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Home  »  Others for 1919  »  The Flatterers

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Marsden Hartley

The Flatterers

I
THE CACTUS has grown young leaves

One and a half inches long

Since I came to live with it.

Its branches are like the claws of crabs

In a bed of seaweed.

Young rosehued shoots are coming

From the new green leaves.

I have divined their desires.

They would make huge boughs

Of soft green for you and me

To sit under,

And tell each other of ourselves

And of the world.

II
Outside the wall of this room,

The young tamerisk tree waves

Its feathery grey branches in the wind.

It has sent its coraldust blossoms to the ground.

They were like wafts of smoke from a tepee

In the morning just before the sun

Reaches the desert.

I sat one evening in the moonlight,

Under the tamerisk tree,

And listened to songs from the lips

Of a Mexican boy.

He told me afterward in broken English

The meaning of these songs.

I could have told him a richer meaning.

I could have told him of your presence

Inside the wall of this room.

I told him nothing of your presence.

It is enough the cactus and the tamerisk

are knowing,

And you, and I.