Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
In the DesertAlice Corbin
More beautiful than sunlight.
But I turned my face aside
Lest you should touch my lips.
You stood darkly.
That no other joy would be like this.
And the few years of my girlhood
Came before me, and I cried,
Not yet!
Not yet, O dark lover!
—I know you will come again.
More beautiful than sunlight.
That keep up a monotonous wind-murmur of leaves,
I can hear the water dripping
Through the canals in Venice
From the oar of the gondola
Hugging the old palaces,
Beautiful old houses
Sinking quietly into decay…..
With your eternal gold!
Sunlight—and night—are everlasting.
Earth has a moment of indecision:
Shall I go on?—
Shall I keep turning?—
Is it worth while?
Everything holds its breath.
The trees huddle anxiously
On the edge of the arroyo,
And then, with a tremendous heave,
Earth shoves the hours on towards dawn.
A stream of money is flowing down Fifth Avenue.
Climbing aboard motor-busses to look down on the endless play
From the Bay to the Bronx.
But it is forever the same:
There is no life there.
Endlessly watching small insects crawling in and out of the shadow of a cactus,
A herd-boy on the horizon driving goats,
Uninterrupted sky and blown sand:
Space—volume—silence—
Nothing but life on the desert,
Intense life.
Point upward like flames,
Like smoke they are drawn upward
From the face of the mountains.
Over the sunbaked slopes,
Patches of sun-dried adobes straggle;
Willows along the acequias in the valley
Give cool streams of green;
Beyond, on the bare hillsides,
Yellow and red gashes and bleached white paths
Give foothold to the burros,
To the black-shawled Mexican girls
Who go for water.