Sour Grapes Part 7

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

Sorrow is my own yard where the new gra.s.s flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today with ma.s.ses of flowers.

Ma.s.ses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them.

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

Light hearted William twirled his November moustaches and, half dressed, looked from the bedroom window upon the spring weather.

Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily leaning out to see up and down the street where a heavy sunlight lay beyond some blue shadows.

Into the room he drew his head again and laughed to himself quietly twirling his green moustaches.

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

The birches are mad with green points the wood's edge is burning with their green, burning, seething--No, no, no.

The birches are opening their leaves one by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold and separate, one by one. Slender ta.s.sels hang swaying from the delicate branch tips-- Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word.

Black is split at once into flowers. In every bog and ditch, flares of small fire, white flowers!--Agh, the birches are mad, mad with their green.

The world is gone, torn into shreds with this blessing. What have I left undone that I should have undertaken

O my brother, you redfaced, living man ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon this same dirt that I touch--and eat.

We are alone in this terror, alone, face to face on this road, you and I, wrapped by this flame!

Let the polished plows stay idle, their gloss already on the black soil.

But that face of yours--!

Answer me. I will clutch you. I will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face into your face and force you to see me.

Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest thing that is in your mind to say, say anything. I will understand you--!

It is the madness of the birch leaves opening cold, one by one.

My rooms will receive me. But my rooms are no longer sweet s.p.a.ces where comfort is ready to wait on me with its crumbs.

A darkness has brushed them. The ma.s.s of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken.

Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed.

I am shaken, broken against a might that splits comfort, blows apart my careful part.i.tions, crushes my house and leaves me--with shrinking heart and startled, empty eyes--peering out into a cold world.

In the spring I would drink! In the spring I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things.

Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei!

your hands, your lips to drink!

Give me your wrists to drink-- I drag you, I am drowned in you, you overwhelm me! Drink!

Save me! The shad bush is in the edge of the clearing. The yards in a fury of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror.

Drink and lie forgetting the world.

And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one.

Coldly I observe them and wait for the end.

And it ends.

THE LONELY STREET

School is over. It is too hot to walk at ease. At ease in light frocks they walk the streets to while the time away.

They have grown tall. They hold pink flames in their right hands.

In white from head to foot, with sidelong, idle look-- in yellow, floating stuff, black sash and stockings-- touching their avid mouths with pink sugar on a stick-- like a carnation each holds in her hand-- they mount the lonely street.

THE GREAT FIGURE

Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving with weight and urgency tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.