TWO POEMS
BY AMY LOWELL
SULTRY
To those who can see them, there are eyes:
Leopard eyes of marigolds crouching above red earth,
Bulging eyes of fruits and rubies in the heavily-hanging trees,
Broken eyes of queasy cupids staring from the gloom of myrtles.
I came here for solitude
And I am plucked at by a host of eyes.
A peacock spreads his tail on the balustrade
And every eye is a mood of green malice,
A challenge and a fear.
A hornet flashes above geraniums,
Spying upon me in a trick of cunning.
And Hermes,
Hermes the implacable,
Points at me with a fractured arm.
Vengeful god of smooth, imperishable loveliness,
You are more savage than the goat-legged Pan,
Than the crocodile of carven yew-wood.
Fisherman of men's eyes,
You catch them on a three-pronged spear:
Your youth, your manhood,
The reticence of your everlasting revelation.
I too am become a cunning eye
Seeking you past your time-gnawed surface,
Seeking you back to hyacinths upon a dropping hill,
Where legend drowses in a glaze of sea.
Yours are the eyes of a bull and a panther,
For all that they are chiseled out and the sockets empty.
You—perfectly imperfect,
