Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Alfred Kreymborg

Dorothy

HER eyes hold black whips—

dart of a whip

lashing, nay, flicking,

nay, merely caressing

the hide of a heart—

and a broncho tears through canyons—

walls reverberating,

sluggish streams

shaken to rapids and torrents,

storm destroying

silence and solitude!

Her eyes throw black lariats—

one for his head,

one for his heels—

and the beast lies vanquished—

walls still,

streams still—

except for a tarn,

or is it a pool,

or is it a whirlpool

twitching with memory?

Her hair

is a tent

held down by two pegs—

ears, very likely—

where two gypsies—

lips, dull folk call them—

read your soul away:

one promising something,

the other stealing it.

If the pegs would let go—

why is it they’re hidden?

and the tent

blow away—drop away—

like a wig—or a nest—

maybe

you’d escape

paying coin

to gypsies—

maybe—

Blue veins

of morning glories—

blue veins

of clouds—

blue veins

bring deep-toned silence

after a storm.

White horns

of morning glories—

white flutes

of clouds—

sextettes hold silence fast,

cup it for aye.

Could I

blow morning glories—

could I

lip clouds—

I’d sound the silence

her hands bring to me.

Had I

the yester sun—

had I

the morrow’s—

brush them like cymbals,

I’d then sound the noise.

Her body gleams

like an altar candle—

white in the dark—

and modulates

to voluptuous bronze—

bronze of a sea—

under the flame.