"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.

"Why not take two or three?"

"Take all you want. Good-looking books like that." He picked one fresh In virgin wrapper from deep in the box, And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness. He read in one and I read in another, Both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering The small book in my pocket. It was there. The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven At having eased her heart of one more copy-- Legitimately. My demand upon her, Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug. In time she would be rid of all her books.

I WILL SING YOU ONE-O

It was long I lay Awake that night Wishing the tower Would name the hour And tell me whether To call it day (Though not yet light) And give up sleep. The snow fell deep With the hiss of spray; Two winds would meet, One down one street, One down another, And fight in a smother Of dust and feather. I could not say, But feared the cold Had checked the pace Of the tower clock By tying together Its hands of gold Before its face.

Then came one knock! A note unruffled Of earthly weather, Though strange and muffled. The tower said, "One!" And then a steeple. They spoke to themselves And such few people As winds might rouse From sleeping warm (But not unhouse). They left the storm That struck en masse My window glass Like a beaded fur. In that grave One They spoke of the sun And moon and stars, Saturn and Mars And Jupiter. Still more unfettered, They left the named And spoke of the lettered, The sigmas and taus Of constellations. They filled their throats With the furthest bodies To which man sends his Speculation, Beyond which God is; The cosmic motes Of yawning lenses. Their solemn peals Were not their own: They spoke for the clock With whose vast wheels Theirs interlock.

In that grave word Uttered alone The utmost star Trembled and stirred, Though set so far Its whirling frenzies Appear like standing In one self station. It has not ranged, And save for the wonder Of once expanding To be a nova, It has not changed To the eye of man On planets over Around and under It in creation Since man began To drag down man And nation nation.

FRAGMENTARY BLUE

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)-- Though some savants make earth include the sky; And blue so far above us comes so high, It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

FIRE AND ICE

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

IN A DISUSED GRAVEYARD

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say: "The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme, Yet can’t help marking all the time How no one dead will seem to come. What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever And tell the stones: Men hate to die And have stopped dying now forever. I think they would believe the lie.

DUST OF SNOW

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

TO E. T.

I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a dream they brought of you,