than the Sea at flood-tide
That rushes over defenseless sand,
Almost up to the rock-strewn land,
And lies there, chanting.
I can stand on the jagged cliff
And cry to the Sea,
“You are weak beside my love!
For you can only rush over sand,
Almost up to the rock-strewn land,
While my love has wings to fly
Over you, Sea, and the rock-strewn land,
Up to the sky!”
The Circle Incomplete
O God,
O thou Eternal One—
Who mad’st me mortal flesh
And then created Love, divine,
Must I forever be condemned
To worship at her shrine?
Hast thou willed
That I must ever wander,
In the cloak of night,
Searching for one flicker
Of her perfect light?
O Love,
Thou unattainable—
Why can I hear no symphony
In his heart’s beat?
Why is, in flesh and flesh combined,
The circle incomplete?
Why can he not bring other gifts to me
Than passion’s fire?
Why must he always worship
In the temple of desire?
Frames
Why should windows be square,
Their corners sharp?
Divided into four equal portions,
Ugly in their symmetry?
My windows shall be curved
To frame the moon.
Love’s Questions
I
Do you know, Beloved,
What it is
To reach out trembling hands
And part the gossamer veil
That dims a star?
Have you sung with thrushes
The wild music of the living universe,
And heard the aged hills
Blend in the harmony?
Can you fling wide your arms
And clasp the turquoise sky to you,
Close to your breast,
Until it bathes you in its coolness?
Have you sat in stillness,
And heard the dusk draped trees
Whisper you a name,
Again,
And again?
II
Beloved, you must know—
That bound me to this earth—
For it was with your hand in mine
I pulled away ethereal veils;
And with the tongue you gave my singing heart,
I joined the thrushes’ choir.
It was in your arms
I felt the turquoise sky press close around me,
A clinging veil.
And when I sit alone
The lips of breezes whisper me a name—
And it is your name,
Beloved,
Your name.
1945–05–28
My Love Is The Singing Sands
I love you as I love the Night—
The tall, straight, noble Night
Who stands above the singing sands,
And carries for a torch, the moon.
I love you as I love the Day—
That gentle maiden I have watched at play,
A bunch of yellow flowers in her fair right hand.
I love you as I love them,
For you are Night and Day to me, my dear, and more.
You are the singing sands,
The bunch of flowers in a maiden’s hands,
And more, my dear,
And more.
Creation’s Dream
In the exalted minds of a selected few,
In youth is dreamed creation’s dream.
This dream, shaped in the flexible fingers
Of a master sculptor,
Is molded,
Polished,
Worked
Until the shapeless mass of putty
Hardens in the simple, flowing lines of grace—
A thing of beauty—
A spark cast in the tinder of a painter’s brain
Until a formless splotch of color
Creates upon bleak wastes of board
The inward impression of the mind and soul,—
A thing of wonder—
A mute plea to a poet’s pen
To utter the vision
Which the lesser minds pervert,
And which is only viewed
By the unseen eye of the master’s quill
Transforming blank parchment
To an everlasting song—
A thing of creation—
A germ of being,
Restless to be born
Of a master’s golden tongue,
To rise,
Mist-veiled,
From the inanimate—
A thing conceived.
Shall this germ be given life and growth?
For this dream, there is but one,
And that is death.
And so in darkness,
Fortune at her wheel
Spins endlessly the shroud of fate
In which to cloak creation’s dream,
When it is dead.
Our Love In Ten Metaphors
Our love is the music of a peacock feather trailed across the supple strings of marsh grass;
Our love is an angel’s web, spun of pale green moths to catch the pastel pearls of scented rain;
Our love is the twilight-colored lace of shadows, clinging gently to a topaz tower;
Our love is the silver fingers of a birch plucking the wind’s white harp;
Our love is the golden medallion of the sun, suspended on the sky’s bright dress by a purple velvet ribbon of clouds;
Our love is a drift of petal snow beneath a tree of violets;
Our love is soft satin lakes brushed by a swan’s white hand;
Our love is the taste of frosty stars on linnets’ tongues;
Our love is all the perfumes of the moon, mingled in the lily’s ivory throat;
Our love is a liquid moonbeam, imprisoned in the red cup of a lover’s heart.
For Every Crimson Streak
O man, art thou so blind thou would destroy
Thyself in war? To kill another’s son
Is but to tear the heart from out thy boy.
The vict’ry cannot be in battles won,
For every crimson streak that marks the field
Is a defeat for those who yet draw breath;
And those who still the dripping sword would wield
Shall someday smell the heavy stench of death
That rises from the bones of their firstborn.
For brutish war spares none; and even those
Who deify its name, it turns to scorn,
To write their names in blood beside their foes’.
O man, sweep not thyself away as sand:
I beg thee—sheathe the sword; extend the hand!
Love
Love is like a river,
Swift and strong,
That flows into the ocean of the soul,
And quickens the wave-beats of the heart
Until they dash the cliffs of reasoning
To nothingness.
“The American Way Of Life”
He makes it simple, the poet of today,
Trying to define “the American way
Of life”.
Wading through words, the poet paints scenes,
Trying to tell what America means
To the grim-lipped boys going off to war,
Trying to tell “what they’re fighting for”,—
His scenes are vivid, and here they are;
The chaos, confusion, when the whistle blows
And it’s quitting time, and God only knows
The relief in your heart, the working man
To be able to stop and rest agai
n
From the endless grinding of greased machines
In the mammoth plants where winches scream,
And the tools of war go rolling past
To kill and kill, for the dye is cast
That freedom shall live…
Standing knee-deep in a field of wheat,
Watching gold earth and flecked sky meet,
Bowing your head in a thankful prayer
That this is Kansas, and you live there…
In the Washington office, like a cage,
Figures march down a ledger page,
Row after row in dark array,
Till the clock in its mercy ends the day,
And you wage your war with the subway crowd
Till you trudge toward home, tired, but proud
Of your place in the world…
The thunder of breakers on rocky shores,
Watching their fury, thrilled to the core,
You pause from your task of drying nets
Bathed in the fire of a Maine sunset;
And you thrill to the thoughts of this day’s catch
Of bluefish and bass – the finest batch
In many a day. But your heart beats more
At the ocean’s roar,
The swooping of seagulls, their screaming cries,
The sting of salt spray that blinds the eyes
And opens the soul…
Watching your child each passing year,
While in your heart is the growing fear
Of the day
When standing alone on a barren hill,
With the night above him, somber and still,
With the stars so white, and his God so near,
He knows why he lives; why life is dear.
And suddenly in a few thoughts span,
Where once a child, he is now a man.
And on and on the poet goes,
While in his mind, more pictures grow;
He does his best, and it’s well and good,
But the poet has never washed in blood.
Can he know what it is to fly through flak,
Brave all hell, – and then – not come back?
How can he know what it is to lie
In the mud of a foxhole, and slowly die
Of gangrene?
Perhaps it’s more than mere routine—
A plow, a desk, a greased machine—
That is in the thoughts of a Marine
Who has time to think.
Then for what do they die, if not for those?
I don’t know, and no one knows.
Perhaps, because they think it’s just;
Or, more than likely, because they must.
Sonnet On Humility
If I may only stand outside the door
That bars me from the banquet of your love,
And eat the crumbs that richer guests shall shove
Disdainfully upon the gaudy floor;
If I in meek servility may see
Them leave the orgy for their lives of ease,
And then drink from their cups of gladness, lees,
As nectar from the heart’s red cup to me;
If that be mine, I have no cause to cry,
For from that time, thirst shall I never know—
The dregs I taste shall be an unchecked flow
To feed the soul’s sweet springs which cannot dry;
Then shall I never hunger, though not fed—
The crumbs shall be sun’s honey on life’s bread.
Darkness And White Lace
Gentle is my love as folds of lace,
And radiant as a candle’s shining face;
Simple is it as a taper’s sloping lines,
Pure as the virgin light which from it