Isolde of the White Hands and her knights, holding their noses and laughing
at prisoners whose bellies soldiers open, pulling the guts into basins.

With broad bosom and hips, her head thrown back,
she parades, her high heels clacking,
having conquered troublesome youth and not yet afraid of age.

When I was four years old my mother led me to the park.
The spring sunshine was not too warm. The street was almost empty.
The witch in my fairy-book came walking along.
She stooped to fish some mouldy grapes out of the gutter.

Ships dragged into the opaque green of the sea,
visible winds flinging houses apart —
and here the poplar roots lifting the pavement an inch.

Kitten, pressed into a rude shape by cart wheels,
an end to your slinking away and trying to hide behind ash-cans.

The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves.
In the streets truck-horses, muscles sliding under the steaming hides,
pound the sparks flying about their hoofs.

They have built red factories along Lake Michigan,
and the purple refuse coils like congers in the green depths.

The girls outshout the machines
and she strains for their words, blushing.

Soon she, too, will speak
their speech glibly.

The sun was low over the blue morning water;
the waves of the bay were silent on the smooth beach,
where in the night the silver fish had died gasping.

We heard no step in the hall.
She came
sudden as a rainbow.