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I WHAT have I saved out of a morning? | |
| The earliest of the morning came with moon-mist | |
| And the travel of a moon-spilt purple: | |
| Bars, horse-shoes, Texas long-horns, | |
| Linked in night silver, | 5 |
| Linked under leaves in moonlit silver, | |
| Linked in rags and patches | |
| Out of the ice-houses of the morning moon. | |
| Yes, this was the earliest— | |
| Before the cowpunchers on the eastern rims | 10 |
| Began riding into the sun, | |
| Riding the roan mustangs of morning, | |
| Roping the mavericks after the latest stars. | |
| What have I saved out of a morning? | |
| Was there a child face I saw once | 15 |
| Smiling up a stairway of the morning moon? | |
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II “It is time for work,” said a man in the morning. | |
| He opened the faces of the clocks, saw their works, | |
| Saw the wheels oiled and fitted, running smooth. | |
| “It is time to begin a day’s work,” he said again, | 20 |
| Watching a bullfinch hop on the rain-worn boards | |
| Of a beaten fence counting its bitter winters. | |
| The clinging feet of the bullfinch and the flash | |
| Of its flying feathers as it flipped away | |
| Took his eyes away from the clocks—his flying eyes. | 25 |
| He walked over, stood in front of the clocks again, | |
| And said, “I’m sorry; I apologize forty ways.” | |
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III The morning paper lay bundled, | |
| Like a spear in a museum, | |
| Across the broken sleeping-room | 30 |
| Of a moon-sheet spider. | |
| The spinning work of the morning spider’s feet | |
| Left off where the morning paper’s pages lay | |
| In the shine of the web in the summer-dew grass. | |
| The man opened the morning paper: saw the first page, | 35 |
| The back page, the inside pages, the editorials; | |
| Saw the world go by, eating, stealing, fighting; | |
| Saw the headlines, date-lines, funnies, ads, | |
| The marching movies of the workmen going to work, the workmen striking, | |
| The workmen asking jobs—five million pairs of eyes look for a boss and say, “Take me”; | 40 |
| People eating with too much to eat, people eating with nothing in sight to eat tomorrow, eating as though eating belongs where people belong. | |
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| “Hustle, you hustlers, while the hustling’s good,” | |
| Said the man, turning the morning paper’s pages, | |
| Turning among headlines, date-lines, funnies, ads. | |
| “Hustlers carrying the banner,” said the man, | 45 |
| Dropping the paper and beginning to hunt the city; | |
| Hunting the alleys, boulevards, back-door by-ways; | |
| Hunting till he found a blind horse dying alone, | |
| Telling the horse, “Two legs or four legs—it’s all the same with a work plug.” | |
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| A hayfield mist of evening saw him | 50 |
| Watching the moon-riders lose the moon | |
| For new shooting-stars. He asked, | |
| “Christ, what have I saved out of a morning?” | |
| He called up a stairway of the morning moon | |
| And he remembered a child face smiling up that same stairway. | 55 |
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