Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Driftwood Burning

Zoë Akins

YOU who behold me,

You—the strangers,

The dwellers in the low lands

Here by the river—

Can you indeed

Behold me, burning,

Without wonder, without dreaming?

The great flames

Are taking me;

They are consuming me;

Even as you—

Dwellers in the low lands—

Are to return unto dust

In the end,

I, the driftwood burning,

Am going my way

To the nothingness

Of ashes in the wind.

Yet I go

Not slowly—not a slow fog

Creeping from one valley

To another—

But flamingly,

Flamingly—

A light, a warmth, a signal,

Leaping out of the darkness!

Time found me

Before I was I—

Long ago, far away

In a deep forest;

And Time took me,

Rooting me up

From the ground that bore me—

Away from the circling arms

Of my brothers and sisters about me—

Time took me

And gave me,

Frightened and broken,

To the Great River.

My brothers and sisters

Of the forest

Where Time found me

Lamented perhaps

That I was broken

And sent to drift

On the unreturning waves

Of the unreturning river.

They have gone perhaps—

My brothers and sisters—

Into the building of ships

Ot the building of homes….

But it was my destiny

To drift, to burn….

Bronze are my flames,

And opal,

Like the breasts

Of the wild geese

In the bronze mirror;

And green are my flames

Like the young willow trees

That lean to the river

From thousands of islands

And from long low shores….

I burn

With all the beauty

That I have known

And have dreamed of

Under the quivering fountains

Of light flowing

From the radiant sun,

Or in the pale

Amethystine twilights

Of gathering snows….

And my flames

Ride upward into smoke

Exulting

That they are akin

To the proudest elements

That gave the light to the stars,

The heat to the sun—

Akin, but more beautiful

With secrets and colors

That the stars and the sun

Have yet to learn.

And there is a gladness in me

That is like the gladness

Of dancers and birds,

For Eternity vexes me not

With the glories and duties

Perpetual

She has given

To the stars and the sun,

The lightning, the wind….

It was my destiny

To burn,

To be a light, a warmth, a signal

Here on your shore

By the Great River

That brought me down

And nursed me on her breast,

And whispered her secrets to me,

And gave me her colors,

And flung me to my fate….

Can you behold me

Burning—

O strangers,

Without wonder, without dreaming?