Harmonium 1 BORZOI POETRY FALL, 1923 THE PILGRIMAGE OF FESTUS Conrad Alken BITTER HERBS Harmonium C. A. Dawsan-Sittt THE PROPHET Kahlil Gibran Wallace Stevens With twflvt drawlitft 6j thi authtr WHIPPEROINNY Robirl Gravtt THE TEMPLE AND OTHBR POEMS Translattd from thi Chintlt hy Arthur Waley New York Alfred ' A ' KnOpf Mcmxxiii COPYRIOll'J', 1 928, Bf ALl'RED A. KNOPF, l:SO. Published, September, 1913 To MY WIFE Bet 11p and pri11 ted bv the Vail-Ballou Oo., B inghamto n, N. Y. Paver f1trnis l1 ed b11 lV. F. Ethcri t1oton & Co .• New York. Bound bu H. WolU Eataio, New York. MANOFAC'rURIOD IN Tlllll UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The poems in this book, with the exception of The Comedian as the Letter C and a few others, have been published before in Others, Secession, Rogue, The Soil, The Modern School, Broom, Contact, The New Republic, The Measure, The Little Review, The Dial, and particularly in Poetry: A lvfagazine of Verse, of Chicago, edited by Harriet Monroe. Contents Earthy Anecdote 15 Invective against Swans 16 In the Carolinas 1 7 The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage 18 The Plot against the Gi,ant 20 Infanta Marina 21 Domination of Black 22 The Snow Man 24 The Ordinary Women 25 The Load of Sugar-Cane 27 Le Monocle de Mon Oncle 28 Nuances of a lfheme by Williams 34 Metaphors of a Magnifico 35 Ploughing or. Sunday 36 Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges 3 7 Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores 39 Fabliau of Florida 40 The Doct.or of Geneva 41 Another Weeping Woman 42 Homunculus et la Belle Etoile 43 The Comedian as the Letter C 46 The World without Imagination 47 Concerning the Thunderstorms of Yucatan 50 Approaching Carolina 54 The Idea of a Colony 58 A Nice Shady Home 62 And Daughters with Curls 66 9 Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat From the Misery of Don Joost 70 Snakes. Men Eat Hogs 114 0, Florida, Venereal Soil 71 Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts underneath the Willow 115 Last Looks at the Lilacs 73 Cortege for Rosenbloom 116 The Warms at Heaven's Gate 74 Tattoo 118 Th'! Jack Rabbit 75 The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws 119 Valley Candle 76 Life is Motion 120 Anecdote of Men by the Thousand 77 Architecture 121 The Silver Plough-Boy 78 The Wind Shifts 124 The Apostrophe to Vincentine 79 Colloquy with a Polish Aunt 125 Floral Decorations for Bananas 81 Gubbinal 126 Anecdote of Canna 83 Two Figures in Dense Violet Night 127 Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds 84 Theory 128 Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb 85 To the One of Fictive Music 129 Of the Surface of Things 86 Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion 131 Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks 87 Peter Quince at the Clavier 132 A High-Toned Old Christian Woman 89 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blaclcbird 135 The Place of the Solitaires 90 Nomad Exquisite 138 The Weeping Burgher 91 Tea 139 The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician 92 To the Roaring Wind 140 Banal Sojourn 93 Depression before Spring 94 The Emperor of Ice-Cream 95 The Cuban Doctor 96 Tea at the Palaz of Hoon 97 Exposition of the Contents of a Cab 98 Disillusionment of Ten O'clock 99 Sunday Morning 100 The Virgin Carrying a Lantern 105 Stars at Tallapoosa 106 Explanation 107 Six Significant Landscapes 108 Bantams in Pine-Woods 111 Anecdote of the Jar 112 II Palace of the Babies 113 10 Harmonium Earthy Anecdote Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way. Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the right, Because of the firecat. Or until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the left, Because of the fir'ecat. The bucks clattered. The firecat went leaping, To ,the right, to the left, And Bristled in the way. Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes And slept. 15 " Invective against Swans In the Carolinas The soul, 0 ganders, flie s beyond the parks T he lilacs wither in the Carolinas. And fa r beyond the discords of the wind. Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins. Already the new-born children interpret love A bronze rain from the sun descending marks In the voices of mothers. The death of summer, which that time endures Timeless mother, Like one who scrawls a lis tless te tament How is it that your aspic nipples Of golden quirks and P aphian caricatures, For once vent honey? Beque ~thing your white feathers to the moon The pine-tree sweetens my body. And giving your bland motions to the nir. The white iris beautifies me. Behold, already on the long parades The crows anoint the statues with their dirt. And the soul, 0 ganders, being lonely, flies Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies. 16 17 Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp, In an intenser 'calm, Scullion of fate, Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly, Upon her irretrievable way. The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage B ut not on a shell, she starts, Archaic, for the sea. But on the first-found weed She scuds the glitters, Noiselessly, like one more wave. She too is discontent And would have purple stuff upon her arms, Tired of the salty harbors, Eager for the brine and bellowing Of the high interiors of the sea. The wind speeds her, Blowing upon her hands And watery back. She touches the clouds, where she goes In the circle of her traverse of the sea. Yet this is meagre play In the scurry and water-shine, As her heels foam- N ot as when the goldener nude Of a later day 19 The Plot against the Giant Infanta Marina Her terrace was the sand First Girl And the palms and the twilight. When this yokel comes maundering, She made of the motions of her wrist Whetting his hacker, The grandiose gestures I shall run before him, Of her thought. Diffusing the civilest odors Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers. The rumpling of the plumes It will check him. Of this creature of the evening Came to be sleights of sails Second Girl Over the sea. I shall run before him, Arching cloths besprinkled with colors And thus she roamed As small as fish-eggs. In the roamings of her fan, The threads Will abash him. Partaking of the sea, And of the evening, Third Girl As they flowed around And uttered their subsiding sound. Oh, la • . le pauvre I I shall run before him, With a curious puffing. He will bend his ear then. I shall whisper Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals. It will undo him. 20 21 Turned in the loud fire, Loud as the hemlocks Full of the cry of the peacocks? Or was it a cry against the hemlocks? \ . Domination of Black Out of the window, I saw hoW. the planets gathered At night, by the fire, Like the leaves themselves The colors of the bushes Turning in the wind. And of the fallen leaves, I saw how the ni~ht came, Repeating themselves, Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks. Turned in the room, I felt afraid. Lik:e the leaves themselves And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlock:s Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacock:s. The colors of their tails vVere lik:e the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind. They swept over the room, Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlock:s Down to the ground. I heard them cry-the peacocks. Was it a cry against the twilight Or against the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, Turning as the flames Turned in the fire, Turning as the tails of the peacock:s 22 23 I I The Snow Man / The Ordinary Women 0 ne must have a mind of winter T hen from their pove rty they rose, To regard the frost and the boughs From dry catarrhs, and to guitars Of the pine-trees crusted with snow ; They fl itted Through the palace walls. And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, They flu ng monotony behind, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Turned from their want, and, nonchalant, They crowded Of the January sun; <a nd not to think The nocturnal halls. Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, The lacquered loges huddled there Wbich is the sound of the -land M umbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay. Full of the same wind The moonlight That is blowing in the same bare place Fubbed the girandoles. For the listener, who listens in the snow, And the cold dresses that they wore, And, nothing himself, beholds In the vapid haze of the window-bays, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. W ·ere tranquil As they leaned and looked From the window-sills at the alphabets, At bet·a b and gamma g, To study The canting curlicues 25 /) Of heaven and of the heavenly script. / And there they read of marriage-bed. Ti-lill-o ! And they read right long. The gaunt guitarists on the strings The Load of Sugar-Cane Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.