William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.
Dorothy
H
dart of a whip
lashing, nay, flicking,
nay, merely caressing
the hide of a heart—
and a broncho tears through canyons—
walls reverberating,
sluggish streams
shaken to rapids and torrents,
storm destroying
silence and solitude!
Her eyes throw black lariats—
one for his head,
one for his heels—
and the beast lies vanquished—
walls still,
streams still,
except for a tarn,
or is it a pool,
or is it a whirlpool
twitching with memory?
Her hair
is a tent
held down by two pegs—
ears, very likely—
where two gypsies—
lips, dull folk call them—
read your soul away:
one promising something,
the other stealing it.
If the pegs would let go—
why is it they’re hidden?—
and the tent
blow away—drop away—
like a wig—or a nest—
maybe
you’d escape
paying coin
to gypsies—
maybe—
Blue veins
of morning glories—
blue veins
of clouds—
blue veins
bring deep-toned silence
after a storm.
White horns
of morning glories—
white flutes
of clouds—
sextettes hold silence fast,
cup it for aye.
Could I
blow morning glories—
could I
lip clouds—
I’d sound the silence
her hands bring to me.
Had I
the yester sun—
had I
the morrow’s—
brush them like cymbals,
I’d then sound the noise.
Her body gleams
like an altar candle—
white in the dark—
and modulates
to voluptuous bronze—
bronze of a sea—
under the flame.