Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922.
Eye-Witness
D
By dancing water, there he stayed awhile
Singing, and three men with him, listeners,
All tramps, all homeless reapers of the wind,
Motionless now and while the song went on
Transfigured into mages thronged with visions;
There with the late light of the sunset on them
And on clear water spinning from a spring
Through little cones of sand dancing and fading,
Close beside pine woods where a hermit thrush
Cast, when love dazzled him, shadows of music
That lengthened, fluting, through the singer’s pauses
While the sure earth rolled eastward bringing stars
Over the singer and the men that listened
There by the roadside, understanding all.
Some eye at a car window must have flashed
From the plush world inside the glassy Pullman,
Carelessly bearing off the scene forever,
With idle wonder what the men were doing,
Seeing they were so strangely fixed and seeing
Torn papers from their smeary dreary meal
Spread on the ground with old tomato cans
Muddy with dregs of lukewarm chicory,
Neglected while they listened to the song.
And while he sang the singer’s face was lifted,
And the sky shook down a soft light upon him
Out of its branches where like fruits there were
Many beautiful stars and planets moving,
With lands upon them, rising from their seas,
Glorious lands with glittering sands upon them,
With soils of gold and magic mould for seeding,
The shining loam of lands afoam with gardens
On mightier stars with giant rains and suns
There in the heavens; but on none of all
Was there ground better than he stood upon:
There was no world there in the sky above him
Deeper in promise than the earth beneath him
Whose dust had flowered up in him the singer
And three men understanding every word.
I will sing, I will go, and never ask me “Why?”
I was born a rover and a passer-by.
A river and a rover and a passer-by.
We lit us a night fire by the track,
And we couldn’t find the warming room for two.
And I went to the weather from my heart’s desire.
But the zero whistle through the icy wire.
Something like a shadow came moving slow.
Something flew above it like a kind of bird.
A light went round me but I kept my place.
I saw my Saviour and I saw my Christ.
But it takes a gentle Saviour to give a gentle look.
His heart was having the railroad blues.
Keeps you moving on for something that you don’t see here.
The line was looking like May and June.
Looking for a lodging since the night began.
He went to the windows, then he went away.
Says, “I will give you the ‘other’ bread.”
O drink, O fire, O burning honey!
I saw inside me, it was light and warm.
I saw the stars weighed down with love.
They poured that music to the earth.
He said: “Now look, and help feed others.”
Was everybody that suffered much.
They could not see us, they were lonely.
With the wounds bare that were not told of;
Hearts that were choked with their dreams’ ashes;
Looking at their breasts and nothing there;
Hurt lads shivering with the fare-thee-wells.
I stood there but my heart went round them.
Says, “Tell them then what you have tasted.”
Told him I was lost.—Says: “Lean on me.”
But I knew I had the water for every hell.
They needed what the stars were singing,
The tune that it danced to, day and night.
The song seemed easy, but I stood there dumb.
They let down light and drew me to them.
Drinking in the word that all things say
Dripping the music like wine from grapes.
—The vine-like song with its wine-like rain.
Of the turning, burning, deathless fruit.
I tried that song but they couldn’t hear me.
A seed for a song that would make men know.
I went; he watched me sink to night.
His pain ploughed in me to believing.
While the heart of life sang in his side.
My heart broke into dust with his.
The dust men trampled on was singing.
The roots of beauty went round my bones.
I stood on the line, I could sing forever.
Song came out of me simple as breathing.
He laid his hand upon my shoulder.
And led me by the hand to the station lights.
If he had lodging. Says, “None at all.”
“Here,—if you haven’t got a better place.”
But if you’ll keep it open, well, I’ll call it ‘home.’”
So the song ended and the four remained
Still in the faint starshine that silvered them,
While the low sound went on of broken water
Out of the spring and through the darkness flowing
Over a stone that held it from the sea.
Whether the men spoke after could not be told,
A mist from the ground so veiled them, but they waited
A little longer till the moon came up;
Then on the gilded track leading to the mountains,
Against the moon they faded in common gold
And earth bore East with all toward the new morning.