20

Close your eyes,
--------------the sun low -- upon them

Sky grows down, one petal
Daisy petal, broad, luminous.
A wind that makes for blindness --
------------Sun

p.36; from 55 Poems 1923-1935.

O sleep, the sky goes down behind the poplars,
I scrape the gravel with my shoes and toe
The ties:
The milky moon is the clearing,
Only the power-plant hurries in winter.

p.36; from 55 Poems 1923-1935.

23
Song Theme
To te last movement of Beethoven's Quartet in C Sharp Minor

All my days --
And all my ways --
Met by hands --
And ringed with feet --
Into laurel-branch the hands
Are gone, into fertile soil the feet;
So these praised ones that are fallen off
Are a signal in the trees,
Are a beacon in the sun,--

Sun and death stir, and death's
------------unlit love,--
All their days
And all their ways.

p.37; from 55 Poems 1923-1935.

28
Dedication
Tibor Serly

Red varnish
Warm flith

Of cello
They play

Scroll before
Them--Sound

Breaks the
Sunset!--Kiss

With wide
Eyes -- With

Their music
The (no?)

Pit, weather
Of tears

Which plagues
Us -- Bodies

Of waves
Whose crests

Spear air,
Here rolls

The sea --
Go chase

It -- a
Salt pact

Ranged over
Bars -- white

Ribs pervade
In constant

Measures the
Rounds -- Its

Wet frosting,
A kiss

Opens nothing,
Bend head

No! Lips
Not this

An assumed
Poise among

Crowds! Blue --
Withdraws sunset --

Tones sound --
Pluck -- dissonant --

Stops sing
The welter

pp.41-42; from 55 Poems 1923-1935.

1
che di lor suona su nella tua vita

I walked out, before
"Break of day"
And saw
Four cabins in the hay.

Blue sealed glasses
Of preserves -- four --
In the window-sash
In the yard on the bay.

Further:
The waters
At the ramp
Running away.

p.85; from Anew 1935-1944.

"che di lor suona se nella tua vita"
Continuing with Dante (limbo, The Inferno, IV, 77

--The comma in line 1 of this poem is meant as a pause in the expectancy of the dream. Perhaps the capital B of "Break," after the opening quotes of line 2, gives the feeling of some unexpected person taking part in one's expected activity: I was aware in the dream that I was writing as poem and also aware of verses by others.
--The word "bay" is what I could reconstruct later from the feeling of the action in the dream, as I moved from place to place, and should convey something of all the meanings of the word "bay":red-brown, the laurel wreath, a bay horse, a deep bark or cry, a window-bay, a large space in a barn for storage as of hay or fodder, the state of being kept at a standstill, but more specifically two meanings that seemed to include all the others, they are, an arm of the sea and a recess of low land between hills.
--The "glasses of preserves" were sealed with white wax.
--The waters teemed like flood waters, but perhaps this is an afterthought. They were certainly falls, tons of them off the side, on a curve, and nearly on the level of the ramp, and the ramp seemed to be running away at the curve.
--When I awoke the exact words of the poem I dreamt were lost, but those I wrote down still seemed to follow on the events of the dream. Later, that morning, Dante's "which sounds of them, up in that life of thine" seemed an appropriate explanation.

p. 113, Notes

22
Catullus viii

Miserable Catullus, stop being foolish
And admit it's over,
The sun shone on you those days
When your girl had you
When you gave it to her
------like nobody else will.
Everywhere together then, always at it
And you liked it and she can't say
--------------------she didn't

Yes, those days glowed.
Now she doesn't want it: why
----------should you, washed out
Want to. Don't trail her,
Don't eat yourself up alive,
Show some spunk, stand up
--------------------and take it.
So long, girl. Catullus
--------------------can take it.
He won't bother you, he won't
--------------------be bothered:
But you'll be, nights.
What do you want to live for?
Whom will you see?
Who'll say you're pretty?
Who'll give it to you now?
Whose name will you have?
Kiss what guy? bite whose
--------------------lips?
Come on Catullus, you can
--------------------take it.

pp. 97-98; from Anew 1935-1944.

In Latin