Sun-Up, and Other Poems Part 6

Out of fiery contacts...

Rushing auras of steel Touching and whirled apart...

Out of the charged phallases Of iron leaping Female and male, Complete, indivisible, one, Fused into light.

SKYSc.r.a.pERS

Skysc.r.a.pers... remote, unpartisan...

Turning neither to the right nor left Your imperturbable fronts....

Austerely greeting the sun With one chilly finger of stone....

I know your secrets... better than all the policemen like fat blue mullet along the avenues.

WALL STREET AT NIGHT

Long vast shapes... cooled and flushed through with darkness....

Lidless windows Glazed with a flashy l.u.s.ter From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow.

And down among iron guts Piled silver Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat...

Like the pallor of dead bodies.

EAST RIVER

Dour river Jaded with monotony of lights Diving off mast heads....

Lights mad with creating in a river... turning its sullen back...

Heave up, river...

Vomit back into the darkness your sp.a.w.n of light....

The night will gut what you give her.

SECRETS

INTERIM

The earth is motionless And poised in s.p.a.ce...

A great bird resting in its flight Between the alleys of the stars.

It is the wind's hour off....

The wind has nestled down among the corn....

The two speak privately together, Awaiting the whirr of wings.

AFTER STORM

Was there a wind?

Tap... tap...

Night pads upon the snow with moccasined feet...

and it is still... so still...

an eagle's feather might fall like a stone.

Could there have been a storm...

mad-tossing golden mane on the neck of the wind...

tearing up the sky...

loose-flapping like a tent about the ice-capped stars?

Cool, sheer and motionless the frosted pines are jeweled with a million flaming points that fling their beauty up in long white sheaves till they catch hands with stars.

Could there have been a wind that haled them by the hair....

and blinding blue-forked flowers of the lightning in their leaves?

Tap... tap...

slow-ticking centuries...

Soft as bare feet upon the snow...

faint... lulling as heard rain upon heaped leaves....

Silence builds her wall about a dream impaled.

SECRETS

Secrets infesting my half-sleep...

did you enter my wound from another wound brushing mine in a crowd...

or did I snare you on my sharper edges as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up carries off spiders on its wings?

Secrets, running over my soul without sound, only when dawn comes tip-toeing ushered by a suave wind, and dreams disintegrate like breath shapes in frosty air, I shall overhear you, bare-foot, scatting off into the darkness....

I shall know you, secrets by the litter you have left and by your b.l.o.o.d.y foot-prints.

POTPOURRI

Do you remember Honey-melon moon Dripping thick sweet light Where Ca.n.a.l Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?

And the faint decayed patchouli-- Fragrance of New Orleans Like a dead tube rose Upheld in the warm air...

Miraculously whole.

THAW

Blow through me wind As you blow through apple blossoms....

Scatter me in shining petals over the pa.s.sers-by....

Joyously I reunite... sway and gather to myself....

Sedately I walk by the dancing feet of children-- Not knowing I too dance over the cobbled spring.

O, but they laugh back at me, (Eyes like daisies smiling wide open), And we both look askance at the snowed-in people Thinking me one of them.

PORTRAITS

I

MOTHER

I

Your love was like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty, so that little wry souls reflecting each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors...

beheld in your luminous spirit their own reflection, transfigured as in a shining stream, and loved you for what they are not.

You are less an image in my mind than a l.u.s.ter I see you in gleams pale as star-light on a gray wall...

evanescent as the reflection of a white swan shimmering in broken water.

II

(To E. S.)