(1948)
#Americans
What’s greater, Pebble or Pond? What can be known? The Unknown. My true self runs toward a Hill More! O More! visible. Now I adore my life
I dream of journeys repeatedly: Of flying like a bat deep into a n… Of driving alone, without luggage,… The road lined with snow—laden sec… A fine dry snow ticking the windsh…
What’s this? A dish for fat lips. Who says? A nameless stranger. Is he a bird or a tree? Not every… Water recedes to the crying of spi… An old scow bumps over black rocks…
In Saginaw, in Saginaw, The wind blows up your feet, When the ladies’ guild puts on a f… There’s beans on every plate, And if you eat more than you shoul…
A cloud moved close. The bulk of… A tree swayed over water. A voice said: Stay. Stay by the slip—ooze. Stay… Dearest tree, I said, may I rest…
All profits disappear: the gain Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum; And now grim digits of old pain Return to litter up our home. We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
I study the lives on a leaf: the l… Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dim… Beetles in caves, newts, stone—dea… Lice tethered to long limp subterr… Squirmers in bogs,
When I put her out, once, by the… She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a si… Or a wizened aster in late Septem… I brought her back in again
I saw a young snake glide Out of the mottled shade And hang, limp on a stone: A thin mouth, and a tongue Stayed, in the still air.
In moving-slow he has no Peer. You ask him something in his Ear, He thinks about it for a Year; And, then, before he says a Word There, upside down (unlike a Bird…
Where were the greenhouses going, Lunging into the lashing Wind driving water So far down the river All the faucets stopped?—
I remember the neckcurls, limp and… And her quick look, a sidelong pic… And how, once started into talk, t… And she balanced in the delight of… A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
The wind billowing out the seat of… My feet crackling splinters of gla… The half-grown chrysanthemums star… Up through the streaked glass, fla… A few white clouds all rushing eas…
The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans
Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the night While others take their rest.