The gold tree is blue. The singer has pulled his cloak over his head. The moon is in the folds of the cloak.

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

In the moonlight I met Berserk, In the moonlight On the bushy plain. Oh, sharp he was As the sleepless!

And, “Why are you red In this milky blue?” I said. “Why sun-colored, As if awake In the midst of sleep?”

“You that wander,” So he said, “On the bushy plain, Forget so soon. But I set my traps In the midst of dreams.”

I knew from this That the blue ground Was full of blocks And blocking steel. I knew the dread Of the bushy plain,

And the beauty Of the moonlight Falling there, Falling As sleep falls In the innocent air.

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That’s clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began. Allow, Therefore, that in the planetary scene Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed, Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade, Proud of such novelties of the sublime, Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk, May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres. This will make widows wince. But fictive things Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

The Place of the Solitaires

Let the place of the solitaires Be a place of perpetual undulation.

Whether it be in mid-sea On the dark, green water-wheel, Or on the beaches, There must be no cessation Of motion, or of the noise of motion, The renewal of noise And manifold continuation;

And, most, of the motion of thought And its restless iteration,

In the place of the solitaires, Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.

The Weeping Burgher

It is with a strange malice That I distort the world.

Ah! that ill humors Should mask as white girls. And ah! that Scaramouche Should have a black barouche.

The sorry verities! Yet in excess, continual, There is cure of sorrow.

Permit that if as ghost I come Among the people burning in me still, I come as belle design Of foppish line.

And I, then, tortured for old speech, A white of wildly woven rings; I, weeping in a calcined heart, My hands such sharp, imagined things.

The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains Is full of long motions; as the ponderous Deflations of distance; or as clouds Inseparable from their afternoons; Or the changing of light, the dropping Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude Of night, in which all motion Is beyond us, as the firmament, Up-rising and down-falling, bares The last largeness, bold to see.

Banal Sojourn

Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps. The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black. The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air. Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom. Pardie! Summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew, Our old bane, green and bloated, serene, who cries, “That bliss of stars, that princox of evening heaven!” reminding of seasons, When radiance came running down, slim through the bareness. And so it is one damns that green shade at the bottom of the land. For who can care at the wigs despoiling the Satan ear? And who does not seek the sky unfuzzed, soaring to the princox? One has a malady, here, a malady. One feels a malady.

Depression before Spring

The cock crows But no queen rises.

The hair of my blonde Is dazzling, As the spittle of cows Threading the wind.

Ho! Ho!

But ki-ki-ri-ki Brings no rou-cou, No rou-cou-cou.

But no queen comes In slipper green.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

The Cuban Doctor

I went to Egypt to escape The Indian, but the Indian struck Out of his cloud and from his sky.

This was no worm bred in the moon, Wriggling far down the phantom air, And on a comfortable sofa dreamed.

The Indian struck and disappeared. I knew my enemy was near--I, Drowsing in summer’s sleepiest horn.

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended The western day through what you called The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears? What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained, And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself; And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

Exposition of the Contents of a Cab

Victoria Clementina, negress, Took seven white dogs To ride in a cab.

Bells of the dogs chinked. Harness of the horses shuffled Like brazen shells.

Oh-hé-hé! Fragrant puppets By the green lake-pallors, She too is flesh, And a breech-cloth might wear, Netted of topaz and ruby And savage blooms;

Thridding the squawkiest jungle In a golden sedan, White dogs at bay.

What breech-cloth might you wear, Except linen, embroidered By elderly women?

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots, Catches tigers In red weather.

Sunday Morning