I painted on the roof of a skyscraper.
I painted a long while and called it a day's work.
The people on the corner swarmed and the traffic cop's whistle never let up all afternoon.
They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way--
These people on the go or at a standstill;
And the traffic cop a spot of blue, a splinter of brass,
Where the black tids ran around him
And he kept the street. I painted a long while
And called it a day's work.
People who live by the sea
understand eternity.
They copy the curves of the waves,
their hearts beat with the tides,
& the saltiness of their blood
corresponds with the sea.
They know that the house of flesh
is only a sandcastle
built on the shore,
that skin breaks
under the waves
like sand under the soles
of the first walker on the beach
when the tide recedes.
Each of us walks there once,
watching the bubbles
rise up through the sand
like ascending souls,
tracing the line of the foam,
People of the living God,
I have sought the world around;
Paths of sin and sorrow trod,
Peace and comfort nowhere found:
Now to you my spirit turns—
Turns a fugitive unblest;
Brethren, where your altar burns,
Oh, receive me into rest.
Lonely I no longer roam
Like the cloud, the wind, the wave;
Where you dwell shall be my home,
Where you die shall be my grave;
Mine the God Whom you adore;
Your Redeemer shall be mine;
Earth can fill my soul no more—
Every idol I resign.
Tell me not of gain and loss,
A night that cuts between you and you
and you and you and you
and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing
through a crowd. & nbsp; We won't
&nbs p;   ; look for each other, either-
wander off, each alone, not looking
in the slow crowd. Among sideshows
To those fixed on white,
White is white,
To those fixed on black,
It is the same,
And red is red,
Yellow, yellow-
Surely there are such sights
In the many colored world,
Or in the mind.
The strange thing is that
These people never see themselves
Or you, or me.
Are they not in their minds?
Are we not in the world?
This is a curious blindness
For those that are color blind.
What queer beliefs
That men who believe in sights
Disbelieve in seers.
O people, if you but used
Your other eyes
The Dove walks with sticky feet
Upon the green crowns of the almond tree,
Its feathers smeared over with warmth
Like honey
That dips lazily down into the shadow ...
Anyone standing in that orchard.So filled with peace and sleep,
Would hardly have noticed the hill
Nearby
With its three strange wooden arms
Lifted above a throng of motionless people
- Above the helmets of Pilate's soldiers
Flashing like silver teeth in the sun.
They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my color in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs
They did not recognize me,
Ah... Don't leave
The palm of my hand without the sun
Because the trees recognize me
Don't leave me pale like the moon!
All the birds that followed my palm
To the door of the distant airport
All the wheatfields
All the prisons
All the white tombstones
All the barbed Boundaries
All the waving handkerchiefs
All the eyes
Sleepless I listen to the surge and drone
And drifting roar of the town’s undertone;
Till through quiet falling rain I hear the bells
Tolling and chiming their brief tune that tells
Day’s midnight end. And from the day that’s over
No flashes of delight I can recover;
But only dreary winter streets, and faces
Of people moving in loud clanging places:
And I in my loneliness, longing for you...
For all I did to-day, and all I’ll do
To-morrow, in this city of intense
Arteried activities that throb and strive,
A RETURN TO THE COVER OF
THIS BOOK
Dear Trout Fishing in America:
I met your friend Fritz in Washington Square. He told me
to tell you that his case went to a jury and that he was acquit-
ted by the jury.
He said that it was important for me to say that his case
went to a jury and that he was acquitted by the jury,
said it again.
He looked in good shape. He was sitting in the sun. There's
an old San Francisco saying that goes: "It's better to rest in
SEA, SEA RIDER
The man who owned the bookstore was not magic. He was not a
three-legged crow on the dandelion side of the mountain.
He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seaman
who had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floated
there day after day until death did not want him. He had a
young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home in
Marin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, Richard
Aldington and Edmund Wilson.
He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky