Old lady talks,
Spins from her lips
Warp and woof
Of teapots, tables, napery,
Sanitary toilets,
Old bedsteads, pictures on walls,
And fine lace,
Spins a cocoon of this secondary life.

Warm and snug is old lady’s belly. 
Old lady makes Venus Aphrodite
Parvenue. 
Old lady
Arranges places for courtesans
In warm outbuildings on back streets.

NIGGER

Nigger with flat cheeks and swollen purple lips;
Nigger with loose red tongue;
Flat browed nigger,
Your skull peaked at the zenith,
The stretched glistening skin
Covered with tight coiled springs of hair: 
I am up here cold. 
I am white man. 
You are still warm and sweet
With the darkness you were born in.

THE MAIDEN MOTHER

He has a squat body,
Glowering brows,
And bulging eyes. 
Lustful contemplation of the meat pie
Is written all over his sweating face.

The thin woman with the meek voice,
Who has carried him so long in her body
And despairs of giving him birth,
Watches over him in secret
With bitter and resentful tenderness.

A PIOUS WOMAN

You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting
And smell candle wax and church incense. 
When she dies she must be burned. 
Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture
And get soggy,
As now she has a way of soaking up tears
Never meant for her.

A VERY OLD ROSE JAR

She ran across the lawn after the cat
And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow,
A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover. 
There was clashing of cymbals,
And the flash of nereids’ arms in autumn leaves. 
A sharp high note died out like an ascending light. 
Something sweet and wanton faded from the old maid’s lips—­
Something of Pierrot chasing after love,
A bacchante dying in her sleep,
A shadow,
And a gray cat.

THE NIXIE

He lies in cool shadows safe under rocks,
His eyes brown stones,
Worn smooth and soft,
But uncrumbled. 
He reaches forth covert child-claws
To tickle the silver bellies of the little blind fish
As they swim secretly above him. 
He laughs—­
The school splinters, panic stricken.

As we stare through the lucid gold water
He gazes up at us from his shadowy retreat
In combative safety. 
There are times when he pretends to himself that he is a god,
Water god, land god, god-in-the-sky. 
We cannot laugh at his grotesquerie. 
We are wistful before the pathetic gallantries of his
     imagination.

OLD LADIES’ VALHALLA