PS 3507 E84B5 BANNERS BABETTE DE-UTS CH W * V- • - BANNERS BABETTE DEUTSCH BANNERS BY BABETTE DEUTSCH NEW ^SdT YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY >&W83 > Copyright, 1919, By George H. Doran Company Printed in the United States of America APR 28 1919 N ^ ©CLA525290 TO MY MOTHER AND THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER For courteous permission to reprint certain of these poems, the author thanks the editors of The Dial, The Liberator, The Lyric, The Maccabcean, The Nation, The New Republic, The North Ameri- can Review, Pearson's, Poetry (Chicago), Reedy 's Mirror, The Seven Arts, The Smart Set, The Sonnet, and The Texas Review. CONTENTS THE DANCERS PAGE THE DANCERS 13 BACCHANAL 15 ANNA 17 A GIRL l8 EXILES 19 EPHEMERIS EPHEMERIS 23 MARBLES 25 TRAILS 28 GENRE . 31 GARDENS 32 OMBRES CHINOISES 33 DISTANCE 34 SMOKE 36 ROMANCE 38 TWO HOKKUS .....' 39 SHOWER 40 "TO AN AMIABLE CHILD " 41 THE DEATH OF A CHILD 43 SEA-MUSIC 44 HARMONICS 45 — ix — CONTENTS SONGS AND SILENCES page SONGS 51 SILENCE 52 FROM THE FERRY 53 WALLS 54 DAWN 55 CANDLES 56 LURES 57 SEA PIECE 58 PRELIBATION 59 SONNETS THE SILVER CHORD 63 SIC SEMPER 64 SOLITUDE 65 THE UNDELIVERED 66 ATHANATOS 67 SEVERANCE 68 THE PERFECTIONIST 69 TO RANDOLPH BOURNE 70 REDEMPTION 71 BANNERS BANNERS 75 THE CHALLENGER 78 ALIENS 80 king's PARK 82 june: 1917 85 the new dionysiac 88 BEAUTY . 90 PSALM FOR THE NEW ZION 92 ZORKA 96 ET LE BON DIEU PENSA 99 — x — THE DANCERS THE DANCERS From the grey woods they come, on silent feet Into a cone of light. A moment poised, A lifting note, Ofair! O fleet! Whence did you come in your amazing flight? And whither now Do you, reluctant, wistfully retreat? Oh surely you have danced upon the hills With the immortals. As an arrow thrills Thru the blue air and sings, You join with the proud wind, your fluent limbs As tameless as his wings. Within your hollowed hand you hold the draught That wakes us from our lingering lethargy To skyey joy Like yours, luring and swift and free. Yours is the birth in beauty that was sung A golden age ago; And now you come —13— BANNERS iTHE dancers — continued With pipe and timbrel and the quickening drum, Till men have hope of conquest over time And death and tears. Dreams know not any bars. You leap like living music thru the air And love triumphant treads among the stars. —14— THE DANCERS BACCHANAL Slowly to the altar . . . slow, As with heavy feet, Bound by a woe foreknown, Slowly we come. Our arms bear high Their bloomy burden, lift and loose them all; We shake our limbs free in the purple fall Of offering. The dark is torn with a cry. Oh we are mad, We are drunk with wine of the god. Our feet are athrill with the juice of the vine we have trod. Our arms are upflung, Our fingers are spread on the air; The scent of the grape in our nostrils; The wind in our hair. We are mad with our maidenhood; Night has come down on the hills. We dance for the god —15— BANNERS bacchanal — continued Where the music of mystery fills The hollows of earth, and the stars leap white in the sky. Our glad hands softly beat. With beautiful stamping feet We come. With flying hair; To face the awful joining, Throat lifted, pale knees bare. Slowly on the dark mountain-top Moving, More slowly now . . . Faint and vague are our traces, Trouble and halt in our paces Where wan dawn follows close. God, we are overthrown. Night breaks, we lie alone. Evoe ! Dionysos. —i 6- THE DANCERS ANNA Are there holier ones Than these? Is there a more fit altar for worship? Limbs of a young Aphrodite; The virgin torso; Feet firmly planted, Or lifted only in rhythm, Beating the ground like the clear Round golden notes of the cymbal; Fingers that draw the heart Like a flute that calls in the twilight; Brows serious, Serene, Hair wind-blown and dark, Lips that are parted slightly, A wondering god's; But this is a maiden. . . . This is the flyng torch For the maternal temple. ■17— BANNERS A GIRL You also, laughing one, Tosser of balls in the sun, Will pillow your bright head By the incurious dead. —i 8— THE DANCERS EXILES By what wind-loved grasses, By what grey sea Do they dwell, The restless ones, forever returning To the places their lovers remember? They are a moment seen, Tossing their golden balls, Or running far, far Beyond the sands where the skies vanish. They come again In the dawn twilight, In the bird-broken silences. But they are gone Ungathered — Cliff-flowers, The grace of foam Lost in the bitter green waters. ■19- EPHEMERIS EPHEMERIS EPHEMERIS Above the river in a summer swoon Hangs the still air, and in the warm embrace Of afternoon We too lie dumbly, full of soft delight. The grass is sweet to smell: We suck the white Fresh ends of it, and the green pleasant place Where we are lapped seems with that faint taste sweeter Than any poppied isle in remote seas To some divinely drowsy lotus-eater. Long, long We lie, and have no care for any human thing, Save for the snatch of song Where, bathing gaily, tawny-bodied boys Up fling The water round them ; or from a child at play Floats the shrill ripple of laughter far away. And then sharp stillness, pointed by the stir Of little winds among the boughs, wherethru The deep sky shines impenetrably blue. —23— BANNERS EPHEMERIS — continued Wrapped in that golden haze we weave at will The scents and airs of summer's subtle loom; Regretting but the moments as they pass, The perished bloom Of the wan day, that like the wind is gone; And in the growing hush we watch her die ; And watch, beneath the same impersonal sky The wimpled river flowing greyly on. —24— EPHEMERIS MARBLES The boys are playing marbles in the street; Crouched with gay eyes intent on the rough ground, Heedless of storming labyrinthal feet, Keen only for the lovely sound Of knocking balls And colors brightly blent. Glazed potties, blue and green and lavender, Gleam near pale stonies' warm eburnean; Like earth and splintered diamond, agates shine; Glassies are struck alive with sun; Blood-alleys glow like drops of frozen wine. Here beauty lies : a bracelet all unstrung For the March city While she smiles and stirs Above the eager gamble, knuckle-down, of her young jewellers. Marbles, and March, the tossing wind, and the click Of ball on ball, and wild tumultuous cries, —25— BANNERS MARB LES — co n tinned Anger and laughter, adventure ! A glance and a thumb's short flick: Rubies and amber and lustrous Carrara to win. Hope jigs in the heart. White house-tops sail in the skies. Romance winks from the dust where the colored alleys spin. The clangorous traffic drowns the hurrying crowd's Nervous relentless tread. Sunset climbs down the clouds. Day and the wind are dead. There are separate ways in the dusk, and lonely shrill farewells. To lamplit windows and his narrow bed Each goes, a trifle wistful. Yet each knows Prodigious spells To charm the hours between sun and sun. The bulging pockets grin ; the spoils in reach Of gloating sight and touch all night must lie. Each has by heart their palpable smooth speech, Their singing colors' lullaby. —26— EPHEMERIS marbles — continued Marbles, and March, and the dreams of a soft Spring night: Prizes of amber and ivory, lapis and jade. An arrow of moving light. . . . They rouse at the joyous noise Of kissing balls To the thrill of games unplayed. i— 27— BANNERS TRAILS Where grey-limbed timber mingled whispering boughs, The forest shadow splintering the sun, Warm-eyed and suddenly very young, you stood. Palpitant nostrils breathed the smell of wood: "Growing, or fresh-cut, It's the smell of home." You moved and put your arms around a tree And laughed at me. And the boy you were, From the highest branch that bore his weight, laughed back. Then swinging free, You were a man again, Taking me down the wild-grown track To the fishing-brook where Spring would find you, Forgetful of the jerking hook, Conjuring out of the dusk behind you The genii and the heroes of your book. "This little brook is a feeder of the river," You said, and with strange adult gravity —28— EPHEMERIS TRAILS — continued Led me beyond the pebble-bottomed stream With wise talk of log-rolling, pretty grains, And strong, elastic beams. Your voice, caressing The woods you named, echoed a boy's Excited treble, and recalled the boy Leaping and like a leaf aquiver With joy, since he was going up the river To spend a week-end at the lumber-camp. That was a place of magic, if you like. Hard bunks, coarse food (the bread in peasant- hunks Like fairy-tales) , the huge rough strength of men, The early morning hours as fresh and cool As if earth had been dipped into a pool And still were dripping with it. Best, the times when they were busiest, Too busy to be mindful of a boy, And only flung the word: "Watch out, there!" when They tightened ropes, let big chips fly, and then Cleared for the monstrous crashing, loud and clean. It had your mark on it, one branching oak: The trunk was like a totem with its signs. —29— BANNERS TRAILS — continued But when the boughs rubbed and the leafage spoke With wind, the sound was like the soft slow roar Of ocean breaking on a distant shore. The forest thinned and vanished, the sky changed ; The boy was nowhere, and the man estranged. I stood perplexed in your familiar haunts, An alien; Time, with subtle taunts, had banished me outside the magic wood. Wonderfully, All the bright life that we had known together: The concert-rooms, the gossip, The mad weather We tramped thru gaily, The fencing over cigarettes and tea, The sweet fierce quarrels in the gallery. . . , ; Paled, faded, was the memory of a mood. Only the boy was real, and he had fled, And you had followed him. But you are dead. —30— EPHEMERIS GENRE The undulant wind-shadowed water lips The weather-bitten wharf. Like anchored phantoms, ships Swing out from the warped slips, with a drowsy rhythm As of insects singing. Inland, the sunwarmed smell of grass Comes softly on. There is a presence as of hours that pass In silence, and inhumanly are gone. The grey haze does not lift. The river is wood-colored like the pier. A lonely shed Down by the water's edge gleams harshly red. The tide is full . . . the worn piles heave and drift. —31— BANNERS GARDENS Into the dropping sun as into a warm flower The strong sun breaks. Petals on glowing petals shower In gorgeous rain, Crimsoning windows, dyeing the passionless city With wild pomegranate stain. The tropic hour Fades slowly, Slowly the evening flower Puts forth its luminous blues and lucent jades, Opening only to withdraw and close Before the unfolding of night's velvet rose, Trembling with starry dews. Gold is the scentless garden of the sky, Imperishably bright. Yet we who lie under its glory, crushing the young grass, Turn from it, as from beauty in a glass, To the flowers that spring near us, that will die. —32— EPHEMERIS OMBRES CHINOISES The city misted in rain, dim wet flashes of light Strike thru the dusk ; vaguely thunders a train ; The cabs rattle and slip over the glimmering street. Under the wheels and hooves and hurrying feet The darkly shining pave Reaches into the night. On blackness color flames: purple and blurs of red Like fruits of faery bloom, Yellow soft as honey and gold, green as tho crushed emeralds bled, Arctic blue in pale cold ribbons Lost in gloom. Wind, and across the shaken lanterns The obscure shadows loom. —33-* BANNERS DISTANCE Two pale old men Sit by a squalid window playing chess. The heavy air and the shrill cries Beyond the sheltering pane are less To them than roof-blockaded skies. Life flowing past them : Women with gay eyes, Resurgent voices, and the noise Of pedlars showing urgent wares, Leaves their dark peace unchanged. They are innocent Of the street clamor as young children bent Absorbed over their toys. The old heads nod; A parchment-colored hand Hovers above the intricate dim board. And patient schemes are woven, where they sit So still, And ravelled, and reknit with reverent skill. And when a point is scored —34— EPHEMERIS distance — continued A flickering jest Brightens their eyes, a solemn beard is raised A moment, and then sunk on the thin chest. Heedless as happy children, or maybe Lovers creating their own solitude, Or worn philosophers, content to brood On an intangible reality. Shut in an ideal universe, Within their darkened window-frame They ponder on their moves, rehearse The old designs, Two rusty skull-caps bowed Above an endless game. —35— BANNERS SMOKE Because it is evening, Because the last light lies In fading warmth on the housefronts and the grey street, Because the night clouds are overcoming the skies, The air comes sweet With the savor of a rare and delicate wine. Ambiguously I repeat The vain old pageant's movements, nor resist The soft demands of eyes. On a loud corner I may pause to stare After the massed backs of the moving throng; Swing to the syncopation of a song; Listen to the chatter of hurrying feet; And send delicate smoke into the air, Regarding the first lamps on the pale thorough- fare. I snuff the dust mingled with the perfume Of women of fashion; Taste night's early breath, -36- EPHEMERIS smoke — continued And the city's bloom. Because life is so barren of passion, I would sense death. Beauty passes like smoke on the wind, and delight Is sharp as the last puff of an exquisite cigarette. And should I fret because the vulgar night, With lost emotions and stale poignancies, Stabs with the chill acuteness of a knife Offering life ? —37" BANNERS ROMANCE There are shy woods Of quickening thin boughs, Pale jade, alive. There is a wind, A tempest and a roar of beaten waters, Agape with laughing fangs. There is a darkness, Tender, terrible. Gestic, or I remember. . . i? —38— EPHEMERIS TWO HOKKUS Answer You ask for a hokku. Ask for silence, rather. It is like trying to ride past the sun. It is like the words of farewell Before a final parting. Screen Pattern The hounding wind Runs shrieking thru the dark.; From a black cloud The moon gleams like a tiger Amber-eyed. -39— BANNERS SHOWER From the clear melancholy sky The rain Drops in long shaken sheets, And softly hops on the wide, glistering streets, And dully flows Through emptied thoroughfares, Where a few solitary cabs parade Like slow defeated ghosts none living knows, For whom none living cares. Till lightning quivers and harsh thunder breaks On startled ears And wakes Old wonders and old fears. The huddled folk Stare outward at wind-swollen gusts And the down-driven smoke, And at the sky, Defended by complacent surety Of a near hour when they need not pause For drenching winds and bolts beyond their laws. —40— EPHEMERIS "TO AN AMIABLE CHILD" You were an amiable child. Not as the other children were, Petulant, pouting, You would wear your half-grown wisdom With an air of humor; And you laughed less than you smiled. And you were largely tolerant Of company and rainy days and common games. you did not want. You were so still, but radiant When life was good. And more than food or play, Music you loved, and motion and Beauty you could not understand In voice and face and golden weather. Yet sometimes for whole days together You wore your silence like a shield; You who could yield As graciously to death as to your nurse At bedtime, hopeful of prodigious dreams. Now here you lie. —41— BANNERS "to an amiable child" — continued But too unmindful of sweet dreams or waking, For all the birdsongs and the blossoms breaking Above your grave, Or wondering strangers making What tale beseems your faint quaint epitaph. Now rank sods cover The dust of lovely limbs, and all the show Of your beloved ways is strangely over. Yet there's some comfort in the world to know That you were dear and fair, and still must be Remembered so. —42^ EPHEMERIS THE DEATH OF A CHILD Are you at ease now, Do you suck content From death's dark nipple between your wan lips? Now that the fever of the day is spent And anguish slips From the small limbs, And they lie lapped in rest, The young head pillowed soft upon that indurate breast. No, you are quiet, And forever, Tho for us the silence is so loud with tears, Wherein we hear the dreadful-footed years Echoing, but your quick laughter never, Never your stumbling run, your sudden face Thrust in bright scorn upon our solemn fears. Now the dark mother holds you close ; „ . . o, you We loved so, How you lie, So strangely still, unmoved so utterly, Dear yet, but oh a little alien too. —43— BANNERS SEA-MUSIC There is a place of bitter memories Dreary and wide and lonely as the sea, Foaming and moaning; there they come to me Like wild gulls crying sea-taught monodies ; . . . Iron-winged hours, heavy, heavy with dread; Dawn after death; the sound of a shut door; And shining love that has a withered core ; The eyes of those who fight and starve for bread. There is doom, and change, and silence, and deny- ing; Memories of these pluck at the heart of me. And over the bitter roar of the old dumb sea The air is filled with the noise of wild gulls crying. ^-44" EPHEMERIS HARMONICS I have come here to be free for an hour or two, To relinquish to a darkness richly lit, To the silken movement of infiltering crowds, The music, the noisy thrill of dischords preluding it,— The morning's fret and the night's restless argu- ment. The quarrelling strings and the dim stage are kind, Rest is in the curtain's velvet fall. Lovely indifferent strangers put poverty out of the mind. The mutter of traffic is exquisitely drowned By the low bright liquid swell of belling sound. I forget . . . The miles of mud, The barren world of mud And fire; pulling at the boots and biting at the flesh. The watery world Of sinking corpses. The filthy dawns, —45— BANNERS harmonics — continued The flames that crack darkness open and limbs apart. The monstrousness of the unthinkable dead, The unthinkable living. The estrangement from known face and places, The going home to a heap of stones ; The monotonous machinery of hell. I had forgotten. . . . The music abruptly stopped, Chatter arose and applause. I was aware Of moving heads, of the close fragrant air, The flutter of a programme dropped. I had forgotten the concert-hall And why I was there. I passed to the red-lamped exit, And hearing the newsboys cry Beckoned. The pennies jingled; all at once it seemed Terrible to live, But curious to die ; And over the music and under the roar of the street The headlines were nothing but print that screamed. — 46— EPHEMERIS HARMONICS — continued There was a sound of war And of defeat. I stood there staring at the sunset sky. —47— SONGS AND SILENCES SONGS AND SILENCES SONGS I would make songs for you: Of slow suns weighing Thru pale mist to the river, overlaying Gold upon silver tissue ; or the hush Of winter twilight when the bushes quiver Blooming with birds; Of the easy snow; Of patient streets, or the theatric glow Of lamps on crowding faces in the night; Of sudden gay encounters without words; Of sorrow quiet in a huddled fight; Of the release of April winds; Of death, That is a stillness without peace, — Like love, wherefor I am so dumb to you. —51— BANNERS SILENCE Silence with you is like the faint delicious Smile of a child asleep, in dreams unguessed: Only the hinted wonder of its dreaming, The soft, slow-breathing miracle of rest. Silence with you is like a kind departure From iron clangor and the engulfing crowd Into a wide and greenly barren meadow, Under the bloom of some blue-bosomed cloud; Or like one held upon the sands at evening, When the drawn tide rolls out, and the mixed light Of sea and sky enshrouds the far, wind-bellowed Sails that move darkly on the edge of night. -52— SONGS AND SILENCES FROM THE FERRY The wind blew salty from the bay, Darkly the river rose, Lights on the farther shore were pale As when the first star shows. Our faces lifted to the night, The air was like a boon ; We were as close as lovers are, And alien as the moon. —53- BANNERS WALLS The cliffs were terrible. Black flint Rearing upon the sky; In futile patterns shadowy boughs Laced their immensity. We moved at the dark granite foot; In our old bantering tone We talked and laughed. Beside us, truth Stood with a face of stone. —54— SONGS AND SILENCES DAWN Over hushed lawns a pale grey arch, Vague walls took sharper form; Beyond, the quiet water lay, Flickering dark and warm. Farther, the city: clustered lights, Dimmed where the sky-line glows; Sleep hovered on the freshened air; You laughed ... the new sun rose 4 —55— BANNERS CANDLES Joy lights the candles in my heart When you come in, until it seems The racing flames must fill the room With Marathons of gleams. The place where we are met is gay And glowing with the darting rout, Till going, you swing wide the door, And blow them out. —56- SONGS AND SILENCES LURES Swart rusty pine-boughs hold Thin threads of pallid gold. At the white high-road's turn Coppery bushes burn. The sky is clear and green. The light is hard and keen. But sharper, shriller, cries Jour absent face . . .your eyes. -57- BANNERS SEA-PIECE Dunes overthrown by the wind lie prone to the twilight; Held in the foam-darkened hollows and softly moving Over the pallid sea-marge in slow resurgence Whispers the ocean. Threads of foam in the fine sands lingering faintly Sink as we watch. The touch of the air is colder. Swift the oncoming clouds. Your lips upon my lips Salt with the sea-wind. —58— SONGS AND SILENCES PRELIBATION Ghostly scent of boughs that stir in the darkness, Fresh the fine dark dews, the thick stars distant, Earth one star that swings in the luminous heavens : These are our terror. Blind and bright, they look upon nameless lovers; In their light the ravishing years are looming; You must go from my arms. One will take you, Death, or estrangement. —59— SONNETS SONNETS THE SILVER CHORD A frosty silence, blank as the wide spaces Of drifted snow, broods on the brilliant air. Green lakes of ice lie in the white embraces Of wind-swept meadows, under skies as bare. Beyond, shrouded in smoky rose, the hills. A pale, bright sun, enmeshed in sombre boughs, Threads these with ruddy haze. And quiet fills The hollows where the shadow-bringers drowse. Quiet is resonant as some deep bell; Beauty like music echoes in the brain. The snow-lit clarity is palpable. Here is profound appeasement . . . here is pain. Only the infinite impersonal moves So poignantly the finite heart that loves. —63— BANNERS SIC SEMPER Hush broods on the pale fields under the spell Of the dim sky and its half-hearted stars. Only the dwindling winds in their soft swell Stir the dark boughs and their flung shadow-bars. All hidden lights, all muffled noises seem To lie beyond the grey horizon's edge. Here is the timeless silence of a dream, And we two ghosts who keep a wordless pledge. But with so small a warning, suddenly Fragrance swoops down upon us like a storm That leaves us clutching, clinging humanly; With your two arms about me, tense and warm. And the sweet night is hid, as by a wall, And love, low-voiced, fierce-fingered love is all. —64— SONNETS SOLITUDE There is the loneliness of peopled places: Streets roaring with their human flood ; the crowd That fills bright rooms with billowing sounds and faces, Like foreign music, overshrill and loud. There is the loneliness of one who stands Fronting the waste under the cold sea-light, A wisp of flesh against the endless sands, Like a lost gull in solitary flight. Single is all up-rising and down-lying; Struggle or fear or silence none may share; Each is alone in bearing, and in dying; Conquest is uncompanioned as despair. But I have known no loneliness like this, Locked in your arms and bent beneath your kiss. -6s— BANNERS THE UNDELIVERED Out of the night an angry woman crying, A typist clicking on, the clink of glass, Laughter, a tenuous music, all denying The whole dark silence of the sky. These pass; The lighted windows blacken, one by one ; The stealthy noises of the late hours cease ; Anger and business, mirth and love are done; Safe in sleep's umber envelope of peace. Safe, as in death, they lie ; tho with day's breaking They stir uneasy limbs once more, and know The dull familiar trouble of awaking, And all night's soft forgettings swift to go. They have had release; but the unsleeping, these Are prisoners who have thrown away the keys. —66- SONNETS ATHANATOS When you have known the swing of every ship ; Obeyed brute winds on loud enormous seas; Lingered to watch the hungry waters lip Bold foreign quays; and wearied of all these: Wearied of changing lights and changing faces, And the perennial sun, rising and setting; Rapt from the lure of unfamiliar places, Adventure will be finding and forgetting. After a hundred cities' shifting streets, After lost landmarks, charred with blackened fire, When pulses falter, shamed by small defeats, There is an end of labor and desire. Art fades, wars fail, and shrinking tides depart; Nothing endures but the compassionate heart. _6 7 - BANNERS SEVERANCE In the fierce rhythm of love we two were swung As tho to hidden music, while the flood Of our insurgent passion throbbed and sung To the staccato thrilling of our blood. All else was silence : silence in the trees, Deep silence in the meadows, and the sky One vast dark arch of silence. All these Quiet before our close-locked bodies' cry. Yet a rebellious brain could question still, Weaponed with fear and with proud reason, come To thwart and torture love's blind-lidded will, To sunder those strained limbs, quivering and dumb. And I could taste estrangement in your kiss; Embraced, we could yet seek, and seeking, miss. —68— SONNETS THE PERFECTIONIST Among the vain confusion of the crowd He bore like wind, with sudden music fraught; Following beauty like a fiery cloud Beyond to the far, frozen peaks of thought. As ice, his lucid passion burned and shone, Wherein he saw the vulgar pageant pass: The shadow of God, and kindling, stared upon His own stern image wavering in the glass. The vision broke. Crashing in fragments round him, His insubstantial universe came down. His mirrored self was splinters to confound him, He struggled blindly, seeing himself drown. But the dark face of God he sought to see Wore death's grotesque familiarity. -6 9 - BANNERS TO RANDOLPH BOURNE So you are dead. Forever foreign now; Yet more accessible than when you moved, With awkward ambling steps and ominous brow, Among the furniture of life you loved. You were so fragile and so pitiless; The games we played with you were rich in dread: You had a devil — and a god, I guess. Now you are proud no longer, being dead. You scorned the ivory tower, yet obeyed Truth with most monkish fervor, in a cell Cramped as your joys. And precious as a maid, Your lonely mind was incorruptible. Your diamond flame burned keen; but now you are Familiar as the fire of a star. —70- SONNETS REDEMPTION Like children wakeful in the night, alert For some sad sound of the deserted street, We too discard our toys, and stare, inert, At walls of black estrangement and defeat. We sicken with the sound and smell of war. Among our best, devouring fingers thrust; And life is hateful, bitter at the core. The world goes out — a candle in a gust. We are in the dark, and terrified or tired, As those who move, with groping hands, to bed, Rather than any joy we once desired, We crave the long blind void of being dead. But in a curving limb, a choric cry, Beauty throbs stronger than the will to die. —71— BANNERS BANNERS BANNERS ("The national colors, with their eagles, have given place to plain red flags, one of which floats over the famous Winter Palace, where the Duma will now meet." Newspaper clipping; March, 1917.) When on the sun-spawned earth First the mothering light Dawned on her dark, What stirred in the dark? The brute was groping there, Lured from his rock-hewn home By the beckoning spark. A slow, earth-smattered thing, With the smell of the earth on his hair — His, in the dawn of the world, His, in a cave impearled, His was the first great spring To the red dawn, to the fire. The caves are buried. The mammoth-hunter —75— BANNERS banners — continued Is dust upon the dust he trod. Yet here upon a richer sod The serf of later ages, burnt with toil, Stood free, And saw the fruits of his own soil Glowing like dawn. And here the cities see Among their clustering lights and smoke, new days, New freedoms, and new slavery. But now, as from beneath the deep earth-floor The seed of flame beats upward, raging higher, Now breaks the noise of people roused to war, Who take their own like fire. Their flag is fire: Color of the red sun On the horizon of the cave-man ; one With the color that is spilled over the earth In every battle, with every shuddering birth. Blood of the beaten slave, of the faithful crucified, Blood sapped from the worker, blood of all who died To nourish the new soil wherefrom should spring The unknown desired thing. This flag a nation takes, to stud -76- BANNERS banners — continued The battle-fields with beauty. Oh when you behold it whipping in the wind, Color of dawn and of your own heart's blood, Soldiers, Will you not rise From earth-trench and sea-hollow where you keep Your tryst with death, And wake out of your sleep, And see with the cave-man's eyes That the day is here, and this is the sunrise ! Come, as the brute from the dark, with a mighty leap To the red dawn, to the light. —77- BANNERS THE CHALLENGER I SHALL give you the keys to the gates of the four winds, To the temple of the sun. The ocean arches Will fall, The night will crumble. Cities of men will lie, puny toys, to your hand. In. the palpitant earth, In the clashing of waters, Crying in the quenchless skies Rises your will. Red, a leaping fire; Cold, a sword. Am I a god that you worship? A lover that you pant toward me? Am I death, whose lap is slumber? You do not know me. In the void you seek, In the furtive darkness, -78— BANNERS THE CHALLENGER — continued In pain, glory, adventure. I cast time behind me, the rind of the fruit. I go naked and happy To the fearless peaks, The brooding. You do not see The night of the womb. You do not hear The voice of the lightning. You do not clasp The body of war. I shall bring you to the gates of the four winds. I shall open to you the temple of the sun. -79— BANNERS ALIENS The mad go softly- Hidden in terror. Their fear protects them. Yet they are lonely. Oh, lonely ones, Who heed neither Harsh skies nor cruel people Who go, dancing or crying, Forever solitary, You I love better Than the sane, Who are one voice and one movement of multi- tudes. You, Tamerlane, Astride Asia, You with the whip; You living secretly With shame, the dark bedfellow; —80— BANNERS ALIENS — co n tinned You, on the fringe of the crowd, Fleeing the empty day; You in the dark of the wind On the sounding mountains. You have no commerce with death, The world-devourer, the worshipped. You are alone. Night hides in your eyes. Silence Clasps you. The mad do not hunger. In them is chaos crying. Their flesh does not yearn with a sweet ache. They would hold the sun from the heavens. The mad do not sleep. Their destroying laughter Breaks their dreams. The mad go softly Hidden in terror. Their fear protects them.j —8 1- BANNERS KING'S PARK One by one they come into the room, Silent, strange, with incurious glances. Some are gay, with a child's irrelevant laughter, But most, shut off From the winter sunlight and the sound of human voices, Incredibly remote. One schemes for wealth ; one boasts, remembering Gossip and rhymes and lovers of old time, Till like a wilful girl she runs away, A childish joke upon her hanging lip. But the dreadful dignity of one Is consummated by his utter stillness. His pale eyes fix an immanent world, No flicker Of light, no needle-point of pain Reaches him where he stays, removed, immobile, Bound by what grief none knows, Or if a wanderer in some dread labyrinth none penetrates Its great blind wall. —82— BANNERS king!s park — continued Trembling old men, and dull-eyed boys, and women Who have outlived a lingering prettiness, They are all here, Silly and wild and mute, but all are mad. All chatter out of tune With time and memory; All play with broken toys, ardors and fears That have no meaning in them. All their eyes Are bent on vacancy or on the ground As tho to pull out of blank space the thing They clutch at, but can never touch. They are the prisoners of their own souls, Dwelling in a yet more horrid jail Than even human savagery builds for human savages to suffer in. Well, and are they for this a race apart From those who pity and hate their tragic case? Has none of these slain his own children, none Been plundered or else plundered prudently? Has never one Lost virtue or courage, maybe failed in both? Has none if such befell Not borne the burden? Or have all been still, —83— BANNERS king's park — continued Serene, and brave, nor cared for anything That happened to them in their careful lives? That's a blind alley. But one thing is plain: There are walls too thick for intercourse, and walls Too thin for privacy, and walls Not to be climbed this side eternity; and we all live in walled cities. There's a sound of festival Or there's a noise of war, And sometimes shattered stones come tumbling down And leave us in an open desolate place Where nothing moves But fear. ^84— BANNERS JUNE: 1917 (class day poem) As one who from the dark Star-crowded sky Turns, to renew his sense Of the rough earth he knows, and human faces, So from the vasts of wisdom we stand back, Amazed by searching impotence. But as the man who stares into the void Cannot forget The wonder and the hush and the desire Of the stupendous spaces pricked with fire, We grope among our commonplaces, Star-blinded yet. For we have seen Out of time's ashen dawn, the brute Clamber along his lonely cliffs, to light The fire that would not die till it had fought Slow centuries of night, And shown The first man's passionate children struggling on Fiercely to goals unknown. -85— BANNERS JUNE: 1 9 17 — continued Shut from the personal battle, we have striven With all the war-scarred nations, and been driven Across all weathered continents and seas. And breathless, we have watched the alchemies Of all the wonder-workers. We have heard Oceans throbbing shells With every word and pulse of truth. And words have been Our toys and tools. Whatever we have wrought Has been in the enkindling strife of thought. But now the sun Marks off the day with shadows. We must go From our golden playground, Into the streets of unfamiliar woe And miserable death. Yet we have watched The stars leap from the mother-orb, And man, rejoicing in the earth that bore him, run To worship, dancing. And those few, By whose heroic gesture the world broke BANNERS june: 1917 — continued From slavery, We have beheld them too, And something in us woke Once That will wake again at the thought of these. And there will stir in us at the memories Of them The old strong will, We shall have done with the ancient agonies. Something there is in us to answer the thrill Of things untried, and a dream like a flag un- furled Beckoning on, wins the youth in us still, The spirit, moving ever to things unseen, Moving us too, Youth overcoming the world ! -87- BANNERS THE NEW DIONYSIAC Tawny, swift, silent, comes October, with her nights like tightened drums. The hunter stalks the hills. . . . Thrown to the great blind sky Shrills the new Dionysiac, and beats The old, nocturnal cry. Thru the deep mountains sound Echoes like autumn thunder, Storming of feet that hound, Voices of joy that wound Men's minds with savage wonder. Out of the ancient years Plucked from the mystic vine, Plucked with a sword for shears, Pressed with brooding and tears, Theirs is the utter wine. The unforgotten places, The paths that their sisters trod BANNERS the new dionysiac — continued Are theirs, and the woven traces Theirs, and under their paces The very body of God. The winds and the night, the fire and the singing fail. The fury falters, the dancers falter and cease. They have crowned the darkness with splendor; With a red veil They have bound the brows of the hills; And filled the night With torches and triumph, with laughter and lifted knees. Out of the tumult of the darkness, dawn Comes, wan as these, With wine-red feet unshod. Sprung from the death they scattered, as a god In terror and beauty: Peace. -89- BANNERS BEAUTY Beauty is kindled like a fire Flung on our common moments: A bright spur To wingless, lapsed desire. She is briefly seen In the untarnished sky, And in the liquid amber and evening green, Or in blue-glooming dusk that falls As a madonna-cloak, and holds The hushed world wound In blue voluptuous folds. She is not married to the stars, But glows In rusty boughs that stain the quiet snows ; In pearly streets, dim-lit; In shop-windows Shining with glamorous things that cry for touch And thrilling ownership. All rainy nights are hers. She vastly flows In frozen rivers slow to find the sea. —90— BANNERS BEAUTY — continued And in the moving wind invisibly Unstable stirs. And she is caught In music, vibrant in the violin, In the full choir And the unequal, thin Chant of a child, and in young laughter or Words singing on a wire. She leaps with fluent limbs And subtly lies In gesture and the tangent beam of eyes. She wavers in slow eddying bands of smoke, In glimmering shape, and in the rhythmic stroke Of swimmers. And her breath Is fresh with forest-smells. Twisted in sinuous roots, or bodiless On friendly odors borne, And like the autumn sky alight with death, Great beauty dwells. But tho she wear the very sign of doom, Like Bacchus' broken body scattered far, She yet shall work her will And in recurrent wonder she shall bloom. Not the unchanging godhead, the fixed star, But the windy torch, and the pulse and thrill That all eternal are. —91— BANNERS PSALM FOR THE NEW ZION Lift up your voices, daughters of Zion! Sing and rejoice with cymbals. Bind with fillets of silver, with leaves of gold And flowers of lapis and coral The brows that are smiling. Sound the low drums now. Blow the pipes for the dancing. Zion is risen again, Zion as a queen who was sleeping, Zion as a conqueror home from the heavy wars. For the years of your exile are done. From the footless route of the dunes, From the aching dark of the Ghettos, From the place of the scourge, Emerging, A moving river of faces, Proud blood that dumbly shouts, You return To the tents of your fathers, To the fields that mock the sunset skies with their beauty, —92— BANNERS psalm FOR THE NEW zion — continued To the mountains that rise like the sisters of happy giants, The mist-woven mountains of joy. Is it more than a dream. . . . In the shadow of the olives To look on the vine-wrapped hillocks Where the wine ripens in silence; To rest and to hear far off The soft song of the peasants; To ignore the gates of the pale At the sound of the twilight bell; To lean on the bridge and care for no one who passes; To give your wisdom the sinews of strength; To put the seal of the Pharaohs on the finger of your young wisdom. Sing, daughters of Zion, Sing and rejoice in the streets. For your mother is come, who was mourned for As Joseph in Egypt, . Sold to the thieves to be a slave of the nations ; Her brothers look upon Zion, Giver of loaves and honey, The companion of princes. ~93— BANNERS psalm for the new zion — continued Zion is wakened, is risen. His eyelashes wet with the dew-fall. His limbs are girdled with lilies, His loins with the sheep-skin. His mouth is sweeter than roses, And his hair thick as the grape-leaves. Zion comes down from the mountains. In his breast there is slumber; But his heart is hot as the desert, Fierce as beasts in the thicket His riotous blood. Zion stands in the sun. Go, greet him with music, Clap your hands and your anklets. Dance till your garments flutter like white doves in the sunshine. He will give you young males Like lions. He will give you daughters like lilies, His kiss is honey and fire. Lift up your voice, oh Zion, For he returns as a lover Thru the eager dark, Like music; —94— BANNERS psalm FOR THE NEW ZION — continued The heart of the night is a song; And the morning Over the wild bright mountains Moves like a dancer. —95— BANNERS ZORKA "So the Orient door Was bolted by the Turk. Spices and ivory, black slaves, Chinese jades: The prizes Europe hungered for, Locked fast, until the last Crusades Belligerent for the cross that was the key. . . ." But a thousand years have passed Since that was told. History seems a tarnished age of gold. Time goes so slowly, there is so much suffering, So many scatterings, and such small ease in tears For the monstrous things Of a thousand years. Now the old kings are fled. They have gone in a sudden panic from their thrones. Death plays the triangle upon their bones. But the dark multitudes Who slowly file to the red funeral - 9 6- BANNERS zorka — continued Drown out his music with their conquerors' tread, Singing, with bloody banners over the common dead. Imperial majesty is fallen away To a purple cloak over a little clay. And holiness is gone from sacred places. Kaiser and czar, sultan and shah and sheik Are broken figure-heads upon the tide Of Bolshevik insurgence, in its wide, red flood From Petrograd, from Samarkand. . . . Europe holds Asia with a rope of sand. Out of earth's rocky craters, Blind with grime, From the dark furrows lifting startled brows, When the vast wheels and the hungry machines are still, Men listen to the striking of a new time Bolder than all the guns. In the grim dawn it sounds, And with the sun's slow whitening breaks upon the millions sleeping, And wakes them to old wounds, And to a silence louder than all weeping. —97— BANNERS ZORKA — co n tinued The East is red once more, Redder than war, As from the iron vigil, morning lifts A beautiful rebellious head. —98- BANNERS ET LE BON DIEU PENSA . . . Being past His first youth, When He had used strong hands To rend the dark, And blown on the stars like coals, Being past the time When He had swung earth by its fiery strands, — And seeing the little playthings He had wrought: Finished stone honey-combs, And the splendor of His thought Borne in frail ships looping the seven seas, God sat and smiled At the games that He had loved when God was a child. But now He was tired. He was middle-aged, And He did not care To build proud cities out of fluted sands, To traverse space for the sake of the sky's red fruit, Or boisterously to shout Like a young giant holding The world by its bright hair. —99— BANNERS ET LE BON DIEU pensa — continued He sat down in heaven Smoking hugely in His chair. But there were one or two things that troubled God. He still remembered His youth with joy, Tho He knew He had been less happy as a boy Than when He was older. But His griefs, like His other passions, had grown colder. He smoked, and pondered on His universe. It was not like His plan, Perhaps not worse, . . . And yet, He stared at the earth And suddenly He shook with wonderful mirth : It was filled with so many of His little idols — man. He had made this one thing in His image. It was like Himself in the first rough power of youth. It considered the various suns And the other things He had made As its own. It was not afraid even of Him. And that was the truth. He smoked and smoked. He wondered why He had cared — ioo — BANNERS ET LE BON DIEU pensa — continued To give it more than He gave To the nebulous worlds Or the lightning Or the fierce lovable brutes. He wondered how He had dared. For man was the cleverest creature He had made, And the meanest, too. And He sighed, sitting up there in heaven, Over His pipe, And all He had intended to do. Now He was middle-aged, Probably that was the reason He felt so old and despaired Of all the fine traps He had laid And the poor things He had caught and caged. But He took another long pull, And He thought again, There were all the stars, And the planets, There was the sun, and the moon that was dead. There was that fantastic earth, And its multiple creatures, Forever dying and forever coming to birth, The monstrous tropic beasts, The ocean's million fins, — 101 — BANNERS ET le bon dieu pensa — continued The million wings that fan the ambient air, The numberless exquisite microscopic, everywhere. And there was still man. God laughed noiselessly, as only God can. He was wondering why He had made man at all, So, His thought wandering to the story of the fall, He reached out carelessly and plucked an apple Of pale golden lustre, from the sky. And as He munched with solemn satisfaction He was still bothered by the mystery Of His small idol. For it was intricate and delicate And had an ancient history Bloody and beautiful and adventurous. And God wondered why He had made it thus, And why He was in such simple slavery To the thing He had made. He threw away the core, And felt His years, and just a touch afraid. He thought of His long sacrifice to man, And how He had bowed to this idol, Fasted and prayed, And shaken before its power, And how He had had faith — 102 — BANNERS et le bon dieu pensa — continued When it showed only wrath and empty hands, And how when all He had done seemed gone for nought He felt that man, His idol, understands. He remembered darkly His creature furious Because He had scorned it, And how with rich burnt offering He had sought To appease it. And He thought how it was hungry, wilful, curi- ous, And it was the image of Himself that He had wrought. And then He thought In His infinite wisdom That if He had not made this creature Man would have made himself. God needed no preacher To tell Him this. He was at least as wise as you. And in His wisdom He laughed to think that that was true. And so God pondered, smoking, And smiling, in heaven. But it was getting late, so He arose And yawned with His whole body And decided —103— BANNERS ET le bon dieu pensa — continued That, being middle-aged, He had to sleep. And tho He never derided prayer, He was sure His idol would forgive Him if He went To His pleasant couch without that sacrament. But before He slept He looked with all His eyes At the distant earth, And blessed with all His heart Man and his works, That were the best part of God's own youth. And on that mystery He turned and went to bed and slumbered deep, Without dreams. God is now middle-aged. But He is still beautiful asleep. * — 104 — > Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 V' r " (724)779-2111 MAY 2 1919 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS llllllllllIlL 015 907 043 8 ©