Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/143
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CACTUS SEED
I
Radiant notes
Piercing my narrow-chested room,
Beating down through my ceiling—
Smeared with unshapen
Belly-prints of dreams
Drifted out of old smokes—
Trillions of icily
Peltering notes
Out of just one canary;
All grown to song,
As a plant to its stalk,
From too long craning at a sky-light
And a square of second-hand blue.
Piercing my narrow-chested room,
Beating down through my ceiling—
Smeared with unshapen
Belly-prints of dreams
Drifted out of old smokes—
Trillions of icily
Peltering notes
Out of just one canary;
All grown to song,
As a plant to its stalk,
From too long craning at a sky-light
And a square of second-hand blue.
Silvery-strident throat
So assiduously serenading me,
My brain flinches under
The glittering hail of your notes.
Were you not safe behind—rats know what thickness of—plastered wall,
I might fathom
Your golden delirium
With throttle of finger and thumb,
Shutting valve of bright song.
So assiduously serenading me,
My brain flinches under
The glittering hail of your notes.
Were you not safe behind—rats know what thickness of—plastered wall,
I might fathom
Your golden delirium
With throttle of finger and thumb,
Shutting valve of bright song.
II
But if—away off—on a fork of grassed earth
Socketing an inlet of blue water . . .
If canaries—do they sing out of cages?—
Flung such luminous notes,
They would sink in the spirit,
Lie germinal . . .
Housed in the soul as a seed in the earth,
To break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles on the mouth . . .
Socketing an inlet of blue water . . .
If canaries—do they sing out of cages?—
Flung such luminous notes,
They would sink in the spirit,
Lie germinal . . .
Housed in the soul as a seed in the earth,
To break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles on the mouth . . .
128