Poems

Murmurings in a Field Hospital [They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel […]

Neighbors On Forty-first Street near Eighth Avenue a frame house wobbles. If houses went on crutches this house would be one of the cripples. A sign […]

Nigger I am the nigger. Singer of songs, Dancer. . . Softer than fluff of cotton. . . Harder than dark earth Roads beaten in the […]

Nocturne In A Deserted Brickyard Stuff of the moon Runs on the lapping sand Out to the longest shadows. Under the curving willows, And round the […]

Noon Hour She sits in the dust at the walls And makes cigars, Bending at the bench With fingers wage-anxious, Changing her sweat for the day’s […]

Old Timers I am an ancient reluctant conscript. On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans. On the march of Miltiades’ phalanx […]

Old Woman The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo From building and battered paving-stone. The headlight scoffs at the mist, And fixes its yellow rays […]

Omaha Red barns and red heifers spot the green grass circles around Omaha–the farmers haul tanks of cream and wagon-loads of cheese. Shale hogbacks across the […]

On The Breakwater On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting, She across his knee and they are looking face […]

On The Way Little one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers And amid the educated men […]