Chapter XI: A L'ombre Des Jeunes Filles En Fleurs

And now when I think of you
I see you on your piano-stool
finger the ineffectual bright keys
and even in the pinkish parlor glow
your eyes sea-grey are very wide
as if they carried the reflection
of mocking black pinebranches
and unclimbed red-purple mountains mist-tattered
under a violet-gleaming evening.

But chirruping of marriageable girls
voices of eager, wise virgins,
no lamp unlit every wick well trimmed,
fill the pinkish parlor chairs,
bobbing hats and shrill tinkling teacups
in circle after circle about you
so that I can no longer see your eyes.

Shall I tear down the pinkish curtains
smash the imitation ivory keyboard
that you may pluck with bare fingers on the strings?

I sit cramped in my chair.
Futility tumbles everlastingly
like great flabby snowflakes about me.

Were they in your eyes, or mine
the tattered mists about the mountains
and the pitiless grey sea?

_1919_

ON FOREIGN TRAVEL

I

Grey riverbanks in the dusk
Melting away into mist
A hard breeze sharp off the sea
The ship's screws lunge and throb
And the voices of sailors singing.

O I have come wandering
Out of the dust of many lands
Ears by all tongues jangled
Feet worn by all arduous ways--
O the voices of sailors singing.

What nostalgia of sea
And free new-scented spaces
dreams of towns vermillion-gated
Must be in their blood as in mine
That the sailors long so in singing.

Churned water marbled astern
Grey riverbanks in the dusk
Melting away into mist
And a shrill wind hard off the sea.
O the voices of sailors singing.