--
Something of Pierrot chasing after love,
A bacchante dying in her sleep,
A shadow,
And a gray cat.

THE NIXIE

He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks,
His eyes brown stones,
Worn smooth and soft,
But uncrumbled.
He reaches forth covert child-claws
To tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fish
As they swim secretly above him.
He laughs--
The school splinters, panic stricken.

As we stare through the lucid gold water
He gazes up at us from his shadowy retreat
In combative safety.
There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a god,
Water god, land god, god-in-the-sky.
We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie.
We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of his
imagination.

OLD LADIES' VALHALLA

I am thinking of a little house,
A pretty gray silk dress,
And a little maid with a tidy white apron.

I am thinking of thin yellow angels
Flying out of Sevres china tea cups,
And a cool spirit with slanting green eyes,
Who peers at me through the screen of plants
I have placed in the corner between the hearth and the window.
I am thinking of the peace in one's own little home
When the afternoon sunshine drips on the shiny floor,
And the rugs are in order,
And the roses in the bowl plunge into shadow
Like pink nymphs into a pool,
While there is no sound to be heard above the hum
of the teakettle
Save the benevolent buzzing of flies in the clean sash curtain.

PORTRAITS OF POETS

I

(For L. R.)

To rush over dark waters,
A swift bird with cruel talons;
To seize life--
Your life for her--
To hold it,
Hold it struggling--
To kiss it.

II

Crystal self-containment,
Giving out only what is sent.
Startled,
The circumference retreats
As it mounts higher, flamelike,
Still and clear without radiance,
Ascending without self-explanation.

A skeleton falls apart
With the dignity of comprehensible pathos,
The bones bleached by denial.

III

With the impalpable lightness of May breezes
Begins a battle of flower petals:
Cowering in the primrose whirlwind his lips have blown,
The little grotesque with the shattered heart,
Fearful,
Yet sinister in his fearfulness.

THEODORE DREISER

The man body jumbled out of the earth, half formed,
Clay on the feet,
Heavy with the lingering might of chaos.
The man face so high above the feet