Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.
Max Michelson
Masks
D
Lighter than a butterfly’s wings.
On the way, she would half-turn and listen.
She fluttered solemn, occupied, yet I never knew her airy business.
Now that I sing of an earthly woman,
She listens wondering.
You looked tired,
For you came from afar,
Perhaps from Greece.
As though you carried
Some precious wine.
Then vanished,
Wondering,
As if you were some one else.
Your family has moulded you. Show about your torse and face. Are half-frozen. Faintly. Your flesh slopes like rose-petals. Like rose-petals It holds and drinks in the light. Remember the mother’s milk. Maturing you, withering you. In the cafeteria the girl moved briskly In her imitation silk, sashed, hang-how-it-will dress; Yet knocked constantly against the customs— In taking her water, her sugar, her catsup. The old purse dangling and the old hat moving firmly; Of a sudden she stopped, looked about, listened— Struck by the city—shot—like a flying bird. Glowing in the dusk, Your body the dusk-green stalk. Your lips were parched, imploring… As if they awaited disappointment. Her eyes are on the alert, as if for some mystic tryst. Through the white limbs where desire has leaped and pranced Now runs the invisible fire— An offering to some mysterious god. You threw it about you— A garment frail and lacy. Fluttering like one of the sweet-pea petals, Had been fertilized by the sweat and blood of her husband’s vest-workers. Yet his eyes resented the intrusion Of firm matter-of-fact chins of servants. Your ears stand alert: Near you, like wolves in the forest, Lurk other people’s poverty and suffering; And though your heart is robust— Tough, like the cheek of a country girl, You dare not trust it. Over your clean-shaven lip glimmers the moustache of a tom-cat. Your smiles are investments at a hundred per-cent. Also, when you were younger, before you knew, You foolishly allowed suffering to reach your heart. So your face sometimes contorts wistfully— You use this sanctimoniously to deceive. In the bluish-white afternoon sky Shed down ruddy flowers of light— Big, capriciously shaped lilies and orchids—so thickly That some, held at the stems, stood as if growing straight from the grass. Among them he came—short, heavy, a little ragged, With eyes and lips that had laughed much with wine; Faintly-drunk, as if wine-vapors of the past were hovering in his head; Blowing his flute and dancing, Now fast, now slow, and now stopping … listening… An earth-flower among the light flowers. The light-flowers caressed his cheeks and his drowsy eyes with their cloud-like coolness—piling about him. Did the trees understand? As though it were sunrise. Gentle, tactful, and of Admirable dignity. He wants me to know him. Sometimes he touches my arm, Or even presses it impulsively. Strange, aloof and far— Shall I shake you and tell you Who you are? Till our hearts are bared to the core, Till we are a man and a woman no more, Till we are empty like vases that leak, Till we droop and fall, Till we are nothing at all.
I
Your face called up a lily
Her lips lie tired, discarded.
For a moment you felt nude and shivered.
He knew the lady’s half-mocking, half-regretful smile,
Your nostrils sniff the air,
Sharp nails grow out from your fat fingers;
The few rosy cloud-splotches
One comes to me every day—
Woman sleeping in the car—