y Renoir,
A Degas dancing girl,
English country houses,
An autumn afternoon in the Bois,
Something I have read of...
In sleep one vision retreating through another,
Like mirrors being doors to other mirrors,
Satin, and lace, and white shoulders,
And elegant ladies,
Dancing, dancing.
FOR WIVES AND MISTRESSES
Death,
Being a woman,
Being passive like all final things,
Being a mother,
Waits.
Shining faces
Gray and melt into her flesh.
Death envies those asleep in her,
Little children who have come back,
Fiery faces,
Bright for a moment in the darkness,
Extinguished softly in her womb.
PORTRAITS
PORTRAIT OF RICH OLD LADY
Old lady talks,
Spins from her lips
Warp and woof
Of teapots, tables, napery,
Sanitary toilets,
Old bedsteads, pictures on walls,
And fine lace,
Spins a cocoon of this secondary life.
Warm and snug is old lady's belly.
Old lady makes Venus Aphrodite
Parvenue.
Old lady
Arranges places for courtesans
In warm outbuildings on back streets.
NIGGER
Nigger with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips;
Nigger with loose red tongue;
Flat browed nigger,
Your skull peaked at the zenith,
The stretched glistening skin
Covered with tight coiled springs of hair:
I am up here cold.
I am white man.
You are still warm and sweet
With the darkness you were born in.
THE MAIDEN MOTHER
He has a squat body,
Glowering brows,
And bulging eyes.
Lustful contemplation of the meat pie
Is written all over his sweating face.
The thin woman with the meek voice,
Who has carried him so long in her body
And despairs of giving him birth,
Watches over him in secret
With bitter and resentful tenderness.
A PIOUS WOMAN
You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting
And smell candle wax and church incense.
When she dies she must be burned.
Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture
And get soggy,
As now she has a way of soaking up tears
Never meant for her.
A VERY OLD ROSE JAR
She ran across the lawn after the cat
And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow,
A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover.
There was clashing of cymbals,
And the flash of nereids' arms in autumn leaves.
A sharp high note died out like an ascending light.
Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid's lips
|