ANNE SPENCER

Ah, you are cruel; You ask too much; Offered a hand, a finger-tip, You must have a soul to clutch.

I have a friend And my heart from hence Is closed to friendship, Nor the gods’ knees hold but one; He watches with me thru the long night, And when I call he comes, Or when he calls I am there; He does not ask me how beloved Are my husband and children, Nor ever do I require Details of life and love In the grave—his home,— We are such friends.

Is Life itself but many ways of thought, Does thinking furl the poets’ pleiades, Is in His slightest convolution wrought These mantled worlds and their men-freighted seas? He thinks—and being comes to ardent things: The splendor of the day-spent sun, love’s birth,— Or dreams a little, while creation swings The circle of His mind and Time’s full girth ... As here within this noisy peopled room My thought leans forward ... quick! you’re lifted clear Of brick and frame to moonlit garden bloom,— Absurdly easy, now, our walking, dear, Talking, my leaning close to touch your face ... His All-Mind bids us keep this sacred place!

Let me learn now where Beauty is; My day is spent too far toward night To wander aimlessly and miss her place; To grope, eyes shut, and fingers touching space. Her maidens I have known, seen durance beside, Handmaidens to the Queen, whose duty bids Them lie and lure afield their Vestal’s acolyte, Lest a human shake the throne, lest a god should know his might: Nereid, daughter of the Trident, steering in her shell, Paused in voyage, smile beguiling, tempted and I fell; Spiteful dryads, sport forsaking, tossing birchen wreathes, Left the Druidic priests they teased so In the oaken trees, crying, “Ho a mortal! here a believer!” Bound me, she who held the sceptre, stricken by her, ah, deceiver ... But let me learn now where Beauty is; I was born to know her mysteries, And needing wisdom I must go in vain: Being sworn bring to some hither land, Leaf from her brow, light from her torchéd hand.

Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia, Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear: Clipt yews, Pomander Walks, and pleachéd alleys; Primroses, prim indeed, in quite ordered hedges, Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled, No thin riotous blade even among the sedges, All the wild country-side tamely impaneled ... Dead, now, dear Browning, lives on in heaven,— (Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring) He’s haunting the byways of wine-aired leaven And throating the notes of the wildings on wing; Here canopied reaches of dogwood and hazel, Beech tree and redbud fine-laced in vines, Fleet clapping rills by lush fern and basil, Drain blue hills to lowlands scented with pines ... Think you he meets in this tender green sweetness Shade that was Elizabeth ... immortal completeness!

Ah, how poets sing and die! Make one song and Heaven takes it; Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I— Ah, how poets sing and die!

She tripped and fell against a star, A lady we all have known; Just what the villagers lusted for To claim her one of their own; Fallen but once the lower felt she, So turned her face and died,— With never a hounding fool to see ’Twas a star-lance in her side!

If my garden oak spares one bare ledge For a boughed mistletoe to grow and wedge; And all the wild birds this year should know I cherish their freedom to come and go; If a battered worthless dog, masterless, alone, Slinks to my heels, sure of bed and bone; And the boy just moved in, deigns a glance-assay, Turns his pockets inside out, calls, “Come and play!” If I should surprise in the eyes of my friend That the deed was my favor he’d let me lend; Or hear it repeated from a foe I despise, That I whom he hated was chary of lies; If a pilgrim stranger, fainting and poor, Followed an urge and rapped at my door, And my husband loves me till death puts apart, Less as flesh unto flesh, more as heart unto heart: I may challenge God when we meet That Day, And He dare not be silent or send me away.

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa, I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar, Into your flaming heart; Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter As the furies after tore him apart? A bird, next, small and humming, Looked into your startled depths and fled.... Surely, some dread sight, and dafter Than human eyes as mine can see, Set the stricken air waves drumming In his flight. Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty, I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey Voice lure your loving swain, But I know one other to whom you are in beauty Born in vain: Hair like the setting sun, Her eyes a rising star, Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar All your competing; Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet, Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet ... Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating, As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies Beating, beating.

Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank, I desire a name for you, Nice, as a right glove fits; For you—who amid the malodorous Mechanics of this unlovely thing, Are darling of spirit and form. I know you—a glance, and what you are Sits-by-the-fire in my heart. My Limousine-Lady knows you, or Why does the slant-envy of her eye mark Your straight air and radiant inclusive smile? Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning. The bull-necked man knows you—this first time His itching flesh sees form divine and vibrant health, And thinks not of his avocation. I came incuriously— Set on no diversion save that my mind Might safely nurse its brood of misdeeds In the presence of a blind crowd. The color of life was gray. Everywhere the setting seemed right For my mood! Here the sausage and garlic booth Sent unholy incense skyward; There a quivering female-thing Gestured assignations, and lied To call it dancing; There, too, were games of chance With chances for none; But oh! the Girl-of-the-Tank, at last! Gleaming Girl, how intimately pure and free The gaze you send the crowd, As though you know the dearth of beauty In its sordid life. We need you—my Limousine-Lady, The bull-necked man, and I. Seeing you here brave and water-clean, Leaven for the heavy ones of earth, I am swift to feel that what makes The plodder glad is good; and Whatever is good is God. The wonder is that you are here; I have seen the queer in queer places, But never before a heaven-fed Naiad of the Carnival-Tank! Little Diver, Destiny for you, Like as for me, is shod in silence; Years may seep into your soul The bacilli of the usual and the expedient; I implore Neptune to claim his child to-day!