Part 3

which noone has suspected(but wherein silently always are kneeling the various deaths which are your lover lady:together with what keen innumerable lives he has not lived.

III

here’s a little mouse)and what does he think about, i wonder as over this floor(quietly with

bright eyes)drifts(nobody can tell because Nobody knows, or why jerks Here &, here, gr(oo)ving the room’s Silence)this like a littlest poem a (with wee ears and see?

tail frisks) (gonE) “mouse”, We are not the same you and

i, since here’s a little he or is it It ? (or was something we saw in the mirror)?

therefore we’ll kiss;for maybe what was Disappeared into ourselves who (look). ,startled

IV

but if i should say goodmorning trouble adds up all sorts of quickly things on the slate of that nigger’s face(but

If i should say thankyouverymuch

mr rosenbloom picks strawberries with beringed hands)but if

i Should say solong my tailor chuckles

like a woman in a dream(but if i should say Now the all saucers but cups if begin to spoons dance every-

should where say over the damned table and we hold lips Eyes everything hands you know what happens)but if i should, Say,

V

in spite of everything which breathes and moves, since Doom (with white longest hands neatening each crease) will smooth entirely our minds

--before leaving my room i turn, and(stooping through the morning)kiss this pillow, dear where our heads lived and were.

VI

you are not going to, dear. You are not going to and i but that doesn’t in the least matter. The big fear Who held us deeply in His fist is

no longer, can you imagine it i can’t which doesn’t matter and what does is possibly this dear, that we may resume impact with the inutile collide

once more with the imaginable,love,and eat sunlight(do you believe it? i begin to and that doesn’t matter)which

i suggest teach us a new terror always which shall brighten carefully these things we consider life. Dear i put my eyes into you but that doesn’t matter further than of old

because you fooled the doctors,i touch you with hopesand words and with so and so: we are together, we will kiss or smile or move. It’s different too isn’t it

different dear from moving as we, you and i,used to move when i thought you were going to(but that doesn’t matter) when you thought you were going to America. Then

moving was a matter of not keeping still;we were two alert lice in the blond hair of nothing

VII

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world

my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry --the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

VIII

some ask praise of their fellows but i being otherwise made compose curves and yellows, angles or silences to a less erring end)

myself is sculptor of your body’s idiom: the musician of your wrists; the poet who is afraid only to mistranslate

a rhythm in your hair, (your fingertips the way you move) the

painter of your voice-- beyond these elements

remarkably nothing is. . . . therefore,lady am i content should any by me carven thing provoke your gesture possibly or

any painting(for its own

reason)in your lips slenderly should create one least smile (shyly if a poem should lift to me the distinct country of your eyes, gifted with green twilight)

IX

supposing i dreamed this) only imagine, when day has thrilled you are a house around which i am a wind--

your walls will not reckon how strangely my life is curved since the best he can do is to peer through windows, unobserved

--listen, for(out of all things)dream is noone’s fool; if this wind who i am prowls carefully around this house of you

love being such, or such, the normal corners of your heart will never guess how much my wonderful jealousy is dark

if light should flower: or laughing sparkle from the shut house(around and around which a poor wind will roam

X

you are like the snow only purer fleeter, like the rain only sweeter frailer you

whom certain flowers ressemble but trembling(cowards which fear to miss within your least gesture the hurting skill which lives)and since

nothing lingers beyond a little instant, along with rhyme and with laughter O my lady (and every brittle marvelous breathing thing)

since i and you are on our ways to dust

of your fragility (but chiefly of your smile, most suddenly which is of love and death a marriage)you give me

courage so that against myself the sharp days slobber in vain:

Nor am i afraid that this, which we call autumn, cleverly dies and over the ripe world wanders with a near and careful smile in his mouth(making

everything suddenly old and with his awkward eyes pushing sleep under and thoroughly into all beautiful things)

winter, whom Spring shall kill

XI

because you go away i give roses who will advise even yourself, lady in the most certainly(of what we everywhere do not touch)deep things; remembering ever so tinily these, your crisp eyes actually shall contain new faeries

(and if your slim lips are amused, no wisest

painter of fragile Marys will understand how smiling may be made as skilfully.) But carry also, with that indolent and with this flower wholly whom you do not ever fear, me in your heart

softly;not all but the beginning

of mySelf

XII

you being in love will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean: entirely having in my careful how careful arms created this at length inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure--you go from several persons:believe me that strangers arrive when i have kissed you into a memory slowly, oh seriously --that since and if you disappear

solemnly myselves ask “life, the question how do i drink dream smile

and how do i prefer this face to another and why do i weep eat sleep--what does the whole intend” they wonder. ohandthey cry “to be,being,thatiamalive this absurd fraction in its lowest terms with everything cancelled but shadows --what does it all come down to? love? Love if you like and i like, for the reason that i hate people and lean out of this window is love,love and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason

that i do not fall into this street is love.”

XIII

Nobody wears a yellow flower in his buttonhole he is altogether a queer fellow as young as he is old

when autumn comes, who twiddles his white thumbs and frisks down the boulevards

without his coat and hat

--(and i wonder just why that should please him or i wonder what he does)

and why(at the bottom of this trunk, under some dirty collars)only a moment (or was it perhaps a year)ago i found staring

me in the face a dead yellow small rose

XIV

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through a darkness where new lights begin and increase, since your mind has walked into my kiss as a stranger into the streets and colours of a town--

that i have perhaps forgotten how, always(from these hurrying crudities of blood and flesh)Love coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

--after which our separating selves become museums filled with skilfully stuffed memories

XV

i am a beggar always who begs in your mind

(slightly smiling, patient, unspeaking with a sign on his breast BLIND)yes i

am this person of whom somehow you are never wholly rid(and who

does not ask for more than just enough dreams to live on) after all, kid

you might as well toss him a few thoughts

a little love preferably, anything which you can’t pass off on other people: for instance a plugged promise--

then he will maybe(hearing something fall into his hat)go wandering after it with fingers;till having

found what was thrown away himself taptaptaps out of your brain, hopes, life

to(carefully turning a corner)never bother you any more.

XVI

if within tonight’s erect everywhere of black muscles feels a weightless slowness(deftly

muting the world’s texture with drifted

gifts of featheriest slenderness and how gradually which descending are suddenly received)or by doomfull connivance

accurately thither and hither myself

struts unremembered(rememberingly with in both pockets curled hands moves) why then toward morning he is a ghost whom

assault these whispering fists of hail

(and a few windows awaken certain faces busily horribly blunder through new light hush we are made of the same thing as perhaps

nothing, he murmurs carefully lying down)

XVII

how this uncouth enchanted person, arising from a restaurant, looks breathes or moves --climbing(past light after light)to turn, disappears

the very swift and invisibly living rhythm of your Heart possibly

will understand; or why(in

this most exquisite of cities)all of the long night a fragile imitation of (perhaps)myself carefully wanders streets dark and, deep

with rain. . . .

(he, slightly whom or cautiously this person

and this imitation resemble, descends into the earth with the year a cigarette between his ghost-lips

gradually) remembering badly, softly your kissed thrice suddenly smile

XVIII

i go to this window

just as day dissolves when it is twilight(and looking up in fear

i see the new moon thinner than a hair)

making me feel how myself has been coarse and dull compared with you, silently who are and cling to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper until i smile with knowing --and all about herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges inward with hurled downward thousands of enormous dreams

FIVE

I

after all white horses are in bed

will you walking beside me, my very lady, if scarcely the somewhat city wiggles in considerable twilight

touch (now) with a suddenly unsaid

gesture lightly my eyes? And send life out of me and the night absolutely into me. . . . a wise and puerile moving of your arm will do suddenly that

will do more than heroes beautifully in shrill armour colliding on huge blue horses, and the poets looked at them, and made verses,

through the sharp light cryingly as the knights flew.

II

touching you i say (it being Spring and night) “let us go a very little beyond the last road--there’s something to be found”

and smiling you answer “everything turns into something else, and slips away. . . . (these leaves are Thingish with moondrool and i’m ever so very little afraid”) i say “along this particular road the moon if you’ll notice follows us like a big yellow dog. You

don’t believe? look back. (Along the sand behind us, a big yellow dog that’s . . . . now it’s red a big red dog that may be owned by who knows) only turn a little your. so. And

there’s the moon,there is something faithful and mad”

III

along the brittle treacherous bright streets of memory comes my heart,singing like an idiot, whispering like a drunken man

who(at a certain corner, suddenly)meets the tall policeman of my mind. awake being not asleep, elsewhere our dreams began which now are folded:but the year completes his life as a forgotten prisoner

--“Ici?”--“Ah non, mon cheri; il fait trop froid”-- they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind bringing rain and leaves, filling the air with fear and sweetness. . . .pauses. (Halfwhispering. . . .halfsinging

stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)

when you were in Paris we met here

IV

our touching hearts slenderly comprehend (clinging as fingers, loving one another gradually into hands) and bend into the huge disaster of the year:

like this most early single star which tugs

weakly at twilight, caught in thickening fear our slightly fingering spirits starve and smother; until autumn abruptly wholly hugs

our dying silent minds, which hand in hand at some window try to understand the (through pale miles of perishing air, haunted with huddling infinite wishless melancholy, suddenly looming) accurate undaunted

moon’s bright third tumbling slowly

V

if i have made,my lady,intricate imperfect various things chiefly which wrong your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail) songs less firm than your body’s whitest song upon my mind--if i have failed to snare the glance too shy--if through my singing slips the very skillful strangeness of your smile the keen primeval silence of your hair

--let the world say “his most wise music stole nothing from death”-- you only will create (who are so perfectly alive)my shame: lady through whose profound and fragile lips the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s note

Non-standard spelling retained.

In the original on Page 46, the poem “this evangelist” is missing a line from the third stanza. That stanza in other editions is:

the editor cigarstinking hobgoblin swims upward in hisswivelchair one fist dangling scandal while five other fingers snitch rapidly through mist a defunct king as

Also in the original on Page 55, the poem “life hurl my” was placed landscape on the page.