V

In the high West there burns a furious star.
It is for fiery boys that star was set
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.
The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.
For me, the firefly's quick electric stroke.
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.
And you? Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin . . .
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

VI

If men at forty will be painting lakes,

The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one, The basic slate, the universal hue.

There is a substance in us that prevails.

But in our amours amorists discern

Such fluctuations that their scrivening

Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.
When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum

Of introspective exiles, lecturing.

It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

VII

The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

VIII

Like a dull scholar I behold, in love,

An ancient aspect touching a new mind.

It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trival trope reveals a way of truth.

Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost.
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains.

IX

In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.
Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too lusty for your broadening.

I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything
For the music and manner of the paladins
To make oblation fit. Where shall I find
Bravura adequate to this great hymn?

X

The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.
I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.
I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.
But, after all, I know a tree that bears
A semblance to the thing I have in mind.

It stands gigantic, with a certain tip

To which all birds come sometime in their time. But when they go that tip still tips the tree.

XI

If sex were all, then every trembling hand

Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words. But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,

That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and moan, and shout Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth

From madness or delight, without regard

To that first foremost law. Anguishing hour!
Last night we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies, scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

XII

A blue pigeon it is that circles the blue sky,
On side-long wing, around and round and round.
A white pigeon it is that flutters to the ground,
Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,
In lordly study. Every day I found

Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.
Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,

And still pursue, the origin and course

Of love, but until now I never knew

That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.

Marion Strobel

SPRING MORNING

O day-if I could cup my hands and drink of you,

And make this shining wonder be

A part of me!

O day! O day!

You lift and sway your colors on the sky

Till I am crushed with beauty. Why is there

More of reeling sunlit air

Than I can breathe? Why is there sound

In silence? Why is a singing wound
About each hour?

And perfume when there is no flower?
O day! O day! How may I press
Nearer to loveliness?

WE HAVE A DAY

We have a day, we have a night
Which have been made for our delight!

Shall we run, and run, and run

Up the path of the rising sun?

Shall we roll down every hill,

Or lie still

Listening while the whispering leaves

Promise what no one believes?

The hours poise, breathless for flight, and bright.

Only a night, only a day

We must not let them get away;

Don a foolish cap and bell,

For all is well and all is well.

Dance through woods a purple-blue!

Dance into

Lanes that are a hidden stem

Beneath the beauty over them.

The hours lift their shadow-form, are warm.

Why do you still stand mute and white?
The day is passed, but there is night.

Turn your head, give me your lips—
The darkness slips! The darkness slips.

We could make it hushed and still.
If you will

We could hear, close to the ground
Life-the one authentic sound.

The hours, as a startled faun, are gone.

LITTLE THINGS

Little things I'll give to you—

Till your fingers learn to press
Gently

On a loveliness;

Little things and new—

Till your fingers learn to hold
Love that's fragile,

Love that's old.

FRIGHTENED FACE

Child of the frightened face,

Trying to understand

The little bit of love

Under your hand,

Holding the little love

Under fingers that crush That which is soft as the Throat of a thrush,

Holding your hand upon

The wonder of the thing, Crushing out the song that Wanted to sing:

Child of the frightened face,

Why do your fingers try To kill the little love?

Soon it would die.