Mama never knew about Jude. 
You always wanted to tell her,
but somehow you never did. 
You were afraid she’d smile
and say he wasn’t real—­
that he was only a little dream-boy,
because the grass didn’t fall down under his feet.... 
He is fading now.... 
He is just lines... like a drawing.... 
You can see mama in between. 
When she moves
she rubs some of him out.

MONOLOGUES

JAGUAR

Nasal intonations of light and clicking tongues... publicity of windows stoning me with pent-up cries... smells of abattoirs... smells of long-dead meat.

Some day-end—­ while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket off the warm body of a squaw, and the jaguars are out to kill... with a blue-black night coming on and a painted cloud stalking the first star—­ I shall go alone into the Silence... the coiled Silence... where a cry can run only a little way and waver and dwindle and be lost.

And there... where tiny antlers clinch and strain as life grapples in a million avid points, and threshing things strike and die, letting their hate live on in the spreading purple of a wound...  I too will make covert of a crevice in the night, and turn and watch... nose at the cleft’s edge.

WILD DUCK

I

That was a great night we spied upon
See-sawing home,
Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars
Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze... 
Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river... 
Lights dwindling to shining slits
In the wet asphalt... 
Purring lights... red and green and golden-whiskered... 
Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud...
...  But you did not know... 
As the trains made golden augers
Boring in the darkness... 
How my heart kept racing out along the rails,
As a spider runs along a thread
And hauls him in again
To some drawing point... 
You did not know
How wild ducks’ wings
Itch at dawn... 
How at dawn the necks of wild ducks
Arch to the sun
And new-mown air
Trickles sweet in their gullets.

II

As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird
That has lately flown across it,
Yet trembles with the beating of its wings,
So my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly... 
Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song
You might have been.... 
’Twas a great night... 
With never a waste look over a shoulder
Curved to the crook of the wind... 
And a great word we threw
For memory to play knuckles with... 
A word the waters of the world have washed,
Leaving it stark and without smell... 
A world that rattles well in emptiness:  Good-by.

THE DREAM