Short Poems

Like a child engrossed in play, you sit, young mother, by the cradle, and your mock-serious face looks so childishly charming, childishly charming the face and childlike blue the eyes .
With smile-wreathed lips sleeps the child in the cradle; it is also time for the little lovely mother to retire ... Yet the little, lovely mother with her head nods: nay ...

Lord God! Thou art alone, I am alone, we are both alone. Flares forth Thy loneliness — a sun for the earth; but mine has burdened my shoulders, like a stone it falls before my feet .
Lord God! Thou comest from Thyself, I come from Thee, we come both from Thee. To Thee eternity is only a day — I carry my days but like borrowed goods — daily awaiting Thy call .
Lord God! Thou art in Thyself, I am in Thee — we are both in Thee. With my misery and anxiety I remain in Thee, I follow Thee, like a slave follows his master — until Thou summonest me .

Those on the top say they know you, Earth — they are liars.
You are my father, and the silence I work in is my mother.
Only the son knows his father.
We are alike — sweaty, inarticulate of soul, bending under thick knowledge.
I drink and shout with my brothers when above you —
Like most children we soon forget the parents of our souls.
But you avidly grip us again — we pay for the little noise of life we steal.

Where Milne wrote Pooh
Jones drowned.
Jones was a Stone

Houses are swaying and swimming light-grey, with damp gardens, silvery lighted streets; and people on thresholds of doors are bowing, smiling, fading, appearing and vanishing through the rainbow of tears .
A child is sitting at the window. In the moonlight the hair flows like dark rain. Stubbornly and clearly the eyes seek, as through a forest, my own, faraway figure .
O, why dost thou tremble, child, when I come toward thee?

My ancestors: Men in satin and in velvet, faces long and like pale silk; languishing, fervid lips. The thin hands patting yellowed folioes. In the depth of night they talk with God .
And merchants from Leipzig and Danzig. Blank cuffs. Delicate smoke of cigars. Gemarah jokes. German courtesies. The look is wise and faint, wise and surfeited. Don Juans, tradesmen and godseekers .
A drunkard, a few renegades in Kieff .

Says I, " John Morgan, where you been? "
Says I, " John Morgan, where you been? "
" Down on the Ohio a-tryin' to swim. "
Says I, " John Morgan, where's your hoss? "
Says he, " I lost it swimmin' across. "

Wine th' insensate Brain o'er-pow'rs —
To what hard Streights thy poys'nous Juice
The good old Dame does oft reduce,
When, sourly belching from her Pip

I

No roofs to rest your gaze on. Skyward ever more daringly. Ever higher the Tine. Severe. Viril. — — Chaotic moods. Tense, anti-gothic, business-like — donquixotic. Chance — style. Compact energies. Trapezes carved by daring wills. Worry of men. — — Grandiose in unbeauty. Derisive of smallness. Manifold in uniformity — Giant New York .

II

Leave me. Forget ... Like a rope there coils around me my longing for thee .
I dare not pull the rope with my own hand, to accelerate the end .
Indoors and on the streets my glance turns to everyone I meet: — Tighten somebody the noose!
But nobody sees. To thee I shall have to return and beg: Strangle me!