Sour Grapes Part 6

And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles.

The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...!

TO A FRIEND CONCERNING SEVERAL LADIES

You know there is not much that I desire, a few crysanthemums half lying on the gra.s.s, yellow and brown and white, the talk of a few people, the trees, an expanse of dried leaves perhaps with ditches among them.

But there comes between me and these things a letter or even a look--well placed, you understand, so that I am confused, twisted four ways and--left flat, unable to lift the food to my own mouth: Here is what they say: Come!

and come! and come! And if I do not go I remain stale to myself and if I go-- I have watched the city from a distance at night and wondered why I wrote no poem.

Come! yes, the city is ablaze for you and you stand and look at it.

And they are right. There is no good in the world except out of a woman and certain women alone for certain things. But what if I arrive like a turtle with my house on my back or a fish ogling from under water?

It will not do. I must be steaming with love, colored like a flamingo. For what?

To have legs and a silly head and to smell, pah! like a flamingo that soils its own feathers behind.

Must I go home filled with a bad poem?

And they say: Who can answer these things till he has tried? Your eyes are half closed, you are a child, oh, a sweet one, ready to play but I will make a man of you and with love on his shoulder--!

And in the marshes the crickets run on the sunny dike's top and make burrows there, the water reflects the reeds and the reeds move on their stalks and rattle drily.

YOUTH AND BEAUTY

I bought a dishmop-- having no daughter-- for they had twisted fine ribbons of s.h.i.+ning copper about white twine and made a towsled head of it, fastened it upon a turned ash stick slender at the neck straight, tall-- when tied upright on the bra.s.s wallbracket to be a light for me-- and naked, as a girl should seem to her father.

THE THINKER

My wife's new pink slippers have gay pom-poms.

There is not a spot or a stain on their satin toes or their sides.

All night they lie together under her bed's edge.

s.h.i.+vering I catch sight of them and smile, in the morning.

Later I watch them descending the stair, hurrying through the doors and round the table, moving stiffly with a shake of their gay pom-poms!

And I talk to them in my secret mind out of pure happiness.

THE DISPUTANTS

Upon the table in their bowl in violent disarray of yellow sprays, green spikes of leaves, red pointed petals and curled heads of blue and white among the litter of the forks and crumbs and plates the flowers remain composed.

Cooly their colloquy continues above the coffee and loud talk grown frail as vaudeville.

TULIP BED

The May sun--whom all things imitate-- that glues small leaves to the wooden trees shone from the sky through bluegauze clouds upon the ground.

Under the leafy trees where the suburban streets lay crossed, with houses on each corner, tangled shadows had begun to join the roadway and the lawns.

With excellent precision the tulip bed inside the iron fence upreared its gaudy yellow, white and red, rimmed round with gra.s.s, reposedly.

THE BIRDS

The world begins again!

Not wholly insufflated the blackbirds in the rain upon the dead topbranches of the living tree, stuck fast to the low clouds, notate the dawn.

Their shrill cries sound announcing appet.i.te and drop among the bending roses and the dripping gra.s.s.

THE NIGHTINGALES

My shoes as I lean unlacing them stand out upon flat worsted flowers under my feet.

Nimbly the shadows of my fingers play unlacing over shoes and flowers.

SPOUTS

In this world of as fine a pair of b.r.e.a.s.t.s as ever I saw the fountain in Madison Square spouts up of water a white tree that dies and lives as the rocking water in the basin turns from the stonerim back upon the jet and rising there reflectively drops down again.

BLUEFLAGS

I stopped the car to let the children down where the streets end in the sun at the marsh edge and the reeds begin and there are small houses facing the reeds and the blue mist in the distance with grapevine trellises with grape cl.u.s.ters small as strawberries on the vines and ditches running springwater that continue the gutters with willows over them.

The reeds begin like water at a sh.o.r.e their pointed petals waving dark green and light.

But blueflags are blossoming in the reeds which the children pluck chattering in the reeds high over their heads which they part with bare arms to appear with fists of flowers till in the air there comes the smell of calamus from wet, gummy stalks.