For this she starred her eyes with salt
And scooped her temples thin,
Until her face shone pure of fault
From the forehead to the chin.
In coldest crucibles of pain
Her shrinking flesh was fired
And smoothed into a finer grain
To make it more desired.
Pain left her lips more clear than glass;
It colored and cooled her hand.
She lay a field of scented grass
Yielded as pasture land.
I shall not sprinkle with dust
A creature so clearly lunar;
You must die — but of course you must —
And better later than sooner.
But if it should be in a year
That year itself must perish;
How dingy a thing is fear,
And sorrow, how dull to cherish!
And if it should be in a day
That day would be dark by evening,
But the morning might still be gay
And the moon have golden leavening.
And beauty’ s a moonlight grist
That comes to the mills of dying;
The silver grain may be missed
Too high, too high to pluck
My heart shall swing.
A fruit no bee shall suck,
No wasp shall sting.
If on some night of cold
It falls to ground
In apple-leaves of gold
I’ ll wrap it round.
And I shall seal it up
With spice and salt,
In a carven silver cup,
In a deep vault.
Before my eyes are blind
And my lips mute,
I must eat core and rind
Of that same fruit.
Before my heart is dust
At the end of all,
Eat it I must, I must
Were it bitter gall.
Soldiers never do die well;
Crosses mark the places —
Wooden crosses where they fell,
Stuck above their faces.
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch —
All the world roars red and black;
Soldiers smother in a ditch,
Choking through the whole attack.
For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devils’ tunes,
Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
Another in the day.
The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.
In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain.
Does it rain in Spain?
Oh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights.
The dancers dance in long white pants
It isn’ t right to yence your aunts
Come Uncle, let’ s go home.
Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is.
Come let us fart in the home.
There is no art in a fart.
Still a fart may not be artless.
Let us fart an artless fart in the home.
Democracy.
Democracy.
Bill says democracy must go.
Go democracy.
Go
In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new,
It was ghostly waking
All night through.
Dear things, kind things
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed.
The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light
On the faces that drift below,
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.
"Myrtle loves Harry" — It is sometimes hard to remember a thing like that,
Hard to think about it, and no one knows what to do with it when he has it,
So write it out on a billboard that stands under the yellow light of an "L" platform among popcorn wrappers and crushed cigars,
A poster that says "Mama I Love Crispy Wafers So."
Leave it on a placard where somebody else gave the blonde lady a pencil moustache, and another perplexed citizen deposited:
"Jesus Saves. Jesus Saves."
One can lay this bundle down there with the others,
