poems56

THE GREAT HUNT
I Cannot tell you now;
     When the wind's drive and whirl
     Blow me along no longer,
     And the wind's a whisper at last--
Maybe I'll tell you then--
                         some other time.

     When the rose's flash to the sunset
     Reels to the rack and the twist,
     And the rose is a red bygone,
     When the face I love is going
     And the gate to the end shall clang,
     And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"--
Maybe I'll tell you then--
                         some other time.

I never knew any more beautiful than you:
     I have hunted you under my thoughts,
     I have broken down under the wind
     And into the roses looking for you.
          I shall never find any
                         greater than you.
------------------------
JOY
Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere--
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.
-----------------------
SHIRT
I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering
     shirt of you in the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and
     the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the
     stuff.
And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the
     singing voice of a careless humming woman.
One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a
     bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own
     talking to a spread of white stars:
               It was you that slunk laughing
               in the clumsy staggering shadows.
Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are
     alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway
     somewhere in the city's push and fury
Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence
     under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run
     away again when I tag the fluttering shirt of you.
------------------------
LAST ANSWERS
I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
          how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
          into points of mystery quivering with color.

     I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
          it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and
          tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last
          answers
Go running back to dust and mist.