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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Skipwith Cannéll

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Ikons

Skipwith Cannéll

I.
MY thoughts

Are little, silver fishes jumping in a row,

Little fishes leaping upon a black cloth

With a shark behind them.

O yellow eyes in the black sea!

Too deep lurk the great fishes,

I cannot sense them.

II.
I have spun me a chain of water

And about my throat I have bound it,

And a pendant of sand I have made

And hung it upon my breast,

And a cross from it.

For there is a sea that is like a lurking emerald,

And my soul is a river of black water that runs

Down to that sea.

III.
The eyes of evil men are like onyx or amber,

A necklace of stone tight round the throats of women.

Alas for the tears of evil men …

Black pearls upon a tablet of silver.