Sour Grapes Part 3

BLIZZARD

Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down-- the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes-- Hairy looking trees stand out in long alleys over a wild solitude.

The man turns and there-- his solitary track stretched out upon the world.

TO WAKEN AN OLD LADY

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze.

Gaining and failing they are buffetted by a dark wind-- But what?

On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested, the snow is covered with broken seedhusks and the wind tempered by a shrill piping of plenty.

WINTER TREES

All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.

COMPLAINT

They call me and I go It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks.

The door opens.

I smile, enter and shake off the cold.

Here is a great woman on her side in the bed.

She is sick, perhaps vomiting, perhaps laboring to give birth to a tenth child. Joy! Joy!

Night is a room darkened for lovers, through the jalousies the sun has sent one gold needle!

I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compa.s.sion.

THE COLD NIGHT

It is cold. The white moon is up among her scattered stars-- like the bare thighs of the Police Seargent's wife--among her five children....

No answer. Pale shadows lie upon the frosted gra.s.s. One answer: It is midnight, it is still and it is cold...!

White thighs of the sky! a new answer out of the depths of my male belly: In April....

In April I shall see again--In April!

the round and perfect thighs of the Police Sergent's wife perfect still after many babies.

Oya!

SPRING STORM

The sky has given over its bitterness.

Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end.

Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground.

But water, water from a thousand runnels!

It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters.

Drop after drop it falls from the withered gra.s.s-stems of the overhanging embankment.

THE DELICACIES

The hostess, in pink satin and blond hair--dressed high--shone beautifully in her white slippers against the great silent bald head of her little-eyed husband!

Raising a gla.s.s of yellow Rhine wine in the narrow s.p.a.ce just beyond the light-varnished woodwork and the decorative column between dining-room and hall, she smiled the smile of water tumbling from one ledge to another.

We began with a herring salad: delicately flavoured saltiness in scallops of lettuce-leaves.

The little owl-eyed and thick-set lady with ma.s.ses of grey hair has smooth pink cheeks without a wrinkle.

She cannot be the daughter of the little red-faced fellow dancing about inviting lion-headed Wolff the druggist to play the piano! But she is. Wolff is a terrific smoker: if the telephone goes off at night--so his curled-haired wife whispers--he rises from bed but cannot answer till he has lighted a cigarette.

Sherry wine in little conical gla.s.ses, dull brownish yellow, and tomatoes stuffed with finely cut chicken and mayonnaise!

The tall Irishman in a Prince Albert and the usual striped trousers is going to sing for us. (The piano is in a little alcove with dark curtains.) The hostess's sister--ten years younger than she--in black net and velvet, has hair like some filmy haystack, cloudy about the eyes. She will play for her husband.

My wife is young, yes she is young and pretty when she cares to be--when she is interested in a discussion: it is the little dancing mayor's wife telling her of the Day nursery in East Rutherford, 'cross the track, divided from us by the railroad--and disputes as to precedence. It is in this town the saloon flourishes, the saloon of my friend on the right whose wife has twice offended with chance words. Her English is atrocious! It is in this town that the saloon is situated, close to the railroad track, close as may be, this side being dry, dry, dry: two people listening on opposite sides of a wall!--The Day Nursery had sixty-five babies the week before last, so my wife's eyes s.h.i.+ne and her cheeks are pink and I cannot see a blemish.

Ice-cream in the shape of flowers and domestic objects: a pipe for me since I do not smoke, a doll for you.

The figure of some great bulk of a woman disappearing into the kitchen with a quick look over the shoulder. My friend on the left who has spent the whole day in a car the like of which some old fellow would give to an actress: flower-holders, mirrors, curtains, plush seats--my friend on the left who is chairman of the Streets committee of the town council--and who has spent the whole day studying automobile fire-engines in neighbouring towns in view of purchase,--my friend, at the Elks last week at the breaking-up hymn, signalled for them to let Bill--a familiar friend of the saloon-keeper--sing out all alone to the organ--and he did sing!

Salz-rolls, exquisite! and Rhine wine _ad libitum_.

A masterly caviare sandwich.

The children flitting about above stairs. The councilman has just bought a National eight--some car!

For heaven's sake I mustn't forget the halves of green peppers stuffed with cream cheese and whole walnuts!