Colors of Life Part 3

A light is laughing thro' the scattered rain, A color quickens in the meadow; Drops are still, upon the window-pane-- They cast a silver shadow.

LITTLE FISHES

A myriad curious fishes, Tiny and pink and pale, All swimming north together With rhythmical fin and tail--

A mountain surges among them, They dart and startle and float, Mere wiggling minutes of terror, Into that mountain's throat.

INVOCATION

Truth, be more precious to me than the eyes Of happy love; burn hotter in my throat Than pa.s.sion; and possess me like my pride; More sweet than freedom; more desired than joy; More sacred than the pleasing of a friend.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes a child's voice crying on the street Comes winging like an arrow through the wind To pierce my breast with you, my baby, and My pen is weak, and all my thinking dreams Are mist of yearning for the touch of you.

TO MARIE SUKLOFF--AN a.s.sa.s.sIN

In your lips moving fervently, Your eyes hot with fire, Life seems immortally young with desire, Life seems impetuous, Hungrily free, Having no faith but its burning to be.

You could dance laughingly, Draw where you move, Hearts, hands and voices pouring you love.

Youth be a carnival, Life be the queen, You could go dancing and singing and seen!

Whence came that tenderness Cruel and wild, Arming with murder the hand of a child?

Whence came that breaking fire, Nursed and caressed With pa.s.sion's white fingers for tyranny's breast?

In your soul sacredly, Deeper than fear, Burns there a miracle dreadful to hear?

Virgin of murder, Was it G.o.d's breath, Begetting a savior, that filled you with Death?

TO AN ACTRESS

You walk as vivid as a sunny storm Across the drinking meadows, through the eyes Of stricken men, with light and fury mingled, Making pa.s.sionate and making young.

You drive the mists, and lift the drooping heads, And in the sultry place of custom raise The naked colors of abounding life, And sound the crimson windy call of liberty.

EYES

My heart is sick because of all the eyes That look upon you drinkingly.

They almost touch you with their fever look!

O keep your beauty like a mystic gem, Clear-surfaced--give no fibre grain of hold To those prehensile amorous bold eyes!

My heart is sick!

O love, let not my heart Corrupt the flower of your liberty-- Go spend your beauty like the summer sky That makes a radius of every glance, And with your morning color light them all!

X RAYS

Your eyes were gem-like in that dim deep chamber Hushed and sombre with imprisoned fire, With yellow ghostly globes of intense aether Potent as the rays of pure desire.

Your voice was startled into vivid wonder, When the winged wild whining mystic wheel Took flight and shot the dark with frosty cras.h.i.+ngs Like an ice-berg splitting to the keel.

Your flesh was never warmer to my pa.s.sion Than when, moving in that lumor green, We saw with eyes our fragile bones enamoured Clasping sadly on the pallid screen.

You seemed so virginal and so undreaming Of the burning hunger in my eyes, To peer more fever-deeply in your being Than the very death of pa.s.sion lies.

The subtle-tuned shy motions of your spirit, Fas.h.i.+oned through the ages for the sun, Were dumb in that green l.u.s.tre-haunted cavern Where you walked a naked skeleton;

Slim-hipped and fluent and of lovely motion, Living to the tip of every bone, And ah, too exquisitely vivid-moving Ever to lie wanly down alone--

To lie forever down so still and slender, Tracing on the ancient screen of night That naked and pale writing of the wonder Of your beauty breathing in the light.

SONNETS

A PREFACE ABOUT SONNETS

Although so complex and difficult to construct, the sonnet has always seemed to me a natural and almost inevitable form. Whether the reason lies in its intrinsic nature, or in the tradition that surrounds it, is not easy to tell. A sonnet is almost exactly square, and yet it has a division sufficiently off the centre to make its squareness admirable instead of tiresome; and perhaps this simple trait, together with its closely woven structure of rhyme, is what gives it the quiet a.s.surance it has--the tranquil rightness of a thing of nature or natural convenience. I feel towards an excellent sonnet as I imagine an eager horse may feel towards a good measure tightly filled up with golden grain.