Lola Ridge

From “Chromatics”

THAT day in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks,

On the bloodied ooze of fields, plowed by iron,

(And the smoke, bluish near earth and gold in the sunshine,

Floating like cotton down)

Do you remember how we heard

All the Red Cross bands on Fifth Avenue,

And bugles in little home towns,

And children’s harmonicas bleating

AMERICA!—

And the harsh and terrible screaming,

And that strange vibration at the roots of us—

Desire, fierce like a song?

And after …

Do you remember the drollery of the wind on our faces,

And horizons reeling,

And the terror of the plain, heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun

Over us—threshing and twanging

Torn-up roots of the song?