AFTER YOUTH
Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth,
Exotic colors in the lamp-lit darkness of wet streets,
Musk and roses in the twilight,
The moon in the park like a golden balloon . . .
Then to awaken and find the shadows fled,
And the music gone . . .
Empty, bleak!
My soul has grown very small and shriveled in my body.
It no longer looks out.
It rattles around,
And inside my body it begins to look,
Staring all around inside my body,
Like a crab in a crevice,
Staring with bulging eyes
At the strange place in which it finds itself.
DEVIL'S CRADLE
Black man hanged on a silver tree;
White breast,
White face with blood on it,
Down by the river,
Slow river.
Black man creaks in the wind,
Knees slack.
Brown poppies, melting in the moonlight,
Swerve on glistening stems
Across an endless field
To the music of a blood-white face
And a tired little devil child
Rocked to sleep on a rope.
