Short Poems

The new moon, of no importance
lingers behind as the yellow sun glares and is gone beyond the sea's edge;
earth smokes blue;
the new moon, in cool height above the blushes,
brings a fresh fragrance of heaven to our senses.

Sighed a dear little shipboard divinity
in a deckchair I lost my virginity
I was glancing to leeward
when along came a steward
and undid my belief in the trinity.

From word to word th' ambiguous sense is played;
Laughing succeeds, and joyful tears are shed.

After a rain on the long dike, grasses are thick.
With sad song I send you off to the South Bank.
When will the Taedong River cease to flow?
Year after year my tears will swell the waves.

I'm the pert little pimpernel,
Who ever so cleverly weather foretells;
If I open my eye,
There's a cloudless sky;
If I shut it again,
Then it's sure to rain.

A glance—and instantly the small meek flower
Whispered of what it had to childhood meant;
But kept the angel secret of that far hour
Ere it had lost its scent.

Reader, stay,
And if I had no more to say
But here doth lie till the last day
All that is left of Philip Gray,
It might thy patience richly pay:
For, if such men as he could die,
What surety of life have thou, and I?

In the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea and adumbrants of rock in her eyes . . . horseback in leather boots and leather gauntlets by the sea.

In the evening, a Sunday evening, a rope of pearls on her white shoulders . . . and a speaking, brooding black velvet, relapsing to the voiceless . . . battering Russian marches on a piano . . . drive of blizzards across Nebraska.

Yes, riding horseback on hills by the sea . . . sitting at the ivory keys in black velvet, a rope of pearls on white shoulders.

POLICEMAN in front of a bank 3 A.M. . . . lonely.
Policeman State and Madison . . . high noon . . . mobs . . . cars . . . parcels . . . lonely.
Woman in suburbs . . . keeping night watch on a sleeping typhoid patient . . . only a clock to talk to . . . lonesome.
Woman selling gloves . . . bargain day department store . . . furious crazy-work of many hands slipping in and out of gloves . . . lone-some.

The dome of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
Out of haze over the sunset,
Out of a smoke rose gold:
One star shines over the sunset.
Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold,
The haze changes from sunset to star.
The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark.
A star might call: It's a long way across.