Soul

Ill-Starred
To bear a weight that cannot be borne,
Sisyphus, even you aren't that strong,
Although your heart cannot be torn
Time is short and Art is long.
Far from celebrated sepulchers
Toward a solitary graveyard
My heart, like a drum muffled hard
Beats a funeral march for the ill-starred.
—Many jewels are buried or shrouded
In darkness and oblivion's clouds,
Far from any pick or drill bit,
Many a flower unburdens with regret
Its perfume sweet like a secret;
In profoundly empty solitude to sit.
Translated by William A. Sigler
Submitted by Ryan McGuire

Her Hair
O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstasy! To fill this alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
I would shake them like penions in the air!
Languorous Asia, burning Africa,
And a far world, defunct almost, absent,
Within your aromatic forest stay!
As other souls on music drift away,
Mine, O my love! still floats upon your scent.
I shall go there where, full of sap, both tree
And man swoon in the heat of the southern climates;
Strong tresses be the swell that carries me!
I dream upon your sea of amber
Of dazzling sails, of oarsmen, masts, and flames:
A sun-drenched and reverberating port,
Where I imbibe colour and sound and scent;
Where vessels, gliding through the gold and moiré,
Open their vast arms as they leave the shore
To clasp the pure and shimmering firmament.
I'll plunge my head, enamored of its pleasure,
In this black ocean where the other hides;
My subtle spirit then will know a measure
Of fertile idleness and fragrant leisure,
Lulled by the infinite rhythm of its tides!
Pavilion, of autumn-shadowed tresses spun,
You give me back the azure from afar;
And where the twisted locks are fringed with down
Lurk mingled odors I grow drunk upon
Of oil of coconut, of musk, and tar.
A long time! always! my hand in your hair
Will sow the stars of sapphire, pearl, ruby,
That you be never deaf to my desire,
My oasis and my gourd whence I aspire
To drink deep of the wine of memory.

De Profundis Clamavi
Have pity, You alone whom I adore
From down this black pit where my heart is sped,
A sombre universe ringed round with lead
Where fear and curses the long night explore.
Six months a cold sun hovers overhead;
The other six is night upon this land.
No beast; no stream; no wood; no leaves expand.
The desert Pole is not a waste so dead.
Now in the whole world there's no horror quite
so cold and cruel as this glacial sun,
So like old Chaos as this boundless night;
I envy the least animals that run,
Which can find respite in brute slumber drowned,
So slowly is the skein of time unwound.

Evening Harmony
The hour has come at last when, trembling to and fro,
Each flower is a censer sifting its perfume;
The scent and sounds all swirl in evening’s gentle fume;
A melancholy waltz, a languid vertigo!
Each flower is a censer sifting its perfume;
A violin’s vibrato wounds the heart of woe;
A melancholy waltz, a languid vertigo!
The sky, a lofty altar, lovely in the gloom,
A violin’s vibrato wounds the heart of woe,
A tender heart detests the black of nullity,
The sky, a lofty altar, lovely in the gloom;
The sun is drowning in the evening’s blood-red glow.
A tender heart detests the black of nullity,
And lovingly preserves each trace of long ago!
The sun is drowning in the evening’s blood-red glow …
Your memory shines through me like an ostensory!

Cats
They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:
When comes the season of decay, they both decide
Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;
Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.
Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,
They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;
Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,
If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.
In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;
Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

Correspondences
Nature is a temple whose living colonnades
Breathe forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
Man wanders among symbols in those glades
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.
Like dwindling echoes gathered far away
Into a deep and thronging unison
Huge as the night or as the light of day,
All scents and sounds and colors meet as one.
Perfumes there are as sweet as the oboe's sound,
Green as the prairies, fresh as a child's caress,
- And there are others, rich, corrupt, profound
And of an infinite pervasiveness,
Like myrrh, or musk, or amber, the excite
The ecstasies of sense, the soul's delight.

Beauty
I am as lovely as a dream in stone;
My breast on which each finds his death in turn
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As everlasting clay, and as taciturn.
Swan-white of heart, as sphinx no mortal knows,
My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
I hate all movement that disturbs my pose;
I smile not ever, neither do I weep.
Before my monumental attitudes,
Taken from the proudest plastic arts,
My poets pray in austere studious moods,
For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

Anywhere Out of the World
This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds;
one man would like to
suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health
beside the window.
It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not, and this
question of removal is one
which I discuss incessantly with my soul.
'Tell me, my soul, poor chilled soul, what do you think of going to live in Lisbon? It
must be warm there, and there
you would invigorate yourself like a lizard. This city is on the sea-shore; they say that
it is built of marble
and that the people there have such a hatred of vegetation that they uproot all the
trees. There you have a landscape
that corresponds to your taste! a landscape made of light and mineral, and liquid to
reflect them!'
My soul does not reply.
'Since you are so fond of stillness, coupled with the show of movement, would you like
to settle in Holland,
that beatifying country? Perhaps you would find some diversion in that land whose
image you have so often admired
in the art galleries. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts,
and ships moored at the foot of
houses?'
My soul remains silent.
'Perhaps Batavia attracts you more? There we should find, amongst other things, the
spirit of Europe
married to tropical beauty.'
Not a word. Could my soul be dead?
'Is it then that you have reached such a degree of lethargy that you acquiesce in your
sickness? If so, let us
flee to lands that are analogues of death. I see how it is, poor soul! We shall pack our
trunks for Tornio. Let us go
farther still to the extreme end of the Baltic; or farther still from life, if that is possible;
let us settle at the Pole. There
the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness
suppresses variety and
increases monotony, that half-nothingness. There we shall be able to take long baths
of darkness, while for our
amusement the aurora borealis shall send us its rose-coloured rays that are like the
reflection of Hell's own
fireworks!'
At last my soul explodes, and wisely cries out to me: 'No matter where! No matter
where! As long as it's out
of the world!'

Afternoon Song
Though your wicked eyebrows call
Your nature into question
(Unangelic's their suggestion,
Witch whose eyes enthrall)
I adore you still
O foolish terrible emotion
Kneeling in devotion
As a priest to his idol will.
Your undone braids conceal
Desert, forest scents,
In your exotic countenance
Lie secrets unrevealed.
Over your flesh perfume drifts
Like incense 'round a censor,
Tantalizing dispenser
Of evening's ardent gifts.
No Philtres could compete
With your potent idleness:
You've mastered the caress
That raises dead me to their feet.
Your hips themselves are romanced
By your back and by your breasts:
By your languid dalliance.
Now and then, your appetite's
Uncontrolled, unassuaged:
Mysteriously enraged,
You kiss me and you bite.
Dark one, I am torn
By your savage ways,
Then, soft as the moon, your gaze
Sees my tortured heart reborn.
Beneath your satin shoe,
Beneath your charming silken foot.
My greatest joy I put
My genius and destiny, too.
You bring my spirit back,
Bringer of the light.
Exploding color in the night
Of my Siberia so black.

Who Am I?

My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading "Keep Off."
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.

Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.


Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Under A Hat Rim

While the hum and the hurry
Of passing footfalls
Beat in my ear like the restless surf
Of a wind-blown sea,
A soul came to me
Out of the look on a face.


Eyes like a lake


Where a storm-wind roams


Caught me from under


The rim of a hat.
I thought of a midsea wreck
and bruised fingers clinging
to a broken state-room door.

Troths


Yellow dust on a bumble
bee's wing,
Grey lights in a woman's
asking eyes,
Red ruins in the changing
sunset embers:
I take you and pile high
the memories.
Death will break her claws
on some I keep.

To A Dead Man

Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.


The flickering shadows have not answered
Nor your lips sent a signal
Whether love talks and roses grow
And the sun breaks at morning
Splattering the sea with crimson.

Skyscraper


By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.


Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.


It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul of dreams
and thoughts and memories.


(Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care
for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman
the way to it?)


Elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and
parcels and iron pipes carry gas and water in and
sewage out.


Wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words,
and tell terrors and profits and loves--curses of men
grappling plans of business and questions of women
in plots of love.


Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
earth and hold the building to a turning planet.


Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
hold together the stone walls and floors.


Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the
mortar clinch the pieces and parts to the shape an
architect voted.


Hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rust,
and the press of time running into centuries, play
on the building inside and out and use it.


Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid
in graves where the wind whistles a wild song
without words


And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes
and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor.


Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging
at back doors hundreds of miles away and the bricklayer
who went to state's prison for shooting another
man while drunk.


(One man fell from a girder and broke his neck at the
end of a straight plunge--he is here--his soul has
gone into the stones of the building.)


On the office doors from tier to tier--hundreds of names
and each name standing for a face written across
with a dead child, a passionate lover, a driving
ambition for a million dollar business or a lobster's
ease of life.



Behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls
tell nothing from room to room.


Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from
corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers,
and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all
ends of the earth.


Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of
the building just the same as the master-men who
rule the building.


Hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor
empties its men and women who go away and eat
and come back to work.


Toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and
all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on
them.


One by one the floors are emptied. . . The uniformed
elevator men are gone. Pails clang. . . Scrubbers
work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water
and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit,
and machine grime of the day.


Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling
miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for
money. The sign speaks till midnight.


Darkness on the hallways. Voices echo. Silence
holds. . . Watchmen walk slow from floor to floor
and try the doors. Revolvers bulge from their hip
pockets. . . Steel safes stand in corners. Money
is stacked in them.


A young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights
of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of
red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span
of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of
crosses and clusters over the sleeping city.


By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars
and has a soul.

Shirt


My shirt is a token and symbol,
more than a cover for sun and rain,
my shirt is a signal,
and a teller of souls.


I can take off my shirt and tear it,
and so make a ripping razzly noise,
and the people will say,
"Look at him tear his shirt."


I can keep my shirt on.
I can stick around and sing like a little bird
and look 'em all in the eye and never be fazed.
I can keep my shirt on.

Sixteen Months

On the lips of the child Janet float changing dreams.
It is a thin spiral of blue smoke,
A morning campfire at a mountain lake.


On the lips of the child Janet,
Wisps of haze on ten miles of corn,
Young light blue calls to young light gold of morning.

Prayers of Steel

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.


Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

Pool


Out of the fire
Came a man sunken
To less than cinders,
A tea-cup of ashes or so.
And I,
The gold in the house,
Writhed into a stiff pool.

Personality


Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau


You have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb.
You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only
one thumb.


You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and
win all the world's honors, but when you come back
home the print of the one thumb your mother gave
you is the same print of thumb you had in the old
home when your mother kissed you and said good-by.


Out of the whirling womb of time come millions of men


and their feet crowd the earth and they cut one anothers'
throats for room to stand and among them all
are not two thumbs alike.


Somewhere is a Great God of Thumbs who can tell the
inside story of this.

Passers-By


Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city's afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.


Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love.
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for. .


Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard

Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.

Last Answers

I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.


I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers
Go running back to dust and mist.

Jungheimer's


In western fields of corn and northern timber lands,
They talk about me, a saloon with a soul,
The soft red lights, the long curving bar,
The leather seats and dim corners,
Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham,
And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of
booze and riots.