Nets to Catch the Wind | Page 2

dust??Second Traveler: A crooked stick.?First Traveler: What's it worth, if you can trust?To arithmetic??Second Traveler: Isn't this a riddle??First Traveler: No, a trick.?Second Traveler: It's worthless. Leave it where it lies.?First Traveler: Wait; count ten;?Rub a little dust upon your eyes;?Now, look again.?Second Traveler: Well, and what the devil is it, then??First Traveler: It's the sort of crooked stick that shepherds know. Second Traveler: Some one's loss!?First Traveler: Bend it, and you make of it a bow.?Break it, a cross.?Second Traveler: But it's all grown over with moss!
ATAVISM
I always was afraid of Somes's Pond:?Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,?Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands?In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond.?There, when the frost makes all the birches burn?Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shines?Like a polished shell between black spruce and pines,?Some strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.
You'll say I dream it, being the true daughter?Of those who in old times endured this dread.?Look! Where the lily-stems are showing red?A silent paddle moves below the water,?A sliding shape has stirred them like a breath;?Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.
WILD PEACHES
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When the world turns completely upside down?You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore?Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;?We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town.?You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown?Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold color.?Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,?We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
The winter will be short, the summer long,?The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,?Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;?All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.?The squirrels in their silver fur will fall?Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
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The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass?Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.?The misted early mornings will be cold;?The little puddles will be roofed with glass.?The sun, which burns from copper into brass,?Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold?Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold,?Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.
Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;?A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;?The spring begins before the winter's over.?By February you may find the skins?Of garter snakes and water moccasins?Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.
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When April pours the colors of a shell?Upon the hills, when every little creek?Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake?In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,?When strawberries go begging, and the sleek?Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,?We shall live well--we shall live very well.
The months between the cherries and the peaches?Are brimming cornucopias which spill?Fruits red and purple, somber-bloomed and black;?Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches?We'll trample bright persimmons, while we kill?Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvas-back.
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Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones?There's something in this richness that I hate.?I love the look, austere, immaculate,?Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.?There's something in my very blood that owns?Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,?A thread of water, churned to milky spate?Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,?Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves;?That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,?Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,?Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,?And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.
SANCTUARY
This is the bricklayer; hear the thud?Of his heavy load dumped down on stone.?His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,?His smoking mortar whiter than bone.
Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick?Straight by the plumb-line's shivering length;?Make my marvelous wall so thick?Dead nor living may shake its strength.
Full as a crystal cup with drink?Is my cell with dreams, and quiet, and cool....?Stop, old man! You must leave a chink;?How can I breathe? You can't, you fool!
THE LION AND THE LAMB
I saw a Tiger's golden flank,?I saw what food he ate,?By a desert spring he drank;?The Tiger's name was Hate.
Then I saw a placid Lamb?Lying fast asleep;?Like a river from its dam?Flashed the Tiger's leap.
I saw a Lion tawny-red,?Terrible and brave;?The Tiger's leap overhead?Broke like a wave.
In sand below or sun above?He faded like a flame.?The Lamb said, "I am Love";?"Lion, tell your name."
The Lion's voice thundering?Shook his vaulted breast,?"I am Love. By this spring,?Brother, let us rest."
THE CHURCH-BELL
As I was lying in my bed?I heard the church-bell ring;?Before one solemn word was said?A bird began to sing.
I heard a dog begin to bark?And a bold crowing cock;?The bell, between the cold and dark,?Tolled. It was five o'clock.
The church-bell tolled, and the bird sang,?A clear true voice he had;?The cock crew, and the church-bell rang,?I knew it had gone mad.
A hand reached down from the dark skies,?It took the bell-rope thong,?The bell cried "Look! Lift up your eyes!"?The clapper shook to song.
The iron clapper laughed aloud,?Like clashing wind and wave;?The bell cried out "Be strong and proud!"?Then, with a shout, "Be brave!"
The rumbling of the