The White Bird
Man of the flame-eyes
And mouth with the bitter twist of in-grown laughter,
And little bald man . . . whose seeming stillness
Is akin to the velocity of a spinning star
Holding its perfect poise—
You two yea-sayers
Beetling over the little deniers,
Two great levelers, building from the earth up, among
puttiers and pluggers of rotten piles—
You of the rich life, running in ample measure, amidst
life deleted of its old raw fire as earth is deleted
of its coal and iron— You be mighty hunters and keepers,
Trotsky and Lenine—
Yet can you hold . . . the unconstrainable One
Of the slow and flaming deaths
And multiple resurrections ?
Hands, reaching in hundreds of millions,
Backs, straightening under the keeling floor of the world,
Can you hold the great white bird?—
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poem by Lola Ridge
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Wild Duck
I
That was a great night we spied upon
See-sawing home,
Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars
Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze…
Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river…
Lights dwindling to shining slits
In the wet asphalt…
Purring lights… red and green and golden-whiskered…
Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud…
… But you did not know…
As the trains made golden augers
Boring in the darkness…
How my heart kept racing out along the rails,
As a spider runs along a thread
And hauls him in again
To some drawing point…
You did not know
How wild ducks' wings
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poem by Lola Ridge
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To Alexander Berkman
Can you see me, Sasha?
I can see you….
A tentacle of the vast dawn is resting on your face
that floats as though detached
in a sultry and greenish vapor.
I cannot reach my hands to you…
would not if I could,
though I know how warmly yours would close about them.
Why?
I do not know…
I have a sense of shame.
Your eyes hurt me… mysterious openings in the gray stone of your face
through which your spirit streams out taut as a flag
bearing strange symbols to the new dawn.
If I stay… projected, trembling against these bars filtering emaciated light… will your eyes… that bore their lonely way through mine… stop as at a friendly gate… grow warm… and luminous? … but I cannot stay… for the smell… I know… how the days pass… The prison squats with granite haunches on the young spring, battened under with its twisting green… and you… socket for every bolt piercing like a driven nail. Eyes stare you through the bars… eyes blank as a graveled yard… and the silence shuffles heavy dice of feet in iron corridors… until the day… that has soiled herself in this black hole to caress the pale mask of your face… withdraws the last wizened ray to wash in the infinite her discolored hands. Can you hear me, Sasha, in your surrounded darkness?
poem by Lola Ridge
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Broadway
Light!
Innumerable ions of light,
Kindling, irradiating,
All to their foci tending…
Light that jingles like anklet chains
On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet,
Or clingles in myriad vibrations
Like trillions of porcelain
Vases shattering…
Light over the laminae of roofs,
Diffusing in shimmering nebulae
About the night's boundaries,
Or billowing in pearly foam
Submerging the low-lying stars…
Light for the feast prolonged -
Captive light in the goblets quivering…
Sparks evanescent
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poem by Lola Ridge
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The Edge
I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me…
But there was time…
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,
staring into the abyss…
I do not know how long…
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins - shaking my hands away…
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein…
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.
As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them…
There must have been a spent moon,
For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver…
That too I remember…
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poem by Lola Ridge
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Cactus Seed
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.
Silvery-strident throat—
so assiduously serenading my brain,
flinching 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 reach of blue water…
if canaries (do they sing out of cages?)
flung such luminous notes,
they would sink in the spirit…
lie germinal…
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poem by Lola Ridge
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The Spilling Of The Wine
The soldiers lie upon the snow,
That no longer gyrates under the spinning lights
Night juggles in her fat black hands.
They will not babble any more secrets to loose-mouthed
nights
Expanding in golden auras,
While sleigh-bells jingle like new coins the darkness
shuffles . . .
They will not drink any more wine—
Wine of the Romanoffs,
Jewelled wine
The secret years worked slowly at
Till it was wrought to fire,
As stones are faceted
Until they give out light.
The soldiers lie very still.
Their shadows have shrunk up close
As toads shrink under a stone;
And night and silence,
The ancient cronies,
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poem by Lola Ridge
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Lullaby
Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown…
(There's a shout at the door an' a big red light…)
Lil' coon baby, mammy is down…
Han's that hold yuh are steady an' white…
Look piccaninny - such a gran' blaze
Lickin' up the roof an' the sticks of home -
Ever see the like in all yo' days!
- Cain't yuh sleep, mah bit-of-honey-comb?
Rock-a-by baby, up to the sky!
Look at the cherries driftin' by -
Bright red cherries spilled on the groun' -
Piping-hot cherries at nuthin' a poun'!
Hush, mah lil' black-bug - doan yuh weep.
Daddy's run away an' mammy's in a heap
By her own fron' door in the blazin' heat
Outah the shacks like warts on the street…
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poem by Lola Ridge
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Portraits
I
MOTHER
I
Your love was like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty, so that little wry souls reflecting each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors… beheld in your luminous spirit their own reflection, transfigured as in a shining stream, and loved you for what they are not.
You are less an image in my mind than a luster I see you in gleams pale as star-light on a gray wall… evanescent as the reflection of a white swan shimmering in broken water.
II
(To E. S.)
You inevitable,
Unwieldy with enormous births,
Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths…
Filth… worms… flowers…
Green and succulent pods…
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poem by Lola Ridge
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Reveille
Come forth, you workers!
Let the fires go cold—
Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—
Let the iron run wild
Like a red bramble on the floors—
Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine
And the shrapnel lying on the wharves—
Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom—
Come,
With your ashen lives,
Your lives like dust in your hands.
I call upon you, workers.
It is not yet light
But I beat upon your doors.
You say you await the Dawn
But I say you are the Dawn.
Come, in your irresistible unspent force
And make new light upon the mountains.
You have turned deaf ears to others—
Me you shall hear.
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poem by Lola Ridge
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