pink and white flowers
To put in baskets and take to the Los Angeles market.
They were clean as what they handled
There in the morning sun, the big people and the baby-faces.
Across the road, high on another mountain,
Stood a house saying, "I am it," a commanding house.
There was the home of a motion picture director
Famous for lavish whore-house interiors,
Clothes ransacked from the latest designs for women
In the combats of "male against female."
The mountain, the scenery, the layout of the landscape,
And the peace of the morning sun as it happened,
The miles of houses pocketed in the valley beyond--
It was all worth looking at, worth wondering about,
How long it might last, how young it might be.

UPSTREAM

The strong men keep coming on.
They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken.
They live on, fighting, singing, lucky as plungers.

The strong men ... they keep coming on.
The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a great prairie, a
long mountain.

Call hallelujah, call amen, call deep thanks.
The strong men keep coming on.

WINDFLOWER LEAF

This flower is repeated
out of old winds, out of
old times.

The wind repeats these, it
must have these, over and
over again.

Oh, windflowers so fresh,
Oh, beautiful leaves, here
now again.

The domes over
fall to pieces.
The stones under
fall to pieces.
Rain and ice
wreck the works.
The wind keeps, the windflowers
keep, the leaves last,
The wind young and strong lets
these last longer than stones.

VACHEL LINDSAY

IN PRAISE OF JOHNNY APPLESEED[1]

(_Born 1775. Died 1847_)

[Footnote 1: The best account of John Chapman's career, under the name
"Johnny Appleseed," is to be found in _Harper's Monthly Magazine_,
November, 1871.]

I. ~Over the Appalachian Barricade~

[Sidenote: _To be read like old leaves on the elm tree of Time.
Sifting soft winds with sentence and rhyme_.]

In the days of President Washington,
The glory of the nations,
Dust and ashes,
Snow and sleet,
And hay and oats and wheat,
Blew west,
Crossed the Appalachians,
Found the glades of rotting leaves, the soft deer-pastures,
The farms of the far-off future
In the forest.
Colts jumped the fence,
Snorting, ramping, snapping, sniffing,
With gastronomic calculations,
Crossed the Appalac