wind

Always I knew that it could not last
(Gathering clouds, and the snowflakes flying),
Now it is part of the golden past
(Darkening skies, and the night-wind sighing);
It is but cowardice to pretend.
Cover with ashes our love's cold crater-
Always I've known that it had to end
Sooner or later.

Always I knew it would come like this
(Pattering rain, and the grasses springing),
Sweeter to you is a new love's kiss
(Flickering sunshine, and young birds singing).
Gone are the raptures that once we knew,

The sky is gray as gray may be,
There is no bird upon the bough,
There is no leaf on vine or tree.

In the Neponset marshes now
Willow-stems, rosy in the wind,
Shiver with hidden sense of snow.

So too 't is winter in my mind,
No light-winged fancy comes and stays:
A season churlish and unkind.

Slow creep the hours, slow creep the days,
The black ink crusts upon the pen--
Just wait till bluebirds, wrens, and jays
And golden orioles come again!

She heard the story of the end,
   Each message, too, she heard;
And there was one for every friend;
   For her alone -- no word.

And shall she bear a heavier heart,
   And deem his love was fled;
Because his soul from earth could part
   Leaving her name unsaid?

No -- No! -- Though neither sign nor sound
   A parting thought expressed --
Not heedless passed the Homeward-Bound
   Of her he loved the best.

Of voyage-perils, bravely borne,
   He would not tell the tale;

A stranger lies ill, in a distant city,
With no - - letters from home!
The glances that meet him, in lieu of pity,
Are querring, "Why does he roam?"
"Oh, heed my request," says he, "else 'twere better
I slept in this gold-dusted loam;
Dismiss the physician, and bring a letter--
A flock of kind letters from home."

"Oh, heed my request," says he, "else 'twer better I
I slept in this gold-dusted loam;
Dismiss the physician, and bring a letter--
A flock of kind letters from home."

I was drivin' my two-mule waggin,
With a lot o' truck for sale,
Towards Macon, to git some baggin'
(Which my cotton was ready to bale),
And I come to a place on the side o' the pike
Whar a peert little winter branch jest had throw'd
The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like,
And I seed, a leetle ways up the road,
A man squattin' down, like a big bull-toad,
On the ground, a-figgerin' thar in the sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
And he looked like Ellick Garry.
And as I driv up, I heerd him bleat

The moon is a charring ember
Dying into the dark;
Off in the crouching mountains
Coyotes bark.

The stars are heavy in heaven,
Too great for the sky to hold --
What if they fell and shattered
The earth with gold?

No lights are over the mesa,
The wind is hard and wild,
I stand at the darkened window
And cry like a child.

Darkness like midnight from the sobbing woods
Clamours with dismal tidings of the rain
Roaring as rivers breaking loose in floods
To spread and foam and deluge all the plain
The cotter listens at his door again
Half doubting whether it be floods or wind
And through the thickening darkness looks affraid
Thinking of roads that travel has to find
Through night's black depths in danger's garb arrayed
And the loud glabber round the flaze soon stops
When hushed to silence by a lifted hand

He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day,
Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm,
Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate
Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said
You're all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he
She went from being an Ivy League professor of French
To an illustrator for a slick midtown magazine
They agreed it was his fault. But for now they needed
To sharpen to a point like a pencil the way
The Empire State Building does. What I really want to say

SEE how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon's throat,
Jewelled with embers of opal and peridote.


See the white river that flashes and scintillates,
Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates.


Hark, from the minaret, how the muezzin's call
Floats like a battle-flag over the city wall.


From trellised balconies, languid and luminous
Faces gleam, veiled in a splendour voluminous.


Leisurely elephants wind through the winding lanes,

The slender moon in its silvery sheen,
The golden stars with the blue between
Of a dreamy, summer sky;
And still the night winds sigh.

With the silvery moon to whisper to,
And the golden stars to kiss, mid the blue
Of a listening, summer sky,
For what should the night winds sigh?