UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES SM* KE AND STEEL SMOKE NIGHTS SMOKE AND STEEL 3 FIVE TOWNS ON THE B. & O. II WORK GANGS 12 PENNSYLVANIA 14 WHIRLS . , . IS PEOPLE WHO TVIUST PEOPLE WHO MUST 19 ALLEY RATS 2O ELEVENTH AVENUE RACKET 21 HOME FIRES 22 HATS 23 THEY ALL WANT TO PLAY HAMLET 24 THE MAYOR OF GARY 25 OMAHA 26 GALOOTS 27 CRABAPPLE BLOSSOMS 28 REAL ESTATE NEWS 3O MANUAL SYSTEM 31 STRIPES 3 2 HONKY TONK IN CLEVELAND, OHIO 33 CRAPSHOOTERS 34 SOUP 3 5 CLINTON SOUTH OF POLK 36 BLUE ISLAND INTERSECTION 37 *ED-HEADED RESTAURANT CASHIER 38 BOY AND FATHER 39 CLEAN CURTAINS 41 CRIMSON CHANGES PEOPLE 42 NEIGHBORS 44 CAHOOTS 45 BLUE MAROONS 46 THE HANGMAN AT HOME 47 MAN, THE MAN-HUNTER 48 THE SINS OF KALAMAZOO 49 BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES 57 APRONS OF SILENCE 59 372115 _ ^ DEATH SNIPS PROUD MEN 6O GOOD-NIGHT 6 1 SHIRT 62 JAZZ FANTASIA 63 DO YOU WANT AFFIDAVITS? 64 OLD-FASHIONED REQUITED LOVE 65 PURPLE MARTINS 66 BRASS KEYS 68 PICK OFFS 69 MANUFACTURED GODS 70 MASK 71 PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND FOUR PRELUDES ON PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND 75 BROKEN TABERNACLES 78 OSSAWATOMIE 79 LONG GUNS 8 I DUSTY DOORS 82 FLASH CRIMSON 83 THE LAWYERS KNOW TOO MUCH 85 CLOSERS 87 PLACES 88 THREES 89 THE LIARS 9O PRAYERS AFTER WORLD WAR 93 A. E. F. 94 BAS-RELIEF 95 CARLOVINGIAN DREAMS 96 BRONZES 97 LET LOVE GO ON 98 KILLERS 99 CLEAN HANDS IOO THREE GHOSTS IO2 PENCILS IO3 JUG IO5 AND THIS WILL BE ALL? IO6 HOODLUMS 107 YES, THE DEAD SPEAK TO US IQf) MIST FORMS CALLS I I 5 SEA- WASH Il6 SILVER WIND 117 EVENING WATERFALL I I 8 CRUCIBLE 119 SUMMER STARS 1 2O THROW ROSES 121 JUST BEFORE APRIL CAME 122 STARS, SONGS, FACES 123 SANDPIPERS 124 THREE VIOLINS 12$ THE WIND SINGS WELCOME IN EARLY SPRING 126 TAWNY 127 SLIPPERY 128 HELGA 129 BABY TOES I 3O PEOPLE WITH PROUD CHINS 13! WINTER MILK 132 SLEEPYHEADS 133 SUMACH AND BIRDS 134 WOMEN WASHING THEIR HAIR 135 PEACH BLOSSOMS 136 HALF MOON IN A HIGH WIND 137 REMORSE 138 RIVER MOONS 139 SAND SCRIBBLINGS I4O HOW YESTERDAY LOOKED 141 PAULA 142 LAUGHING BLUE STEEL 143 THEY ASK EACH OTHER WHERE THEY CAME FROM 144 HOW MUCH? 145 THROWBACKS 146 WIND SONG 147 THREE SPRING NOTATIONS ON BIPEDS 148 SANDHILL PEOPLE I5O FAR ROCKAWAY NIGHT TILL MORNING 151 HUMMING BIRD WOMAN 152 BUCKWHEAT 153 BLUE RIDGE 154 VALLEY SONG 155 MIST FORMS 156 PIGEON 157 CHASERS 158 HORSE FIDDLE 159 TIMBER WINGS l6l NIGHT STUFF I 62 SPANISH 163 SHAGBARK HICKORY 164 THE SOUTH WIND SAY SO 165 ACCOMPLISHED FACTS ACCOMPLISHED FACTS 169 GRIEG BEING DEAD I JQ CHORDS lyi BOGHEADS 1 72 TRINITY PLACE 173 PORTRAIT 1 74 POTOMAC RIVER MIST 175 JACK LONDON AND O. HENRY 176 HIS OWN FACE HIDDEN 177 CUPS OF COFFEE 178 PASSPORTS SMOKE ROSE GOLD l8l TANGIBLES I 8 2 NIGHT MOVEMENT NEW YORK 183 NORTH ATLANTIC 184 FOG PORTRAIT I 88 FLYING FISH I 89 HOME THOUGHTS 1 90 IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE igi TWO ITEMS 192 STREETS TOO OLD 193 SAVOIR FAIRE 194 MOHAMMED BEK HADJETLACHE 196 HIGH CONSPIRATORIAL PERSONS 197 BALTIC FOG NOTES 198 CIRCLES OF DOORS CIRCLES OF DOORS 2O3 HATE 2O4 TWO STRANGERS BREAKFAST 2O5 SNOW 2OO DANCER 2O7 PLASTER 2O8 CURSE OF A RICH POLISH PEASANT ON HIS SISTER WHO RAN AWAY WITH A WILD MAN 2Og WOMAN WITH A PAST 2IO WHITE HANDS 211 AN ELECTRIC SIGN GOES DARK 212 THEY BUY WITH AN EYE TO LOOKS 214 PROUD AND BEAUTIFUL 2 1 5 TELEGRAM 2l6 GLIMMER 217 WHITE ASH 2l8 TESTIMONY REGARDING A GHOST 219 PUT OFF THE WEDDING FIVE TIMES AND NOBODY COMES TO IT 22O BABY VAMPS 222 VAUDEVILLE DANCER 223 BALLOON FACES 224 HAZE HAZE 229 CADENZA 232 MEMORANDA 233 POTOMAC TOWN IN FEBRUARY 234 BUFFALO DUSK 235 CORN HUT TALK 236 BRANCHES 238 RUSTY CRIMSON 239 LETTER S 24O WEEDS 241 NEW FARM TRACTOR 242 PODS 243 HARVEST SUNSET 244 NIGHTS NOTHINGS AGAIN 245 PANELS PANELS 253 DAN 254 WHIFFLETREE 255 MASCOTS 256 THE SKYSCRAPER LOVES NIGHT 257 NEVER BORN 258 THIN STRIPS 259 FIVE CENT BALLOONS 260 MY PEOPLE 26l SWIRL 262 WISTFUL 263 BASKET 264 FIRE PAGES 265 FINISH 266 FOR YOU 267 SLABS OF THE SUNBURNT WEST THE WINDY CITY 3 WASHINGTON MONUMENT BY NIGHT l8 AND SO TO-DAY 2O BLACK HORIZONS 28 SEA SLANT 29 UPSTREAM 30 FOUR STEICHEN PRINTS 3! FINS 32 BEAT, OLD HEART 33 MOON RIDERS 34 AT THE GATES OF TOMBS 37 HAZARDOUS OCCUPATIONS 39 PROPS 40 GYPSY MOTHER 4! GOLD MUD 43 CROSSING THE PACES 45 COUPLES 46 CALIGARI 47 FEATHER LIGHTS 48 PEARL HORIZONS 49 HOOF DUSK 5O HARSK, HARSK 5! BRANCUSI 53 AMBASSADORS OF GRIEF 55 WITHOUT THE CANE AND THE DERBY 56 THE RAKEOFF AND THE GETAWAY 60 TWO HUMPTIES 62 IMPROVED FARM LAND 63 HELL ON THE WABASH 64 THIS FOR THE MOON YES? 65 PRIMER LESSON 66 SLABS OF THE SUNBURNT WEST 67 SMOKE AND STEEL SMOKE NIGHTS TO C3L. EDWARD J. STEICHEN PAINTER OF NOCTURNES AND FACES, CAMERA ENGRAVER OF GLINTS AND MOMENTS, LISTENER TO BLUE EVENING WINDS AND NEW YELLOW ROSES, DREAMER AND FINDER, RIDER OF GREAT MORNINGS IN GARDENS, VALLEYS, BATTLES. SMKE AN STEEL SMOKE of the fields in spring is one, Smoke of the leaves in autumn another. Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel, They all go up in a line with a smokestack, 0r they twist ... in the slow twist ... of the wind. If the north wind comes they run to the south. If the west wind comes they run to the east. By this sign all smokes know each other. Smoke of the fields in spring and leaves in autumn, Smoke of the finished steel, chilled and blue, By the oath of work they swear : " I know you." Hunted and hissed from the center Deep down long ago when God made us over, Deep down are the cinders we came from You and I and our heads of smoke. Some of the smokes God dropped on the job Cross on the sky and count our years And sing in the secrets of our numbers ; Sing their dawns and sing their evenings, Sing an old log-fire song: 3 4 Smoke and Steel You may put the damper up, You may put the damper down, The smoke goes up the chimney just the same. Smoke of a city sunset skyline, Smoke of a country dusk horizon They cross on the sky and count our years. Smoke of a brick-red dust f Winds on a spiral Out of the stacks For a hidden and glimpsing moon. This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill, This is the slang of coal and steel. The day-gang hands it to the night-gang, The night-gang hands it back. Stammer at the slang of this Let us understand half of it. In the rolling mills and sheet mills, In the harr and boom of the blast fires, The smoke changes its shadow And men change their shadow ; A nigger, a wop, a bohunk changes. A bar of steel it is only Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man. A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else, And left smoke and the blood of a man And the finished steel, chilled and blue. Smike and Steel 5 So fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again, And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel, A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky ; And always dark in the heart and through it, Smoke and the blood of a man. Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary they make their steel with men. In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys The smoke nights write their oaths : Smoke into steel and blood into steel ; Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men. Smoke and blood is the mix of steel. The birdmen drone in the blue ; it is steel a motor sings and zooms. Steel barb-wire around The Works. Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of The Works. Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells. The runners now, the handlers now, are steel ; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel. 6 Smoke and Steel Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces ; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle ; the clinkers are dumped : Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land ; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky. Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks with an evening paper for the woman and kids, you Steve with your head wondering where we all end up Finders in the dark, Steve : I hook my arm in cinder sleeves ; we go down the street together ; it is all the same to us ; you Steve and the rest of us end on the same stars; we all wear a hat in hell together, in hell or heaven. * Smoke nights now, Steve. Smoke, smoke, lost in the sieves of yesterday ; Dumped again to the scoops and hooks today. Smoke like the clocks and whistles, always. Smoke nights now. To-morrow something else. Luck moons come and go : Five men swim in a pot of red steel. Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel : Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils And the sucking plungers of sea-fighting turbines. Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless statioa Smoke and Steel 7 So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in mirrors. Peepers, skulkers they shadow-dance in laughing tombs. They are always there and they never answer. One of them said : " I like my job, the company is good to me, America is a wonderful country." One : " Jesus, my bones ache ; the company is a liar ; this is a free country, like hell." One : " I got a girl, a peach ; we save up and go on a farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves." And the others were roughneck singers a long ways from home. Look for them back of a steel vault door. They laugh at the cost. They lift the birdmen into the blue. It is steel a motor sings and zooms. In the subway plugs and drums, In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel, Under dynamo shafts in the webs of armature spiders. They shadow-dance and laugh at the cost. The ovens light a red dome. Spools of fire wind and wind. Quadrangles of crimson sputter. The lashes of dying maroon let down. Fire and wind wash out the slag. Forevet* the slag gets washed in fire and wind. 8 Smoke and Steel The anthem learned by the steel is: Do this or go hungry. Look for our rust on a plow. Listen to us in a threshing-engine razz. Look at our job in the running wagon wheat. Fire and wind wash at the slag. Box-cars, clocks, steam-shovels, churns, pistons, boilers, scissors Oh, the sleeping slag from the mountains, the slag- heavy pig-iron will go down many roads. Men will stab and shoot with it, and make butter and tunnel rivers, and mow hay in swaths, and slit hogs and skin beeves, and steer airplanes across North America, Europe, Asia, round the world. Hacked from a hard rock country, broken and baked in mills and smelters, the rusty dust waits Till the clean hard weave of its atoms cripples and blunts the drills chewing a hole in it. The steel of its plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God. in one-millionth of an inch. Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf women dancing, Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks flying hair of fire, flying feet upside down ; Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling, fire running wild out of the steady and fastened ovens ; Smoke and Steel 9 Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for them- selves ; Ears and noses of fire, gibbering gorilla arms of fire, gold mud-pies, gold bird-wings, red jackets riding purple mules, scarlet autocrats tumbling from the humps of camels, assassinated czars straddling vermillion balloons ; I saw then the fires flash one by one : good-by : then smoke, smoke ; And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool stars, sitting women arranging their hair, Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, wait- ing and half-murmuring : " Since you know all and I know nothing, tell me what I dreamed last night." Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain, in only a flicker of wind, are caught and lost and never known again. A pool of moonshine comes and waits, but never waits long: the wind picks up loose gold like this and is gone. A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed-^ on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine; sleeps slant-eyed a million years, IO Smoke and Steel sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths, a shirt of gathering sod and loam. The wind never bothers ... a bar of steel. The wind picks only . . pearl cobwebs ., _. pools of moonshine. Smoke and Steel II FIVE TOWNS ON THE B. AND O. -^~ BY day . . . tireless smokestacks . . . hungry smoky shanties hanging to the slopes . . . crooning: , that's all By night ... all lit up ... fire-gold bars, fire-gold flues . . . and the shanties shaking in clumsy shadows . . . almost the hills shaking ... all crooning: By God, we're going to find out or know why. 12 Smoke and Steel WORK GANGS Box cars run by a mile long. And I wonder what they say to each other When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack. Maybe their chatter goes : I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line. I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered my boards. I came from Detroit heavy with a load of flivvers. \ carried apples from the Hood river last year and this year bunches of bananas from Florida ; they look for me with watermelons from Mississippi next year. Hammers and shovels of work gangs sleep in shop < p/ corners when the dark stars come on the sky and the night watchmen walk and look. Then the hammer heads talk to the handles, then the scoops of the shovels talk, how the day's work nicked and trimmed them, how they swung and lifted all day, how the hands of the work gangs smelled of hope. Work Gangs 13 In the night of the dark stars when the curve of the sky is a work gang handle, in the night on the mile long sidetracks, in the night where the hammers and shovels sleep in corners, the night watchmen stuff their pipes with dreams and sometimes they doze and don't care for nothin', and sometimes they search their heads for meanings, stories, stars. The stuff of it runs like this : A long way we come ; a long way to go ; long rests and long deep sniffs for our lungs on the way. Sleep is a belonging of all ; even if all songs are old songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman's lantern with the oil gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and best of all. \ People singing; people with song mouths connecting with song hearts ; people who must sing people whose song hearts break if there song mouth ; these are my people. 14 Smoke and Steel PENNSYLVANIA I HAVE been in Pennsylvania, In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys. In the blue Susquehanna On a Saturday morning I saw the mounted constabulary go by, I saw boys playing marbles. Spring and the hills laughed. And in places Along the Appalachian chain, I saw steel arms handling coal and iron, And I saw the white-cauliflower faces Of miners' wives waiting for the men to come home from the day's work. I made color studies in crimson and violet Over the dust and domes of culm at sunset. Smoke and Steel 15 WHIRLS NEITHER rose leaves gathered in a jar respectably in Boston these nor drops of Christ blood for a chalice decently in Philadelphia or Baltimore. Cinders these hissing in a marl and lime of Chicago also these the howling of northwest winds across North and South Dakota or the spatter of winter spray on sea rocks of Kamchatka. PEOPLE WHO MUST Smoke and Steel 19 \ PEOPLE WHO MUST ( ^^ I PAINTED on the roof of a skyscraper. I painted a long while and called it a day's work. The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop's whistle never let up all afternoon. They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way Those people on the go or at a standstill ; And the traffic cop a spot of blue, a splinter of brass, Where the black tides ran around him And he kept the street. I painted a long while And called it a day's work. 2O Smoke and Steel ALLEY RATS THEY were calling certain styles of whiskers by the name of " lilacs." And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter a verbal guise Of " mutton chops," " galways," " feather dusters." Metaphors such as these sprang from their lips while other street cries Sprang from sparrows finding scattered oats among interstices of the curb. Ah-hah these metaphors and Ah-hah these boys among the police they were known As the Dirty Dozen and their names took the front pages of newspapers And two of them croaked on the same day at a " neck- tie party " . . . if we employ the metaphors of their lips. Smoke and Steel 21 ELEVENTH AVENUE RACKET THERE is something terrible about a hurdy-gurdy, a gipsy man and woman, and a monkey in red flannel all stopping in front of a big house with a sign " For Rent " on the door and the blinds hanging loose and nobody home. I never saw this. I hope to God I never will. Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo. Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum. Nobody home? Everybody home. Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo. Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night : Eddie Jones died of whooping cough : George Hacks got a job on the police force : the flosenheims bought a brass bed : Lena Hart giggled at a Jackie : a pushcart man called towwrytoes, tomaytoes. Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo. Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum. Nobody home ? Everybody home. 22 Smoke and Steel HOME FIRES IN a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street . . . faces . . . coffee spots . . . children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks. They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts, Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow. Here the stranger wonders how so many people re- member where they keep home fires. Smoke and Steel 23 HATS HATS, where do you belong? what is under you? On the rim of a skyscraper's forehead I looked down and saw : hats : fifty thousand hats : Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and waterfalls, Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of prairie corn. Hats: tell me your high hopes. 24 Smoke and Steel THEY ALL WANT TO PLAY HAMLET THEY all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart, Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote ; Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker's skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that's breaking, breaking, This is something that calls and calls to their blood. They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet : They all want to play Hamlet. Smoke and Steel 2$ THE MAYOR OF GARY ^ I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week. And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal \ time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States. "Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing machinery does every- thing," said the Mayor of Gary when I asked \^ him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week. And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary, and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up with a shampoo and a shave and he was easy and imperturbable though the government weather bureau thermometer said 96 and children were soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the street corners. And I said good-by to the Mayor of Gary and I went out from the city hall and turned the corner into Broadway. And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed with fire and cinders, and pitted with little holes from running molten steel, And some had bunches of specialized muscles around their shoulder blades hard as pig iron, muscles of their fore-arms were sheet steel and they looked to me like men who had been somewhere. Gary, Indiana, 1915. 26 Smoke and Steel OMAHA RED barns and red heifers spot the green grass circles around Omaha the farmers haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese. Shale hogbacks across the river at Council Bluffs and shanties hang by an eyelash to the hill slants back around Omaha. A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River. Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies, Eats and swears from a dirty face. Omaha works to get the world a breakfast. Smoke and Steel 27 GALOOTS Y^ GALOOTS, you hairy, hankering, Snousle on the bones you eat, chew at the gristle and lick the last of it. Grab off the bones in the paws of other galoots hook your claws in their sleazy mouths snap and run. If long-necks sit on their rumps and sing wild cries to the winter moon, chasing their tails to the flickers of foolish stars ... let 'em howl. Galoots fat with too much, galoots lean with too little, galoot millions and millions, snousle and snicker on, plug your exhausts, hunt your snacks of fat and lean, grab off yours. 28 Smoke and Steel '-.-y CRABAPPLE BLOSSOMS SOMEBODY'S little girl how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now. Somebody's little girl she played once under a crab- apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair. It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse's Head. And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went into the house and her mother washed her face and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel voice, " I don't want to." Somebody's little girl forty little girls of somebodies splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches, pyramids forty little show girls, ponies, squabs. How easy a sob story over who she once was and who she is now and how the crabapple blossoms fell on her dark hair in June. Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter and the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show is over and the street goes dark. Crabapple Blossoms 29 Let the girls wash off the paint and go for their mid- night sandwiches let 'em dream in the morning sun, late in the morning, long after the morning papers and the milk wagons Let 'em dream long as they want to . . .of June somewhere on the Erie line . . . and crabapple blossoms. 30 Smoke and Steel REAL ESTATE NEWS ARMOUR AVENUE was the name of this street and door signs on empty houses read " The Silver Dollar," " Swede Annie " and the Christian names of madams such as " Myrtle " and " Jenny." Scrap iron, rags and bottles fill the front rooms hither and yon and signs in Yiddish say Abe Kaplan & Co. are running junk shops in whore houses of former times. The segregated district, the Tenderloin, is here no more; the red-lights are gone; the ring of shovels handling scrap iron replaces the banging of pianos and the bawling songs of pimps. Chicago, 1915. Smike and Steel 31 MANUAL SYSTEM ARY has a thingamajig clamped on her ears' sits all day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in. jPlashes and flashes voices and voices calling for ears to pour words in Faces at the ends of wires asking for other faces at the ends of other wires : All day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in, Mary has a thingamajig clamped on her ears. 32 Smoke and Steel STRIPES 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 . . . lonesome. Smoke and Steel 33 HONKY TONK IN CLEVELAND, OHIO IT'S a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes. The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts. The banjo tickles and titters too awful. The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers. The cartoonists weep in their beer. Ship riveters talk with their feet To the feet of floozies under the tables. A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers : " I got the blues. I got the blues. I got the blues." And ... as we said earlier: The cartoonists weep in their beer. 34 Smoke and Steel CRAPSHOOTERS SOMEBODY loses whenever somebody wins. This was known to the Chaldeans long ago. And more : somebody wins whenever somebody loses. This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans. They take it heaven's hereafter is an eternity of crap games where they try their wrists years and years and no police come with a wagon ; the game goes on forever. The spots on the dice are the music signs of the songs of heaven here. God is Luck: Luck is God: we are all bones the High Thrower rolled: some are two spots, some double sixes. The myths are Phoebe, Little Joe, Big Dick. Hope runs high with a : Huh, seven huh, come seven This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans. Smoke and Steel 35 SOUP I SAW a famous man eating soup. I say he was lifting a fat broth Into his mouth with a spoon. His name was in the newspapers that day Spelled out in tall black headlines And thousands of people were talking about him. When I saw him, He sat bending his head over a plate Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon. 36 Smoke and Steel CLINTON SOUTH OF POLK I WANDER down on Clinton street south of Polk And listen to the voices of Italian children quarreling. It is a cataract of coloratura And I could sleep to their musical threats and accusa- tions. Smoke and Steel 37 BLUE ISLAND INTERSECTION Six street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles of banks and drug stores watch. The policemen whistle, the trolley cars bump : Wheels, wheels, feet, feet, all day. In the false dawn when the chickens blink And the east shakes a lazy baby toe at to-morrow, And the east fixes a pink half-eye this way, In the time when only one milk wagon crosses These three streets, these six street ends, It is the sleep time and they rest. The triangle banks and drug stores rest. The policeman is gone, his star and gun sleep. The owl car blutters along in a sleep-walk. 372115 38 Smoke and Steel RED-HEADED RESTAURANT CASHIER SHAKE back your hair, O red-headed girl. Let go your laughter and keep your two proud freckles on your chin. Somewhere is a man looking for a red-headed girl and some day maybe he will look into your eyes for a restaurant cashier and find a lover, maybe. Around and around go ten thousand men hunting a red headed girl with two freckles on her chin. I have seen them hunting, hunting. Shake back your hair; let go your laughter. Smoke and Steel ^$^ ?o J x BOY AND FATHER THE boy Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer. / The leather law books of Alexander's father fill a room like hay in a barn. \ Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house \ like bricklayers build, a house with walls and \ roofs made of big leather law books. The rain beats on the windows And the raindrops run down the window glass And the raindrops slide off the green blinds down the siding. The boy Alexander dreams of Napoleon in John C. Abbott's history, Napoleon the grand and lonely man wronged, Napoleon in his life wronged and in his memory wronged. The boy Alexander dreams of the cat Alice saw, the cat fading off into the dark and leaving the teeth of its Cheshire smile lighting the gloom. Buffaloes, blizzards, way down in Texas, in the pan- handle of Texas snuggling close to New Mexico, These creep into Alexander's dreaming by the window when his father talks with strange men about land down in Deaf Smith County. 4O Boy and Father Alexander's father tells the strange men : Five years ago we ran a Ford out on the prairie and chased antelopes. Only once or twice in a long while has Alexander heard his father say " my first wife " so-and-so and such-and-such. A few times softly the father has told Alexander, " Your mother . . . was a beautiful woman . . . but we won't talk about her." Always Alexander listens with a keen listen when he hears his father mention " my first wife " or " Al- exander's mother." Alexander's father smokes a cigar and the Episcopal rector smokes a cigar and the words come often : mystery of life, mystery of life. These two come into Alexander's head blurry and gray while the rain beats on the windows and the rain- drops run down the window glass and the rain- drops slide off the green blinds and down the siding. These and : There is a God, there must be a God, how can there be rain or sun unless there is a God ? So from the wrongs of Napoleon and the Cheshire cat smile on to the buffaloes and blizzards of Texas and on to his mother and to God, so the blurry gray rain dreams of Alexander have gone on five minutes, maybe ten, keeping slow easy time to the raindrops on the window glass and the raindrops sliding off the green blinds and down the siding. Smoke and Steel 41 CLEAN CURTAINS NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets. The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet. One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons. The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire dust of police and fire wagons dust of the winds that circled at midnights and noon listening to no prayers. " O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing the rim of a nun's bonnet O white curtains and people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the faded ramshackle at Congress and Green. Dust and the thundering trucks won the barrages of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows ? 42 Smoke and Steel CRIMSON CHANGES PEOPLE DID I see a crucifix in your eyes and nails and Roman soldiers and a dusk Golgotha? Did I see Mary, the changed woman, washing the feet of all men, clean as new grass when the old grass burns? Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths, with a flutter of wings that meant : we can never come again. Did I see No Man's Land in your eyes and men with lost faces, lost loves, and you among the stubs crying? Did I see you in the red death jazz of war losing moths among lost faces, speaking to the stubs who asked you to speak of songs and God and dancing, of bananas, northern lights or Jesus, any hummingbird of thought whatever flying away from the red death jazz of war? Crimson Changes People 43 Did I see your hand make a useless gesture trying to say with a code of five fingers something the tongue only stutters? did I see a dusk Golgotha? 44 Smoke and Steel NEIGHBORS ON Forty First Street near Eighth Avenue a frame house wobbles. If houses went on crutches this house would be one of the cripples. A sign on the house: Church of the Living God And Rescue Home for Orphan Children. From a Greek coffee house Across the street A cabalistic jargon Jabbers back. And men at tables Spill Peloponnesian syllables And speak of shovels for street work. And the new embankments of the Erie Railroad At Painted Post, Horse's Head, Salamanca. Smoke and Steel 45 CAHOOTS PLAY it across the table. What if we steal this city blind? If they want any thing let 'em nail it down. Harness bulls, dicks, front office men, And the high goats up on the bench, Ain't they all in cahoots ? Ain't it fifty-fifty all down the line, Petemen, dips, boosters, stick-ups and guns what's to hinder? Go fifty-fifty. If they nail you call in a mouthpiece. Fix it, you gazump, you slant-head, fix it. Feed 'em. . . . Nothin' ever sticks to my fingers, nah, nah, nothin' like that, But there ain't no law we got to wear mittens huh is there? Mittens, that's a good one mittens! There oughta be a law everybody wear mittens. 46 Smoke and Steel BLUE MAROONS " You slut," he flung at her. It was more than a hundred times He had thrown it into her face And by this time it meant nothing to her. She said to herself upstairs sweeping, " Clocks are to tell time with, pitchers Hold milk, spoons dip out gravy, and a Coffee pot keeps the respect of those Who drink coffee I am a woman whose Husband gives her a kiss once for ten Times he throws it in my face, ' You slut.' If I go to a small town and him along Or if I go to a big city and him along, What of it? Am I better off ?" She swept The upstairs and came downstairs to fix Dinner for the family. Smoke and Steel 47 THE HANGMAN AT HOME WHAT does the hangman think about When he goes home at night from work ? When he sits down with his wife and Children for a cup of coffee and a Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask Him if it was a good day's work And everything went well or do they Stay off some topics and talk about The weather, base ball, politics And the comic strips in the papers And the movies? Do they look at his Hands when he reaches for the coffee Or the ham and eggs? If the little Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's A rope does he answer like a joke: I seen enough rope for today? Or does his face light up like a Bonfire of joy and does he say: It's a good and dandy world we live In. And if a white face moon looks In through a window where a baby girl Sleeps and the moon gleams mix with Baby ears and baby hair the hangman How does he act then? It must be easy For him. Anything is easy for a hangman, I guess. 48 Smoke and Steel MAN, THE MAN-HUNTER I SAW Man, the man-hunter, Hunting with a torch in one hand And a kerosene can in the other, Hunting with guns, ropes, shackles. I listened And the high cry rang, The high cry of Man, the man-hunter : We'll get you yet, you sbxyzch! I listened later. The high cry rang: Kill him ! kill him ! the sbxyzch ! In the morning the sun saw Two butts of something, a smoking rump. And a warning in charred wood : Well, we got him, the sbxyzch. Smoke and Steel 49 THE SINS OF KALAMAZOO THE sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab. And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. They run to drabs and grays and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow and some: We should worry. Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map And the passenger trains stop there And the factory smokestacks smoke And the grocery stores are open Saturday nights And the streets are free for citizens who vote And inhabitants counted in the census. Saturday night is the big night. Listen with your ears on a Saturday night in Kalamazoo And say to yourself : I hear America, I hear, what do I hear? Main street there runs through the middle of the town And there is a dirty postoffice And a dirty city hall And a dirty railroad station 50 The Sins of Kalamazoo And the United States flag cries, cries the Stars and Stripes to the four winds on Lincoln's birthday and the Fourth of July. Kalamazoo kisses a hand to something far off. Kalamazoo calls to a long horizon, to a shivering silver angel, to a creeping mystic what-is-it. " We're here because we're here," is the song of Kala- mazoo. " We don't know where we're going but we're on our way," are the words. There are hound dogs of bronze on the public square, hound dogs looking far beyond the public square. Sweethearts there in Kalamazoo Go to the general delivery window of the postoffice And speak their names and ask for letters And ask again, " Are you sure there is nothing for me ? I wish you'd look again there must be a letter for me." And sweethearts go to the city hall And tell their names and say, " We want a license." And they go to an installment house and buy a bed on time and a clock And the children grow up asking each other, " What can we do to kill time ? " They grow up and go to the railroad station and buy tickets for Texas, Pennsylvania, Alaska. " Kalamazoo is all right," they say. " But I want to see the world." The Sins of Kalamazoo 51 And when they have looked the world over they come back saying it is all like Kalamazoo. The trains come in from the east and hoot for the crossings, And buzz away to the peach country and Chicago to the west Or they come from the west and shoot on to the Battle Creek breakfast bazaars And the speedbug heavens of Detroit. " I hear America, I hear, what do I hear ? " Said a loafer lagging along on the sidewalks of Kal- amazoo, Lagging along and asking questions, reading signs. Oh yes, there is a town named Kalamazoo, A spot on the map where the trains hesitate. I saw the sign of a five and ten cent store there And the Standard Oil Company and the International Harvester And a graveyard and a ball grounds And a short order counter where a man can get a stack of wheats And a pool hall where a rounder leered confidential like and said : " Lookin' for a quiet game ? " The loafer lagged along and asked, " Do you make guitars here ? Do you make boxes the singing wood winds ask to sleep in? 52 The Sins of Kalamazoo Do you rig up strings the singing wood winds sift over and sing low?" The answer: "We manufacture musical instruments here." Here I saw churches with steeples like hatpins, Undertaking rooms with sample coffins in the show window And signs everywhere satisfaction is guaranteed, Shooting galleries where men kill imitation pigeons, And there were doctors for the sick, And lawyers for people waiting in jail, And a dog catcher and a superintendent of streets, And telephones, water-works, trolley cars, And newspapers with a splatter of telegrams from sister cities of Kalamazoo the round world over. And the loafer lagging along said : Kalamazoo, you ain't in a class by yourself ; I seen you before in a lot of places. If you are nuts America is nuts. And lagging along he said bitterly : Before I came to Kalamazoo I was silent. Now I am gabby, God help me, I am gabby. Kalamazoo, both of us will do a fadeaway. I will be carried out feet first And time and the rain will chew you to dust And the winds blow you away. And an old, old mother will lay a green moss cover on my bones The Sins of Kalamazoo 53 And a green moss cover on the stones of your post- office and city hall. Best of all I have loved your kiddies playing run-sheep-run And cutting their initials on the ball ground fence. They knew every time I fooled them who was fooled and how. Best of all I have loved the red gold smoke of your sunsets ; I have loved a moon with a ring around it Floating over your public square ; I have loved the white dawn frost of early winter silver And purple over your railroad tracks and lumber yards. The wishing heart of you I loved, Kalamazoo. I sang bye-lo, bye-lo to your dreams. I sang bye-lo to your hopes and songs. I wished to God there were hound dogs of bronze on your public square, Hound dogs with bronze paws looking to a long horizon with a shivering silver angel, a creeping mystic what-is-it. BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES Smoke and Steel 57 BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES ALL I can give you is broken- face gargoyles. It is too early to sing and dance at funerals, Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and throwing his feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now you see it and now you don't. Fish to swim a pool in your garden flashing a speckled silver, A basket of wine-saps filling your room with flame- dark for your eyes and the tang of valley orchards for your nose, Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples, I cannot bring you now. It is too early and I am not footloose yet. I shall come in the night when I come with a hammer and saw. I shall come near your window, where you look out when your eyes open in the morning, And there I shall slam together bird-houses and bird- baths for wing-loose wrens and hummers to live in, birds with yellow wing tips to blur and buzz soft all summer, 58 Broken-Face Gargoyles So I shall make little fool homes with doors, always open doors for all and each to run away when they want to. I shall come just like that even though now it is early and I am not yet footloose, Even though I am still looking for an undertaker with a raw, wind-bitten face and a dance in his feet. I make a date with you (put it down) for six o'clock in the evening a thousand years from now. All I can give you now is broken-face gargoyles. All I can give you now is a double gorilla head with two fish mouths and four eagle eyes hooked on a street wall, spouting water and looking two ways to the ends of the street for the new people, the young strangers, coming, coming, always coming. It is early. I shall yet be footloose. Smoke and Steel 59 APRONS OF SILENCE MANY things I might have said today. And I kept my mouth shut. So many times I was asked To come and say the same things Everybody was saying, no end To the yes-yes, yes-yes, me-too, me-too. The aprons of silence covered me. A wire and hatch held my tongue. I spit nails into an abyss and listened. I shut off the gabble of Jones, Johnson, Smith, All whose names take pages in the city directory. I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around. I locked myself in and nobody knew it. Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow Knew it on the streets, in the postoffice, On the cars, into the railroad station Where the caller was calling, "All a-board, All a-board for . . Blaa-blaa . . Blaa-blaa, Blaa-blaa . . and all points northwest . . all a-board." Here I took along my own hoosegow And did business with my own thoughts. Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence. 60 Smoke and Steel DEATH SNIPS PROUD MEN DEATH is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs : Now you see 'em, now you don't. Death is stronger than all proud men and so death snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of dice and says : Read 'em and weep. Death sends a radiogram every day: When I want you I'll drop in and then one day he comes with a master-key and lets himself in and says: We'll go now. * Death is a nurse mother with big arms : 'Twon't hurt you at all; it's your time now; you just need a long sleep, child ; what have you had anyhow better than sleep? Smoke and Steel 61 GOOD NIGHT MANY ways to spell good night. Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes. They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit. Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out. Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar. Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill. It is easy to spell good night. Many ways to spell good night 62 Smoke and Steel SHIRT MY shirt is a token and symbol, more than a cover for sun and rain, my shirt is a signal, and a teller of souls. I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly noise, and the people will say, " Look at him tear his shirt." I can keep my shirt on. I can stick around and sing like a little bird and look 'em all in the eye and never be fazed. I can keep my shirt on. (moke and Steel 63 JAZZ FANTASIA DRUM on your drums, batter on your banjoes, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen. Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha- husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper. Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree- tops, moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns, tin cans make two people fight on the top of a stairway and scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs. Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars ... a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen. 64 Smoke and Steel DO YOU WANT AFFIDAVITS? THERE'S a hole in the bottom of the sea. Do you want affidavits? There's a man in the moon with money for you. Do you want affidavits? There are ten dancing girls in a sea-chamber off Nan- tucket waiting for you. There are tall candles in Timbuctoo burning penance for you. There are anything else? Speak now for now we stand amid the great wishing windows and the law says we are free to be wishing all this week at the windows. Shall I raise my right hand and swear to you in the monotone of a notary public? this is "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Smoke and Steel 65 "OLD-FASHIONED REQUITED LOVE" I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedias And slid my ringers among topics and titles Looking for you. And the answer comes slow. There seems to be no answer. I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the why of it. Or the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear cube in summer sunlight maybe he will know. 66 Smoke and Steel PURPLE MARTINS IF we were such and so, the same as these, maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, tumbling half over in the water mirrors, tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple tumblers you are. Dip and get away From loops into slip-knots, Write your own ciphers and figure eights. It is your wooded island here in Lincoln park. Everybody knows this belongs to you. Five fat geese Eat grass on a sod bank And never count your slinging ciphers, your sliding figure eights, A man on a green paint iron bench, Slouches his feet and sniffs in a book, And looks at you and your loops and slip-knots, And looks at you and your sheaths of satin blue, And slouches again and sniffs in the book, And mumbles : It is an idle and a doctrinaire exploit. Purple Martins 67 Go on tumbling half over in the water mirrors. Go on tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple tumblers you are. 68 Smoke and Steel BRASS KEYS JOY . . . weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel . . . painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face . . . slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room . . . forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new rooms. are we near or far? ... is there anything else? ... who comes back ? . . . and why does love ask nothing and give all? and why is love rare as a tailed comet shaking guesses out of men at telescopes ten feet long? why does the mystery sit with its chin on the lean forearm of women in gray eyes and women in hazel eyes? are any of these less proud, less important, than a cross-examining lawyer? are any of these less perfect than the front page of a morning newspaper? the answers are not computed and attested in the back of an arithmetic for the verifications of the lazy there is no authority in the phone book for us to call and ask the why, the wherefore, and the howbeit it's ... a riddle ... by God Smoke and Steel 69 PICK-OFFS THE telescope picks off star dust on the clean steel sky and sends it to me. The telephone picks off my voice and sends it cross country a thousand miles. The eyes in my head pick off pages of Napoleon memoirs ... a rag handler, a head of dreams walks in a sheet of mist . . . the palace panels shut in no- bodies drinking nothings out of silver helmets ... in the end we all come to a rock island and the hold of the sea-walls. jo Smoke and Steel MANUFACTURED GODS THEY put up big wooden gods. Then they burned the big wooden gods And put up brass gods and Changing their minds suddenly Knocked down the brass gods and put up A doughface god with gold earrings. The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads, They didn't know a little tin god Is as good as anything in the line of gods Nor how a little tin god answers prayer And makes rain and brings luck The same as a big wooden god or a brass God or a doughface god with golden Earrings. Smoke and Steel 71 MASK To have your face left overnight Flung on a board by a crazy sculptor; To have your face drop off a board And fall to pieces on a floor * Lost among lumps all finger-marked How now? To be calm and level, placed high, Looking among perfect women bathing And among bareheaded long-armed men, Corner dreams of a crazy sculptor, And then to fall, drop clean off the board, Four o'clock in the morning and not a dog Nor a policeman anywhere Hoo hoo! had it been my laughing face maybe I would laugh with you, but my lover's face, the face I give women and the moon and the sea ! PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND Smoke and Steel 75 FOUR PRELUDES ON PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND The past is a bucket of ashes! THE. woman named To-morrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time and does her hair the way she wants it and fastens at last the last braid and coil and puts the hairpin where it belongs and turns and drawls : Well, what of it ? My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. What of it? Let the dead be dead. The doors were cedar and the panels strips of gold and the girls were golden girls and the panels read and the girls chanted : We are the greatest city, the greatest nation: nothing like us ever was. 76 Playthings of the Wind The doors are twisted on broken hinges. Sheets of rain swish through on the wind where the golden girls ran and the panels read: We are the greatest city, the greatest nation, nothing like us ever was. It has happened before. Strong men put up a city and got a nation together, And paid singers to sing and women to warble : We are the greatest city, the greatest nation, nothing like us ever was. And while the singers sang and the strong men listened and paid the singers well and felt good about it all, there were rats and lizards who listened . . . and the only listeners left now . . . are . . . the rats . . . and the lizards. And there are black crows crying, " Caw, caw," bringing mud and sticks building a nest Playthings of the Wind 77 over the words carved on the doors where the panels were cedar and the strips on the panels were gold and the golden girls came singing: We are the greatest city, the greatest nation: nothing like us ever was. The only singers now are crows crying, " Caw, caw," And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. And the only listeners now are ... the rats . . . and the lizards. The feet of the rats scribble on the door sills ; the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints chatter the pedigrees of the rats and babble of the blood and gabble of the breed of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers of the rats. And the wind shifts and the dust on a door sill shifts and even the writing of the rat footprints tells us nothing, nothing at all about the greatest city, the greatest nation where the strong men listened and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever 78 Smoke and Steel BROKEN TABERNACLES HAVE I broken the smaller tabernacles, O Lord? And in the destruction of these set up the greater and massive, the everlasting tabernacles? I know nothing today, what I have done and why, O Lord, only I have broken and broken taber- nacles. They were beautiful in a way, these tabernacles torn down by strong hands swearing They were beautiful why did the hypocrites carve their own names on the corner-stones? why did the hypocrites keep on singing their own names in their long noses every Sunday in these taber- nacles? Who lays any blame here among the split corner- stones ? Smoke and Steel 79 OSSAWATOMIE I DON'T know how he came, shambling, dark, and strong. He stood in the city and told men: My people are fools, my people are young and strong, my people must learn, my people are terrible workers and fighters. Always he kept on asking : Where did that blood come from? They said: You for the fool killer, you for the booby hatch and a necktie party. They hauled him into jail. They sneered at him and spit on him, And he wrecked their jails, Singing, " God damn your jails," And when he was most in jail Crummy among the crazy in the dark Then he was most of all out of jail Shambling, dark, and strong, Always asking: Where did that blood come from? 80 Ossawatomie They laid hands on him And the fool killers had a laugh And the necktie party was a go, by God. They laid hands on him and he was a goner. They hammered him to pieces and he stood up. They buried him and he walked out of the grave, by God, Asking again : Where did that blood come from ? Smoke and Steel 81 LONG GUNS THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking milk, The law of stars held together, They slept and worked in the heads of men Making twenty mile guns, sixty mile guns, Speaking their language Of no land for a man, no land for a country Unless . . . guns . . . unless . . . guns. There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky, asking a long gun to get the moon, to conquer the insults of the moon, to conquer something, anything, to put it over and win the day, To show them the running of the world was all in guns. There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky. They dreamed ... in the time of the guns ... of guns. 82 Smoke and Steel DUSTY DOORS CHILD of the Aztec gods, how long must we listen here, how long before we go? The dust is deep on the lintels. The dust is dark on the doors. If the dreams shake our bones, what can we say or do? Since early morning we waited. Since early, early morning, child. There must be dreams on the way now. There must be a song for our bones. The dust gets deeper and darker. Do the doors and lintels shudder? How long must we listen here? How long before we go? Smoke and Steel 83 FLASH CRIMSON I SHALL cry God to give me a broken foot. I shall ask for a scar and a slashed nose. I shall take the last and the wcrst. I shall be eaten by gray creepers in a bunkhouse where no runners of the sun come and no dogs live. And yet of all " and yets " this is the bronze strong- est I shall keep one thing better than all else ; there is the blue steel of a great star of early evening in it; it lives longer than a broken foot or any scar. The broken foot goes to a hole dug with a shovel or the bone of a nose may whiten on a hilltop and yet " and yet " There^is one crimson pinch of ashes left after all; and none of the shifting winds that whip the grass and none of the pounding rains that beat the dust, know how to touch or find the flash of this crim- son. 84 Flash Crimson I cry God to give me a broken foot, a scar, or a lousy death. I who have seen the flash of this crimson, I ask God for the last and worst. Smoke and Steel 85 THE LAWYERS KNOW TOO MUCH THE lawyers, Bob, know too much. They are chums of the books of old John Marshall. They know it all, what a dead hand wrote, A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling, The bones of the fingers a thin white ash. The lawyers know a dead man's thoughts too well. In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob, Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers, Too much hereinbefore provided whereas, Too many doors to go in and out of. When the lawyers are through What is there left, Bob? Can a mouse nibble at it And find enough to fasten a tooth in? Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away? 86 The Lawyers Know Too Much The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue. The knack of a mason outlasts a moon. The hands of a plasterer hold a room together. The land of a farmer wishes him back again. Singers of songs and dreamers of plays Build a house no wind blows over. The lawyers tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer's bones. Smoke and Steel 87 LOSERS IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark And came out alive after all. If I pass the burial spot of Nero I shall say to the wind, " Well, well ! " I who have fiddled in a world on fire, I who have done so many stunts not worth doing. I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too. I want to shake his ghost-hand and say, " Neither of us died very early, did we?" And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar When I arrive there I shall tell the wind : " You ate grass ; I have eaten crow Who is better off now or next year ? " Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James, There too I could sit down and stop for awhile. I think I could tell their headstones : " God, let me remember all good losers." I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods, Walking into the drumfires, calling his men, " Come on, you . . . Do you want to live forever ? " Smoke and Steel PLACES ROSES and gold For you today, And the flash of flying flags. I will have Ashes, Dust in my hair, Crushes of hoofs. Your name Fills the mouth Of rich man and poor. Women bring Armfuls of flowers And throw on you. I go hungry Down in dreams And loneliness, Across the rain To slashed hills Where men wait and hope for me. Smoke and Steel THREES I WAS a boy when I heard three red words a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity I asked why men die for words. I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns, lilacs, told me the high golden words are : Mother, Home, and Heaven other older men with face decorations said : God, Duty, Immortality they sang these threes slow from deep lungs. Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks of doom and damnation, soup and nuts : meteors flashed their say-so : and out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land. And I met a marine of the U. S. A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things and I always get by gimme a plate of ham and eggs how much? and do you love me, kid? 90 Smoke and Steel THE LIARS (March, 1919} A LIAR goes in fine clothes. A liar goes in rags. A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes. A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies. And the stonecutters earn a living with lies on the tombs of liars. A liar looks 'em in the eye And lies to a woman, Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool. And he is an old liar ; we know him many years back. A liar lies to nations. A liar lies to the people. A liar takes the blood of the people And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie, A laugh in his neck, A lie in his mouth. And this liar is an old one ; we know him many years. He is straight as a dog's hind leg. He is straight as a corkscrew. He is white as a black cat's foot at midnight. The Liars 91 The tongue of a man is tied on this, On the liar who lies to nations, The liar who lies to the people. The tongue of a man is tied on this And ends: To hell with 'em all. To hell with 'em all. It's a song hard as a riveter's hammer, Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo, Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy, Twisted as a shell-shock idiot's gibber. The liars met where the doors were locked. They said to each other : Now for war. The liars fixed it and told 'em : Go. Across their tables they fixed it up, Behind their doors away from the mob. And the guns did a job that nicked off millions. The guns blew seven million off the map, The guns sent seven million west. Seven million shoving up the daisies. Across their tables they fixed it up, The liars who lie to nations. And now Out of the butcher's job And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned, Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts, Out of this they are calling now : Let's go back where we were. Let us run the world again, us, us. 92 The Liars Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we'll cash in again. So I hear The People talk. I hear them tell each other: Let the strong men be ready. Let the strong men watch. Let your wrists be cool and your head clear. Let the liars get their finish, The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again To open the doors and tell us : War ! get out to your war again. So I hear The People tell each other : Look at to-day and to-morrow. Fix this clock that nicks off millions When The Liars say it's time. Take things in your own hands. To hell with 'em all, The liars who lie to nations, The liars who lie to The People. Smoke and Steel 93 PRAYER AFTER WORLD WAR WANDERING oversea dreamer, Hunting and hoarse, Oh daughter and mother, Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood, Child of the hair let down, and tears, Child of the cross in the south And the star in the north, Keeper of Egypt and Russia and France, Keeper of England and Poland and Spain, Make us a song for to-morrow. Make us one new dream, us who forget, Out of the storm let us have one star. Struggle, Oh anvils, and help her. Weave with your wool, Oh winds and skies. Let your iron and copper help, Oh dirt of the old dark earth. Wandering oversea singer, Singing of ashes and blood, Child of the scars of fire, Make us one new dream, us who forget. Out of the storm let us have one star. 94 Smoke and Steel A. E. F. THERE will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it. The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty. And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall. Forefingers and thumbs will point absently and casu- ally toward it. It will be spoken among half-forgotten, wished-to-be- forgotten things. They will tell the spider : Go on, you're doing good work. Smoke and Steel 95 BAS-RELIEF FIVE geese deploy mysteriously. Onward proudly with flagstaffs, Hearses with silver bugles, Bushels of plum-blossoms dropping For ten mystic web- feet Each his own drum-major, Each charged with the honor Of the ancient goose nation, Each with a nose-length surpassing The nose-lengths of rival nations. Somberly, slowly, unimpeachably, Five geese deploy mysteriously. 96 Smoke and Steel CARLOVINGIAN DREAMS COUNT these reminiscences like money. The Greeks had their picnics under another name. The Romans wore glad rags and told their neighbors, " What of it ? " The Carlovingians hauling logs on carts, they too Stuck their noses in the air and stuck their thumbs to their noses And tasted life as a symphonic dream of fresh eggs broken over a frying pan left by an uncle who killed men with spears and short swords. Count these reminiscences like money. Drift, and drift on, white ships. Sailing the free sky blue, sailing and changing and sailing, Oh, I remember in the blood of my dreams how they sang before me. Oh, they were men and women who got money for their work, money or love or dreams. Sail on, white ships. Let me have spring dreams. Let me count reminiscences like money; let me count picnics, glad rags and the great bad manners of the Carlovingians breaking fresh eggs in the cop- per pans of their proud uncles. Smoke and Steel 97 BRONZES THEY ask me to handle bronzes Kept by children in China Three thousand years Since their fathers Took fire and molds and hammers And made these. The Ming, the Chou, And other dynasties, Out, gone, reckoned in ciphers, Dynasties dressed up In old gold and old yellow They saw these. Let the wheels Of three thousand years Turn, turn, turn on. Let one poet then (One will be enough) Handle these bronzes And mention the dynasties And pass them along. Smoke and Steel LET LOVE GO ON LET it go on ; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone. Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides dosvn the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins. Let the love of this hour go on ; let all the oaths and children and people of this love be clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun. Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs a winning race against life and the clocks, time tickles with rust and spots. Let love go on ; the heartbeats are measured out with a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with, to use and spend and reckon ; let love go on. Smoke and Steel 99 KILLERS I AM put high over all others in the city today. I am the killer who kills for those who wish a killing today. Here is a strong young man who killed. There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an auto- matic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen. Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens, and a jury of his peers, also fellow citizens, lis- tened to the testimony of other fellow citizens, policemen, doctors, and after a verdict of guilty, the judge, a fellow citizen, said : I sentence you to be hanged by the neck till you are dead. So there is a killer to be killed and I am the killer of the killer for today. I don't know why it beats in my head in the lines I read once in an old school reader : I'm to be queen of the May, mother, I'm to be queen of the May. Anyhow it comes back in language just like that today. I am the high honorable killer today. There are five million people in the state, five million killers for whom I kill I am the killer who kills today for five million killers who wish a killing. 100 2 Smoke and Steel CLEAN HANDS IT is something to face the sun and know you are free. To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean : It is something. To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands, Clean for the day book today and the record of the after days, Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready, So to have clean hands : God, it is something, One day of life so And a memory fastened till the stars sputter out And a love washed as white linen in the noon drying. Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth. O yes, clean hands is the chant and only one man knows its sob and its undersong and he dies clenching the secret more to him than any woman or chum. Clean Hands ' 101 And O the great brave men, the silent little brave men, proud of their hands clutching the knuckles of their fingers into fists ready for death and the dark, ready for life and the fight, the pay and the memories O the men proud of their hands. IO2 Smoke and Steel THREE GHOSTS THREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote : We, the People. The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each other thimbles. Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other as misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor, they sat and spoke their thoughts of the glory of The People, they met after work and drank beer to The People. Faded off into the twilights the names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Let it ride. They wrote : We, The People. Smoke and Steel 103 PENCILS PENCILS telling where the wind comes from open a story. Pencils telling where the wind goes end a story. These eager pencils come to a stop . . only . . when the stars high over come to a stop. Out of cabalistic to-morrows come cryptic babies calling life a strong and a lovely thing. I have seen neither these nor the stars high over come to a stop. Neither these nor the sea horses running with the clocks of the moon. Nor even a shooting star snatching a pencil of fire writing a curve of gold and white. IO4 Pencils Like you . . I counted the shooting stars of a winter night and my head was dizzy with all of them calling one by one : Look for us again. Smoke and Steel 105 JUG THE shale and water thrown together so-so first of all, Then a potter's hand on the wheel and his fingers shap- ing the jug ; out of the mud a mouth and a handle ; Slimpsy, loose and ready to fall at a touch, fire plays on it, slow fire coaxing all the water out of the shale mix. Dipped in glaze more fire plays on it till a molasses lava runs in waves, rises and retreats, a varnish of volcanoes. Take it now; out of mud now here is a mouth and handle; out of this now mothers will pour milk and maple syrup and cider, vinegar, apple juice, and sorghum. There is nothing proud about this; only one out of many ; the potter's wheel slings them out and the fires harden them hours and hours thousands and thousands. " Be good to me, put me down easy on the floors of the new concrete houses ; I was poured out like a concrete house and baked in fire too." io6 Smoke and Steel AND THIS WILL BE ALL? AND this will be all? And the gates will never open again? And the dust and the wind will play around the rusty door hinges and the songs of October moan, Why- oh, why-oh? And you will look to the mountains And the mountains will look to you And you will wish you were a mountain And the mountain will wish nothing at all? This will be all ? The gates will never-never open again? The dust and the wind only And the rusty door hinges and moaning October And Why-oh, why-oh, in the moaning dry leaves, This will be all ? Nothing in the air but songs And no singers, no mouths to know the songs ? You tell us a woman with a heartache tells you it is so ? This will be all? Smoke and Steel 107 HOODLUMS I AM a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us are a world of hoodlums maybe so. I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so do all of us maybe maybe so. In the ends of my fingers the itch for another man's neck, I want to see him hanging, one of dusk's cartoons against the sunset. This is the hate my father gave me, this was in my mother's milk, this is you and me and all of us in a world of hoodlums maybe so. Let us go on, brother hoodlums, let us kill and kill, it has always been so, it will always be so, there is nothing more to it. Let us go on, sister hoodlums, kill, kill, and kill, the torsoes of the world's mother's are tireless and the loins of the world's fathers are strong so go on kill, kill, kill. Lay them deep in the dirt, the stiffs we fixed, the cadavers bumped off, lay them deep and let the night winds of winter blizzards howl their burial service. The night winds and the winter, the great white sheets of northern blizzards, who can sing better for the lost hoodlums the old requiem, " Kill him ! kill him! . ." io8 Hoodlums Today my son, to-morrow yours, the day after your next door neighbor's it is all in the wrists of the gods who shoot craps it is anybody's guess whose eyes shut next. Being a hoodlum now, you and I, being all of us a world of hoodlums, let us take up the cry when the mob sluffs by on a thousand shoe soles, let us too yammer, " Kill him ! kill him ! . . . " Let us do this now . . . for our mothers . . . for our sisters and wives ... let us kill, kill, kill for the torsoes of the women are tireless and the loins of the men are strong. Chicago, July 29, 1919. Smoke and Steel 109 YES, THE DEAD SPEAK TO US YES, the Dead speak to us. This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness. Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the other says the Dead spoke a No, they go then together to this house. They loosen the clamps and haul at the hasps and try their keys and curse at the locks and the combina- tion numbers. For the teeth of the rats are barred and the tongues of the moths are outlawed and the sun and the air of wind is not wanted. They open a box where a sheet of paper shivers, in a dusty corner shivers with the dry inkdrops of the Dead, the signed names. Here the ink testifies, here we find the say-so, here we learn the layout, now we know where the cities and farms belong. no Yes, the Dead Speak to Us Dead white men and dead red men tested each other with shot and knives : they twisted each others' necks : land was yours if you took and kept it. How are the heads the rain seeps in, the rain-washed knuckles in sod and gumbo? Where the sheets of paper shiver, Back of the hasps and handles, Back of the fireproof clamps, They read what the fingers scribbled, who the land belongs to now it is herein provided, it is hereby stipulated the land and all appurtenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thorn-apple branches or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops So it is scrawled here, " I direct and devise So and so and such and such," And this is the last word. There is nothing more to it. Yes, the Dead Speak to Us 1 1 1 In a shanty out in the Wilderness, ghosts of to-morrow sit, waiting to come and go, to do their job. They will go into the house of the Dead and take the shivering sheets of paper and make a bonfire and dance a deadman's dance over the hissing crisp. In a slang their own the dancers out of the Wilderness will write a paper for the living to read and sign : The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the dead have peace and sleep, let the papers of the Dead who fix the lives of the Living, let them be a hissing crisp and ashes, let the young men and the young women forever understand we are through and no longer take the say-so of the Dead; Let the dead have honor from us with our thoughts of them and our thoughts of land and all appur- tenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thornapple branches or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops. And so, it is a shack of ghosts, a lean-to they have in the Wilderness, and they are waiting and they have learned strange songs how easy it is to wait and how anything comes to those who wait long enough and how most of all it is easy to wait for death, and waiting, dream of new cities. MIST FORMS Smoke and Steel CALLS BECAUSE I have called to you as the flame flamingo calls, or the want of a spotted hawk is called because in the dusk the warblers shoot the running waters of short songs to the homecoming warblers because the cry here is wing to wing and song to song I am waiting, waiting with the flame flamingo, the spotted hawk, the running water warbler waiting for you. Ii6 Smoke and Steel SEA-WASH THE sea-wash never ends. The sea-wash repeats, repeats. Only old songs ? Is that all the sea knows ? Only the old strong songs? Is that all? The sea-wash repeats, repeats. Smoke and Steel 117 SILVER WIND Do you know how the dream looms ? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change to low contralto singing mornings when the green corn leaves first break through the black loam And another long breath for the silver soprano melody of the moon songs in the light nights when the earth is lighter than a feather, the iron mountains lighter than a goose down So I shall look for you in the light nights then, in the laughter of slats of silver under a hill hickory. In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imi- tations of slow sea water on the shingle silver in the wind I shall look for you. n8 Smoke and Steel EVENING WATERFALL WHAT was the name you called me? And why did you go so soon? The crows lift their caw on the wind, And the wind changed and was lonely. The warblers cry their sleepy-songs Across the valley gloaming, Across the cattle-horns of early stars. Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs, What was the name you called me? And why did you go so soon? Smoke and Steel 119 CRUCIBLE HOT gold runs a winding stream on the inside of a green bowl. Yellow trickles in a fan figure, scatters a line of skirmishers, spreads a chorus of dancing girls, performs blazing ochre evolutions, gathers the whole show into one stream, forgets the past and rolls on. The sea-mist green of the bowl's bottom is a dark throat of sky crossed by quarreling forks of umber and ochre and yellow changing faces. I2O Smoke and Steel SUMMER STARS BEND low again, night of summer stars. So near you are, sky of summer stars, So near, a long arm man can pick off stars, Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, So near you are, summer stars, So near, strumming, strumming, So lazy and hum-strumming. Smoke and Steel 121 THROW ROSES THROW roses on the sea where the dead went down. The roses speak to the sea, And the sea to the dead. Throw roses, O lovers Let the leaves wash on the salt in the sun. 122 Smoke and Steel JUST BEFORE APRIL CAME THE snow piles in dark places are gone. Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear. The gravel of all shallow places shines. A white pigeon reels and somersaults. Frogs plutter and squdge and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody. Crows go in fives and tens ; they march their black feathers past a blue pool ; they celebrate an old festival. A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs. I might ask: Who are these people? Smoke and Steel 123 STARS, SONGS, FACES GATHER the stars if you wish it so. Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years. And then . . . Loosen your hands, let go and say good-by. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-by. 124 Smoke and Steel SANDPIPERS TEN miles of flat land along the sea. Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers the script of their feet is on the sea shingles they write in the morning, it is gone at noon they write at noon, it is gone at night. Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpiper's wire legs and feet. Smoke and Steel 125 THREE VIOLINS THREE violins are trying their hearts. The piece is MacDowell's Wild Rose. And the time of the wild rose And the leaves of the wild rose And the dew-shot eyes of the wild rose Sing in the air over three violins. Somebody like you was in the heart of MacDowell. Somebody like you is in three violins. 126 Smoke and Steel THE WIND SINGS WELCOME IN EARLY SPRING (For Paula} THE grip of the ice is gone now. The silvers chase purple. The purples tag silver. They let out their runners Here where summer says to the lilies : " Wish and be wistful, Circle this wind-hunted, wind-sung water." Come along always, come along now. You for me, kiss me, pull me by the ear. Push me along with the wind push. Sing like the whinnying wind. Sing like the hustling obstreperous wind. Have you ever seen deeper purple . . . this in my wild wind fingers? Could you have more fun with a pony or a goat? Have you seen such flicking heels before, Silver jig heels on the purple sky rim? Come along always, come along now. Smoke and Steel 127 TAWNY THESE are the tawny days : your face comes back. The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden early on the trellis. The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise. Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome. Run on, yellow balls on the hills, and you tawny pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange. Tawny days: and your face again. 1 28 Smoke and Steel SLIPPERY THE six month child Fresh from the tub Wriggles in our hands. This is our fish child. Give her a nickname: Slippery. Smoke and Steel 129 HELGA THE wishes on this child's mouth Came like snow on marsh cranberries ; The tamarack kept something for her; The wind is ready to help her shoes. The north has loved her; she will be A grandmother feeding geese on frosty Mornings ; she will understand Early snow on the cranberries Better and better then. 13 Smoke and Steel BABY TOES THERE is a blue star, Janet, Fifteen years' ride from us, If we ride a hundred miles an hour. There is a white star, Janet, Forty years' ride from us, If we ride a hundred miles an hour. Shall we ride To the blue star Or the white star? Smoke and Steel 131 PEOPLE WITH PROUD CHINS I TELL them where the wind comes from, Where the music goes when the fiddle is in the box. Kids I saw one with a proud chin, a sleepyhead, And the moonline creeping white on her pillow. I have seen their heads in the starlight And their proud chins marching in a mist of stars. They are the only people I never lie to. I give them honest answers, Answers shrewd as the circles of white on brown chestnuts. 132 Smoke and Steel WINTER MILK THE milk drops on your chin, Helga, Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes. Let your mammy keep hands of! the chin. This is a high holy spatter of white on the reds and blues. Before the bottle was taken away, Before you so proudly began today Drinking your milk from the rim of a cup They did not splash this high holy white on your chin. There are dreams in your eyes, Helga. Tall reaches of wind sweep the clear blue. The winter is young yet, so young. Only a little cupful of winter has touched your lips. Drink on ... milk with your lips . . . dreams with your eyes. Smoke and Steel 133 SLEEPYHEADS SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at the balance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy over, the whole works tumbles a done bird off the perch. Fox cubs sleep. The pointed head curls round into hind legs and tail. It is a ball of red hair. It is a muff waiting. A wind might whisk it in the air across pastures and rivers, a cocoon, a pod of seeds. The snooze of the black nose is in a circle of red hair. Old men sleep. In chimney corners, in rocking chairs, at wood stoves, steam radiators. They talk and forget and nod and are out of talk with closed eyes. For- getting to live. Knowing the time has come useless for them to live. Old eagles and old dogs run and fly in the dreams. Babies sleep. In flannels the papoose faces, the bam- bino noses, and dodo, dodo the song of many matush- kas. Babies a leaf on a tree in the spring sun. A nub of a new thing sucks the sap of a tree in the sun, yes a new thing, a what-is-it? A left hand stirs, an eyelid twitches, the milk in the belly bubbles and gets to be blood and a left hand and an eyelid. Sleep is a maker of makers. 134 Smoke and Steel SUMACH AND BIRDS IF you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple Shining in the six o'clock September dusk: If the red sumach on the autumn roads Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes: If the red-haws never burst in a million Crimson fingertwists of your heartcrying: If all this beauty of yours never crushed me Then there are many flying acres of birds for me, Many drumming gray wings going home I shall see, Many crying voices riding the north wind. Smoke and Steel 135 f WOMEN WASHING THEIR HAIR THEY have painted and sung the women washing their hair, and the plaits and strands in the sun, and the golden combs and the combs of elephant tusks and the combs of buffalo horn and hoof. The sun has been good to women, drying their heads of hair as they stooped and shook their shoulders and framed their faces with copper and framed their eyes with dusk or chestnut. The rain has been good to women. If the rain should forget, if the rain left off for a year the heads of women would wither, \ the copper, the dusk and chestnuts, go. They have painted and sung the women washing their hair reckon the sun and rain in, too. 136 Smoke and Steel PEACH BLOSSOMS WHAT cry of peach blossoms let loose on the air today I heard with my face thrown in the pink-white of it all? in the red whisper of it all? What man I heard saying: Christ, these are beautiful And Christ and Christ was in his mouth, over these peach blossoms? Smoke and Steel 137 HALF MOON IN A HIGH WIND MONEY is nothing now, even if I had it, mooney moon, yellow half moon, Up over the green pines and gray elms, Up in the new blue. Streel, streel, White lacey mist sheets of cloud, Streel in the blowing of the wind, Streel over the blue-and-moon sky, Yellow gold half moon. It is light On the snow; it is dark on the snow, Streel, O lacey thin sheets, up in the new blue. Come down, stay there, move on. 1 want you, I don't, keep all. There is no song to your singing. I am hit deep, you drive far, mooney yellow half moon, Steady, steady; or will you tip over? Or will the wind and the streeling Thin sheets only pass and move on And leave you alone and lovely ? 1 want you, I don't, come down, Stay there, move on. Money is nothing now, even if I had it. 138 Smoke and Steel REMORSE THE horse's name was Remorse. There were people said, " Gee, what a nag ! " And they were Edgar Allan Poe bugs and so They called him Remorse. When he was a gelding He flashed his heels to other ponies And threw dust in the noses of other ponies And won his first race and his second And another and another and hardly ever Came under the wire behind the other runners. And so, Remorse, who is gone, was the hero of a play By Henry Blossom, who is now gone. What is there to a monicker? Call me anything. A nut, a cheese, something that the cat brought in. Nick me with any old name. Class me up for a fish, a gorilla, a slant head, an egg, a ham. Only . . . slam me across the ears sometimes . . . and hunt for a white star In my forehead and twist the bang of my forelock around it. Make a wish for me. Maybe I will light out like a streak of wind. Smoke and Steel 139 RIVER MOONS The double moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face, The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head. I saw them last night, a cradle moon, two horns of a moon, such an early hopeful moon, such a child's moon for all young hearts to make a picture of. The river I remember this like a picture the river was the upper twist of a written question mark. I know now it takes many many years to write a river, a twist of water asking a question. And white stars moved when the moon moved, and one red star kept burning, and the Big Dipper was almost overhead. 140 Smoke and Steel SAND SCRIBBLINGS THE wind stops, the wind begins. The wind says stop, begin. A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor. The shovel changes, the floor changes. The sandpipers, maybe they know. Maybe a three-pointed foot can tell. Maybe the fog moon they fly to, guesses. The sandpipers cheep " Here " and get away. Five of them fly and keep together flying. Night hair of some sea woman Curls on the sand when the sea leaves The salt tide without a good-by. Boxes on the beach are empty. Shake 'em and the nails loosen. They have been somewhere. Smoke and Steel 141 HOW YESTERDAY LOOKED THE high horses of the sea broke their white riders On the walls that held and counted the hours The wind lasted. Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam And the evening began. The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls For a wild night like this. The south and the west looked on and the moon came When the wind went down and the sea was sorry And the singing slow. Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle To tell the how of it. I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you The wind that blew them across and across, The scooping, mixing wind. 142 Smoke and Steel PAULA NOTHING else in this song only your face. Nothing else here only your drinking, night-gray eyes. The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel. I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings. It is not your eyes, your face, I remember. It is not your dancing, race-horse feet. It is something else I remember you for on the pier mornings. Your hands are sweeter than nut-brown bread when you touch me. Your shoulder brushes my arm a south-west wind crosses the pier. I forget your hands and your shoulder and I say again : Nothing else in this song only your face. Nothing else here only your drinking, night-gray eyes. Smoke and Steel 143 LAUGHING BLUE STEEL Two fishes swimming in the sea, Two birds flying in the air, Two chisels on an anvil maybe. Beaten, hammered, laughing blue steel to each other maybe. Sure I would rather be a chisel with you than a fish. Sure I would rather be a chisel with you than a bird. Take these two chisel-pals, O God. Take 'em and beat 'em, hammer 'em, hear 'em laugh. 144 Smoke and Steel THEY ASK EACH OTHER WHERE THEY CAME FROM AM I the river your white birds fly over? Are you the green valley my silver channels roam? The two of us a bowl of blue sky day time and a bowl of red stars night time? Who picked you out of the first great whirl of nothings and threw you here? Smoke and Steel 145 HOW MUCH? How much do you love me, a million bushels ? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel? To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather. 146 Smoke and Steel THROWBACKS SOMEWHERE you and I remember we came. Stairways from the sea and our heads dripping. Ladders of dust and mud and our hair snarled. Rags of drenching mist and our hands clawing, climb- ing. You and I that snickered in the crotches and corners, in the gab of our first talking. Red dabs of dawn summer mornings and the rain sliding off our shoulders summer afternoons. Was it you and I yelled songs and songs in the nights of big yellow moons? Smoke and Steel 147 WIND SONG LONG ago I learned how to sleep, In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away, In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all, In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, " Who, who are you ? " I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer after- noon and there I took a sleep lesson. There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds. Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine, Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars : Who, who are you? Who can ever forget listening to the wind go by counting its money and throwing it away? 148 Smoke and Steel THREE SPRING NOTATIONS ON BIPEDS 1 THE down drop of the blackbird, The wing catch of arrested flight, The stop midway and then off : off for triangles, circles, loops of new hieroglyphs This is April's way : a woman : " O yes, I'm here again and your heart knows I was coming." White pigeons rush at the sun, A marathon of wing feats is on : " Who most loves danger ? Who most loves wings ? Who somersaults for God's sake in the name of wing power in the sun and blue on an April Thursday." So ten winged heads, ten winged feet, race their white forms over Elmhurst. They go fast: once the ten together were a feather of foam bubble, a chrysanthemum vhirl speaking to silver and azure. Three Spring Notations on Bipeds 149 The child is on my shoulders. In the prairie moonlight the child's legs hang over my shoulders. She sits on my neck and I hear her calling me a good horse. She slides down and into the moon silver of a prairie stream She throws a stone and laughs at the clug-clug. 150 Smoke and Steel SANDHILL PEOPLE I TOOK away three pictures. One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan. One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come. One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing points, half over the sand, half over the water, a half-love for the sea, a half-love for the land. I took away three thoughts. One was a thing my people call " love," a shut-in river hunting the sea, breaking white falls between tall clefs of hill country. One was a thing my people call " silence," the wind running over the butter faced sand-flowers, run- ning over the sea, and never heard of again. One was a thing my people call " death," neither a whistle in the little sandhills, nor a bird Sanscrit of wing points, yet a coat all the stars and seas have worn, yet a face the beach wears between sunset and dusk. Smoke and Steel FAR ROCKAWAY NIGHT TILL MORNING WHAT can we say of the night ? The fog night, the moon night, the fog moon night last night? There swept out of the sea a song. There swept out of the sea torn white plungers. There came on the coast wind drive In the spit of a driven spray, On the boom of foam and rollers, The cry of midnight to morning: Hoi-a-loa. Hoi-a-loa. Hoi-a-loa. Who has loved the night more than I have? Who has loved the fog moon night last night more than I have? Out of the sea that song can I ever forget it? Out of the sea those plungers can I remember anything else? Out of the midnight morning cry : Hoi-a-loa : how can I hunt any other songs now ? 152 Smoke and Steel HUMMINGBIRD WOMAN WHY should I be wondering How you would look in black velvet and yellow ? in orange and green? I who cannot remember whether it was a dash of blue Or a whirr of red under your willow throat Why do I wonder how you would look in humming- bird feathers? Smoke and Steel 153 BUCKWHEAT 1 THERE was a late autumn cricket, And two smoldering mountain sunsets Under the valley roads of her eyes. There was a late autumn cricket, A hangover of summer song, Scraping a tune Of the late night clocks of summer, In the late winter night fireglow, This in a circle of black velvet at her neck. In pansy eyes a flash, a thin rim of white light, a beach bonfire ten miles across dunes, a speck of a fool star in night's half circle of velvet. In the corner of the left arm a dimple, a mole, a forget-me-not, and it fluttered a hummingbird wing, a blur in the honey-red clover, in the honey- white buckwheat. Smoke and Steel BLUE RIDGE BORN a million years ago you stay here a million years . . . watching the women come and live and be laid away . . . you and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely. So it goes : either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star. I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains. Smoke and Steel VALLEY SONG THE sunset swept To the valley's west, you remember. The frost was on. A star burnt blue. We were warm, you remember, And counted the rings on a moon. The sunset swept To the valley's west And was gone in a big dark door of stars. 156 Smoke and Steel MIST FORMS THE sheets of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all ? How many times can death come and pay back what we saw? In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore, In the oath of night mist, nothing and all, A riddle is here no man tells, no woman. Smoke and Steel 157 PIGEON THE flutter of blue pigeon's wings Under a river bridge Hunting a clean dry arch, A corner for a sleep This flutters here in a woman's hand. A singing sleep cry, A drunken poignant two lines of song, Somebody looking clean into yesterday And remembering, or looking clean into To-morrow, and reading, This sings here as a woman's sleep cry sings. Pigeon friend of mine, Fly on, sing on. 158 Smoke and Steel CHASERS THE sea at its worst drives a white foam up, The same sea sometimes so easy and rocking with green mirrors. So you were there when the white foam was up And the salt spatter and the rack and the dulse You were done fingering these, and high, higher and higher Your feet went and it was your voice went, " Hai, hai, hai," Up where the rocks let nothing live and the grass was gone, Not even a hank nor a wisp of sea moss hoping. Here your feet and your same singing, " Hai, hai, hai." Was there anything else to answer than, " Hai, hai, hai"? Did I go up those same crags yesterday and the day before Scrumng my shoe leather and scraping the tough gnomic stuff Of stones woven on a cold criss-cross so long ago ? Have I not sat there . . . watching the white foam up, The hoarse white lines coming to curve, foam, slip back? Didn't I learn then how the call comes, " Hai, hai, hai"? Smoke and Steel 159 HORSE FIDDLE FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whis- per to Jack on his soft wire legs learning to stand up and preach, Jack-in-the-pulpit. As many poems as I have written to the moon and the streaming of the moon spinners of light, so many of the summer moon and the winter moon I would like to shoot along to your ears for nothing, for a laugh, a song, for nothing at all, for one look from you, for your face turned away and your voice in one clutch half way between a tree wind moan and a night-bird sob. Believe nothing of it all, pay me nothing, open your window for the other singers and keep it shut for me. The road I am on is a long road and I can go hungry again like I have gone hungry before. What else have I done nearly all my life than go hungry and go on singing? 160 Horse Fiddle Leave me with the hoot owl. I have slept in a blanket listening. He learned it, he must have learned it From two moons, the summer moon, And the winter moon And the streaming of the moon spinners of light. Smoke and Steel 161 TIMBER WINGS THERE was a wild pigeon came often to Hinkley's timber. Gray wings that wrote their loops and triangles on the walnuts and the hazel. There was a wild pigeon. There was a summer came year by year to Hinkley's timber. Rainy months and sunny and pigeons calling and one pigeon best of all who came. There was a summer. It is so long ago I saw this wild pigeon and listened. It is so long ago I heard the summer song of the pigeon who told me why night comes, why death and stars come, why the whippoorwill remembers three notes only and always. It is so long ago ; it is like now and today ; the gray wing pigeon's way of telling it all, telling it to the walnuts and hazel, telling it to me. So there is memory. So there is a pigeon, a summer, a gray wing beating my shoulder. 162 Smoke and Steel NIGHT STUFF LISTEN a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus rider's silver dress. Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mix- ing their green and white among stars shattered in spray clear nights. I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots under my heart the same as a lonely woman, a lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus rider's silver dress. Smoke and Steel 163 SPANISH FASTEN black eyes on me. I ask nothing of you under the peach trees, Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm. The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink. 164 Smoke and Steel SHAG-BARK HICKORY IN the moonlight under a shag-bark hickory tree Watching the yellow shadows melt in hoof-pools, Listening to the yes and the no of a woman's hands, I kept my guess why the night was glad. The night was lit with a woman's eyes. The night was crossed with a woman's hands, The night kept humming an undersong. Smoke and Steel 165 THE SOUTH WIND SAYS SO IF the oriole calls like last year when the south wind sings in the oats, if the leaves climb and climb on a bean pole saying over a song learnt from the south wind, if the crickets send up the same old lessons found when the south wind keeps on coming, we will get by, we will keep on coming, we will get by, we will come along, we will fix our hearts over, the south wind says so. ACCOMPLISHED FACTS Smoke and Steel 169 ACCOMPLISHED FACTS EVERY year Emily Dickinson sent one friend the first arbutus bud in her garden. In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson remembered a friend with the gift of George Washington's pocket spy-glass. Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great, and passed along this trophy to a particular friend. O. Henry took a blood carnation from his coat lapel and handed it to a country girl starting work in a bean bazaar, and scribbled : " Peach blossoms may or may not stay pink in city dust." So it goes. Some things we buy, some not. Torn Jefferson was proud of his radishes, and Abe Lincoln blacked his own boots, and Bismarck called Berlin a wilderness of brick and newspapers. So it goes. There are accomplished facts. Ride, ride, ride on in the great new blimps Cross unheard-of oceans, circle the planet. When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks. We might listen to boys fighting for marbles. The grasshopper will look good to us. So it goes . . . 170 Smoke and Steel GRIEG BEING DEAD GRIEG being dead we may speak of him and his art. Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was any good or not. Grieg being with Ibsen, Bjornson, Lief Ericson and the rest, Grieg being dead does not care a hell's hoot what we say. Morning, Spring, Anitra's Dance, He dreams them at the doors of new stars. Smoke and Steel 171 CHORDS IN the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea and adumbrants of rock in her eyes . . . horse- back 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. 172 Smoke and Steel BOGHEADS AMONG the grassroots In the moonlight, who comes circling, red tongues and high noses? Is one of 'em Buck and one of 'em White Fang? In the moonlight, who are they, cross-legged, telling their stories over and over? Is one of 'em Martin Eden and one of 'em Larsen the Wolf? Let an epitaph read: He loved the straight eyes of dogs and the strong heads of men. Smoke and Steel 173 TRINITY PEACE THE grave of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street. The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops. And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love. An iron picket fence . . . and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks . . . straw hats, faces, legs ... a singing, talking, hustling river . . . down the great street that ends with a Sea. . . . easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton. . . . easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton. . . . easy are the great governments and the great steamboats. 174 Smoke and Steel PORTRAIT (For S. A.} To write one book in five years or five books in one year, to be the painter and the thing painted, . . . where are we, bo? Wait get his number. The barber shop handling is here and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, and the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more he sleeps under bridges with lonely crazy men; he sits in country jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children of broken-down burlesque actresses ; he has cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson's father ; he pencils wrists of lonely women. Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa and feel the tall grass coming up in June and the ache of the cottonwood trees singing with the prairie wind? Smoke and Steel 175 POTOMAC RIVER MIST ALL the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency ex- perts in Toledo knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten years when Whitlock was mayor. Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flit from zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters, scavengers. The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for us and a gang from over the river sang rag- time to a ukelele. The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we hunted the fog-swept Lincoln Memorial, white as a blond woman's arm. We circled the city of Washington and came back home four o'clock in the morning, passing a sign : House Where Abraham Lincoln Died, Admission 25 Cents. I got a letter from him in Sweden and I sent him a postcard from Norway . . every newspaper from America ran news of " the flu." The path of a night fog swept up the river to the Lincoln Memorial when I saw it again and alone at a winter's end, the marble in the mist white as a blond woman's arm. 176 Smoke and Steel JACK LONDON AND O. HENRY BOTH were jailbirds ; no speechmakers at all ; speaking best with one foot on a brass rail ; a beer glass in the left hand and the right hand employed for gestures. And both were lights snuffed out ... no warning ... no lingering: Who knew the hearts of these boozefighters ? Smoke and Steel 177 HIS OWN FACE HIDDEN HOKUSAI'S portrait of himself Tells what his hat was like And his arms and legs. The only faces Are a river and a mountain And two laughing farmers. The smile of Hokusai is under his hat. 178 Smoke and Steel CUPS OF COFFEE THE haggard woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white flowers ... in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel. The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones . . . and the woman who sold to many men and saw her breasts shrivel ... in two poems you pour these like a cup of coffee, Francois. The woman whose lips are a thread of scarlet, the woman whose feet take hold on hell, the woman who turned to a memorial of salt looking at the lights of a forgotten city ... in ycur affidavits, ancient Jews, you pour these like cups of coffee. The woman who took men as snakes take rabbits, a rag and a bone and a hank of hair, she whose eyes called men to sea dreams and shark's teeth . . . in a poem you pour this like a cup of coffee, Kip. Marching to the footlights in night robes with spots of blood, marching in white sheets muffling the faces, marching with heads in the air they come back and cough and cry and sneer : . . .in your poems, men, you pour these like cups of coffee. PASSPORTS Smoke and Steel 181 SMOKE ROSE GOLD THE dome of the capital 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. 182 Smoke and Steel TANGIBLES (Washington, August, 1918) I HAVE seen this city in the day and the sun. I have seen this city in the night and the moon. And in the night and the moon I have seen a thing this city gave me nothing of in the day and the sun. The float of the dome in the day and the sun is one thing. The float of the dome in the night and the moon is another thing. In the night and the moon the float of the dome is a dream-whisper, a croon of a hope : " Not today, child, not today, lover; maybe tomorrow, child, maybe tomorrow, lover." Can a dome of iron dream deeper than living men? Can the float of a shape hovering among tree-tops can this speak an oratory sad, singing and red beyond the speech of the living men? A mother of men, a sister, a lover, a woman past the dreams of the living Does she go sad, singing and red out of the float of this dome? There is ... something . . . here . . . men die for. Smoke and Steel 183 NIGHT MOVEMENT NEW YORK IN the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms, And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon ; In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city, The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city ; In the night, when the trains and wagons start from a long way off For the city where the people ask bread and want letters ; In the night the city lives too the day is not all. In the night there are dancers dancing and singers singing, And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors. In the night the sea-winds take the city in their arms. 184 Smoke and Steel NORTH ATLANTIC WHEN the sea is everywhere from horizon to horizon . . when the salt and blue fill a circle of horizons . . I swear again how I know the sea is older than anything else and the sea younger than anything else. My first father was a landsman. My tenth father was a sea-lover, a gipsy sea-boy, a singer of chanties. (Oh Blow the Man Down!) The sea is always the same : and yet the sea always changes. The sea gives all, and yet the sea keeps something back. The sea takes without asking. The sea is a worker, a thief and a loafer. Why does the sea let go so slow? Or never let go at all? The sea always the same day after day, the sea always the same North Atlantic 185 night after night, fog on fog and never a star, wind on wind and running white sheets, bird on bird always a sea-bird so the days get lost: it is neither Saturday nor Monday, it is any day or no day, it is a year, ten years. Fog on fog and never a star, what is a man, a child, a woman, to the green and grinding sea? The ropes and boards squeak and groan. On the land they know a child they have named Today. On the sea they know three children they have named : Yesterday, Today, To-morrow. I made a song to a woman : it ran : I have wanted you. I have called to you on a day I counted a thousand years. In the deep of a sea-blue noon many women run in a man's head, phantom women leaping from a man's forehead . . to the railings . . . into the sea ... to the sea rim . . . . . a man's mother ... a man's wife . . . other women . . . I asked a sure-footed sailor how and he said : I have known many women but there is only one sea. 1 86 North Atlantic I saw the North Star once and our old friend, The Big Dipper, only the sea between us : " Take away the sea and I lift The Dipper, swing the handle of it, drink from the brim of it." I saw the North Star one night and five new stars for me in the rigging ropes, and seven old stars in the cross of the wireless plunging by night, plowing by night Five new cool stars, seven old warm stars. I have been let down in a thousand graves by my kinfolk. I have been left alone with the sea and the sea's wife, the wind, for my last friends And my kinfolk never knew anything about it at all. Salt from an old work of eating our graveclothes is here. The sea-kin of my thousand graves, The sea and the sea's wife, the wind, They are all here to-night between the circle of horizons, between the cross of the wireless and the seven old warm stars. North Atlantic 187 Out of a thousand sea-holes I came yesterday. Out of a thousand sea-holes I come to-morrow. I am kin of the changer. I am a son of the sea and the sea's wife, the wind. 1 88 Smoke and Steel FOG PORTRAIT RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman's steel face . . . looking . . . looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail . . . and a woman's steel face . . . looking . . . looking. Cliffs challenge humped ; sudden arcs form on a gull's wing in the storm's vortex ; miles of white horses plow through a stony beach ; stars, clear sky, and everywhere free climbers calling ; and a woman's steel face . . . looking . . . looking . . . Smoke and Steel FLYING FISH I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself . . . and so I know you. I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of fur- rows carved by the plowing keel. I leaned so ... and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now . . . and then under the water and out again ... a fish ... a bird . . . a fin thing ... a wing thing. Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing ... I have lived in many half worlds myself . . . and so I know you. 190 Smoke and Steel HOME THOUGHTS THE sea rocks have a green moss. The pine rocks have red berries. I have memories of you. Speak to me of how you miss me. Tell me the hours go long and slow. Speak to me of the drag on your heart, The iron drag of the long days. I know hours empty as a beggar's tin cup on a rainy day, empty as a soldier's sleeve with an arm lost. Speak to me . . . Smoke and Steel 191 IN THE SHADOW OF THE PALACE LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy per- sistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspaper office. Let us sit among the telegrams clickety-click the kaiser's crown goes into the gutter and the Hohen- zollern throne of a thousand years falls to pieces a one-hoss shay. It is a fog night out and the umbrellas are up and the collars of the raincoats and all the steam- boats up and down the Baltic sea have their lights out and the wheelsmen sober. Here the telegrams come one king goes and another butter is costly: there is no butter to buy for our bread in Stockholm and a little patty of butter costs more than all the crowns of Germany. Let us go out in the fog, John, let us roll up our raincoat collars and go on the streets where men are sneering at the kings. 192 Smoke and Steel TWO ITEMS STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge . . . always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them . . . In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat this winter. In a boat among calm waters next to the running waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down ... he waits ... the waters run ... the riksdag talks ... he lifts the net and lets it down . . . Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over the sky saying yes-yes. Every afternoon at four o'clock fifteen apple women who have sold their apples in Christiania meet at a coffee house and gab. Every morning at nine o'clock a girl wipes the win- dows of a hotel across the street from the post- office in Stockholm. I have pledged them when I go to California next summer and see the orange groves splattered with yellow balls I shall remember other people half way round the world. Smoke and Steel 193 STREETS TOO OLD I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years. How old, how old, how old, we are : the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old midwives tired and only doing what must be done. The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of kings ancient bearded kings who wrote books and spoke of God's love for all people and young kings who took forth armies out across the fron- tiers splitting the heads of their opponents and enlarging their kingdoms. Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was the murmur always whistling on the winds twist- ing out of the armpits and fingertips of the kings in bronze: Is there no loosening? Is this for always ? In an early snowflurry one cried: Pull me down where the tired old midwives no longer look at me, throw the bronze of me to a fierce fire and make me into neckchains for dancing children. 194 Smoke and Steel SAVOIR FAIRE CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king's street. Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel. The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins. Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames. The old men who beset the soil of Sweden and own the titles to the land the old men who enjoy a silken shimmer to their chin whiskers when they promenade the streets named after old kings if they forget me the old men whose varicose veins stand more and more blue on the calves of their legs when they take their morning baths attended by old women born to the bath service of old men and young if these old men say another King Carl should have a bronze on the king's street rather than a Fool Carl Then I would hurl them only another fool's laugh S avoir Faire 195 I would remember last Sunday when I stood on a Jutland of fire-born red granite watching the drop of the sun in the middle of the afternoon and the full moon shining over Stockholm four o'clock in the afternoon. If the young men will read five lines of one of my poems I will let the kings have all the bronze I ask only that one page of my writings be a knapsack keepsake of the young men who are the bloodkin of those who laughed nine hundred years ago: We are afraid of nothing only the sky may fall on us. 196 Smoke and Steel MOHAMMED BEK HADJETLACHE THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms. The interpreter translates, " I was a friend of Korni- lov, he asks me what to do and I tell him." A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel ... a projectile shape ... a bald head hammered . . . " Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?" This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows every- body. " I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,- 000, you get $50,000 ..." " I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau ..." These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom . . . and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women. Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, " I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent . . ." This rider of fugitive dawns. . . . Smoke and Steel 197 HIGH CONSPIRATORIAL PERSONS OUT of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars, out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to the white sun before all men, Out of a rag saturated with smears and smuts gath- ered from the footbaths of kings and the loin cloths of whores, from the scabs of Babylon and Jerusalem to the scabs of London and New York, From such a rag that has wiped the secret sores of kings and overlords across the rrilleniums of human marches and babblings, From such a rag perhaps I shall wring one reluctant desperate drop of blood, one honest-to-God spot of red speaking a mother-heart. December, 1918. Christiania, Norway 198 Smoke and Steel BALTIC FOG NOTES (Bergen) SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pound- ing through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat's neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon. Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky, A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against a night sky, And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand people here. Among the Wednesday night thousands in goloshes and coats slickered for rain, I learned how hungry I was for streets and people. I would rather be water than anything else. I saw a drive of salt fog and mist in the North Atlantic and an iceberg dusky as a cloud in the gray of morning. And I saw the dream pools of fjords in Norway . . . and the scarf of dancing water on the rocks and over the edges of mountain shelves. Baltic Fog Notes 199 Bury me in a mountain graveyard in Norway. Three tongues of water sing around it with snow from the mountains. Bury me in the North Atlantic. A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray over me and a long deep wind sob always. Bury me in an Illinois cornfield. The blizzards loosen their pipe organ voluntaries in winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall rains bring letters from the sea. CIRCLES OF DOORS Smoke and Steel 203 CIRCLES OF DOORS I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips And she formed his name on her tongue and sang And she sent him word she loved him so much, So much, and death was nothing ; work, art, home, All was nothing if her love for him was not first Of all ; the patter of her lips ran, I love him, I love him ; and he knew the doors that opened Into doors and more doors, no end of doors, And full length mirrors doubling and tripling The apparitions of doors : circling corridors of Looking glasses and doors, some with knobs, some With no knobs, some opening slow to a heavy push, And some jumping open at a touch and a hello. And he knew if he so wished he could follow her Swift running through circles of doors, hearing Sometimes her whisper, I love him, I love him, And sometimes only a high chaser of laughter Somewhere five or ten doors ahead or five or ten Doors behind, or chittering h-st, h-st, among corners Of the tall full-length dusty looking glasses. I love, I love, I love, she sang short and quick in High thin beaten soprano and he knew the meanings, The high chaser of laughter, the doors on doors And the looking glasses, the room to room hunt, The ends opening into new ends always. 204 Smoke and Steel HATE ONE man killed another. The saying between them had been " I'd give you the shirt off my back." The killer wept over the dead. The dead if he looks back knows the killer was sorry. It was a shot in one second of hate out of ten years of love. Why is the sun a red ball in the six o'clock mist? Why is the moon a tumbling chimney ? . . . tumbling . . . tumbling ..." I'd give you the shirt off my back "... And I'll kill you if my head goes wrong. Smoke and Steel 205 TWO STRANGERS BREAKFAST THE law says you and I belong to each other, George. The law says you are mine and I am yours, George. And there are a million miles of white snowstorms, a million furnaces of hell, Between the chair where you sit and the chair where I sit. The law says two strangers shall eat breakfast together after nights on the horn of an Arctic moon. 206 Smoke and Steel SNOW SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk. Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances. Six bits for a sniff of snow in the old days bought us bubbles beautiful to forget floating long arm women across sunny autumn hills. Our bones cry and cry, no let-up, cry their telegrams : More, more a yen is on, a long yen and God only knows when it will end. In the old days six bits got us snow and stopped the yen now the government says : No, no, when our bones cry their telegrams : More, more. The blue cows are dying, no more pink milk, no more floating long arm women, the hills are empty us for the smoke valleys sneeze and shiver and croak, you dopes the government says : No, no. Smoke and Steel 207 DANCER THE lady in red, she in the chile con came red, Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun, She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this mas- querade, The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music, I sit in a corner watching her dance first with one man and then another. 208 Smoke and Steel PLASTER " I KNEW a real man once," says Agatha in the splen- dor of a shagbark hickory tree. Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold her in his arms? Did a man only look at her and pass by? Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance, says, " I knew a real man once." Smoke and Steel 209 CURSE OF A RICH POLISH PEASANT ON HIS SISTER WHO RAN AWAY WITH A WILD MAN FELIKSOWA has gone again from our house and this time for good, I hope. She and her husband took with them the cow father gave them, and they sold it. She went like a swine, because she called neither on me, her brother, nor on her father, before leaving for those forests. That is where she ought to live, with bears, not with men. She was something of an ape before and there, with her wild husband, she became altogether an ape. No honest person would have done as they did. Whose fault is it? And how much they have cursed me and their father! May God not punish them for it. They think only about money; they let the church go if they can only live fat on their money. 2IO Smoke and Steel WOMAN WITH A PAST THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry. There was a woman spoke six short words And quit a life that was old to her For a life that was new. There was a woman swore an oath And gave hoarse whisper to a prayer And it was all over. She was a thief and a whore and a kept woman, She was a thing to be used and played with. She wore an ancient scarlet sash. The story is thin and wavering, White as a face in the first apple blossoms, White as a birch in the snow of a winter moon. The story is never told. There are white lips whisper alone. There are red lips whisper alone. In the cool of the old walls, In the white of the old walls, The red song is over. Smoke and Steel 21 1 WHITE HANDS FOR the second time in a year this lady with the white hands is brought to the west room second floor of a famous sanatorium. Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa town and the lady has often read papers on Vic- torian poets before the local literary club. Yesterday she washed her hands forty seven times during her waking hours and in her sleep moaned restlessly attempting to clean imaginary soiled spots off her hands. Now the head physician touches his chin with a crooked forefinger. 212 Smoke and Steel AN ELECTRIC SIGN GOES DARK POLAND, France, Judea ran in her veins, Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle's cork. " Won't you come and play wiz me " she sang . . . and " I just can't make my eyes behave." " Higgeldy-Piggeldy," " Papa's Wife," " Follow Me " were plays. Did she wash her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand of pearls sneaked from her trunk? The news- papers asked. Cigarettes, tulips, pacing horses, took her name. Twenty years old . . . thirty . . . forty . . . Forty-five and the doctors fathom nothing, the doctors quarrel, the doctors use silver tubes feeding twenty-four quarts of blood into the veins, the respects of a prize-fighter, a cab driver. And a little mouth moans : It is easy to die when they are dying so many grand deaths in France. A voice, a shape, gone. A baby bundle from Warsaw . . . legs, torso, head . . . on a hotel bed at The Savoy. An Electric Sign Goes Dark 213 The white chiselings of flesh that flung themselves in somersaults, straddles, for packed houses: A memory, a stage and footlights out, an electric sign on Broadway dark. She belonged to somebody, nobody. No one man owned her, no ten nor a thousand. She belonged to many thousand men, lovers of the white chiseling of arms and shoulders, the ivory of a laugh, the bells of song. Railroad brakemen taking trains across Nebraska prairies, lumbermen jaunting in pine and tamarack of the Northwest, stock ranchers in the middle west, mayors of southern cities Say to their pals and wives now : I see by the papers Anna Held is dead. 214 Smoke and Steel THEY BUY WITH AN EYE TO LOOKS THE fine cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt, Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers, Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up And bring home and stick on the walls and say: " There's a little thing made a hit with me When I was in Cairo I think I must see Cairo again some day." So there are cornice manufacturers, chewing gum kings, Young Napoleons who corner eggs or corner cheese, Phenoms looking for more worlds to corner, And still other phenoms who lard themselves in And make a killing in steel, copper, permanganese, And they say to random friends in for a call : " Have you had a look at my wife ? Here she is. Haven't I got her dolled up for fair ? " O-ee ! the fine cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt. Smoke and Steel 215 PROUD AND BEAUTIFUL AFTER you have spent all the money modistes and manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you over into a thing the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After the shops and fingers have worn out all they have and know and can hope to have and know for the sake of making you what the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After there is absolutely nothing more to be done for the sake of staging you as a great enigmatic bird of paradise and they must all declare you to be proud and beautiful, After you have become the last word in good looks, insofar as good looks may be fixed and formu- lated, then, why then, there is nothing more to it then, it is then you listen and see how voices and eyes declare you to be proud and beautiful. 216 Smoke and Steel TELEGRAM I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist's tube to a whispering pinch of salt. Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he got his wife, when the messenger boy slipped in and asked him to sign. He gave the boy a nickel, tore the envelope and read. Then he yelled " Good God," jumped for his hat and raincoat, ran for the elevator and took a taxi to a railroad depot. As I say, it was like a set of crystals in a chemist's tube and a whispering pinch of salt. I wonder what Diogenes who lived in a tub in the sun would have commented on the affair. I know a shoemaker who works in a cellar slamming half-soles onto shoes, and when I told him, he said : " I pay my bills, I love my wife, and I am not afraid of anybody." Smoke and Steel 217 GLIMMER LET down your braids of hair, lady. Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass And gaze long on lines under your eyes. Life writes ; men dance. And you know how men pay women. 218 Smoke and Steel WHITE ASH THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice. She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door. Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts : The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron. The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke. The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering un- certain flame. And there is a love . . . one in a thousand . . . burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash. . . . And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot and goldfish and two white mice. Smoke and Steel 219 TESTIMONY REGARDING A GHOST THE roses slanted crimson sobs On the night sky hair of the women, And the long light-fingered men Spoke to the dark-haired women, " Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier." How could he sit there among us all Guzzling blood into his guts, Goblets, mugs, buckets Leaning, toppling, laughing With a slobber on his mouth, A smear of red on his strong raw lips, How could he sit there And only two or three of us see him? There was nothing to it. He wasn't there at all, of course. The roses leaned from the pots. The sprays snot roses gold and red And the roses slanted crimson sobs In the night sky hair And the voices chattered on the way To the frappe, speaking of pictures, Speaking of a strip of black velvet Crossing a girlish woman's throat, Speaking of the mystic music flash Of pots and sprays of roses, " Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier." 22O Smoke and Steel PUT OFF THE WEDDING FIVE TIMES AND NOBODY COMES TO IT (Handbook for Quarreling Lovers) I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms. I might have said, " Dogs bark and the wind carries it away." I might have said, " He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day." So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a high impetuous moment for you to look on before the final farewells were spoken. You who assumed the farewells in the manner of people buying newspapers and reading the head- lines and all peddlers of gossip who buttonhole each other and wag their heads saying, " Yes, I heard all about it last Wednesday." I considered several apothegms. " There is no love but service," of course, would only initiate a quarrel over who has served and how and when. " Love stands against fire and flood and much bitter- ness," would only initiate a second misunderstand- ing, and bickerings with lapses of silence. What is there in the Bible to cover our case, or Shake- spere? What poetry can help? Is there any left but Epictetus? Put off the Wedding 221 Since you have already chosen to interpret silence for language and silence for despair and silence for contempt and silence for all things but love, Since you have already chosen to read ashes where God knows there was something else than ashes, Since silence and ashes are two identical findings for your eyes and there are no apothegms worth handing out like a hung jury's verdict for a record in our own hearts as well as the community at large, I can only remember a Russian peasant who told me his grandfather warned him: If you ride too good a horse you will not take the straight road to town. It will always come back to me in the blur of that hokku: The heart of a woman of thirty is like the red ball of the sun seen through a mist. Or I will remember the witchery in the eyes of a girl at a barn dance one winter night in Illinois saying : Put off the wedding five times and nobody comes to it. 222 Smoke and Steel BABY VAMPS BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be ? Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons ? Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night? In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks, Wherever figure eights are carved, by skates in winter, by roller coasters in summer, Wherever the whirligigs are going and chicken Spanish and hot dog are sold, There you come, giggling baby vamp, there you come with your blue baby eyes, saying: Take me along. Smoke and Steel 223 VAUDEVILLE DANCER ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville. The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues. It is long ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father came with the locomotor ataxia shuffle. It is long ago, Elsie, and now they spell your name with an electric sign. Then you were a little thing in checked gingham and your mother wiped your nose and said: You little fool, keep off the streets. Now you are a big girl at last and streetfuls of people read your name and a line of people shaped like a letter S stand at the box office hoping to see you shimmy. 224 Smoke and Steel BALLOON FACES THE balloons hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens. They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky. Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, " What shall we eat ? " and the waiters, " Have you ordered ? " they are sixty ballon faces sifting white over the tuxedoes. Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smart- alecks discussing " educated jackasses," here they put crabs into their balloon faces. Here sit the heavy balloon face women lifting crimson lobsters into their crimson faces, lobsters out of Sargossa sea bottoms. Here sits a man cross-examining a woman, " Where were you last night? What do you do with all your money? Who's buying your shoes now, anyhow ? " So they sit eating whitefish, two balloon faces swept on God's night wind. And all the time the balloon spots on the wires, a little mile of festoons, they play their own silence play of film yellow and film gold, bubble blue and bub- ble red. The wind crosses the town, the wind from the west side comes to the banks of marigolds boxed in the Marigold Gardens. Balloon Faces 22$ Night moths fly and fix their feet in the leaves and eat and are seen by the eaters. The jazz outfit sweats and the drums and the saxo- phones reach for the ears of the eaters. The chorus brought from Broadway works at the fun and the slouch of their shoulders, the kick of their ankles, reach for the eyes of the eaters. These girls from Kokomo and Peoria, these hungry girls, since they are paid-for, let us look on and listen, let us get their number. Why do I go again to the balloons on the wires, some- thing for nothing, kin women of the half-moon, dream women? And the half -moon swinging on the wind crossing the town these two, the half -moon and the wind this will be about all, this will be about all. Eaters, go to it; your mazuma pays for it all; it's a knockout, a classy knockout and payday always comes. The moths in the marigolds will do for me, the half- moon, the wishing wind and the little mile of balloon spots on wires this will be about all, this will be about all. HAZE Smoke and Steel 229 HAZE KEEP a red heart of memories Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky, Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers. Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds; All starlights of cool memories on storm paths. Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men. They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say. Other faces rise on the prairie. They are the unborn. The future. Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the sky- line The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits. In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o'clock June nights . . . the dead men and the unborn children speak to me ... I can not tell you what they say . . . you listen and you know. I don't care who you are, man: I know a woman is looking for you and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind. 230 Haze (The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling the cows ; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X's of milk.) I don't care who you are, man: I know sons and daughters looking for you And they are gray dust working toward star paths And you see them from a garret window when you laugh At your luck and murmur, " I don't care." I don't care who you are, woman: I know a man is looking for you And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn- tassel. (The kitchen girl on the farm is throwing oats to the chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset's late maroon.) I don't care who you are, woman: I know sons and daughters looking for you And they are next year's wheat or the year after hidden in the dark and loam. My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana. My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. My love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper Haze 231 on her shoulders in March and April. My love is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter. Why is my love always a crying thing of wings? On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach? Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut? Why do the prairie roses answer every summer ? Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies? 232 Smoke and Steel CADENZA THE knees of this proud woman are bone. The elbows of this proud woman are bone. The summer-white stars and the winter-white stars never stop circling around this proud woman. The bones of this proud woman answer the vibrations of the stars. In summer the stars speak deep thoughts In the winter the stars repeat summer speech* The knees of this proud woman know these thoughts and know these speeches of the summer and winter stars. Smoke and Steel 233 MEMORANDA THIS handful of grass, brown, says little. This quar- ter mile field of it, waving seeds ripening in the sun, is a lake of luminous firefly lavender. Prairie roses, two of them, climb down the sides of a road ditch. In the clear pool they find their faces along stiff knives of grass, and cat-tails who speak and keep thoughts in beaver brown. These gardens empty ; these fields only flower ghosts ; these yards with faces gone ; leaves speaking as feet and skirts in slow dances to slow winds ; I turn my head and say good-by to no one who hears ; I pronounce a useless good-by. 234 Smoke and Steel POTOMAC TOWN IN FEBRUARY THE bridge says : Come across, try me ; see how good I am. The big rock in the river says : Look at me ; learn how to stand up. The white water says : I go on ; around, under, over, I go on. A kneeling, scraggly pine says : I am here yet ; they nearly got me last year. A sliver of moon slides by on a high wind calling: I know why; I'll see you to-morrow; I'll tell you everything to-morrow. Smoke and Steel 235 BUFFALO DUSK THE buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk, Those who saw the buffaloes are gone. And the buffaloes are gone. 236 Smoke and Steel CORN HUT TALK WRITE your wishes on the door and come in. Stand outside in the pools of the harvest moon. Bring in the handshake of the pumpkins. There's a wish for every hazel nut? There's a hope for every corn shock ? There's a kiss for every clumsy climbing shadow? Clover and the bumblebees once, high winds and November rain now. Buy shoes for rough weather in November. Buy shirts to sleep outdoors when May comes. Corn Hut Talk 237 Buy me something useless to remember you by. Send me a sumach leaf from an Illinois hill. In the faces marching in the firelog flickers, In the fire music of wood singing to winter, Make my face march through the purple and ashes. Make me one of the fire singers to winter. 238 Smoke and Steel BRANCHES THE dancing girls here . . . after a long night of it ... The long beautiful night of the wind and rain in April, The long night hanging down from the drooping branches of the top of a birch tree, Swinging, swaying, to the wind for a partner, to the rain for a partner. What is the humming, swishing thing they sing in the morning now? The rain, the wind, the swishing whispers of the long slim curve so little and so dark on the western morning sky . . . these dancing girls here on an April early morning . . . They have had a long cool beautiful night of it with their partners learning this year's song of April. Smoke and Steel 239 RUSTY CRIMSON (Christmas Day, 1917) THE five o'clock prairie sunset is a strong man going to sleep after a long day in a cornfield. The red dust of a rusty crimson is fixed with two fingers of lavender. A hook of smoke, a woman's nose in charcoal and . . . nothing. The timberline turns in a cover of purple. A grain elevator humps a shoulder. One steel star whisks out a pointed fire. Moonlight comes on the stubble. "Jesus in an Illinois barn early this morning, the baby Jesus ... in flannels ..." 240 Smoke and Steel LETTER S THE river is gold under a sunset of Illinois. It is a molten gold someone pours and changes. A woman mixing a wedding cake of butter and eggs Knows what the sunset is pouring on the river here. The river twists in a letter S. A gold S now speaks to the Illinois sky. Smoke and Steel 241 WEEDS FROM the time of the early radishes To the time of the standing corn Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes. There are laws in the village against weeds. The law says a weed is wrong and shall be killed. The weeds say life is a white and lovely thing And the weeds come on and on in irrepressible regi- ments. Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes; and the village law uttering a ban on weeds is unchangeable law. 242 Smoke and Steel NEW FARM TRACTOR SNUB nose, the guts of twenty mules are in your cylinders and transmission. The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses. It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here. The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules he sings to you instead of ten span of mules. A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and oats. Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere in the fields with the stars for a roof. I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel it's good-by now to leather reins and the songs of the old mule skinners. Smoke and Steel 243 PODS PEA pods cling to stems. Neponset, the village, Clings to the Burlington railway main line. Terrible midnight limiteds roar through Hauling sleepers to the Rockies and Sierras. The earth is slightly shaken And Neponset trembles slightly in its sleep. 244 Smoke and Steel HARVEST SUNSET RED gold of pools, Sunset furrows six o'clock, And the farmer done in the fields And the cows in the barns with bulging udders. Take the cows and the farmer, Take the barns and bulging udders. Leave the red gold of pools And sunset furrows six o'clock. The farmer's wife is singing. The farmer's boy is whistling. I wash my hands in red gold of pools. Smoke and Steel 245 NIGHT'S NOTHINGS AGAIN WHO knows what I know when I have asked the night questions and the night has answered nothing only the old answers? Who picked a crimson cryptogram, the tail light of a motor car turning a corner, or the midnight sign of a chile con carne place, or a man out of the ashes of false dawn muttering " hot-dog " to the night watchmen : Is there a spieler who has spoken the word or taken the number of night's nothings? am I the spieler? or you? Is there a tired head the night has not fed and rested and kept on its neck and shoulders? Is there a wish of man to woman and woman to man the night has not written and signed its name under? Does the night forget as a woman forgets? and remember as a woman remembers? 246 Night's Nothings Again Who gave the night this head of hair, this gipsy head calling : Come-on ? Who gave the night anything at all and asked the night questions and was laughed at? Who asked the night for a long soft kiss and lost the half-way lips? who picked a red lamp in a mist? Who saw the night fold its Mona Lisa hands and sit half-smiling, half-sad, nothing at all, and everything, all the world? Who saw the night let down its hair and shake its bare shoulders and blow out the candles of the moon, whispering, snickering, cutting off the snicker . . and sobbing , out of pillow-wet kisses and tears? Is the night woven of anything else than the secret wishes of women, the stretched empty arms of women? the hair of women with stars and roses? Night's Nothings Again 247 I asked the night these questions. I heard the night asking me these questions. I saw the night put these whispered nothings across the city dust and stones, across a single yellow sunflower, one stalk strong as a woman's wrist; And the play of a light rain, the jig-time folly of a light rain, the creepers of a drizzle on the sidewalks for the policemen and the railroad men, for the home-goers and the homeless, silver fans and funnels on the asphalt, the many feet of a fog mist that crept away ; I saw the night put these nothings across and the night wind came saying : Come-on : and the curve of sky swept off white clouds and swept on white stars over Battery to Bronx, scooped a sea of stars over Albany, Dobbs Ferry, Cape Horn, Constantinople. I saw the night's mouth and lips strange as a face next to mine on a pillow and now I know . . . as I knew always . . . the night is a lover of mine . . . I know the night is ... everything. I know the night is ... all the world. 248 Night's Nothings Again I have seen gold lamps in a lagoon play sleep and murmur with never an eyelash, never a glint of an eyelid, quivering in the water-shadows. A taxi whizzes by, an owl car clutters, passengers yawn reading street signs, a bum on a park bench shifts, another bum keeps his majesty of stone stillness, the forty-foot split rocks of Central Park sleep the sleep of stone whalebacks, the cornices of the Metropolitan Art mutter their own nothings to the men with rolled-up collars on the top of a bus : Breaths of the sea salt Atlantic, breaths of two rivers, and a heave of hawsers and smokestacks, the swish of multiplied sloops and war dogs, the hesi- tant hoo-hoo of coal boats: among these I listen to Night calling: I give you what money can never buy : all other lovers change : all others go away and come back and go away again : I am the one you slept with last night. I am the one you sleep with tonight and tomorrow night. I am the one whose passion kisses keep your head wondering and your lips aching to sing one song never sung before at night's gipsy head calling: Come-on. Night's Nothings Again 249 These hands that slid to my neck and held me, these fingers that told a story, this gipsy head of hair calling: Come-on: can anyone else come along now and put across night's nothings again? I have wanted kisses my heart stuttered at asking, I have pounded at useless doors and called my people fools. I have staggered alone in a winter dark making mumble songs to the sting of a blizzard that clutched and swore. It was the night in my blood: open dreaming night, night of tireless sheet-steel blue : The hands of God washing something, feet of God walking somewhere. PANELS Smoke and Steel 253 PANELS THE west window is a panel of marching onions. Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards. The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace. (How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums ?) 254 Smoke and Steel DAN EARLY May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind. Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door, all sun and no wind, Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep, Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off against each other on his paws and head. Smoke and Steel 255 WHIFFLETREE GIVE me your anathema. Speak new damnations on my head. The evening mist in the hills is soft. The boulders on the road say communion. The farm dogs look out of their eyes and keep thoughts from the corn cribs. Dirt of the reeling earth holds horseshoes. The rings in the whiffletree count their secrets. Come on, you. 256 Smoke and Steel MASCOTS I WILL keep you and bring hands to hold you against a great hunger. I will run a spear in you for a great gladness to die with. I will stab you between the ribs of the left side with a great love worth remembering. Smoke and Steel 257 THE SKYSCRAPER LOVES NIGHT ONE by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checker- ing cross work on the velvet gown of night. I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a velvet gown, And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under the dark feel of it all. The masonry of steel looks to the night for somebody it loves, He is a little dizzy and almost dances . . . waiting . . . dark . 258 Smoke and Steel NEVER BORN THE time has gone by. The child is dead. The child was never even born. Why go on ? Why so much as begin ? How can we turn the clock back now And not laugh at each other As ashes laugh at ashes? Smoke and Steel 259 THIN STRIPS IN a jeweler's shop I saw a man beating out thin sheets of gold. I heard a woman laugh many years ago. Under a peach tree I saw petals scattered . . torn strips of a bride's dress. I heard a woman laugh many years ago. 260 Smoke and Steel FIVE CENT BALLOONS PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string. They flutter and dance pulling Pietro's arm. A nickel apiece is what they sell for. Wishing children tag Pietro's heels. He sells out and goes the streets alone. Smoke and Steel 261 MY PEOPLE MY people are gray, pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray. I call them beautiful, and I wonder where they are goir*g. 262 Smoke and Steel SWIRL A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here. You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me I might almost stand here and believe you alive. Smoke and Steel 263 WISTFUL WISHES left on your lips The mark of their wings. Regrets fly kites in your eyes. 264 Smoke and Steel BASKET SPEAK, sir, and be wise. Speak choosing your words, sir, like an old woman over a bushel of apples. Smoke and Steel 265 FIRE PAGES I WILL read ashes for you, if you ask me. I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes And out of the red and black tongues and stripes, I will tell how fire comes And how fire runs far as the sea. 266 Smoke and Steel FINISH DEATH comes once, let it be easy. Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that. Or ring no bell at all, better yet. Sing one song if I die. Sing John Brown's Body or Shout All Over God's Heaven. Or sing nothing at all, better yet. Death comes once, let it be easy. Smoke and Steel 267 FOR YOU THE peace of great doors be for you. .Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs. Wait for the great hinges. The peace of great churches be for you, Where the players of loft pipe organs Practice old lovely fragments, alone. The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather. The peace of great prairies be for you. Listen among windplayers in cornfields, The wind learning over its oldest music. The peace of great seas be for you. Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing For you, wait in the salt wash. The peace of great mountains be for you, The sleep and the eyesight of eagles, Sheet mist shadows and the long look across. The peace of great hearts be for you, Valves of the blood of the sun, Pumps of the strongest wants we cry. 268 For You The peace of great silhouettes be for you, Shadow dancers alive in your blood now, Alive and crying, " Let us out, let us out." The peace of great changes be for you. Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills. Tumble, Oh cubs to-morrow belongs to you. The peace of great loves be for you. Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot. Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these. The peace of great ghosts be for you, Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors. Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you, Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze, Keepers of the lean clean breeds. SLABS OF THE SUNBURNT WEST TO HELGA THE WINDY CITY i THE lean hands of wagon men put out pointing fingers here, picked this crossway, put it on a map, set up their sawbucks, fixed their shotguns, found a hitching place for the pony express, made a hitching place for the iron horse, the one-eyed horse with the fire-spit head, found a homelike spot and said, " Make a home," saw this corner with a mesh of rails, shuttling people, shunting cars, shaping the junk of the earth to a new city. The hands of men took hold and tugged AnH thp hrpa.thR.nf men went into the junk And the junk stood up into skyscrapers and asked: Who am I? Am I a city? And if I am what is my name? And once while the time whistles blew and blew again The men answered: Long ago we gave you a name, Long ago we laughed and said: You? Your name is Chicago. Early the red men gave a name to a river, the place of the skunk, the river of the wild onion smell, Shee-caw-go. 3 4 The Windy City Out of the payday songs of steam shovels, Out of the wages of structural iron rivets, The living lighted skyscrapers tell it now as a name, Tell it across miles of sea blue water, gray blue land: I am Chicago, I am a name given out by the breaths of working men, laughing men, a child, a belonging. So between the Great Lakes, The Grand De Tour, and the Grand Prairie, The living lighted skyscrapers stand, Spotting the blue dusk with checkers of yellow, streamers of smoke and silver, parallelograms of night-gray watchmen, Singing a soft moaning song: I am a child, a belonging. How should the wind songs of a windy city go? Singing in a high wind the dirty chatter gets blown away on the wind the clean shovel, the clean pickax, lasts. It is easy for a child to get breakfast and pack off to school with a pair of roller skates, buns for lunch, and a geography. Riding through a tunnel under a river running backward, to school to listen . . . how the Pottawattamies . . . and the Blackhawks . . . ran on moccasins . . . between Kaskaskia, Peoria, Kankakee, and Chicago. The Windy City 5 It is easy to sit listening to a boy babbling of the Pottawattamie moccasins in Illinois, how now the roofs and smokestacks cover miles where the deerfoot left its writing and the foxpaw put its initials in the snow ... for the early moccasins ... to read. It is easy for the respectable taxpayers to sit in the street cars and read the papers, faces of burglars, the prison escapes, the hunger strikes, the cost of living, the price of dying, the shop gate battles of strikers and strikebreakers, the strikers killing scabs and the police killing strikers the strongest, the strongest, always the strongest. It is easy to listen to the haberdasher customers hand each other their easy chatter it is easy to die alive to register a living thumbprint and be dead from the neck up. And there are sidewalks polished with the footfalls of undertakers' stiffs, greased mannikins, wearing up-to- the-minute sox, lifting heels across doorsills, shoving their faces ahead of them dead from the neck up proud of their sox their sox are the last word dead from the neck up it is easy. The Windy City Lash yourself to the bastion of a bridge and listen while the black cataracts of people go by, baggage, bundles, balloons, listen while they jazz the classics: " Since when did you kiss yourself in And who do you think you are? Come across, kick in, loosen up. Where do you get that chatter? " " Beat up the short change artists. They never did nothin' for you. How do you get that way? Tell me and I'll tell the world. I'll say so, I'll say it is." " You're trying to crab my act. You poor fish, you mackerel, You ain't got the sense God Gave an oyster it's raining What you want is an umbrella." " Hush baby I don't know a thing. I don't know a thing. Hush baby." " Hush baby, It ain't how old you are, The Windy City It's how old you look. It ain't what you got, It's what you can get away with." " Bring home the bacon. Put it over, shoot it across. Send 'em to the cleaners. What we want is results, re-suits And damn the consequences. Sh . . . sh. . . . You can fix anything If you got the right fixers." " Kid each other, you cheap skates. Tell each other you're all to the mustard You're the gravy." "Tell 'em, honey. Ain't it the truth, sweetheart? Watch your step. You said it. You said a mouthful. We're all a lot of damn fourflushers." " Hush baby! Shoot it, Shoot it alii Coo coo, coo coo " This is one song of Chicago. The Windy City It is easy to come here a stranger and show the whole works, write a book, fix it all up it is easy to come and go away a muddle-headed pig, a bum and a bag of wind. Go to it and remember this city fished from its depths a text: " independent as a hog on ice." Venice is a dream of soft waters, Vienna and Bagdad recollections of dark spears and wild turbans; Paris is a thought in Monet gray on scabbards, fabrics, fagades; London is a fact in a fog filled with the moaning of transatlantic whistles; Berlin sits amid white scrubbed quadrangles and torn arithmetics and testaments; Moscow brandishes a flag and repeats a dance figure of a man who walks like a bear. Chicago fished from its depths a text: Independent as a hog on ice. Forgive us if the monotonous houses go mile on mile Along monotonous streets out to the prairies If the faces of the houses mumble hard words At the streets and the street voices only say: " Dust and a bitter wind shall come." The Windy City Forgive us if the lumber porches and doorsteps Snarl at each other And the brick chimneys cough in a close-up of Each other's faces And the ramshackle stairways watch each other As thieves watch And dooryard lilacs near a malleable iron works Long ago languished In a short whispering purple. And if the alley ash cans Tell the garbage wagon drivers The children play the alley is Heaven And the streets of Heaven shine With a grand dazzle of stones of gold And there are no policemen in Heaven Let the rag-tags have it their way. And if the geraniums In the tin cans of the window sills Ask questions not worth answering And if a boy and a girl hunt the sun With a sieve for sifting smoke Let it pass let the answer be " Dust and a bitter wind shall come." Forgive us if the jazz timebeats Of these clumsy mass shadows Moan in saxophone undertones, IO The Windy City And the footsteps of the jungle, The fang cry, the rip claw hiss, The sneak-up and the still watch, The slant of the slit eyes waiting If these bother respectable people with the right crimp in their napkins reading breakfast menu cards forgive us let it pass let be. If cripples sit on their stumps And joke with the newsies bawling, " Many lives lost! many lives lost! Ter-ri-ble ac-ci-dent! many lives lost! " If again twelve men let a woman go, " He done me wrong; I shot him "- Or the blood of a child's head Spatters on the hub of a motor truck Or a 44-gat cracks and lets the skylights Into one more bank messenger Or if boys steal coal in a railroad yard And run with humped gunnysacks While a bull picks off one of the kids And the kid wriggles with an ear in cinders And a mother comes to carry home A bundle, a limp bundle, To have his face washed, for the last time, Forgive us if it happens and happens again And happens again. Forgive the jazz timebeat of clumsy mass shadows, The Windy City II footsteps of the jungle, the fang cry, the rip claw hiss, the slant of the slit eyes waiting. Forgive us if we work so hard And the muscles bunch clumsy on us And we never know why we work so hard- If the big houses with little families And the little houses with big families Sneer at each other's bars of misunderstanding; Pity us when we shackle and kill each other And believe at first we understand And later say we wonder why. Take home the monotonous patter Of the elevated railroad guard in the rush hours: " Watch your step. Watch your step. Watch your step." Or write on a pocket pad what a pauper said To a patch of purple asters at a whitewashed wall: " Let every man be his own Jesus that's enough." The wheelbarrows grin, the shovels and the mortar hoist an exploit. The stone shanks of the Monadnock, the Transportation, the People's Gas Building, stand up and scrape at the sky. The wheelbarrows sing, the bevels and the blue prints whisper. 12 The Windy City The library building named after Crerar, naked as a stock farm silo, light as a single eagle feather, stripped like an airplane propeller, takes a path up. Two cool new rivets say, " Maybe it is morning," " God knows." Put the city up ; tear the city down ; put it up again; let us find a city. Let us remember the little violet-eyed man who gave all, praying, " Dig and dream, dream and hammer, till your city comes." Every day the people sleep and the city dies; every day the people shake loose, awake and build the city again. The city is a tool chest opened every day, a time clock punched every morning, a shop door, bunkers and overalls counting every day. The city is a balloon and a bubble plaything shot to the sky every evening, whistled in a ragtime jig down the sunset. The city is made, forgotten, and made again, trucks hauling it away haul it back steered by drivers whistling ragtime against the sunsets. The Windy City 13 Every day the people get up and carry the city, carry the bunkers and balloons of the city, lift it and put it down. " I will die as many times as you make me over again, says the city to the people, " I am the woman, the home, the family, I get breakfast and pay the rent; I telephone the doctor, the milkman, the undertaker; I fix the streets for your first and your last ride " Come clean with me, come clean or dirty, I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers; I remember all you forget. I will die as many times as you make me over again." Under the foundations, Over the roofs, The bevels and the blue prints talk it over. The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders. The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles. The winkers of the morning stars count out cities And forget the numbers. 7 At the white clock-tower lighted in night purples over the boulevard link bridge only the blind get by without acknowledgments. I 4 The Windy City The passers-by, factory punch-clock numbers, hotel girls out for the air, teameoes, coal passers, taxi drivers, window washers, paperhangers, floorwalkers, bill collectors, burglar alarm salesmen, massage students, manicure girls, chiropodists, bath rubbers, booze runners, hat cleaners, armhole basters, delicatessen clerks, shovel stiffs, work plugs They all pass over the bridge, they all look up at the white clock-tower lighted in night purples over the boulevard link bridge And sometimes one says, " Well, we hand it to 'em." Mention proud things, catalogue them. The jack-knife bridge opening, the ore boats, the wheat barges passing through. Three overland trains arriving the same hour, one from Memphis and the cotton belt, one from Omaha and the corn belt, one from Duluth, the lumberjack and the iron range. Mention a carload of shorthorns taken off the valleys of Wyoming last week, arriving yesterday, knocked in the head, stripped, quartered, hung in ice boxes to-day, mention the daily melodrama of this hum- drum, rhythms of heads, hides, heels, hoofs hung up. 8 It is wisdom to think the people are the city. It is wisdom to think the city would fall to pieces and die and be dust in the wind. The Windy City 15 If the people of the city all move away and leave no people at all to watch and keep the city. It is wisdom to think no city stood here at all until the working men, the laughing men, came. It is wisdom to think to-morrow new working men, new laughing men, may come and put up a new city Living lighted skyscrapers and a night lingo of lanterns testify to-morrow shall have its own say-so. 9 Night gathers itself into a ball of dark yarn. Night loosens the ball and it spreads. The lookouts from the shores of Lake Michigan find night follows day, and ping! ping! across sheet gray the boat lights put their signals. Night lets the dark yarn unravel, Night speaks and the yarns change to fog and blue strands. The lookouts turn to the city. The canyons swarm with red sand lights of the sunset. The atoms drop and sift, blues cross over, yellows plunge. Mixed light shafts stack their bayonets, pledge with crossed handles. So, when the canyons swarm, it is then the lookouts speak Of the high spots over a street . . . mountain language Of skyscrapers in dusk, the Railway Exchange, The People's Gas, the Monadnock, the Transportation, Gone to the gloaming. 1 6 The Windy City The river turns in a half circle. The Goose Island bridges curve over the river curve. Then the river panorama performs for the bridge, dots . . . lights . . . dots . . . lights, sixes and sevens of dots and lights, a lingo of lanterns and searchlights, circling sprays of gray and yellow. 10 A man came as a witness saying: " I listened to the Great Lakes And I listened to the Grand Prairie, And they had little to say to each other, A whisper or so in a thousand years. ' Some of the cities are big,' said one. ' And some not so big,' said another. 1 And sometimes the cities are all gone,' Said a black knob bluff to a light green sea." Winds of the Windy City, come out of the prairie, all the way from Medicine Hat. Come out of the inland sea blue water, come where they nickname a city for you. Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the flat spear leaves. The Windy City 17 Blue water wind in summer, come off the blue miles of lake, carry your inland sea blue fingers, carry us cool, carry your blue to our homes. White spring winds, come off the bag wool clouds, come off the running melted snow, come white as the arms of snow-born children. Gray fighting winter winds, come along on the tear- ing blizzard tails, the snouts of the hungry hunting storms, come fighting gray in winter. Winds of the Windy City, Winds of corn and sea blue, Spring wind white and fighting winter gray, Come home here they nickname a city for you. The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders. The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles. The winkers of the morning stars count out cities And forget the numbers. 1 8 Slabs of the Sunburnt West WASHINGTON MONUMENT BY NIGHT THE stone goes straight. A lean swimmer dives into night sky, Into half-moon mist. 2 Two trees are coal black. This is a great white ghost between. It is cool to look at. Strong men, strong women, come here. Eight years is a long time To be fighting all the time. The republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream. The wind bit hard at Valley Forge one Christmas. Soldiers tied rags on their feet. Washington Monument by Night 19 Red footprints wrote on the snow . . . . . . and stone shoots into stars here . . . into half-moon mist to-night. Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone. Women said: He is lonely . . . fighting . . . fighting . . . eight years . The name of an iron man goes over the world. It takes a long time to forget an iron man. 20 Slabs of the Sunburnt West AND SO TO-DAY AND so to-day they lay him away the boy nobody knows the name of the buck private the unknown soldier the doughboy who dug under and died when they told him to that's him. Down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day the riders go, men and boys riding horses, roses in their teeth, stems of roses, rose leaf stalks, rose dark leaves the line of the green ends in a red rose flash. Skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses, the rib bones shine, the rib bones curve, shine with savage, elegant curves a jawbone runs with a long white slant, a skull dome runs with a long white arch, bone triangles click and rattle, elbows, ankles, white line slants shining in the sun, past the White House, past the Treasury Building, Army and Navy Buildings, on to the mystic white Capitol Dome so they go down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day, skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses, stems of roses in their teeth, And So To-day 21 rose dark leaves at their white jaw slants and a horse laugh question nickers and whinnies, moans with a whistle out of horse head teeth: why? who? where? ( " The big fish eat the little fish the little fish eat the shrimps and the shrimps eat mud." said a cadaverous man with a black umbrella spotted with white polka dots with a missing ear with a missing foot and arms with a missing sheath of muscles singing to the silver sashes of the sun.) And so to-day they lay him away the boy nobody knows the name of the buck private the unknown soldier the doughboy who dug under and died when they told him to that's him. If he picked himself and said, " I am ready to die," if he gave his name and said, " My country, take me," then the baskets of roses to-day are for the Boy, the flowers, the songs, the steamboat whistles, the proclamations of the honorable orators, they are all for the Boy that's him. If the government of the Republic picked him saying, "You are wanted, your country takes you" if the Republic put a stethoscope to his heart and looked at his teeth and tested his eyes and said, 22 And So To-day " You are a citizen of the Republic and a sound animal in all parts and functions the Republic takes you " then to-day the baskets of flowers are all for the Republic, the roses, the songs, the steamboat whistles, the proclamations of the honorable orators they are all for the Republic. And so to-day they lay him away and an understanding goes his long sleep shall be under arms and arches near the Capitol Dome there is an authorization he shall have tomb com- panions the martyred presidents of the Republic the buck private the unknown soldier that's him. The man who was war commander of the armies of the Republic rides down Pennsylvania Avenue The man who is peace commander of the armies of the Republic rides down Pennsylvania Avenue for the sake of the Boy, for the sake of the Republic. (And the hoofs of the skeleton horses all drum soft on the asphalt footing so soft is the drumming, so soft the roll call of the grinning sergeants calling the roll call so soft is it all a camera man murmurs, " Moon- shine.") And So To-day 23 Look who salutes the coffin lays a wreath of remembrance on the box where a buck private sleeps a clean dry sleep at last look it is the highest ranking general of the officers of the armies of the Republic. (Among pigeon corners of the Congressional Library they file documents quietly, casually, all in a day's work this human document, the buck private nobody knows the name of they file away in gran- ite and steel with music and roses, salutes, proc- lamations of the honorable orators.) Across the country, between two ocean shore lines, where cities cling to rail and water routes, there people and horses stop in their foot tracks, cars and wagons stop in their wheel tracks faces at street crossings shine with a silence of eggs laid in a row on a pantry shelf among the ways and paths of the flow of the Republic faces come to a standstill, sixty clockticks count in the name of the Boy, in the name of the Republic. (A million faces a thousand miles from Pennsylvania Avenue stay frozen with a look, a clocktick, a moment skeleton riders on skeleton horses the nickering high horse laugh, the whinny and the howl up Pennsylvania Avenue: who? why? where?) 24 And So To-day (So people far from the asphalt footing of Pennsyl- vania Avenue look, wonder, mumble the riding white-jaw phantoms ride hi-eeee, hi-eeee, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-eeee the proclamations of the honorable orators mix with the top-sergeants whistling the roll call.) If when the clockticks counted sixty, when the heartbeats of the Republic came to a stop for a minute, if the Boy had happened to sit up, happening to sit up as Lazarus sat up, in the story, then the first shivering language to drip off his mouth might have come as, " Thank God," or " Am I dreaming? " or " What the hell " or " When do we eat? " or " Kill 'em, kill 'em, the . . ." or " Was that ... a rat ... ran over my face? " or " For Christ's sake, gimme water, gimme water," or " Blub blub, bloo bloo " or any bubbles of shell shock gibberish from the gashes of No Man's Land. Maybe some buddy knows, some sister, mother, sweetheart, maybe some girl who sat with him once when a two-horn silver moon slid on the peak of a house-roof gable, and promises lived in the air of the night, when the air was filled with promises, when any little slip-shoe lovey could pick a promise out of the air. And So To-day 25 " Feed it to 'em, they lap it up, bull ... bull . . . bull," Said a movie news reel camera man, Said a Washington newspaper correspondent, Said a baggage handler lugging a trunk, Said a two-a-day vaudeville juggler, Said a hanky-pank selling jumping-jacks. " Hokum they lap it up," said the bunch. And a tall scar-face ball player, Played out as a ball player, Made a speech of his own for the hero boy, Sent an earful of his own to the dead buck private: " It's all safe now, buddy, Safe when you say yes, Safe for the yes-men." He was a tall scar-face battler With his face in a newspaper Reading want ads, reading jokes, Reading love, murder, politics, Jumping from jokes back to the want ads, Reading the want ads first and last, The letters of the word JOB, " J-O-B," Burnt like a shot of bootleg booze In the bones of his head In the wish of his scar-face eyes. 26 And So To-day The honorable orators, Always the honorable orators, Buttoning the buttons on their prinz alberts, Pronouncing the syllables " sac-ri-fice," Juggling those bitter salt-soaked syllables Do they ever gag with hot ashes in their mouths? Do their tongues ever shrivel with a pain of fire Across those simple syllables " sac-ri-fice " ? (There was one orator people far off saw. He had on a gunnysack shirt over his bones, And he lifted an elbow socket over his head, And he lifted a skinny signal finger. And he had nothing to say, nothing easy He mentioned ten million men, mentioned them as having gone west, mentioned them as shoving up the daisies. We could write it all on a postage stamp, what he said. He said it and quit and faded away, A gunnysack shirt on his bones.) Stars of the night sky, did you see that phantom fadeout, did you see those phantom riders, skeleton riders on skeleton horses, stems of roses in their teeth, rose leaves red on white-jaw slants, grinning along on Pennsylvania Avenue, the top-sergeants calling roll calls did their horses nicker a horse laugh? did the ghosts of the boney battalions move out and on, up the Potomac, over on the Ohio, And So To-day 27 and out to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Red River, and down to the Rio Grande, and on to the Yazoo, over to the Chattahoochee and up to the Rappa- hannock? did you see 'em, stars of the night sky? And so to-day they lay him away the boy nobody knows the name of they lay him away in granite and steel with music and roses under a flag under a sky of promises. 28 Slabs of the Sunburnt West BLACK HORIZONS BLACK horizons, come up. Black horizons, kiss me. That is all; so many lies; killing SD cheap; babies so cheap ; blood, people, so cheap ; and land high, land dear; a speck of the earth costs; a suck at the tit of Mother Dirt so clean and strong, it costs; fences, papers, sheriffs; fences, laws, guns; and so many stars and so few hours to dream ; such a big song and so little a footing to stand and sing; take a look; wars to come; red rivers to cross. Black horizons, come up. Black horizons, kiss me. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 29 SEA SLANT ON up the sea slant, On up the horizon, This ship limps. The bone of her nose fog-gray, The heart of her sea-strong, She came a long way, She goes a long way. On up the horizon, On up the sea-slant, She limps sea-strong, fog-gray . She is a green-lit night gray. She comes and goes in sea fog. Up the horizon slant she limps. 30 Slabs of the Sunburnt West UPSTREAM THE strong men keep coming on. They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken. They live on fighting, singing, lucky as plungers. The strong mothers pulling them 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. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 31 FOUR STEICHEN PRINTS THE earth, the rock and the oil of the earth, the slippery frozen places of the earth, these are for homes of rainbow bubbles, curves of the circles of a bubble, curves of the arcs of the rainbow prisms between sun and rock they lift to the sun their foam feather and go. Throw your neck back, throw it back till the neck muscles shine at the sun, till the falling hair at the scalp is a black cry, till limbs and knee bones form an altar, and a girl's torso over the fire-rock torso shouts hi yi, hi yee, hallelujah. Goat girl caught in the brambles, deerfoot or fox-head, ankles and hair of feeders of the wind, let all the covering burn, let all stopping a naked plunger from plunging naked, let it all burn in this wind fire, let the fire have it in a fast crunch and a flash. They threw you into a pot of thorns with a wreath in your hair and bunches of grapes over your head your hard little buttocks in the thorns then the black eyes, the white teeth, the nameless muscular flair of you, rippled and twisted in sliding rising scales of laughter; the earth never had a gladder friend; pigs, goats, deer, tawny tough-haired jaguars might understand you. 32 Slabs of the Sunburnt West FINS PLOW over bars of sea plowing, the moon by moon work of the sea, the plowing, sand and rock, must be done. Ride over, ride over bars of sea riding, the sun and the blue riding of the sea sit in the saddles and say it, sea riders. Slant up and go, silver breakers; mix the high howls of your dancing; shoot your laugh of rainbow foam tops. Foam wings, fly ; pick the comers, the fin pink, the belly green, the blue rain sparks, the white wave spit fly, you foam wings. The men of the sea are gone to work ; the women of the sea are off buying new hats, combs, clocks; it is rust and gold on the roofs of the sea. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 33 BEAT, OLD HEART BEAT, old heart, these are the old bars All strugglers have beat against. Beat on these bars like the old sea ^c. Beats on the rocks and beaches. <- Beat here like the old winter winds ' Beat on the prairies and timbers. -t> Old grizzlies, eagles, buffalo, Their paws and beaks register this.-^ Their hides and heads say it with scars. 34 Slabs of the Sunburnt West MOON RIDERS WHAT have I saved out of a morning? The earliest of the morning came with moon-mist And the travel of a moon-spilt purple; Bars, horseshoes, Texas longhorns, Linked in night silver, Linked under leaves in moonlit silver, Linked in rags and patches Out of the ice houses of the morning moon. Yes, this was the earliest Before the cowpunchers on the eastern rims Began riding into the sun, Riding the roan mustangs of morning, Roping the mavericks after the latest stars. What have I saved out of a morning? Was there a child face I saw once Smiling up a stairway of the morning moon? " It is time for work," said a man in the morning. He opened the faces of the clocks, saw their works, Saw the wheels oiled and fitted, running smooth. " It is time to begin a day's work," he said again, Watching a bull-finch hop on the rain-worn boards Moon Riders 35 Of a beaten fence counting its bitter winters. The slinging feet of the bull-finch and the flash Of its flying feathers as it flipped away Took his eyes away from the clocks, his flying eyes. He walked over, stood in front of the clocks again And said, " I'm sorry; I apologize forty ways." The morning paper lay bundled Like a spear in a museum Across the broken sleeping room Of a moon-sheet spider. The spinning work of the morning spider's feet Left off where the morning paper's pages lay In the shine of the web in the summer dew grass. The man opened the morning paper, saw the first page, The back page, the inside pages, the editorials, Saw the world go by, eating, stealing, fighting, Saw the headlines, date lines, funnies, ads, The marching movies of the workmen going to work, the workmen striking, The workmen asking jobs five million pairs of eyes look for a boss and say, " Take me" People eating with too much to eat, people eating with nothing in sight to eat to-morrow, eating as though eating belongs where people belong. " Hustle, you hustlers, while the bustling's good," Said the man, turning the morning paper's pages, Turning among headlines, date lines, funnies, ads. 36 Moon Riders " Hustlers carrying the banner," said the man Dropping the paper and beginning to hunt the city, Hunting the alleys, boulevards, back-door by-ways, Hunting till he found a blind horse dying alone, Telling the horse, " Two legs or four legs it's all the same with a work plug." A hayfield mist of evening saw him Watching moon riders lose the moon For new shooting stars he asked, " Christ, what have I saved out of a morning? " He called up a stairway of the morning moon And he remembered a child face smiling up that same stairway. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 37 AT THE GATES OF TOMBS CIVILIZATIONS are set up and knocked down the same as pins in a bowling alley. Civilizations get into the garbage wagons and are hauled away the same as potato peelings or any pot scrapings. Civilizations, all the work of the artists, inventors, dreamers of work and genius, go to the dumps one by one. Be silent about it; since at the gates of tombs silence is a gift, be silent; since at the epitaphs written in the air, since at the swan songs hung in the air, silence is a gift, be silent; forget it. If any fool, babbler, gabby mouth, stand up and say: Let us make a civilization where the sacred and beautiful things of toil and genius shall last If any such noisy gazook stands up and makes himself heard put him out tie a can on him lock him up in Leavenworth shackle him in the Atlanta hoosegow let him eat from the tin dishes at Sing Sing slew him in as a lifer at San Ouentin. 38 At the Gates of Tombs It is the law; as a civilization dies and goes down to eat ashes along with all other dead civilizations it is the law all dirty wild dreamers die first gag 'em, lock 'em up, get 'em bumped off. And since at the gates of tombs silence is a gift, be silent about it, yes, be silent forget it. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 39 HAZARDOUS OCCUPATIONS JUGGLERS keep six bottles in the air. Club swingers toss up six and eight. The knife throwers miss each other's ears by a hair and the steel quivers in the target wood. The trapeze battlers do a back-and-forth high in the air with a girl's feet and ankles upside down. So they earn a living till they miss once, twice, even three times. So they live on hate and love as gypsies live in satin skins and shiny eyes. In their graves do the elbows jostle once in a blue moon and wriggle to throw a kiss answering a dreamed-of applause? Do the bones repeat: It's a good act we got a good hand. . . . ? 4-O Slabs of the Sunburnt West PROPS ROLL open this rug; a minx is in it; see her toe wiggling; roll open the rug; she is a runaway; or somebody is trying to steal her; here she is; here's your minx; how can we have a play unless we have this minx? The child goes out in the storm stage thunder; " erring daughter, never darken this door-sill again "; the tender parents speak their curse; the child puts a few knick-knacks in a handkerchief; and the child goes; the door closes and the child goes; she is out now, in the storm on the stage, out forever ; snow, you son-of-a-gun, snow, turn on the snow. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 41 GYPSY MOTHER IN a hole-in-a-wall on Halsted Street sits a gypsy woman, In a garish gas-lit rendezvous, in a humpback higgling hole-in-a-wall. The left hand is a tattler; stars and oaths and alphabets Commit themselves and tell happenings gone, happenings to come, pathways of honest people, hypocrites. " Long pointed fingers mean imagination; a star on the third finger says a black shadow walks near." Cross the gypsy's hand with fifty cents and she takes your left hand and reads how you shall be happy in love, or not, and whether you die rich, or not. Signs outside the hole-in-a-wall say so, misspell the promises, scrawl the superior gypsy mysteries. A red shawl on her shoulders falls with a fringe hem to a green skirt; Chains of yellow beads sweep from her neck to her tawny hands. Fifty springtimes must have kissed her mouth holding a calabash pipe. She pulls slow contemplative puffs of smoke; she is a shape for ghosts of contemplation to sit around and 42 Gypsy Mother ask why something cheap as happiness is here and more besides, chapped lips, rough eyes, red shawl. She is thinking about somebody and something the same as Whistler's mother sat and thought about some- body and something. In a hole-in-a-wall on Halsted Street are stars, oaths, alphabets. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 43 GOLD MUD (For R. F.) THE pot of gold at the rainbow end is a pot of mud, gold mud, slippery shining mud. Pour it on your hair and you will have a golden hair. Pour it on your cat and you will have a golden cat. Pour it on your clock and you will have a golden clock. Pour it on a dead man's thumb and you will have a golden thumb to bring you bad dreams. Pour it on a dead woman's ear and you will have a golden ear to tell hard luck stories to. Pour it on a horse chestnut and you will have a golden buckeye changing your luck. 44 Gold Mud Pour it in the shape of a holy cross, fasten it on my shirt for me to wear and I will have a keepsake. I will touch it and say a prayer for you. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 45 CROSSING THE PACES THE Sioux sat around their wigwam fires in winter with some papooses hung up and some laid down. And the Sioux had a saying, " Love grows like hair on a black bear's skin." The Arabians spill this: The first gray hair is a challenge of death. A Polish blacksmith: A good black- smith is not afraid of smoke. And a Scandinavian warns: The world was born in fire and he who is fire himself will be at home anywhere on earth. So a stranger told his children: You are strangers and warned them: Bob your hair; or let it grow long; Be a company, a party, a picnic; Be alone, a nut, a potato, an orange blossom, a keg of nails ; if you get lost try a want ad; if night comes try a long sleep. 46 Slabs of the Sunburnt West COUPLES Six miasmic women in green danced an absinthe dance hissing oaths of laughter at six men they cheated. Six miasmic men did the same for six women they cheated. It was a stand-off in oaths of laughter hissed; The dirt is hard where they danced. The pads of their feet made a floor. The weeds wear moon mist mourning veils. The weeds come high as six little crosses, One little cross for each couple. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 47 CALIGARI MANNIKINS, we command you. Stand up with your white beautiful skulls. Stand up with your moaning sockets. Dance your stiff limping dances. We handle you with spic and span gloves. We tell you when and how And how much. 48 Slabs of the Sunburnt West FEATHER LIGHTS MACABRE and golden the moon opened a slant of light. A triangle for an oriole to stand and sing, " Take me home." A layer of thin white gold feathers for a child queen of gypsies. So the moon opened a slant of light and let it go. So the lonesome dogs, the fog moon, the pearl mist, came back. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 49 PEARL HORIZONS UNDER a prairie fog moon in a circle of pearl mist horizons, a few lonesome dogs scraping thongs, midnight is lonely; the fog moon midnight takes up again its even smooth November. Memories: you can flick me and sting me. Memories, you can hold me even and smooth. A circle of pearl mist horizons is not a woman to be walked up to and kissed, nor a child to be taken and held for a good-night, nor any old coffee-drinking pal to be smiled at in the eyes and left with a grip and a handshake. Pearl memories in the mist circling the horizon, flick me, sting me, hold me even and smooth. 50 Slabs of the Sunburnt West HOOF DUSK THE dusk of this box wood is leather gold, buckskin gold, and the hoofs of a dusk goat leave their heel marks on it. The cover of this wooden box is a last-of-the-sunset red, a red with a sandman sand fixed in evening siftings late evening sands are here. The gold of old clocks, forgotten in garrets, hidden out between battles of long wars and short wars, the smoldering ember gold of old clocks found again here is the small smoke fadeout of their slow loitering. Feel me with your fingers, measure me in fire and wind: maybe I am buckskin gold, old clock gold, late evening sunset sand Let go and loiter in the smoke fadeout. Slabs of the Sunburnt West HARSK, HARSK HARSK, harsk, the wind blows to-night. What a night for a baby to come into the world! What a night for a melodrama baby to come And the father wondering And the mother wondering What the years will bring on their stork feet Till a year when this very baby might be saying On some storm night when a melodrama baby is born: "What a night for a baby to come into the world ! ! " Harsk, harsk, the wind blows to-night. It is five months off. Knit, stitch, and hemstitch. Sheets, bags, towels, these are the offerings. When he is older or she is a big girl There may be flowers or ribbons or money For birthday offerings. Now, however, We must remember it is a naked stranger Coming to us, and the sheath of the arrival 52 Harsk, Harsk Is so soft we must be ready, and soft too. Knit, stitch, hemstitch, it is only five months. It would be easy to pick a lucky star for this baby If a choice of two stars lay before our eyes, One a pearl gold star and one pearl silver, And the offer of a chance to pick a lucky star. When the high hour comes Let there be a light flurry of snow, A little zigzag of white spots Against the gray roofs. The snow-born all understand this as a luck-wish. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 53 BRANCUSI BRANCUSI is a galoot; he saves tickets to take him no- where ; a galoot with his baggage ready and no time table ; ah yes, Brancusi is a galoot; he understands birds and skulls so well, he knows the hang of the hair of the coils and plaits on a woman's head, he knows them so far back he knows where they came from and where they are going; he is fathoming down for the secrets of the first and the oldest makers of shapes. Let us speak with loose mouths to-day not at all about Brancusi because he has hardly started nor is hardly able to say the name of the place he wants to go when he has time and is ready to start; O Brancusi, keeping hardwood planks around your doorsteps in the sun waiting for the hardwood to be harder for your hard hands to handle, you Brancusi with your chisels and hammers, birds going to cones, skulls going to eggs how the hope hugs your heart you will find one cone, one egg, so hard when the earth turns mist there among the last to go will be a cone, an egg. Brancusi, you will not put a want ad in the papers telling God it will be to his advantage to come around and see you; you will not grow gabby and spill God earfuls of prayers; you will not get fresh and familiar as if God is a next-door neighbor and you have counted His shirts 54 Brancusi on a clothes line; you will go stammering, stuttering and mumbling or you will be silent as a mouse in a church garret when the pipe organ is pouring ocean waves on the sunlit rocks of ocean shores; if God is saving a corner for any battling bag of bones, there will be one for you, there will be one for you, Brancusi. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 55 AMBASSADORS OF GRIEF THERE was a little fliv of a woman loved one man and lost out. And she took up with another and it was a blank again. And she cried to God the whole layout was a fake and a frame-up. And when she took up with Number Three she found the fires burnt out, the love power, gone. And she wrote a letter to God and dropped it in a mail-box. The letter said: God, ain't there some way you can fix it up so the little flivs of women, ready to throw themselves in front of railroad trains for men they love, can have a chance? 1 guessed the wrong keys, I battered on the wrong panels, I picked the wrong roads. O God, ain't there no way to guess again and start all over back where I had the keys in my hands, back where the roads all came together and I had my pick? And the letter went to Washington, D. C., dumped into a dump where all letters go addressed to God and no house number. 56 Slabs of the Sunburnt West WITHOUT THE CANE AND THE DERBY (For C. C.) THE woman had done him wrong. Either that ... or the woman was clean as a white rose in the morning gauze of dew. It was either one or the other or it was the two things, right and wrong, woven together like two braids of a woman's head of hair hanging down woven together. / The room is dark. The door opens. It is Charlie playing for his friends after dinner, " the marvelous urchin, the little genius of the screen," (chatter it like a monkey's running laughter cry.) No ... it is not Charlie ... it is somebody else. It is a man, gray shirt, bandana, dark face. A candle in his left hand throws a slant of light on the dark face. The door closes slow. The right hand leaves the door knob slow. He looks at something. What is it? A white sheet on a table. He takes two long soft steps. He runs the candle light around a hump in the sheet. He lifts the sheet slow, sad like. A woman's head of hair shows, a woman's white face. He takes the head between his hands and looks long at Without the Cane and the Derby 57 it. His fingers trickle under the sheet, snap loose something, bring out fingers full of a pearl necklace. He covers the face and the head of hair with the white sheet. He takes a step toward the door. The necklace slips into his pocket off the fingers of his right hand. His left hand lifts the candle for a good-by look. Knock, knock, knock. A knocking the same as the time of the human heartbeat. Knock, knock, knock, first louder, then lower. Knock, knock, knock, the same as the time of the human heartbeat. He sets the candle on the floor . . . leaps to the white sheet . . . rips it back . . . has his fingers at the neck, his thumbs at the throat, and does three slow fierce motions of strangling. The knocking stops. All is quiet. He covers the face and the head of hair with the white sheet, steps back, picks up the candle and listens. Knock, knock, knock, a knocking the same as the time of the human heartbeat. Knock, knock, knock, first louder, then lower. Knock, knock, knock, the same as the time of the human heartbeat. Again the candle to the floor, the leap, the slow fierce motions of strangling, the cover-up of the face and the head of hair, the step back, the listening. And again the knock, knock, knock . . . louder . . . lower ... to the time of the human heartbeat. Once more the motions of strangling . . .then . . . nothing at all ... nothing at all ... no more 58 Without the Cane and the Derby knocking ... no knocking at all ... no knocking at all . . in the time of the human heartbeat. He stands at the door . . . peace, peace, peace every- where only in the man's face so dark and his eyes so lighted up with many lights, no peace at all, no peace at all. So he stands at the door, his right hand on the door knob, the candle slants of light fall and flicker from his face to the straight white sheet changing gray against shadows. So there is peace everywhere ... no more knocking . . . no knocking at all to the time of the human heart- beat . . . so he stands at the door and his right hand on the door knob. And there is peace everywhere . . . only the man's face is a red gray plaster of storm in the center of peace ... so he stands with a candle at the door ... so he stands with a red gray face. After he steps out the door closes; the door, the door knob, the table, the white sheet, there is nothing at all; the owners are shadows; the owners are gone; not even a knocking; not even a knock, knock, knock . . . louder, lower, in the time of the human heartbeat. The lights are snapped on. Charlie, " the marvelous urchin, the little genius of the screen" (chatter it with a running monkey's laughter cry) Charlie is laughing a laugh the whole world knows. Without the Cane and the Derby 59 The room is full of cream yellow lights. Charlie is laughing . . . louder . . . lower . . . And again the heartbeats laugh ... the human heart- beats laugh. . . . 60 Slabs of the Sunburnt West THE RAKEOFF AND THE GETAWAY " SHALL we come back? " the gamblers asked. " If you want to, if you feel that way," the answer. And they must have wanted to, they must have felt that way; for they came back, hats pulled down over their eyes as though the rain or the policemen or the shadows of a sneaking scar-face Nemesis followed their tracks and hunted them down. "What was the clean-up? Let's see the rakeoff," somebody asked them, looking into their eyes far under the pulled-down hat rims; and their eyes had only the laugh of the rain in them, lights of escape from a sneaking scar- face Nemesis hunting their tracks, hunting them down. Anvils, pincers, mosquitoes, anguish, raspberries, steaks and gravy, remorse, ragtime, slang, a woman's looking glass to be held in the hand for looking at the face and the face make-up, blackwing birds fitted onto slits of the sunsets they were flying into, bitter green waters, clear running waters, The Rakeoff and the Getaway 61 standing pools ringing the changes of all the triangles of the equinoxes of the sky, and a woman's slipper with a tarnished buckle, a tarnished Chinese silver buckle. The gamblers snatched their hats off babbling, " Some layout take your pick, kid." And their eyes had yet in them the laugh of the rain and the lights of their getaway from a sneaking scar- face Nemesis. 62 Slabs of the Sunburnt West TWO HUMPTIES THEY tried to hand it to us on a platter, Us hit in the eyes with marconigrams from moon dancers And the bubble busted, went flooey, on a thumb touch. So this time again, Humpty, We cork our laughs behind solemn phizzogs, Sweep the floor with the rim of our hats And say good-a-by and good-a-by, just like that. To-morrow maybe they will be hit In the eyes with marconigrams From moon dancers. Good-a-by, our hats and all of us say good-a-by. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 63 IMPROVED FARM LAND TALL timber stood here once, here on a corn belt farm along the Monon. Here the roots of a half mile of trees dug their runners deep in the loam for a grip and a hold against wind storms. Then the axmen came and the chips flew to the zing of steel and handle the lank railsplitters cut the big ones first, the beeches and the oaks, then the brush. Dynamite, wagons and horses took the stumps the plows sunk their teeth in now it is first class corn land improved property and the hogs grunt over the fodder crops. It would come hard now for this half mile of improved farm land along the Monon corn belt, on a piece of Grand Prairie, to remember once it had a great singing family of trees. 64 Slabs of the Sunburnt West HELL ON THE W ABASH WHEN country fiddlers held a convention in Danville, the big money went to a barn dance artist who played Turkey in the Straw, with variations. They asked him the name of the piece calling it a humdinger and he answered, " I call it 1 Hell On The Wabash.' " The two next best were The Speckled Hen, and Sweet Potatoes Grow in Sandy Land, with variations. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 65 THIS FOR THE MOON YES? THIS is a good book? Yes? Throw it at the moon. Stand on the ball of your right foot And come to the lunge of a center fielder Straddling in a throw for the home plate, Let her go spang this book for the moon yes? And then other books, good books, even the best books shoot 'em with a long twist at the moon yes? 66 Slabs of the Sunburnt West PRIMER LESSON LOOK out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots ; they walk off proud ; they can't hear you calling Look out how you use proud words. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 67 SLABS OF THE SUNBURNT WEST INTO the night, into the blanket of night, Into the night rain gods, the night luck gods, Overland goes the overland passenger train. Stand up, sandstone slabs of red, Tell the overland passengers who burnt you. Tell 'em how the jacks and screws loosened you. Tell 'em who shook you by the heels and stood you on your heads, Who put the slow pink of sunset mist on your faces. Panels of the cold gray open night, Gates of the Great American Desert, Skies keeping the prayers of the wagon men, The riders with picks, shovels and guns, On the old trail, the Santa Fe trail, the Raton pass Panels, skies, gates, listen to-night while we send up our prayers on the Santa Fe trail. (A colossal bastard frog squats in stone. Once he squawked. Then he was frozen and shut up forever.) 68 Slabs of the Sunburnt West Into the night the overland passenger train, Slabs of sandstone red sink to the sunset red, Blankets of night cover 'em up. Night rain gods, night luck gods, are looking on. March on, processions. Tie your hat to the saddle and ride, O Rider. Let your ponies drag their navels in the sand. Go hungry; leave your bones in the desert sand. When the desert takes you the wind is clean. The winds say so on a noisy night. The fingerbone of a man lay next to the handle of a frying pan and the footbone of a horse. " Clean, we are clean," the winds whimper on a noisy night. Into the night the overland passenger train, And the engineer with an eye for signal lights, And the porters making up berths for passengers, And the boys in the diner locking the ice-box And six men with cigars in the buffet car mention " civilization," " history," " God." Into the blanket of night goes the overland train, Into the black of the night the processions march, The ghost of a pony goes by, A hat tied to the saddle, The wagon tongue of a prairie schooner And the handle of a Forty-niner's pickax Slabs of the Sunburnt West 69 Do a shiver dance in the desert dust, In the coyote gray of the alkali dust. And six men with cigars in the buffet car mention " civilization," " history," " God." Sleep, O wonderful hungry people. Take a shut-eye, take a long old snooze, and be good to yourselves; Into the night the overland passenger train And the sleepers cleared for a morning sun and the Grand Canyon of Arizona. 2 A bluejay blue and a gray mouse gray ran up the canyon walls. A rider came to the rim Of a slash and a gap of desert dirt A long-legged long-headed rider On a blunt and a blurry jackass Riding and asking, " How come? How come? " And the long-legged long-headed rider said: " Between two ears of a blurry jackass I see ten miles of auburn, gold and purple I see doors open over doorsills And always another door and a doorsill. Cheat my eyes, fill me with the float Of your dream, you auburn, gold, and purple. 70 Slabs of the Sunburnt West Cheat me, blow me off my pins onto footless floors. Let me put footsteps in an airpath. Cheat me with footprints on auburn, gold, purple Out to the last violet shimmer of the float Of the dream and I will come straddling a jackass, Singing a song and letting out hallelujahs To the door sill of the last footprint." And the man took a stub lead pencil And made a long memo in shorthand On the two blurry jackass ears: " God sits with long whiskers in the sky." I said it when I was a boy. I said it because long-whiskered men Put it in my head to say it. They lied . . . about you . . . God . . . They lied. . . . The other side of the five doors and doorsills put in my house how many hinges, panels, doorknobs, how many locks and lintels, put on the doors and doorsills winding and wild between the first and the last doorsill of all? " Out of the footprints on ten miles of auburn, gold and purple an old song comes: These bones shall rise again, Yes, children, these bones shall rise. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 71 " Yonder past my five doors are fifty million doors, maybe, stars with knobs and locks and lintels, stars with riders of rockets, stars with swimmers of fire. " Cheat my eyes and I come again straddling a jackass singing a song letting out hallelujahs. " If God is a proud and a cunning Bricklayer, Or if God is a King in a white gold Heaven, Or if God is a Boss and a Watchman always watching, I come riding the old ride of the humiliation, Straddling a jackass, singing a song, Letting out hallelujahs. " Before a ten mile float of auburn, gold, and purple, footprints on a sunset airpath haze, I ask: How can I taste with my tongue a tongueless God? How can I touch with my fingers a fingerless God? How can I hear with my ears an earless God? Or smell of a God gone noseless long ago? Or look on a God who never needs eyes for looking? " My head is under your foot, God. My head is a pan of alkali dust your foot kicked loose your foot of air with its steps on the sunset airpath haze. 72 Slabs of the Sunburnt West (A bluejay blue and a gray mouse gray ran up the canyon walls.) " Sitting at the rim of the big gap at the high lash of the frozen storm line, I ask why I go on five crutches, tongues, ears, nostrils all cripples eyes and nose both cripples I ask why these five cripples limp and squint and gag with me, why they say with the oldest frozen faces: Man is a poor stick and a sad squirt; if he is poor he can't dress up ; if he dresses up he don't know any place to go. " Away and away on some green moon a blind blue horse eats white grass And the blind blue horse knows more than I do because he saw more than I have seen and remembered it after he went blind. " And away and away on some other green moon is a sea-kept child who lacks a nose I got and fingers like mine and all I have. And yet the sea-kept child knows more than I do and sings secrets alien to me as light to a nosing mole underground. I understand this child as a yellow-belly catfish in China understands peach pickers at sunrise in September in a Michigan orchard. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 73 " The power and lift of the sea and the flame of the old earth fires under, I sift their meanings of sand in my fingers. I send out five sleepwalkers to find out who I am, my name and number, where I came from, and where I am going. They go out, look, listen, wonder, and shoot a fire-white rocket across the night sky; the shot and the flare of the rocket dies to a whisper; and the night is the same as it always was. They come back, my five sleepwalkers; they have an answer for me, they say; they tell me: Wait the password all of them heard when the fire- white rocket shot across the sky and died to a whisper, the pass- word is: Wait. " I sit with five binoculars, amplifiers, spectroscopes I sit looking through five windows, listening, tasting, smelling, touching. I sit counting five million smoke fogs. Repeaters, repeaters, come back to my window sills. Some are pigeons coming to coo and coo and clean their tail feathers and look wise at me. Some are pigeons coming with broken wings to die with pain in their eyes on my window sills. " I walk the high lash of the frozen storm line; I sit down with my feet in a ten-mile gravel pit. Here I ask why I am a bag of sea-water fastened to a frame of bones put walking on land here I look at crawlers, crimson, spiders spotted with 74 Slabs of the Sunburnt West purple spots on their heads, flinging silver nets, two, four, six, against the sun. Here I look two miles down to the ditch of the sea and pick a winding ribbon, a river eater, a water grinder ; it is a runner sent to run by a stop-watch, it is a wrecker on a rush job." (A bluejay blue and a gray mouse gray ran up the canyon walls.) Battering rams, blind mules, mounted policemen, trucks hauling caverns of granite, elephants grappling gorillas in a death strangle, cathedrals, arenas, platforms, somersaults of telescoped rail- road train wrecks, exhausted egg heads, piles of skulls, mountains of empty sockets, mummies of kings and mobs, memories of work gangs and wrecking crews, sobs of wind and water storms, all frozen and held on paths leading on to spirals of new zigzags An arm-chair for a one-eyed giant; two pine trees grow in the left arm of the chair; a bluejay comes, sits, goes, comes again; a bluejay shoots and twitters . . out and across tumbled skyscrapers and wrecked battleships, walls of crucifixions and wedding breakfasts; ruin, ruin a brute gnashed, dug, kept on kept on and quit: and this is It. Slabs of the Sunburnt West 75 Falling away, the brute is working. Sheets of white veils cross a woman's face. An eye socket glooms and wonders. The brute hangs his head and drags on to the job. The mother of mist and light and air murmurs: Wait. The weavers of light weave best in red, better in blue. The weavers of shadows weave at sunset; the young black-eyed women run, run, run to the night star homes; the old women sit weaving for the night rain gods, the night luck gods. Eighteen old giants throw a red gold shadow ball ; they pass it along; hands go up and stop it; they bat up flies and practice; they begin the game, they knock it for home runs and two-baggers ; the pitcher put it across in an out- and an in-shoot drop; the Devil is the Umpire; God is the Umpire; the game is called on account of darkness. A bluejay blue and a gray mouse gray ran up the canyon walls. Good night ; it is scribbled on the panels of the cold grey open desert. 76 Slabs of the Sunburnt West Good night; on the big sky blanket over the Santa Fe trail it is woven in the oldest Indian blanket songs. Buffers of land, breakers of sea, say it and say it, over and over, good night, good night. Tie your hat to the saddle and ride, ride, ride, O Rider. Lay your rails and wires and ride, ride, ride, Rider. The worn tired stars say you shall die early and die dirty. The clean cold stars say you shall die late and die clean. The runaway stars say you shall never die at all, never at all. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped belov FeM7'58 I BOV.? ,1SB3 . ,r*$ MWtJ4 JAN 2 - 1962 PjWO MUX DMIRL DEC i 2 196' I ID nrr c^ JjRL U nFH ft lows it Form -7,'