly bands about my hands and feet.

Like heaven's music played on reedy sheaves,
Blessed the foreign tongue that soothes and charms,
Like silver drops of rain from thick-thatched eaves,
That fall upon uplifted tania leaves,
Blessed this accident that even warms
My stoic spirit that here new fire receives.

FOR MARGUERITE

Contemplating exquisite flesh aglow
Awakened by the subtle sign of love,
Marking the rhythm of the passion-flow
Like the brown bosom of a tropic dove,
Sitting upon a wild fig-tree in flower,
Above the white foam of a waterfall,
Sounding its golden note at high noon hour
And waiting for the mate-bird's answering call:

And seeing now your wistful self, I wonder,
Although love's lines be perfect as a bird's,
With flesh as petal-sweet and fair as day,
What vile malignant worms may be thereunder,
Roaming the body's seas in deadly herds,
Seeking to bring sweet love to harsh decay.

THE DESOLATE CITY

My spirit is a pestilential city,
With misery triumphant everywhere,
Glutter with baffled hopes and human pity.
Strange agonies make quiet lodgement there:
Its sewers bursting ooze up from below
And spread their loathsome substance through its lanes,
Flooding all areas with their evil flow
And blocking all the motions of its veins:
Its life is sealed to love or hope or pity,
My spirit is a pestilential city.

Above its walls the air is heavy-wet,
Brooding in fever mood and hanging thick
Round empty tower and broken minaret,
Settling upon the tree tops stricken sick
And withered under its contagious breath.
Their leaves are shrivelled silver, parched decay,
Like wilting creepers trailing underneath
The chalky yellow of a tropic way.
Round crumbling tower and leaning minaret,
The air hangs fever-filled and heavy-wet.

THE DESOLATE CITY

And all its many fountains no more spurt;
Within the dammed-up tubes they tide and foam,
Around the drifted sludge and silted dirt,
And weep against the soft and liquid loam.
And so the city's ways are washed no more,
All is neglected and decayed within,
Clean waters beat against its high-walled shore
In furious force, but cannot enter in:
The suffocated fountains cannot spurt
They foam and rage against the silted dirt.

Beneath the ebon gloom of mounting rocks
The little pools lie poisonously still,
And birds come to the edge in forlorn flocks,
And utter sudden, plaintive notes and shrill,
Pecking at strangely gray-green substances;
But never do they dip their bills and drink.
They twitter, sad beneath the mournful trees,
And fretfully flit to and from the brink,
In little gray-brown, green-and-purple flocks,
Beneath the jet-gloom of the mounting rocks.

And green-eyed moths of curious design,
With gold-black wings and rarely silver-dotted,
On nests of flowers among those rocks recline,
Bold, burning blossoms, strangely leopard-spotted,
But breathing deadly poison from their lips.

THE DESOLATE CITY

And every lovely moth that wanders by,
And of the blossoms fatal nectar sips,
Is doomed to drooping stupor, there to die;
All green-eyed moths of curious design
That on the fiercely-burning blooms recline.

Oh cold as death is all the loveliness,
That breathes out of the strangeness of the scene,
And sickening like a skeleton's caress,
Of clammy clinging fingers, long and lean.
Above it float a host of yellow flies,
Circling in changeless motion in their place,
That came down snow-thick from the freighted skies,
Swarming across the gluey floor of space:
Oh cold as death is all the loveliness,
And sickening like a skeleton's caress.

There was a time, when, happy with the birds,
The little children clapped their hands and laughed;
And midst the clouds the glad winds heard their words
And blew down all the merry ways to waft
The music through the scented fields of flowers.
Oh sweet were children's voices in those days,
Before the fall of pestilential showers
That drove them forth far from the city's ways:
Now never, nevermore their silver words
Will mingle with the golden of the birds.

THE DESOLATE CITY

4

Gone, gone forever the familiar forms
To which the city once so dearly clung,
Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms
And lost away like lovely songs unsung.
Yet life, still lingers, questioningly strange,
Timid and quivering, naked and alone,
Against the cycle of disruptive change,
Though all the fond familiar forms are gone,
Forever gone, the fond familiar forms;
Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms.