Sometimes
Sometimes a child’s voice crying on the street
Comes winging like an arrow through the wind
To pierce my breast with you, my baby, and
My pen is weak, and all my thinking dreams
Are mist of yearning for the touch of you.
TO MARIE SUKLOFF—AN ASSASSIN
In your lips moving fervently,
Your eyes hot with fire,
Life seems immortally young with desire,
Life seems impetuous,
Hungrily free,
Having no faith but its burning to be.
You could dance laughingly,
Draw where you move,
Hearts, hands and voices pouring you love.
Youth be a carnival,
Life be the queen,
You could go dancing and singing and seen!
Whence came that tenderness
Cruel and wild,
Arming with murder the hand of a child?
Whence came that breaking fire,
Nursed and caressed
With passion’s white fingers for tyranny’s breast?
In your soul sacredly,
Deeper than fear,
Burns there a miracle dreadful to hear?
Virgin of murder,
Was it God’s breath,
Begetting a savior, that filled you with Death?
TO AN ACTRESS
You walk as vivid as a sunny storm
Across the drinking meadows, through the eyes
Of stricken men, with light and fury mingled,
Making passionate and making young.
You drive the mists, and lift the drooping heads,
And in the sultry place of custom raise
The naked colors of abounding life,
And sound the crimson windy call of liberty.