Back and forth on a timeless time machine.
I walk to the edge and see a field of flowers.
The field goes on for miles, stunning in it's vastness.
Every single flower is purple.
Not the same shade of purple, but every shade, magnificent in its rainbow of purple.
Dark purples.
Light purples.
Purples close to blue.
Purples close to pink.
Purples so dark they near black.
Lilac purple.
Lavender purple.
Every purple you can imagine and then some.
These flowers are not just one kind of flower either.
There are carnations, roses, lilies, daisies, every kind of flower you've ever heard of and then some you haven't.
These flowers take over my vision and consume my mind so that all I see is flowers, and purple.
But, as I peer closer, I spot one flower that is a different.
That flower appears to destroy the beautiful effect of all the purple.
But it doesn't.
That single flower is a bright, crimson red.
The color of horror flick blood.
It's a vibrant dahlia flower.
The petals cascade violently over each other, craving my notice.
Craving the euphoria of touch.
I sympathize with that flower.
I, too, knew that craving.
I, too, knew the craving of another's touch.

wind of summer
too vagabond
drunk
touching the melancholy afternoon
of the last pale season

flowing over the
deep yellow barren field
echoing the last mystic sound
though yet romantic
spring
the purples are deep
divine

butterflies are flying around
a few birds playing
on the ground
suddenly singing
uttering love

yellow
the golden yellow floating
in the eyes  
over hued
saturated

dropping on the ignored
dry
wither leaves
as the rain drops that has made
a blue
day dream

crossing over the mind  
a jingle
leap singing
classic
the very lost spring
scrolling into
soul

even in the lonely dark night
rolling up
the sound
as the rolling stone
of the sounding sea

@Musfiq us shaleheen

[you were]

"where love is a song settling in the night"

you were the softness of feathers
and the harsh cadence of grief,
you were the sky’s frail mists
and its glittering pools.
in the warm indigos of summer
i welcomed you home,
the sea with its engine pistons
played loud harmonics,
it wasn't the noise but quiet
i wanted most, the way i wanted you,
star silent, drifting like a boat.

[tonight]

tonight i can't write poetry,
a star is just a star

[shadows on my bones]

"when everything is washed out like faded jeans"

i thought i could stay alive
but there were shadows on my bones,
summer fell through my lips
and washed the colours from my shirt.
i became a lizard in the
dry heat.

the sky layered greys into
clouds, told me how
expressive it could be
and then turned white.
i wasn't going to argue
but i liked it better blue!

when your heart is
full of softness it gathers
the flowers of dusk.

the sea is so far from me
now, how can i remember
a wave or the bluster of
the wind?
i am as forgetful of
shape as foam, i am
as broken as driftwood,
i am the memory of
something that never was,
an impromptu impressionist
painting in ink.

[i've not written]

i've not written for a week.
i need to visualize, feed
on an image, grow out of
immense distance, slumber
on the rocks.
i need to paint a flower
in all its frailty, gather
the skies on the horizon.
until the bright lilies
have drowned me in their
white linens i will not feel whole.
gathering, gathering the world,
its moments stormy rooks.

[love poem]

"where love is a wave that splashes on the sand"

when a heart
loves
the stars surrender
to the heavens,
the moon catches her breath
and the avenues
of silence become
voice. i follow the
path to my love,
i die for him,
i live for him,
like a spartan
in the heat of battle,
like a flower in the
mist.

[summer tide]

the moon, shrunken, faint
as pencil, as if the wild nettles
of night carried her loads.
her glazes the raptures of
dancing stars.
her stencil mark a white crescent
leant on cloud.
the trees shudder in the
wind, break their promises,
forgive no one.  
the tide listens to her rhythms,
traps them in water, distils
her victories, unwraps the dark,
stretches it out.

[out of the night]

out of the night, the softening rain dripping
from leaves and memories hanging like stars
in a northern sky, everything sank to the sea,
sinking in night and song and silence.
everywhere was still, no climbing to the dawn,
no old ghost singing winter to the sky.
it was time to leave, time for the grey ghosts
to crumble, time for the rose beds to sleep.
the morning dew is the water's flowers,
the early frost is the marbling of the earth,
we're pushed to emptiness by the iron-hinged wind,
melt in caves where the shadows lie hid.
from your hair, the glistening drops of rain,
from the air, the flight of a bird,
terrible and black the dark clouds,
where the night utters vowels its voice full of stones,
and its breath an empty pail once filled
with water and the kiss of the moon.

[grey stone sky]

grey stone sky, ghost clouds crying to the wind,
remembering the distant wave.
the moon was the whitening mists of time,
was the quiver of a musical note,
her broad branches silver seas,
her caverns quiet visions of light.
i stride the shores of oblivion where
dark ages hide, where the ocean falls,
i capture infinite moons in my
mouth, capture something bright,
something of you that i bless,
something of you that grows out
of the dark, glimmering like a night frost,
midnight stars dipped in a clear lake
and as the surface gleams and reflects,
how the water ripples in little blue tides.

[i ask you]

i ask you how the water cries, how you hold
the tide, the light, the thin light glistening.
i ask you how you bury root and earth,
how you dress the wind, how you carry
clouds in your mouth, how you drift
out of morning's ghosts, sky full,
how you drift downstream taking
part of me with you. i ask and i ask.
why do you not answer me? tomorrow
stretches her wings, tomorrow with her
tremendous oceans of fire, her dark eyes
full of hope while part of me dies.
no furnace could burn like you burn,
every whisper the dark, the infinite dark,
and that little flame hovering like a bird
a paradise higher than stars.

[the ocean dreams]

the ocean dreams...
colours like burnt kisses,
the blue mist tangles the air.
the shore shook out its creases
like old linen, fell under
the tumbling wave.
i drank the silence,
walking where the moon,
carried along by the song
of a ripple, dipped
her feet in the foam,
dancing, dancing...
beneath her ivory tongue,
a glistening jewel,
her alabaster skin
night's whitest rose,
and where the stars
wrapped december in
ghosts and the
gleaming water was the
quietest echo of love,
i could no longer bear
to be alone, and my tears
were the wilderness
and how it grew inside me,
and everything i loved was there
the wave carrying the wind
and i felt alive, as joyful
as the silver shore, a dark-pooled
painting of you, a river-eyed song.

[sad, sad eyes]

winter fed us with blood-red berries and ice clouds,
our visible breath soon colder than our lips.
i did not want to see what you had seen,
could not grow out of those sad, sad eyes.
we fell into the calm wave of circumstance
and twilight hurried from us into the dark.
hurried away like the last drop of sunlight
purples the earth, dancing on the edge of the world.
do we wait, stone-heavy, for the last tendrils
of day to melt like ice?
the fearful cold breathes like a fog,
gathers its stars of voice and hill,
gathers memories and distant dreams,
lets us forget.
are you the ghost that lies on the hill
calling to me?
are you that ghost,
whose irons soften like cloud,
whose frozen leaf trembles on the branch
waiting to fall to the whispering land?
your eyes are from the past and yet
they follow like a cold wind blasts.
your eyes, everywhere your sad eyes,
biting like a frost.

[do you dream of me?]

my love, you wear silence like a coat
and i am left drifting like a far-out wave.
the wind tangles leaf and sky.
winter is barely noticed, the moon
is a ghost of forgotten flowers where
the night sings to the starry waters,
sings of our love. everything is sailing
like a ship in a bottle, a kaleidoscope  
of brightness, gothic hill and wildflower
ruin, flowing like a silvery stream.
do you dream of me? do you burn when
the night wraps you in her cloak and the moon
unwinds the waters of the seas?
do you dream of me?

[morning]

a bird slid into the wind's
bright paths, awoke
the sound of morning, the
only elegant sound. i sprinkled you
you with the roots of the rain and
with a song sweetened by
sunlight and although you were stunted
and your blue-blossom wings were broken,
and the very earth swam in dark
floods of tears, that little piece of
love was a kingdom as reachable
as your hand touching mine.

[song]

this was a song that lingers in caverns and
caves, scented by sea rose and anemone,
lost kingdoms where we dream of the sea.

this was a song like a whale shivering
through the water, diving into the
impossible dark, with its huge tail
waving, flag-like and star-hungry,
its skin the moon's lips, in a world
with no moonlight, no brightening pools,
and only echoes of a forgotten sun.

how deep do we dive, seals of ink
and overtures of unanswerable
dark? our eyes have been betrayed
many times and the water buries us
whole, takes us to the staccato rhythms
of a ghostly tide, takes us back to
a womb woman whose prayers lie
like whispers on the water, who tells
us to hush and we hear our mother's voice.

these are wild notes that press into the
waves, and i am frightened of this song,
it is dissonant and gathered from the
rivers of night, her tombs overgrown with
wild flowers and the bones of the sea,
and she cries for the lost,
for those that were taken from her,
and she will cry for all eternity
and her tears are like breath of ice.

[winter]

winter buries her flames,
buries whispers of river and leaf,

the sea wraps turquoise into bronze,
everything is full of white bones,

the sky is an illusion of clouds,
her petticoats blue rags,

the day is as heavy as a paperweight,
as brittle as a glass flower,

the light is as naked as the trees
gold could not be more cold,

the sunlight reflects in the snow,
her amber eyes gleam,

nothing flows, nothing flowers,
nothing flows, nothing flowers,

and your smile is the sun,
a ghost as faint as watercolour,

the brush dipped in daylight,
a little part of me.

[waiting]

i stood there waiting like a
nettle with the moon's forget-me-not
eyes, wild flowers overflowing
down the little paths, i was the flower that
no one wanted, a black companion
****.
my cherry mouth was built of
forgotten orchards and swallow's wings,
while my hair was blown by the indigo wind,
the moon tap, tap, tapping on the door.

the whiteness of the land, the colours of
winter and how her song arose out of
the dark, bearing my soul like the
earth rediscovered, glistening in the
light, drawn out of hollows, the shadows
driven back, with a dry root's crazy thirst
that left me longing for rain.
the poetry could not quite free itself
from my lips, dragged me down to
the earth where i staggered with
the lost and the weary. i tried to get back,
but all I could do was sink into the frozen waste.
no, the poetry would not free itself, and
still I waited but it didn't seem to matter
now because leaf and moon and the
frosting that covered my body had left
me like a pale ghost in the wilderness
and all I wanted to do was sink into
the cold cornered night, sink and forget.

[moonflower]

out of the water, the water of ghost pools,
you rose, naked figurehead, oh, flower of night.
an impressionist's brush shook the water
like light reflected on moonstone.
****** of prisms, flowering, flowering,
lost ocean of star voices, forgotten star.
you sang and the night ran towards the sea,
you blossomed and the night became a wanderer.
nectar of the gods, sky-visionary, you sink into
the night like the petal of a rose, the grass almond-
eyed and whispering to you her dreams, fluttering
like a butterfly; little moonflower, you gather
the shadows and the song of the dark, the
drift of the clouds is your bare feet running,
the drift of the clouds, the cold sea crashing
in the harbour, the drift of the clouds,
the incredible overflowing of sky, poet-
ink and straying hair, the drift of
the clouds, everything that scatters
like you on the wind.

[we seek...]

we seek the ocean in the palm of our hands,
breath is the frailties of a winter sky,

the stars are reflections in a mirror of bone.

we are carried by the wind into strange avenues
where we fall like leaves, dance into the indigos

of the washed out sky, haunt the dimming light like night
blossoms and dies, her rivers burning like fire.

we awaken in the eastern
sky washing slumber from our eyes, yawning

and day drops her heavy nets into the waters
of the sun and drowns out the voice of the dark.

flowers settle in the morning, capturing
the silence of the hills in petals of water and light,

and we drink passion and ink, we drink the colours
of our emotions and walk without hesitation towards the light.

[song of the wind]

the wind has something of your wild song,
whispers in a voice i knew long ago.

there is nothing here accept the empty wind,
nothing of you and me,

i could paint the silence with the moon,
kiss your mouth, touch your hair....

but we are forgotten like this song
of the wind, and in the emptiness

i can hear the faltering wave
fall against the belly of the sand

running like the white clouds
race through the sky,

where the stars fall like old ruins,
this ghost dance of stars, these crashing,

crashing waves. where is the freedom
of the falling water?

not in the breath of the earth,
not in the silvering of the sea.

[you are neither]

my love, you are neither the morning
with her bright unwinding hills

or the night, with her nets of silver stars,
you are not the sea whispering.

you are hidden from the world, an alpine
rose that nobody sees.

you flower like the sky makes its way
out of the dark, her archipelagos  

thrown to the wind, there to discover
like a frost that whitens the earth and

leaves its footprints in the leaves.

you are neither the moon, my love,
that waits at your feet

nor the sun that burns like the
summer with her mute fire. you

are none of these things and yet all  
these things carry me to you,

like a drifting cloud longing
for the waters of the night.

[those brief moments of heaven]

the land was a slumbering bird that had not yet opened
its eyes. the morning roared like a thunder

cloud and i gazed at the sky with her cornflower blues
and orchestral flutes, her dark bones whitening

in the yellow-threaded light. silence wrapped me like
a shawl, and love settled on my shoulders like

a bird. it was too early for the swallow to return
with its spring-tinted wings, the winter settled

in the nooks and crannies of the earth, sweet
as your mouth, crisp and cold as the ashen north.

and while you lay beside me, warm, nocturnal
and dreaming of the sea, i kissed your lips

and told you to hush, not because you had spoken but
because night had been so gentle to you that i

wanted to keep you wrapped in her star-scented arms.

[silence]

silence moored like a boat in the harbour,
and you flew against the horizon like a bird  

until my mouth was the night with its hungry stars
and you were the sea wind.

you were the night flowering, a ripple on
the surface of the water, the dreams of the ocean...

your eyes told me that history is made of a
a thousand bleeding wounds, your lips that

kisses are petals falling from a rose
and that we wait like old moons for night

to melt on the shore and set us free, we wait,
unquestionably free, for her gathering of

iris and blue bird, for her beautiful
and melancholy song.

[february]

the light, the faint curtain that draws across day,
far from night's shadows, creature of fire,

revolves, drops white nets into the sea-earth,
where ice and the aching frost cry out

and the soil hardens with its harsh, freezing edge.

we are deaf and blind, numb of limb
like the thin trees and the specter-sky,

blue and forlorn, dreaming our winter dreams...

and through the cold walls i can hardly draw
a smile, sad as a silver leaf the autumn forgot.

it is you who lifts me from the ground, somehow,
like an april shoot seeking the sun, somehow,

my bones as frail as a bird and yet
when the air stirs my blood and i stare into

the amber notes of the wind, the unforgiving land
buckles and breaks and i return to the

kernel of your heart and even the icy
lakes and the weighty forest you loved

under your skin that the light waits to
warm, forget their cold death, breathe

like summer returning to a distant shore.

[empty of light]

there is nothing of you in this late hour,
i have no voice to wrap you in tenderness,
and i wait for your arrival like a starless sky,
empty of light, the ocean's forgetful voyage,
the sinking wave coaxed to grow out of the dark.
the trees are motionless, branches fall silent in the night,
like ghosts against the sky. i am empty of light,
drawn out of memories and blue air,
a crystal that breaks, bound to the wide earth
and the white dust of immeasurable hills. i think i am
still, small as a bird, and i know that i long for you,
that the hunger never leaves me for long, colouring
dry paper with the gleam of a harbour-like moon.

[you grew]

you grew out of the tangling black,
those carefree tides that lead to the moon.

the stars i thought were silver knots
would not unwind, danced on the horizon,

softened like the white mist that gathered
the sky and the dark rose of your eyes.

you filled with the quiet of the hills
and i watched as your ghost

started to tell me goodbye, that
ghost whose seas were frozen in the night,

the ghost i loved, and everything that
was fire in me carved the words into

the night's magnolia net and the words
were; " i don't want you to go".


[loving you...where love is a pretty handwritten page]

loving you is like waiting for the spring,
the love that winds around my fingers

a stream that will fill with the most beautiful light.
when you open your eyes to my kisses,

i fill with the summer and the bright stars,
so chill with loneliness, leave.

i forget that the moon hangs like a
silver leaf in a sky of swallow's song,

while the rose that winter stole,
that died in my lovelorn arms,

left like the impressionist the water loved,
until all i could see was the dreams

of the water, and all i could feel was
the sleeping of the dark.

[winter faded]

winter faded like old parchment, drawn in charcoal
the trees waited for the inevitable colours of spring.

your voice coloured silence and left me standing
away from the crowd with my head inclined to yours,

listening to you, the shadows swept away and your
voice like the moonlight, the blue inks of the sea.

i watched you unwind night skies and the night stars
that burnt in the rivery realms of lost ruins and whispering

dreams, fell like dead men before your passion and there
was no reasoning with what you believed and you had

no compassion for the world. hatred fired up before
my forgiveness and you could not forgive. how many

oceans scattered their flowers and light, how many
armies fell before the burning amber of your eyes?

[i thought i understood the water]

i thought i understood the water,
the silver whispers of stream,
dying the way sadness sighs  
like a star.

the water didn't bring me to
you or you to me.

you were not the shimmer of a
fish.

you were the light reflecting,
bold splashes of colour
on a bold canvas. you

were night when i could
hardly bear the night and you
fell through me

like twilight bringing black
marble moons and watery ghosts.

i thought i understood the water.
i thought the stars painted your
reflection on my lips,

but the silver whispers were not
sad they were happy and
i wondered how i ever
found them sad.

[where]

where every poem starts
and every ends,
where we are stunned,
where we are thirsty and the thirst is
never quenched,
where there is something that breaks
and i can't bring back although it
burns me to dust, love was not our
miracle but the dying was, the flames
never quenched like the blues of the stars
little rivers,
don't bring me fire to bury me in flame,
bring me oceans of black ink to colour
the night, bring me your love.

[early summer]

the light flutters like ribbons,
the light gold leaf and flickering

amber, the light tenuous in her
gentleness, slumbering with her whims

and her sleep of blue earth, and air,
breath of joy, breath of dust.

night holds us and her daydreams are
a forgotten song, and night is like

the streams of water that awaken with
summer and her cool rivers of air. night with

her paradise far from the gathering
of limb and ledge, far from the leaves

of the dusk where the shadows tremble and the
water turns itself into tears, and we hear the

ghosts cry to the pretty sky,
sometimes we hear the ghosts cry.

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

Before I met you,
My world was black and white.

When we met,
You showed me the in between,
The gray of life.

When we became friends,
You showed me that there is even more.
There are oranges, red, and greens.

Peace, happiness, and life

When I left,
You taught me more,
Although you were gone.

You taught me of
Blues, yellows, and purples.
Darker, colder colors

Sadness, bitterness, and anxiety

You taught me so much
About the colors of this world

when we met you were all pinks purples and violets. a symphony of all the colors i would never wear. entirely too tightly wound. excited about life and all it hard  to offer.
when we met you hated me. i was all blacks and greys and dark greens. you saw somewhere trapped under all that muck, you were the only to see this light that sat burried beneath all the mud.
you wanted to change me, i didn’t want you to change. you wanted to save me, i wanted to keep you safe. from the beginning you were my priority, maybe in a different way but never less important. i tried and tried to fight you off. but you kept coming back and back and back again. i tried to keep you form getting hurt. ended up getting myself killed. you brought me back to life.
now after so much time has passed, i see your pinks and purples and violets, have changed. not quite as bright as they once were. hardened and darkened by pain and suffering. but you still have that yellow core. that bright shining white effervescent light that will never go out. you took my murky walls. you white washed and painted them with love. you fixed my cracks and cuddles and filled them with your yellow. you gave me violet and it turned blue. i have navy’s and turquoise, and baby blues. all because of you
when we come together, that explosion of passion, i swear our souls melt and become one. when your body touches mine the colors explore and leak and run and spill everywhere. but you make it so ******* beautiful. when our bodies meet our colors mix, they become our pinks and purples and navy and turquoise blues. our lights swirl and spin together to make a galaxy within ourselves. only for us. only for that moment. but in those moments and ones like these where our bodies connect and meet, when you above or below me, when your lying next to me, or when you lie your head in my lap to read, you explode my colors. and you always will.

I grew up by the beach
Air salt and sunscreen
Houses squat on dunes
Calendar in scratchy sand
All yellows and brindle

Winter scored in cactus ketch-groans
Summer seagull soundtrack
Snake sunbakes
Kikuyu crunches

Now home is hillside
Rosemary jasmine breeze
Every pane a picture
Year parades in colour
All purples and greens

Spring exits in lily lavender
Soft sepia summer
Auburn autumn
Jade July

And in unison agave flower
Invisible itinerary
Monocarpic masts
Noble nativity

Curtains to overture
In purples and greens

THE HOUSE OF DUST
A Symphony

BY
CONRAD AIKEN

To Jessie

NOTE

. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden"
in Part II.


     This text comes from the source available at
     Project Gutenberg, originally prepared by Judy Boss
     of Omaha, NE.
    
THE HOUSE OF DUST


PART I.


I.

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .

Good-night!  Good-night!  Good-night!  We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride.  We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.

Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for?  Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.


II.

One, from his high bright window in a tower,
Leans out, as evening falls,
And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
And silver falling from eave and tree.

One, from his high bright window, looking down,
Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
And thinks its towers are like a dream.
The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.

Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,-we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.


III.

One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand,
With wave upon slowly shattering wave,
Turned to the city of towers as evening fell;
And slowly walked by the darkening road toward it;
And saw how the towers darkened against the sky;
And across the distance heard the toll of a bell.

Along the darkening road he hurried alone,
With his eyes cast down,
And thought how the streets were hoarse with a tide of people,
With clamor of voices, and numberless faces . . .
And it seemed to him, of a sudden, that he would drown
Here in the quiet of evening air,
These empty and voiceless places . . .
And he hurried towards the city, to enter there.

Along the darkening road, between tall trees
That made a sinister whisper, loudly he walked.
Behind him, sea-gulls dipped over long grey seas.
Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked.
And death was observed with sudden cries,
And birth with laughter and pain.
And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies
And night came down again.


IV.

Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.

They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.

And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,
Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,
From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death
As she blew out her light.

And there was one who turned from clamoring streets,
And walked in lamplit gardens among black trees,
And looked at the windy sky,
And thought with terror how stones and roots would freeze
And birds in the dead boughs cry . . .

And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain,
To mingle among the crowds again,
To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street;
And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream,
With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet.

And one, from his high bright window looking down
On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,
Hearing a sea-like murmur rise,
Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower,
And drown in waves of shouts and laughter and cries.


V.

The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.
We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.

The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him,
And throwing him pennies, we bear away
A mournful echo of other times and places,
And follow a dream . . . a dream that will not stay.

Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow;
Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting;
In broken slow cascades.
The gardens extend before us . . .  We spread out swiftly;
Trees are above us, and darkness.  The canyon fades . . .

And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . .
A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.

We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down;
We close our eyes to music in bright cafees.
We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent.
We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays.

And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.


VI.

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city's feet;
On one side sleep the plains, with heaped-up hills.
Oaks and beeches whisper in rings about it.
Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat.

The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.

Rain with a shrill sings on the lapsing waves;
Rain thrills over the roofs again;
Like a shadow of shifting silver it crosses the city;
The lamps in the streets are streamed with rain;
And sparrows complain beneath deep eaves,
And among whirled leaves
The sea-gulls, blowing from tower to lower tower,
From wall to remoter wall,
Skim with the driven rain to the rising sea-sound
And close grey wings and fall . . .

. . . Hearing great rain above me, I now remember
A girl who stood by the door and shut her eyes:
Her pale cheeks glistened with rain, she stood and shivered.
Into a forest of silver she vanished slowly . . .
Voices about me rise . . .

Voices clear and silvery, voices of raindrops,-
'We struck with silver claws, we struck her down.
We are the ghosts of the singing furies . . . '
A chorus of elfin voices blowing about me
Weaves to a babel of sound.  Each cries a secret.
I run among them, reach out vain hands, and drown.

'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled,
Thinking your face so strangely young . . . '
'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.'
'I am the one you followed through crowded streets,
The one who escaped you, the one with red-gleamed hair.'

'I am the one you saw to-day, who fell
Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell:
A bell that broke great memories in my brain.'
'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.'

'I am the one who suddenly cried, beholding
The face of a certain man on the dazzling screen.
They wrote me that he was dead.  It was long ago.
I walked in the streets for a long while, hearing nothing,
And returned to see it again.  And it was so.'


Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!
I am dissolved and woven again . . .
Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.

'I am the one who rode beside you, blinking
At a dazzle of golden lights.
Tempests of music swept me: I was thinking
Of the gorgeous promise of certain nights:
Of the woman who suddenly smiled at me this day,
Smiled in a certain delicious sidelong way,
And turned, as she reached the door,
To smile once more . . .
Her hands are whiter than snow on midnight water.
Her throat is golden and full of golden laughter,
Her eyes are strange as the stealth of the moon
On a night in June . . .
She runs among whistling leaves; I hurry after;
She dances in dreams over white-waved water;
Her body is white and fragrant and cool,
Magnolia petals that float on a white-starred pool . . .
I have dreamed of her, dreaming for many nights
Of a broken music and golden lights,
Of broken webs of silver, heavily falling
Between my hands and their white desire:
And dark-leaved boughs, edged with a golden radiance,
Dipping to screen a fire . . .
I dream that I walk with her beneath high trees,
But as I lean to kiss her face,
She is blown aloft on wind, I catch at leaves,
And run in a moonless place;
And I hear a crashing of terrible rocks flung down,
And shattering trees and cracking walls,
And a net of intense white flame roars over the town,
And someone cries; and darkness falls . . .
But now she has leaned and smiled at me,
My veins are afire with music,
Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light;
I shall dream to her secret heart tonight . . . '

He rises and moves away, he says no word,
He folds his evening paper and turns away;
I rush through the dark with rows of lamplit faces;
Fire bells peal, and some of us turn to listen,
And some sit motionless in their accustomed places.

Cold rain lashes the car-roof, scurries in gusts,
Streams down the windows in waves and ripples of lustre;
The lamps in the streets are distorted and strange.
Someone takes his watch from his pocket and yawns.
One peers out in the night for the place to change.

Rain . . . rain . . . rain . . . we are buried in rain,
It will rain forever, the swift wheels hiss through water,
Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street.
The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops.
Remote and hurried the great bells beat.

'I am the one whom life so shrewdly betrayed,
Misfortune dogs me, it always hunted me down.
And to-day the woman I love lies dead.
I gave her roses, a ring with opals;
These hands have touched her head.

'I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.

'They cover a body with roses . . . I shall not see it . . .
Must one return to the lifeless walls of a city
Whose soul is charred by fire? . . . '
His eyes are closed, his lips press tightly together.
Wheels hiss beneath us.  He yields us our desire.

'No, do not stare so-he is weak with grief,
He cannot face you, he turns his eyes aside;
He is confused with pain.
I suffered this.  I know.  It was long ago . . .
He closes his eyes and drowns in death again.'

The wind hurls blows at the rain-starred glistening windows,
The wind shrills down from the half-seen walls.
We flow on the mournful wind in a dream of dying;
And at last a silence falls.


VII.

Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died-you know the way.  Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'

He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors are closed and silent.  A gas-jet flares.
His shadow disturbs a shadow of balustrades.
The door swings shut behind.  Night roars above him.
Into the night he fades.

Wind; wind; wind; carving the walls;
Blowing the water that gleams in the street;
Blowing the rain, the sleet.
In the dark alley, an old tree cracks and falls,
Oak-boughs moan in the haunted air;
Lamps blow down with a crash and ****** of glass . . .
Darkness whistles . . . Wild hours pass . . .

And those whom sleep eludes lie wide-eyed, hearing
Above their heads a goblin night go by;
Children are waked, and cry,
The young girl hears the roar in her sleep, and dreams
That her lover is caught in a burning tower,
She clutches the pillow, she gasps for breath, she screams . . .
And then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow,
She dreams of an evening, long ago:
Of colored lanterns balancing under trees,
Some of them softly catching afire;
And beneath the lanterns a motionless face she sees,
Golden with lamplight, smiling, serene . . .
The leaves are a pale and glittering green,
The sound of horns blows over the trampled grass,
Shadows of dancers pass . . .
The face smiles closer to hers, she tries to lean
Backward, away, the eyes burn close and strange,
The face is beginning to change,-
It is her lover, she no longer desires to resist,
She is held and kissed.
She closes her eyes, and melts in a seethe of