I
HOME TO TOWN: TWO HIGHBALLS
First Highball
-My dear, whenever I hear anybody whistling in the streets at
night-
I know it-darling, darling—that I’m of the city, too!
And those women are all provincials, the full-bosomed, the
robust-
They are peasants beside you!
The slim pale body and the blue-veined wrists-
For you and I are at home in the narrow room,
Between the jail and the river at the foot of the street, gray, glum,
And the El that accelerates, grates, shrieks, diminishes, swishing
with such pain-
To talk the quick city tongue!
To talk to the one who knows! –
You and I shall be gone,
Dear, when the city goes! –
And all the city love, intense and faint like you,
The little drooping breasts, the cigarettes,
The little cunning shadow between the narrow thighs.
They will get rid of cities-
They will build themselves better bodies-
But they will never have a girl so pale and blue-veined, so quick
and passionate as you!
Second Highball
-When I don’t see you, dear,
The blood in my head sings like birds!–
The only singing birds we ever hear…’
You watched some city sparrows the winter you were sick,
In the little backyard in Brooklyn when the snow was on the
ground
You fed them crumbs but you never could catch them at it.
II
NOVEMBER RIDE
The horse bends his head
In a bold homeward hope;
With stooped wolfish tread
The dog trots a rope.
Brown leaves all beneath
The gray-bristling ridge;
Bare twigs in the path;
The stream breaks by the bridge.
-The stream in day clear
Looks suddenly bleak:
The last of the year!
The end of the week!
Just before the white blast,
Just before the dull mists ..
The people at last
Are less than the beasts!
Yet you who have slipped
With me out of doors:
Brown-eyed, rapid-stepped,
Like dog and like horse
For you womankind
Have cast forest and pelt
Have contrived and designed,
Put on bodice and belt
Gold white, gold red, round arms, rose-dotted breasts,
That long space between hip and knee, the striding thighs,
The vase-line of the throat that answers to the waist’s,
The great round-lidded, heavy-curtained eyes;
The short dear feet that firm the perfect line,
Red ringletted gold hair that harbors hidden angers,
White skin like goldleaf beaten smooth and fine,
Soft as the goldsmith’s chamois to the fingers … ,
-Back home-dark now-
High eaves-hard light-
Dogs bark far
On dark farms-
Hard now—bad tonight!
III
My dear, you burn with bright green eyes
That shine like jewels of the mind,
Whose clearest gazings crystallize,
Translucent to the light behind.-
Let not those lovely eyes go blind
In these divided darkened days!—
For when they darken and they fade
To turbid blues and dullest grays—
As cities mask their lamps, afraid-
The very dawn is dimmer made.
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