(1948)
#Americans
Nothing would sleep in that cellar… Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting f… Shoots dangled and drooped, Lolling obscenely from mildewed cr… Hung down long yellow evil necks,…
One feather is a bird, I claim; one tree, a wood; In her low voice I heard More than a mortal should; And so I stood apart,
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
In purest song one plays the const… As changes shimmer in the inner ey… I stare and stare into a deepening… And tell myself my image cannot di… I love myself: that’s my one const…
In a shoe box stuffed in an old ny… Sleeps the baby mouse I found in… Where he trembled and shook beneat… Till I caught him up by the tail… Cradled in my hand,
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…
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 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.
Where were the greenhouses going, Lunging into the lashing Wind driving water So far down the river All the faucets stopped?—
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…
I have known the inexorable sadnes… Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad… All the misery of manila folders a… Desolation in immaculate public pl… Lonely reception room, lavatory, s…
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,
Against the stone breakwater, Only an ominous lapping, While the wind whines overhead, Coming down from the mountain, Whistling between the arbors, the…
In the long journey out of the sel… There are many detours, washed—out… Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost ov… At the sudden veering, the moment…
My secrets cry aloud. I have no need for tongue. My heart keeps open house, My doors are widely swung. An epic of the eyes