Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Kan-Il-Lak the Singer

Constance Lindsay Skinner

NAK-KU, desired!

Thine eyes speak gifts

But thy hands are empty.

Thy lips draw me

Like morning’s flame on a song-bird’s wing.

I follow—but thy kiss is denied.

I am a hunter alone in a forest of silence.

Under what bough

Are the warm wings of thy kiss folded?

Amid the scent of berries drying

From my high roof I have seen the dusky sea

Trip rustlingly along the sand-floors,

In little moccasins of silver, moon-broidered with shells of longing.

Ah, thy little moccasins, Nak-Ku!

But thy feet recede from me like ebbing tides.

I have closed my door:

The heavy cedar-blanket hangs before it.

Since thou comest not,

Better that my narrow pine couch seem wide as a winter field.

The moon makes silver shadows on my floor through the poplars.

The wind rustles the leaves,

Swaying the boughs o’er the smoke-hole;

The little silver shadows run toward my couch—

Ah-hi, Nak-Ku!

I hear the pattering of women on the sand-paths:

Fluttered laughs, bird-whisperings before my lodge—

“Oh lover, lover!”

Brave little fingers tap upon the cedar-blanket.

But I do not open my door—

Better this grief!

I am thy poet, Nak-Ku,

Faithful to her who has given me

Dreams!

I have given dreams to Kan-il-Lak, the singer!

Oh, what care I, Kan-il-Lak,

Though thy hut be full of witches,

Thy lips’ melody flown before their kisses?

Know I not that all women

Must to the singer bring their gifts?

Know I not that to the singer comes at last

His hour of gift-judging?

I will lie, like a moonbeam, in thy heart.

A hundred gifts shall fall regarded not:

But where among the dust of forgetfulness

The one pearl shell is found—

Pure, faint-flushed with longing,

The deeps no man has seen

Brimming its lyric mouth with mystical murmurs—

There shalt thou pause

And render me thy song!