| |
I I HAVE seen you, O king of the dead, | |
| More beautiful than sunlight. | |
| |
| Your kiss is like quicksilver; | |
| But I turned my face aside | |
| Lest you should touch my lips. | 5 |
| |
| In the field with the flowers | |
| You stood darkly. | |
| |
| My knees trembled, and I knew | |
| That no other joy would be like this. | |
| |
| But the warm field, and the sunlight, | 10 |
| And the few years of my girlhood | |
| Came before me, and I cried, | |
| Not yet! | |
| Not yet, O dark lover! | |
| |
| You were patient. | 15 |
| —I know you will come again. | |
| |
| I have seen you, O king of the dead, | |
| More beautiful than sunlight. | |
| |
II Here in the desert, under the cottonwoods | |
| That keep up a monotonous wind-murmur of leaves, | 20 |
| I can hear the water dripping | |
| Through the canals in Venice | |
| From the oar of the gondola | |
| Hugging the old palaces, | |
| Beautiful old houses | 25 |
| Sinking quietly into decay….. | |
| |
| O sunlight—how many things you gild | |
| With your eternal gold! | |
| Sunlight—and night—are everlasting. | |
| |
III Once every twenty-four hours | 30 |
| Earth has a moment of indecision: | |
| Shall I go on?— | |
| Shall I keep turning?— | |
| Is it worth while? | |
| Everything holds its breath. | 35 |
| The trees huddle anxiously | |
| On the edge of the arroyo, | |
| And then, with a tremendous heave, | |
| Earth shoves the hours on towards dawn. | |
| |
IV Four o’clock in the afternoon. | 40 |
| A stream of money is flowing down Fifth Avenue. | |
| |
| They speak of the fascination of New York | |
| Climbing aboard motor-busses to look down on the endless play | |
| From the Bay to the Bronx. | |
| But it is forever the same: | 45 |
| There is no life there. | |
| |
| Watching a cloud on the desert, | |
| Endlessly watching small insects crawling in and out of the shadow of a cactus, | |
| A herd-boy on the horizon driving goats, | |
| Uninterrupted sky and blown sand: | 50 |
| Space—volume—silence— | |
| Nothing but life on the desert, | |
| Intense life. | |
| |
V The hill cedars and piñons | |
| Point upward like flames, | 55 |
| Like smoke they are drawn upward | |
| From the face of the mountains. | |
| Over the sunbaked slopes, | |
| Patches of sun-dried adobes straggle; | |
| Willows along the acequias in the valley | 60 |
| Give cool streams of green; | |
| Beyond, on the bare hillsides, | |
| Yellow and red gashes and bleached white paths | |
| Give foothold to the burros, | |
| To the black-shawled Mexican girls | 65 |
| Who go for water. | |
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