Read Ebook: Minna and Myself by Bodenheim Maxwell Hecht Ben Contributor

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Ebook has 391 lines and 13198 words, and 8 pages

I shall walk down the road. I shall turn and feel upon my feet The kisses of Death, like scented rain. For Death is a black slave with little silver birds Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head. He will tell me, his voice like jewels Dropped into a satin bag, How he has tip-toed after me down the road, His heart made a dark whirlpool with longing for me. Then he will graze me with his hands And I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds Between the cold waves of his hair, as he tip-toes on.

TO GEORGIE MAY

The ruins of your face were twined with youth. Vines of starlight questioned your face when you smiled. Your eyes dissolved over distances And steeped the graves of many loves. Night was kind to your body: The careless vehemence of curves Softened beneath your darkly-loosened dress. And your heart toyed with an emotion That left you vague hunger poised over death.

POET-VAGABOND GROWN OLD

The dust of many roads has been my grey wine. Surprised beech-trees have bowed With me, to the plodding morning Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume, To his love in golden silks, the departed moon. Maidens like rose-flooded statues Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.

But now I walk on, alone. And only after watching many evenings, Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light, To persuade myself that I am young.

BLIND

Blinder than oak-trees in the wind Endlessly weaving sighs into a poem To sight, He sits, the light of one pale purple lantern Seeping into his dream-hollowed face, Like floating, transparent words Pale with unuttered meanings. He mends a flute and sighs as though Its shadow leaned heavily upon his heart And told him things his dead eyes could not grasp.

LOVE

You seemed a caryatid melting Into the wind-blown, dark blue temple of the sky. But you bent down as I came closer, breaking the image. When I passed, you raised your head And blew the little feather of a smile upon me. I caught it on open lips and blew it back. And in that moment we loved, Although you stood still waiting for your lover, And I walked on to my love.

HILL-SIDE TREE

Like a drowsy, rain-browned saint, You squat, and sometimes your voice In which the wind takes no part, Is like mists of music wedding each other. A drunken, odor-laced peddler is the morning wind. He brings you golden-scarfed cities Whose voices are swirls of bells burdened with summer; And maidens whose hearts are galloping princes. And you raise your branches to the sky, With a whisper that holds the smile you cannot shape.

INTRUSION

The lilies sag with rain-drops: Their petals hold fire that does not break out. . And a young breeze stumbles upon the lilies And strokes them with his spinning hands.... The lilies and the young breeze are not unlike Your silence and the rush of soft words breaking it.

CHANGE

I came upon a maiden Blowing rose petals in the air And catching them, as they fell, Upon quick fingertips Her laugh fell lighter than the petals And dropped little gestures upon my forehead. I gave her sadness and she blew it up As she had blown the rose petals: And it almost seemed joy as her fingers caught it. But I was only a wanderer plaited with dust, Who gave her new petals to play with.

PORTRAITS

You were in the room, yet your body Was stone cut in drooping lines And hued with decorous puzzling pinks and browns. Even your hair seemed an elfin wig Carelessly thrown upon your stone head. And your eyes were hollows cradling broken shadows. When you spoke your body did not change: It was as though a flock of sleepy birds Had issued from your stone mouth.

Vague words tapered off to pale weariness, And sunlight was night smiling in his sleep. Your hands moved as though they sought a dying emotion: Your lips, drawn back, seemed evading sound. When twilight fell upon us, Like night striving to forget his dream, We had long since passed out of the room.

MEETING

A mood whose heart was a flagon of ashes, Met another mood whose lips were stained With the odors of sleeping wine-songs. The second mood kissed the breast of the first And filled the ashen flagon with his pale purple breath. Then the two moods died, and he who bore them, Being an old man, sat down to make others.

COTTON-PICKER

Like the arms of a child lifting shining white lilies from a little brown pond, Sunlight drew songs from this lithe, grimacing negress Whose skin was smoother than the cloudless sky above her. The flecks of cotton they picked brought a changing white stupor To the negroes about her, but she swung down her row, With broad smiles cutting her pent-up satin face. And though the afternoon slowly pressed down her back, She never ceased humming to her joyous Christ.

FRIENDSHIP

Grey, drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers. So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you.

Split, brown-blue clouds press into each other Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze. So do my thoughts slowly form Over the draped mystery of you.

FACTORY GIRL

Why are your eyes like dry brown flower-pods, Still, gripped by the memory of lost petals? I feel that if I touched them They would crumble to falling brown dust And you would stand with blindness revealed. Yet, you would not shrink, for your life Has been long since memorized, And eyes would only melt out against its high walls. Besides, in the making of boxes Sprinkled with crude forget-me-nots, One is curiously blessed if ones eyes are dead.

DEATH

A fan of smoke in the long, green-white revery of the sky, Slowly curls apart. So shall we rise and widen out in the silence of air.

An old man runs down a little yellow road To an out-flung, white thicket uncovered by morning. So shall I swing to the white sharpness of death.

INTERLUDE

Sun-light recedes on the mountains, in long gold shafts, Like the falling pillars of a temple. Then singing silence almost too nimble for ears: The mountain-tenors fling their broad voices Into the blue hall of the sky, And through a rigid column of these voices Night dumbly walks. Night, crushing sound between his fingers Until it forms a lightly frozen couch On which he dreams.

CHORUS GIRL

Her voice was like rose-fragrance waltzing in the wind. She seemed a shadow stained with shadow colors Swinging through waves of sunlight. Perhaps her heart was an old minstrel Sleepily pawing at his little mandolin.

OLD AGE

In me is a little painted square Bordered by old shops, with gaudy awnings. And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men, Drinking sunlight. The old men are my thoughts: And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart, And quietly unload supplies. We fill slim pipes and chat, And inhale scents from pale flowers in the center of the square.... Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children Stroll past us, or into the shops. They greet the shopkeepers, and touch their hats or foreheads to me.... Some evening I shall not return to my people.

TO ONE DEAD

I walked upon a hill And the wind, made solemnly drunk with your presence, Reeled against me. I stooped to question a flower, And you floated between my fingers and the petals, Tying them together. I severed a leaf from its tree And a water-drop in the green flagon Cupped a hunted bit of your smile. All things about me were steeped in your remembrance And shivering as they tried to tell me of it.

TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL

Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch: A soul you have--strength has always delicate, secret reasons. Your soul is a dull question. I do not care for your strength, but your stiff smile at Time: A smile which men call rust.

TO AN ENEMY

I despise my friends more than you. I would have known myself but they stood before the mirrors And painted on them images of the virtues I craved. You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint. Then I knew and detested myself, but not you, For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered Showed me the virtues whose images you destroyed.

SOLDIERS

The smile of one face is like a fierce mermaid Floating dead in a little pale-brown pond. The lips of one are twisted To a hieroglyphic of silence. The face of another is like a shining frog. Another face is met by a question That digs into it like sudden claws. Beside it is a face like a mirror In which a stiffened child dangles....

Dead soldiers, in a sprawling crescent, Whose faces form a gravely mocking sentence.

FORGETFULNESS

Happier than green-kirtled apple-trees Waving their soft-rimmed fans of light And taking the morning mist, in quick breaths, You sit in the woven meditation and surprise Of a morning uncovering its wind-wreathed head. And yet within the light stillness of your soul Dream-heavy guards sleep uneasily Over the body of your last slain sorrow.

THE INTERNE

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