Under the eaves of the gas-mart—swallows

fall into the day, wheel before the headless 

grooms of the formal wear shop, angle low

as my shoes, then comet up, sheer, careless

of traffic, all that is grounded or down.

A flight of leaf-blown cursives, blue coats

over dashing white, the red-rift of dawn

painted upon their crowns and busy throats.

I must learn to keep them with me, to hold,

somehow, their accomplished joy when I’m gone

to the city where I am mostly old 

and their song, under the noise of hours, is done.

But now, auto exhaust cripples the air

as my grey somnambulant bus draws near.

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear you body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again. 

The courage that my mother had

Went with her, and is with her still:

Rock from New England quarried;

Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore

She left behind for me to wear;

I have no thing I treasure more:

Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me

The thing she took into the grave!—

That courage like a rock, which she

Has no more need of, and I have.

For the dim regions whence my fathers came

My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.

Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;

My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.

I would go back to darkness and to peace,

But the great western world holds me in fee,

And I may never hope for full release

While to its alien gods I bend my knee.

Something in me is lost, forever lost,

Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,

And I must walk the way of life a ghost

Among the sons of earth, a thing apart;

For I was born, far from my native clime,

Under the white man's menace, out of time.