English

Like fish left in a shallow marshy lake
With silted opening to the living sea;
Beyond the reach of any ocean tides,
Or seasonal visitors from depths; cut off
From everything except the clouds above
And the slow change of seasons, or the rings
The deadly fisher or the stork might make,
Upon the surface of their stagnant mere —
The villagers dwelt in the hamlet close
By Sarah's house. Their passing half-shades fell
Translucently upon the shimmering sand,
Then drifted slowly into shadows while

But sorrow came for Sarah from his words,
For as her children grew from year to year
Their eyes were slowly closed to all her world.
They slipped by trivial things away from her:
Stephen's proud charity, the rector's boast,
Winners of prizes, much at Sunday school,
Employed on errands by the white folks round
Who whispered stories of their " origin, "
And made a point of saving them behind
The back of their proud mother, thankful yet
That so much interest had been made for them
At courts where she could never go at all.

Thus stood this tree, young fruit upon its boughs,
When by long chances devious to tell
One Stephen Oldfields, Fellow out of Kings,
Sauntered one sunny day down Sarah's lane,
And thought he saw an eclogue come to life,
Furnished with flocks and children, Sarah's house,
The flowers, and the cove, and " wine-dark sea. "
His was a soul that was as far removed
From Sarah's as the Alps from the Andes,
Opposing peaks on separate hemispheres,
Results of forces ships can never join.
Yet now in mid Atlantic they had met.

Oh, if you could have seen her! You would know
How Sarah triumphed in those full, firm years
Of latter youth and glorious womanhood —
How beautiful she was, and how she walked
With burdens on her head, firm from the waist,
Like maidens that look out from Athens' porch,
Princess of caryatids — how her brood,
Nimble and laughing, romped along the lane
Before her and behind her with wide eyes,
And lips apart to taste the honeyed breeze
Of its most delicate tang of happiness —
How smooth they were from water and the sun,

Thus Sarah snatched her mate out of the sea.
James Trevlock, he, a tawny Cornishman,
Tall, with the blood of sailors in his veins
From Tyre and Gades, and the Cornish ports
Where Penkevil looks down at Harry's Reach.
Truro, and Penryn River, and St. Mawes,
Trefusis, and Pendennis knew them well,
And saw their keels go out to all the world
From coracle to frigate after gain.
Keen at a bargain, and in trading wiles
Tinct with a trace of avid Semite blood
Sharpened with Celtic, set with giant thews

Summer, and summer — and three summers passed.
The cradle and its ghost were hid away.
A calm and rainless, scorching fall came on.
Even the cactus withered. Then one night
The waves down in the cove began to lisp,
Then whisper, and then hiss, then higher climb.
Breakers along the cliff broke into spray,
And hurried in with backs in oily ranks
That glittered underneath a copper sun,
As if the stagnant and reluctant sea
Somewhere, far off, was troubled. And a wind
Sucked through the parching grasses, and then rose,

When Simon died his young wife watched for him,
Scanning the shifting shadows of the sea
Three days upon the cliff, then called the dog
And went back to the house and sat alone.
She let her hands fall limply by her chair
As if all she had grasped ran out of them,
Till hunger barked at grief and roused her will.
Some mush she cooked, of which there was scant store,
And while the fire died, by the waning coals
She dreamed about the future; then lay down
To her first widowed sleep, and faced the day.

Old Sarah lived upon a patch of ground
Set on an island-peak that tops the sea
Some hundred feet or so, and then slopes down
Amid the hills of aquid atmosphere
Where fins are wings, and ever-hungry lives
Seem cruel utilities beyond our ken.
There other-beauty sickens in our eyes,
And sympathy dies at the water's edge
Where our experience halts — upon a star
That might have been all water — almost is.
Scarce can we sympathize from zone to zone.
Or pass from town to country with a heart

401. I feel open to writing in general.
402. I feel open to free writing, sestinas, and haiku.
403. I feel open to sonnets and canzones, villanelles and pantoums.
404. I feel open to collages and centos.
405. I feel open to memory and my dreams.
406. I feel open to recipes and headlines and found poems of all kinds.
407. I feel open to nonsense and I feel open to sense.
408. I feel open to lists and inversions.
409. I feel open to squirting KY Jelly on my brain, if necessary, to get things going.
410. I feel open to reading the slaves.

Darkness comes on my soul, O fair daughter of Toscar, I behold not the form of my son at Carun; nor the figure of Oscar on Crona. The rustling winds have carried him far away; and the heart of his father is sad. But lead me, O Malvina, to the sound of my woods; to the roar of my mountain streams. Let the chace be heard on Cona; let me think on the days of other years. And bring me the harp, O maid, that I may touch it, when the light of my soul shall arise. Be thou near, to learn the song; future times shall hear of me!