Part 6 (1/2)

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.