Medical students up at Hahnemann
Hunt women on a Saturday night.
And sing, tell tales, and verse recite,
And rush the forbidden can.
The paltry mistress made you pay for all
The fault of us, and packed you out of doors
When you had scrubbed the floors,
And swept the entrance hall.
I watched you in your faded cloak and hat
With canvas bag walk towards the Grove.
Then something in my fancy hove,
Laughing I caught you at
The doorway of the hotel on the street
Where I had tracked you round from thirty-first.
You laughed and cried and called me worst
Of devils on two feet.
There I had followed you and seized you when
You did not care what happened, so
You fell into my hands, you know—
’Tis twenty years since then.
I never saw you after that, nor heard
In all this city aught of you.
You vanished like a blot of dew,
Or ashen hued seed bird.
I wonder if you wed a red bull-throat
Who ran a rivet hammer, drove a truck,
Bore many children or worse luck
Went where the drift weeds float....
HAVING HIS WAY
We parted at the Union Station,
Tom Hall and I,
Two boys in the early twenties
Fresh from the quiet of fields,
And the sleepy silence of village life.
And we stepped into Adams Street,
Noisy from trucks and rattling cars,
And babbling multitudes.
He with his great invention,
And I with my translation of Homer,
And the books of Rousseau and Marx.
And he went his way
To sell his great invention.
And I in the village glory
Of clothes ill-fitting, timid, sensitive
And proud, a little learned, so zealous
For the weal of the world
Came to your chateau palace near the Drive,
To you my friend, my queenly cousin,
For a little visit before I entered
Upon the city’s life.
You looked me over with calm Egyptian eyes,
And put me at ease with your lovely smile.
And there was about you the calm of desert air in Nevada
That made me forget myself.
Yet you began to guide me with subtlest words,
And to mould me with delicate hands,
As one might smooth a rumpled collar,
Or fasten a loosened scarf,
Or lift to place a strand of hair
Of one beloved who thrills to the touch.
Even with closed eyes you saw everything
Of harmony, or form, or hue.
There were silver strings in your little ears
Which caught the tone pictures of sounds,
And the intonations and sonorities of voices;
Which trembled to the barbarities of unmelodic words.
And there as you saw and heard me,
(I knew it at once,)
You took me for your piece of bronze in the rough
To be made under your hands
Your triumph, your work, your creation
In the world where you ruled as queen.
You would see me as finished art
Move before admiring eyes
Where music is and richness,
And where poverty and struggle
And sacrifice and failure are forgotten.
That was the cousin you meant me to be.
And in a few nights
There was an evening dress and fine linen
And an opera hat and cloak
Laid out for me in my snow white room,
And a valet came to help me.
For we were to see Carmen together—
You and I in a box.
You the queen,
And I a genius from the country
Of whom the word had gone the rounds:
A translator of Homer,
And a dreamer of revolutions,
Her cousin, you know!