Only the lusty and the plenteous Shall walk The bronze-filled plazas And the nut-shell esplanades.

The Wind Shifts

This is how the wind shifts: Like the thoughts of an old human, Who still thinks eagerly And despairingly. The wind shifts like this: Like a human without illusions, Who still feels irrational things within her. The wind shifts like this: Like humans approaching proudly, Like humans approaching angrily. This is how the wind shifts: Like a human, heavy and heavy, Who does not care.

Colloquy with a Polish Aunt

_Elle savait toutes les légendes du Paradis et tous les contes de la Pologne._ _Revue des Deux Mondes_

_She_

How is it that my saints from Voragine, In their embroidered slippers, touch your spleen?

_He_

Old pantaloons, duenna of the spring!

_She_

Imagination is the will of things.... Thus, on the basis of the common drudge, You dream of women, swathed in indigo, Holding their books toward the nearer stars, To read, in secret, burning secrecies....

Gubbinal

That strange flower, the sun, Is just what you say. Have it your way.

The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say.

That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way.

The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night

I had as lief be embraced by the porter at the hotel As to get no more from the moonlight Than your moist hand.

Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear. Use dusky words and dusky images. Darken your speech.

Speak, even, as if I did not hear you speaking, But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts, Conceiving words,

As the night conceives the sea-sounds in silence, And out of their droning sibilants makes A serenade.

Say, puerile, that the buzzards crouch on the ridge-pole And sleep with one eye watching the stars fall Below Key West.

Say that the palms are clear in a total blue, Are clear and are obscure; that it is night; That the moon shines.

Theory

I am what is around me.

Women understand this. One is not duchess A hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits: A black vestibule; A high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.

To the One of Fictive Music

Sister and mother and diviner love, And of the sisterhood of the living dead Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom, And of the fragrant mothers the most dear And queen, and of diviner love the day And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown Its venom of renown, and on your head No crown is simpler than the simple hair.

Now, of the music summoned by the birth That separates us from the wind and sea, Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes, By being so much of the things we are, Gross effigy and simulacrum, none Gives motion to perfection more serene Than yours, out of our imperfections wrought, Most rare, or ever of more kindred air In the laborious weaving that you wear.

For so retentive of themselves are men That music is intensest which proclaims The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom, And of all vigils musing the obscure, That apprehends the most which sees and names, As in your name, an image that is sure, Among the arrant spices of the sun, O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom We give ourselves our likest issuance.

Yet not too like, yet not so like to be Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs The difference that heavenly pity brings. For this, musician, in your girdle fixed Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear A band entwining, set with fatal stones. Unreal, give back to us what once you gave: The imagination that we spurned and crave.

Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion

You dweller in the dark cabin, To whom the watermelon is always purple, Whose garden is wind and moon,

Of the two dreams, night and day, What lover, what dreamer, would choose The one obscured by sleep?

Here is the plantain by your door And the best cock of red feather That crew before the clocks.

A feme may come, leaf-green, Whose coming may give revel Beyond revelries of sleep,

Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail, So that the sun may speckle, While it creaks hail.

You dweller in the dark cabin, Rise, since rising will not waken, And hail, cry hail, cry hail.

Peter Quince at the Clavier