1. The Harbor Dawn

Incessantly through sleep – a tide of voices –                
They meet you listening midway in your dream,           
The long, tired sounds, fog-insulated noises:                 
Gongs in white surplices, beshrouded wails,                 
Far strum of fog horns … signals dispersed in veils.     
                                                                                        
And then a truck will lumber past the wharves
As winch engines begin throbbing on some deck;
Or a drunken stevedore’s howl and thud below
Comes echoing alley-upward through dim snow.

And if they take your sleep away sometimes
They give it back again.  Soft sleeves of sound
Attend the darkling harbor, the pillowed bay;
Somewhere out there in blankness steam

Spills into steam, and wanders, washed away
 – Flurried by keen fifings, eddied
Among distant chiming buoys – adrift.  The sky,
Cool feathery fold, suspends, distills
This watering slumber … Slowly –
Immemorially the window, the half-covered chair
Ask nothing but the sheaf of pallid air.

And you beside me, blessed now while sirens  
Sing to us, stealthily weave us into day – 
Serenely now, before day claims our eyes  
Your cool arms murmurously about me lay.
                                                                                        
While myriad snowy hands are clustering at the  
panes –
            your hands within my hands are deeds;
            my tongue upon your throat – singing
            arms close; eyes wide, undoubtful
                                    dark
                                            drink the dawn –
            a forest shudders in your hair!

The window goes blond slowly.  Frostily clears.            
From Cyclopean towers across Manhattan waters
– Two – three bright window eyes aglitter, disk
The sun, released – aloft with cold gulls hither.

The fog leans one last moment on the sill.                      
Under mistletoe of dreams, a star –                                 
As though to join us at some distant hill –                       
Turns in the waking west and goes to sleep.      

2. Cutty Sark

I met a man in South Street, tall –
anervous shark tooth swung on his chain.
His eyes pressed through the green glass
– green glasses, or bar lights made them
so –
            shine –
                        GREEN –
                                      eyes –
stepped out – forgot to look at you
or left you several blocks away –

in the nickel-in-the-slot piano jogged
“Stamboul Nights” – weaving somebody’s nickel – sang –

            O Stamboul Rose – dreams weave the rose!
            Murmurs of Leviathan he spoke,
            and rum was Plato in our heads …

“It’s S. S. Ala – Antwerp – now remember kid
to put me out at three she sails on time.
I’m not much good at time any more keep
weakeyed watched sometimes snooze –” his bony hands
got to beating time… “A whaler once –
I ought to keep time and get over it – I’m a
Democrat – I know what time it is – No
I don’t want to know what time it is – that
damned white Arctic killed my time…”

            O Stamboul Rose – dreams weave –

“I ran a donkey engine down there on the Canal
in Panama – got tired of that –
the Yucatan selling kitchenware – beads –
have you seen Popocatepetl – birdless mouth
with ashes sifting down –?
                                          And then the coast again…”

            Rose of Stamboul O coral Queen –
            teased remnants of skeletons of cities –
            and galleries, galleries of water-glutted lava
            snarling stone – green – drums – drown –

Sing!
“– that spiracle!” he shot a finger out the door…
“O life’s a geyser – beautiful – my lungs –
No – I can’t live on land –!

I saw the frontiers gleaming of his mind;
Or are there frontiers – running sands sometimes
Running sands – somewhere – sands running…
Or they may start some white machine that sings.
Then you may laugh and dance the axletree –
steel – silver – kick the traces – and know –

            Atlantis Rose drums wreathe the rose,
            the star floats burning in a gulf of tears
            and sleep another thousand –

                                    interminably
long since somebody’s nickel – stopped –
playing –

A wind worried those wicker-neat lapels, the
swinging summer entrances to cooler hells…
Outside a wharf truck nearly ran him down
– he lunged up Bowery way while the dawn
was putting the Statue of Liberty out – that
torch of hers you know –

I started walking home across the Bridge…
        .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .

Blithe Yankee vanities, turreted spires, winged
               British repartees, skil-
ful savage sea-girls
that blossomed in the spring – Heave, weave
those bright designs the trade winds drive…

            Sweet opium and tea, Yo-ho!
            Pennies for porpoises that bank the keel!
            Fins whip the breeze around Japan!

Bright skysails ticketing the Line, wind round the Horn
to Frisco, Melbourne…
                                            Pennants, parabolas,
Clipper dreams indelible and ranging,
baronial white on lucky blue!
            Perennial-Cutty-trophied Sark!

Thermopulae, Black Prince, Flying Cloud through Sunda
– scarfed of foam, their bellies veered green esplanades,
locked in wind-humors, ran their eastings down:

            at Java Head freshened the nip
            (sweet opium and tea!)
            and turned and left us on the lee…

Buntlines tusseling (91 days, 20 hours and anchored!)
                                                         Rainbow, Leander
(last trip a tragedy) – where can you be
Nimbus? and you rivals two –

                a long tack keeping –

                                                          Taeping?
                                                          Ariel?

4. Indiana

The morning glory, climbing the morning long
       Over the lintel on its wiry vine,
Closes before the dusk, furls in its song
       As I close mine…
                                                                                         
And bison thunder rends my dreams no more
       As once my womb was torn, my boy, when you
Yielded your first cry at the prairie’s door…
       Your father knew

Then, though we’d buried him behind us, far
       Back on the gold trail – then his lost bones stirred…
But you who drop the scythe to grasp the oar
       Knew not, nor heard

How we, too, Prodigal, once rode off, too –
       Waved Seminary Hill a gay good-bye…
We found God lavish there in Colorado
       But passing sly.

The pebbles sang, the firecat slunk away
     And glistening through the sluggard freshets came
In golden syllables loosed from the clay
       His gleaming name.

A dream called El Dorado was his town,
       It rose up shambling in the nuggets’ wake,
It had no charter put a promised crown
       Of claims to stake.

But we, – too late, too early, howsoever –
       Won nothing out of fifty-nine – those years –
But gilded promise, yielded to us never,
       And barren tears…

The long trail back!  I huddled in the shade
       Of wagon-tenting looked out once and saw
Bent westward, passing on a stumbling jade
       A homeless squaw –

Perhaps a halfbreed.  On her slender back
       She cradled a babe’s body, riding without rein,
Her eyes, strange for an Indian’s, were not black
     But sharp with pain

And like twin stars.  They seemed to shun the gaze
       Of all our silent men – the long team line –
Until she saw me – when their violet haze
       Lit with love shine…

I held you up – I suddenly the bolder,
       Knew that mere words could not have brought us nearer.
She nodded – and that smile across her shoulder
       Will still endear her

As long as Jim, your father’s memory, is warm.
       Yes, Larry, now you’re going to sea, remember
You were the first – before Ned and this farm –
     First born, remember –

And since then – all that’s left to me of Jim
       Whose folks, like mine, came out of Arrowhead.
And you’re the only one with eyes like him –
       Kentucky bred!

I’m standing still, I’m old, I’m half of stone!
       Oh, hold me in those eyes’ engaging blue:
There’s where the stubborn years gleam and atone –
       Where gold is true!

Down the dim turnpike to the river’s edge –
       Perhaps I’ll hear the mare’s hoofs to the ford…
Write me from Rio… and you’ll keep your pledge;
       I know your word!
Come back to Indiana – not too late!
       (Or will you be a ranger to the end?)
Good-bye… Good-bye… oh, I shall always wait
       You, Larry, traveler –
                                    stranger,
                                                   son,
                                                         – my friend –

5. Virginia

   O rain at seven,
   Pay-check at eleven –
   Keep smiling the boss away,
   Mary (what are you going to do?)
   Gone seven – gone eleven,
   And I’m still waiting you –

O blue-eyed Mary with the claret scarf,
                Saturday Mary, mine!

   It’s high carillon
   From the popcorn bells!
   Pigeons by the million –
   And Spring in Prince Street
   Where green figs gleam
   By oyster shells!

O Mary, leaning from the high wheat tower,
                Let down your golden hair!

   High in the noon of May
   On cornices of daffodils
   The slender violets stray.
   Crap-shooting gangs in Bleecker reign,
   Peonies with pony manes –
   Forget-me-nots at windowpanes:

Out of the way-up nickel-dime tower shine,
                       Cathedral Mary,
                                                          Shine!–

VI. Atlantis

Through the bound cable strands, the arching path
Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings,–
Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate
The whispered rush, telepathy of wires.
Up in the index of night, granite and steel–
Transparent meshes–fleckless the gleaming staves–
Sibylline voices flicker, waveringly stream
As though a god were issue of the strings….

And through that cordage, threading with its call
One arc synoptic of all tides below–
Their labyrinthine mouths of history
Pouring reply as though all ships at sea
Complighted in one vibrant breath made cry,–
“Make thy love sure–to weave whose song we ply!”

Migrations that must needs void memory,
Inventions that cobblestone the heart,–
Unspeakable Thou Bridge to Thee, O Love.
Thy pardon for this history, whitest Flower,
O Answerer of all,–Anemone,–
Now while thy petals spend the suns about us, hold–
(O Thou whose radiance doth inherit me)
Atlantis,–hold thy floating singer late!

So to thine Everpresence, beyond time,
Like spears ensanguined of one tolling star
That bleeds infinity–the orphic strings,
Sidereal phalanxes, leap and converge:
–One Song, one Bridge of Fire!  It is Cathay,
Now pity steeps the grass and rainbows ring
The serpent with the eagle in the leaves …?
Whispers antiphonal in azure swing.