ACCIDENTALS
"THE EVERLASTING RETURN"
It is dark… so dark, I remember the sun on Chios…
It is still… so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean…
Ten times we had watched the moon
Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters
And round into a full maternity…
For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh
Save the man flesh on either hand
That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea.
The Athenian boy sat on my left…
His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine…
And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian,
Grinning Phildar
With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth.
Many a whip had coiled about him
And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels,
And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun.
He did not sing like the other slaves,
But when a big wind came up he screamed with it.
And always he looked out to sea,
Save when he tore at his fish ends
Or spat across me at the Greek boy, whose mouth was red and apart
like an opened fruit.
We had rowed from dawn and the green galley hard at our stern.
She was green and squat and skulked close to the sea.
All day the tish of their paddles had tickled our ears,
And when night came on
And little naked stars dabbled in the water
And half the crouching moon
Slid over the silver belly of the sea thick-scaled with light,
We heard them singing at their oars…
We who had no breath for song.
There was no sound in our boat
Save the clingle of wrist chains
And the sobbing of the young Greek.
I cursed him that his hair blew in my mouth, tasting salt of the sea…
I cursed him that his oar kept ill time…
When he looked at me I cursed him again,
That his eyes were soft as a woman's.
How long… since their last shell gouged our batteries?
How long… since we rose at aim with a sleuth moon astern?
(It was the damned green moon that nosed us out…
The moon that flushed our periscope till it shone like a silver flame…)
They loosed each man's right hand
As the galley spent on our decks…
And amazed and bloodied we reared half up
And fought askew with the left hand shackled…
But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets
And knotted our thews like string…
Our thews grown stiff as a crooked spine that would not straighten…
How long… since our gauges fell
And the sea shoved us under?
It is dark… so dark…
Darkness presses hairy-hot
Where three make crowded company…
And the rank steel smells….
It is still… so still…
I seem to hear the wind
On the dimpled face of the water fathoms above…
It was still… so still… we three that were left alive
Stared in each other's faces…
But three make bitter company at one man's bread…
And our hate grew sharp and bright as the moon's edge in the water.
One grinned with his mouth awry from the long gapped teeth…
And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over…
But one struck with his hate in his hand…
After that I remember
Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea…
The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues.
It is still… so still, with the jargon of engines quiet.
We three awaiting the crunch of the sea
Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces…
We three sheathing hate in our hearts…
But when hate shall have made its circuit,
Our bones will be loving company
Here in the sea's den…
And one whimpers and cries on his God
And one sits sullenly
But both draw away from me…
For I am the pyre their memories burn on…
Like black flames leaping
Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea…
The sea that kneels above us…
And makes no sign.
PALESTINE
Old plant of Asia—
Mutilated vine
Holding earth's leaping sap
In every stem and shoot
That lopped off, sprouts again—
Why should you seek a plateau walled about,
Whose garden is the world?
THE SONG
That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks
on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron,
And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine
floating like cotton-down,
And the harsh and terrible screaming,
And that strange vibration at the roots of us…
Desire, fierce, like a song…
And we heard
(Do you remember?)
All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue
And bugles in little home towns
And children's harmonicas bleating
America!
And after…
(Do you remember?)
The drollery of the wind on our faces,
And horizons reeling,
And the terror of the plain
Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun…
Under us—threshing and twanging
Torn-up roots of the Song…
TO THE OTHERS
I see you, refulgent ones,
Burning so steadily
Like big white arc lights…
There are so many of you.
I like to watch you weaving—
Altogether and with precision
Each his ray—
Your tracery of light,
Making a shining way about America.
I note your infinite reactions—
In glassware
And sequin
And puddles
And bits of jet—
And here and there a diamond…
But you do not yet see me,
Who am a torch blown along the wind,
Flickering to a spark
But never out.
BABEL
Oh, God did cunningly, there at Babel—
Not mere tongues dividing, but soul from soul,
So that never again should men be able
To fashion one infinite, towering whole.
THE FIDDLER
In a little Hungarian cafe
Men and women are drinking
Yellow wine in tall goblets.
Through the milky haze of the smoke,
The fiddler, under-sized, blond,
Leans to his violin
As to the breast of a woman.
Red hair kindles to fire
On the black of his coat-sleeve,
Where his white thin hand
Trembles and dives,
Like a sliver of moonlight,
When wind has broken the water.
DAWN WIND
Wind, just arisen—
(Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss
In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars,
Or niche of cliff under the eagles?)
You of living things,
So gay and tender and full of play—
Why do you blow on my thoughts—like cut flowers
Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood?
I see you
Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation
And frisking away,
Deliciously rumpling the grass…
So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle,
Prattling of fields
Before I had had my milk…
Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One?
I—swaddled, unwinged, like a bird in the egg.
Let be
My dreams that crackle under your breath…
You have the dust of the world to blow on…
Do not tag me and dance away, looking back…
I am too old to play with you,
Eternal Child.
NORTH WIND
I love you, malcontent
Male wind—
Shaking the pollen from a flower
Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand.
Blow on and over my dreams…
Scatter my sick dreams…
Throw your lusty arms about me…
Envelop all my hot body…
Carry me to pine forests—
Great, rough-bearded forests…
Bring me to stark plains and steppes…
I would have the North to-night—
The cold, enduring North.
And if we should meet the Snow,
Whirling in spirals,
And he should blind my eyes…
Ally, you will defend me—
You will hold me close,
Blowing on my eyelids.
THE DESTROYER
I am of the wind…
A wisp of the battering wind…
I trail my fingers along the Alps
And an avalanche falls in my wake…
I feel in my quivering length
When it buries the hamlet beneath…
I hurriedly sweep aside
The cities that clutter our path…
As we whirl about the circle of the globe…
As we tear at the pillars of the world…
Open to the wind,
The Destroyer!
The wind that is battering at your gates.
LULLABY
Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown…
(There's a shout at the door an' a big red light…)
Lil' coon baby, mammy is down…
Han's that hold yuh are steady an' white…
Look piccaninny—such a gran' blaze
Lickin' up the roof an' the sticks of home—
Ever see the like in all yo' days!
—Cain't yuh sleep, mah bit-of-honey-comb?
Rock-a-by baby, up to the sky!
Look at the cherries driftin' by—
Bright red cherries spilled on the groun'—
Piping-hot cherries at nuthin' a poun'!
Hush, mah lil' black-bug—doan yuh weep.
Daddy's run away an' mammy's in a heap
By her own fron' door in the blazin' heat
Outah the shacks like warts on the street…
An' the singin' flame an' the gleeful crowd
Circlin' aroun'… won't mammy be proud!
With a stone at her hade an' a stone on her heart,
An' her mouth like a red plum, broken apart…
See where the blue an' khaki prance,
Adding brave colors to the dance
About the big bonfire white folks make—
Such gran' doin's fo' a lil' coon's sake!
Hear all the eagah feet runnin' in town—
See all the willin' han's reach outah night—
Han's that are wonderful, steady an' white!
To toss up a lil' babe, blinkin' an' brown…
Rock-a-by baby—higher an' higher!
Mammy is sleepin' an' daddy's run lame…
(Soun' may yuh sleep in yo' cradle o' fire!)
Rock-a-by baby, hushed in the flame…
(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women flung a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.)
THE FOUNDLING
Snow wraiths circle us
Like washers of the dead,
Flapping their white wet cloths
Impatiently
About the grizzled head,
Where the coarse hair mats like grass,
And the efficient wind
With cold professional baste
Probes like a lancet
Through the cotton shirt…
About us are white cliffs and space.
No façades show,
Nor roof nor any spire…
All sheathed in snow…
The parasitic snow
That clings about them like a blight.
Only detached lights
Float hazily like greenish moons,
And endlessly
Down the whore-street,
Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm,
The blizzard waltzes with the night.
THE WOMAN WITH JEWELS
The woman with jewels sits in the cafe,
Spraying light like a fountain.
Diamonds glitter on her bulbous fingers
And on her arms, great as thighs,
Diamonds gush from her ear-lobes over the goitrous throat.
She is obesely beautiful.
Her eyes are full of bleared lights,
Like little pools of tar, spilled by a sailor in mad haste for shore…
And her mouth is scarlet and full—only a little crumpled—
like a flower that has been pressed apart…
Why does she come alone to this obscure basement—
She who should have a litter and hand-maidens to support her
on either side?
She ascends the stairway, and the waiters turn to look at her,
spilling the soup.
The black satin dress is a little lifted, showing the dropsical legs
in their silken fleshings…
The mountainous breasts tremble…
There is an agitation in her gems,
That quiver incessantly, emitting trillions of fiery rays…
She erupts explosive breaths…
Every step is an adventure
From this…
The serpent's tooth
Saved Cleopatra.
SUBMERGED
I have known only my own shallows—
Safe, plumbed places,
Where I was wont to preen myself.
But for the abyss
I wanted a plank beneath
And horizons…
I was afraid of the silence
And the slipping toe-hold…
Oh, could I now dive
Into the unexplored deeps of me—
Delve and bring up and give
All that is submerged, encased, unfolded,
That is yet the best.
ART AND LIFE
When Art goes bounding, lean,
Up hill-tops fired green
To pluck a rose for life.
Life like a broody hen
Cluck-clucks him back again.
But when Art, imbecile,
Sits old and chill
On sidings shaven clean,
And counts his clustering
Dead daisies on a string
With witless laughter….
Then like a new Jill
Toiling up a hill
Life scrambles after.
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
Pythoness body—arching
Over the night like an ecstasy—
I feel your coils tightening…
And the world's lessening breath.
DREAMS
Men die…
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of…
However deep the pit and heaped the clay—
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world—
Dreams will to light.
THE FIRE
The old men of the world have made a fire
To warm their trembling hands.
They poke the young men in.
The young men burn like withes.
If one run a little way,
The old men are wrath.
They catch him and bind him and throw him again to the flames.
Green withes burn slow…
And the smoke of the young men's torment
Rises round and sheer as the trunk of a pillared oak,
And the darkness thereof spreads over the sky….
Green withes burn slow…
And the old men of the world sit round the fire
And rub their hands….
But the smoke of the young men's torment
Ascends up for ever and ever.
A MEMORY
I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat… a little apart… in the close-pressing night.
The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself…
As we…
Inadequate night…
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea…
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.
THE EDGE
I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me…
But there was time…
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,
staring into the abyss…
I do not know how long…
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins—shaking my hands away…
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein…
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.
As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them…
There must have been a spent moon,
For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver…
That too I remember…
And the tenderly rocking mountain
Silence
And beating stars…
Dawn
Lay like a waxen hand upon the world,
And folded hills
Broke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold,
Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily,
Flecked with sun,
Fine as a golden pollen—
It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow.
I smelled the raw sweet essences of things,
And heard spiders in the leaves
And ticking of little feet,
As tiny creatures came out of their doors
To see God pouring light into his star…
… It seemed life held
No future and no past but this…
And I too got up stiffly from the earth,
And held my heart up like a cup…
THE GARDEN
Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw…
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field…
But each your best.
I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day…
I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase
And watched each petal sallowing…
I might have held them so—mechanically—
Till the wind winnowed all the leaves
And left upon my hands
A little smear of dust.
Instead
I hid them in the soft warm loam
Of a dim shadowed place…
Deep
In a still cool grotto,
Lit only by the memories of stars
And the wide and luminous eyes
Of dead poets
That love me and that I love…
Deep… deep…
Where none may see—not even ye who gave—
About my soul your garden beautiful.
UNDER-SONG
There is music in the strong
Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
Heard in the leaves' hush—
Ballads of the trees
In tongues unknown—
A reminiscent tone
On minor keys…
Boughs swaying to and fro
Though no winds pass…
Faint odors in the grass
Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
Of faded springs.
Is it music from the graves
Of all things fair
Trembling on the staves
Of spacious air—
Fluted by the winds
Songs with no words—
Sonatas from the throats
Of master birds?
One peering through the husk
Of darkness thrown
May hear it in the dusk—
That ancient tone,
Silvery as the light
Of long dead stars
Yet falling through the night
In trembling bars.
A WORN ROSE
Where to-day would a dainty buyer
Imbibe your scented juice,
Pale ruin with a heart of fire;
Drain your succulence with her lips,
Grown sapless from much use…
Make minister of her desire
A chalice cup where no bee sips—
Where no wasp wanders in?
Close to her white flesh housed an hour,
One held you… her spent form
Drew on yours for its wasted dower—
What favour could she do you more?
Yet, of all who drink therein,
None know it is the warm
Odorous heart of a ravished flower
Tingles so in her mouth's red core…
IRON WINE
The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine,
It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies,
And purple, like the blood of elderberries.
Surely it is a strong wine—juice distilled of the fierce iron.
I am drunk of its fumes.
I feel its fiery flux
Diffusing, permeating,
Working some strange alchemy…
So that I turn aside from the goodly board,
So that I look askance upon the common cup,
And from the mouths of crucibles
Suck forth the acrid sap.
DISPOSSESSED
Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines—
Wind in the grass
Blowing a clear path
For the new-stripped soul to pass…
The naked soul in the sunlight…
Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight
On the hill-side shimmering.
Dance light on the wind, little soul,
Like a thistle-down floating
Over the butterflies
And the lumbering bees…
Come away from that tree
And its shadow grey as a stone…
Bathe in the pools of light
On the hillside shimmering—
Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain—
But do not linger and look
At that bleak thing under the tree.
THE STAR
Last night
I watched a star fall like a great pearl into the sea,
Till my ego expanding encompassed sea and star,
Containing both as in a trembling cup.
THE TIDINGS
(Easter 1916)
Censored lies that mimic truth…
Censored truth as pale as fear…
My heart is like a rousing bell—
And but the dead to hear…
My heart is like a mother bird,
Circling ever higher,
And the nest-tree rimmed about
By a forest fire…
My heart is like a lover foiled
By a broken stair—
They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street,
And I am not there!
End of Project Gutenberg's The Ghetto and Other Poems, by Lola Ridge