PORTRAITS

I

MOTHER

I

Your love was like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty, so that little wry souls reflecting each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors... beheld in your luminous spirit their own reflection, transfigured as in a shining stream, and loved you for what they are not.

You are less an image in my mind than a luster I see you in gleams pale as star-light on a gray wall... evanescent as the reflection of a white swan shimmering in broken water.

II

(To E. S.)

You inevitable,
Unwieldy with enormous births,
Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths... 
Filth... worms... flowers... 
Green and succulent pods... 
Tremulous gestation
Of dark water germinal with lilies... 
All in you from the beginning... 
Nothing buried or thrown away... 
Only the moon like a white sheet
Spread over the dead you carry.

III

(To H.)

Speeding gull
Passing under a cloud
Caught on his white back
You... drop of crystal rain. 
Now you gleam softly triumphant
Folding immensities of light.

IV

(To O. F. T.)

You have always gotten up after blows
And smiled... and shaken off the dust... 
Only you could not shake the darkness
From off the bruised brown of your eyes.

V

(To E. A. R.)

Centuries shall not deflect nor many suns absorb your stream, flowing immune and cold between the banks of snow.  Nor any wind carry the dust of cities to your high waters that arise out of the peaks and return again into the mountain and never descend.

SONS OF BELIAL

I

We are old,
Old as song. 
Before Rome was
Or Cyrene. 
Mad nights knew us
And old men’s wives. 
We knew who spilled the sacred oil
For young-gold harlots of the town.... 
We knew where the peacocks went
And the white doe for sacrifice.

II

We were the Sons of Belial. 
One black night
Centuries ago
We beat at a door
In Gilead.... 
We took the Levite’s concubine
We plucked her hands from off the door.... 
We choked the cry into her throat
And stuck the stars among her hair.... 
We glimpsed the madly swaying stars
Between the rhythms of her hair
And all our mute and separate strings
Swelled in a raging symphony.... 
Our blood sang paeans
All that night
Till dawn fell like a wounded swan
Upon the fields of Gilead.