The Dancer

Holding out your delicate fingers,

Tilting your little head when the wind comes blowing.

Softly,

Suddenly,

You will shake your twinkling locks,

You will leap and skip, little tree,

Tree on the hillside

Lightly,

And twirl yourself away.

TO A VINE THE WORKMEN CUT DOWN

How will your greenness stay

Now your roots are cut away y?

The little tendrils that climbed so high,

The little green leaves still fluttering in the sun,

Will shrivel and wither to dust when your sap is dry.

Your pleasant days are done.

Oh, you turned these bricks into a happy place,

Dancing and growing;

Dancing and throwing

The dancing grace

Of your shadows over the wall

When the winds made your little leaves stir.

When your shade was full of the call

And nesting of birds, you were happy hearing the whir

Of their wings.

Oh, wings and summer days

Will miss you; and men, whose treeless ways
You gladdened in the dusty town.

I wish that we could keep your pleasant sheen;

I wish you need not fade and be cut down.

But buildings are more worth than vines, you know,

Old vine. Forgive this wasting of your precious green: Forgive us that we had to let you go!

ARCHES

Under the high-arching bridge

The shadow arch

Bends itself,

Curved

Down into the water;

And lies in the water

As motionless

As the arch above it is motionless:
Masonry of the dusk.

✓CONTINUANCE

What will you find

In the depths of the wind

What does it hold?

Fold on fold on flowing fold

Clasp it, and your fingers press

Continuance

Only a soft emptiness;
Only air is in your hand.
Yet this nothing may command
The purposes of men and seas,
Ordering them with a mighty ease;
With that same, that ancient power
That was born in time's first hour,
In the beginning of change and days.
But never its strength delays

Or grows old, or will weary or rest;

Nor the years diminish its wild invisible zest.

SKY-HUMOR

How many and many

Since the world began

Have sung of your beauty,

Moon!

Since the world began.

And now tonight

We call you ours,

Saying that your beauty belongs to us,

Dreaming that only ourselves

Have known your mystery.

Sometimes,

Under the hiding of the clouds,

Do you smile,

And laugh to yourself

At these people of the earth
And their imaginings?

Oh, but do not laugh at us unkindly,
Moon!

Remember how little time we live-
And you live so long!

THE LETTER

The words were beautiful, Before I had read them.

I laid my fingers along the edges, Over the fold your hands had foldedI laid my face to the face of my letter.

Softly came down and closed in about me A solitude,

A separate world;

In which was no sound or motion or being, Only the whispering of the paper

Stirring to life in my brain.

All day I carried it

Against me,

Like a bird;

Against my heart where my life is,

Like a secret waiting in my heart,

Singing.

KIN

Do

you also know it,

Did you catch the beam?
Have you felt the fire,

Has your day the dream?
Did you drink as I did?
Was it long ago?
Does your memory of it
Burn and glow?

Do you wait its coming,
Wish it back again?

Have you known the rapture?
Known the pain?

HEY NONINO

I will put on my gay dress,

My corals and locket;

On my hair a blue ribbon,

And my softest shoes.

I will go and dance

Where the mirror will show me;

I will go and dance

And turn myself and courtesy--
(Oh, the mirror will be glad!)—
And courtesy way way down,

Kin