My ancestors: Men in satin and in velvet, faces long and like pale silk; languishing, fervid lips. The thin hands patting yellowed folioes. In the depth of night they talk with God .
And merchants from Leipzig and Danzig. Blank cuffs. Delicate smoke of cigars. Gemarah jokes. German courtesies. The look is wise and faint, wise and surfeited. Don Juans, tradesmen and godseekers .
A drunkard, a few renegades in Kieff .

Says I, " John Morgan, where you been? "
Says I, " John Morgan, where you been? "
" Down on the Ohio a-tryin' to swim. "
Says I, " John Morgan, where's your hoss? "
Says he, " I lost it swimmin' across. "

Wine th' insensate Brain o'er-pow'rs —
To what hard Streights thy poys'nous Juice
The good old Dame does oft reduce,
When, sourly belching from her Pip

I

No roofs to rest your gaze on. Skyward ever more daringly. Ever higher the Tine. Severe. Viril. — — Chaotic moods. Tense, anti-gothic, business-like — donquixotic. Chance — style. Compact energies. Trapezes carved by daring wills. Worry of men. — — Grandiose in unbeauty. Derisive of smallness. Manifold in uniformity — Giant New York .

II

Leave me. Forget ... Like a rope there coils around me my longing for thee .
I dare not pull the rope with my own hand, to accelerate the end .
Indoors and on the streets my glance turns to everyone I meet: — Tighten somebody the noose!
But nobody sees. To thee I shall have to return and beg: Strangle me!

The Hand of God lies somewhere mangled, the Hand of God lies somewhere cut. — And I myself have tried to shield my head: I stay within — all doors and doorways shut .
Like pieces of a snake, curved, though sundered, so leaps of God's Hand every particle; and every fling reveals the final Wonders, unveiling furthermore my screening wall .
Now I shield myself no more; I call for him who seeks his final prey. The Hand of God lies somewhere bruised and mangled and I — like parts of a snake in the gory dust .

The lands and seas, the cities and places, faces and smiles and words — they all left me for some distant dale .
I only behold through the veil of a clear mist two childish saddened eyes. Two blackish strayed lambkins lost in a world of snow .

Joan vows, (to hearten tim' rous Youth)
She ne'er saw Ghost or thing uncivil,
Worse than herself — — tho' once, in truth,
JOAN does believe she saw the Devil .

I am the wild vine! I rise at the wall of your court and am climbing, red and wild, up to the sill of your window .
To lie at the floor of your room, to listen to the swish of your dress, to pale in the light of your eyes, grow sad from your words!
To hang in ambush from your lamps, autumny and green as a spider, to fade musingly as your lamp, to die out in ashes in the flame of your stove!
To lie pale and dead in the snow on your windows, snowy white in the snow and snowed under, and weeping to you from the snow .

I have not yet conquered myself fully, not yet. Not all the wild plants have I uprooted .
Not all my wishes come true yet — and not every word that leaves my throat is clean yet .
Still before my eyes red lights glow and glitter — and still I am attracted by my pain .