(1948)
#Americans
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…
The fruit rolled by all day. They prayed the cogs would creep; They thought about Saturday pay, And Sunday sleep. Whatever he smelled was good:
I knew a woman, lovely in her bone… When small birds sighed, she would… Ah, when she moved, she moved more… The shapes a bright container can… Of her choice virtues only gods sh…
I think the dead are tender. Shal… My lady laughs, delighting in what… If she but sighs, a bird puts out… She makes space lonely with a love… She lilts a low soft language, and…
I wake to sleep, and take my wakin… I feel my fate in what I cannot f… I learn by going where I have to… We think by feeling. What is ther… I hear my being dance from ear to…
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,
This urge, wrestle, resurrection o… Cut stems struggling to put down f… What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new… I can hear, underground, that suck…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
In a dark time, the eye begins to… I meet my shadow in the deepening… I hear my echo in the echoing wood… A lord of nature weeping to a tree… I live between the heron and the w…
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.
Let others probe the mystery if th… Time—harried prisoners of Shall a… The right thing happens to the hap… The bird flies out, the bird flies… The hill becomes the valley, and i…