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OTHERS
A Magazine of the New Verse
Edited by Alfred Kreymborg
MARCH 1916
Vol. 2 No. 3
New York
Published by John Marshall, 331 Fourth Avenue 15 cents a Copy $1.50 a Year
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##OTHERS
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY LELIA MILLER PEARCE WALLACE STEVENS ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE CARL SANDBURG KENNETH BURKE EDWARD RAMOS ROBERT ALDEN SANBORN
All thanks are due Mr. Claud Bragdon of Rochester, N. Y. for his permission to use the verses of Miss Adelaide Cropsey.
Commencing with the present issue, Others will be published by John Marshall, 331 Fourth Avenue, New York City, to whom all business communications should be addressed. All manuscripts, as formerly, should be directed to the editor, Alfred Kreymborg, in care of the publisher.
####ADELAIDE CRAPSEY 167
CINQUAINS
November Night Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
Release
With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.
Triad These be
three silent things: The falling snow. . the hour Before the dawn. . the mouth of one Just dead.
Trapped
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year. and ever days and years. .
Well?
##168 ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
Moon-shadows Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I Am dead.
Susanna And The Elders
"Why do
You thus devise
Evil against her?" "For that
She is beautiful, delicate;
Therefore."
Youth But me
They cannot touch,
Old age and death. . the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!
The Guarded Wound If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass, oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy!
Winter The cold
With steely clutch
##ADELAIDE CRAPSEY 169
Grips all the land. . alack,
The little people in the hills Will die !
Night Winds The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?
Amaze I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
The Warning
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk. . as strange, as still.
A white moth flew. . Why am I grown
So cold?
Fate Defied As it
Were tissue of silver I'll wear, O fate, thy grey, And go mistily radiant, clad Like the moon.
##170 LELIA MILLER PEARCE
MACHINE MADE
I am the woman at the loom— Throwing the merry shuttles back and forth Flat-bosomed, I am moulded for the Task Gaunt and unwomanly—
The great wheels mutter, snarl, and jeer— Others ill shapen as I, strive persistently— Slope focused down, a vista with no end, Grey and unlovely—
From what drab beginnings did we spring?— Tossers of bobbins in a mad hemisphere?— Work-soddened, we are fathered by the Task— Sweat of factories—
These are our forbears—these—the looms— Fathers and mothers of dull, wan, humanity— Soul-starved, we are breeders of our Kind— PVuit of clamorings—
Dusk frees the woman from the loom— Hobbles the shuttles for the night, jarringly— Wheel-weaned, the loom-daughter dreads the Dawn's Call of nativity—## WALLACE STEVENS 171
DOMINATION OF BLACK
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves, Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding—
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails Were like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind. They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry—the peacocks. Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
##172 WALLACE STEVENS
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks. I felt afraid—
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
TATTOO
The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there—
Its two webs.
The webs of your eyes Are fastened
To the fiesh and bones of you As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes On the surface of the water And in the edges of the snow.
##WALLACE STEVENS 175
THE FLORIST WEARS KNEE-BREECHES
My flowers are reflected In your mind
As you are reflected in your glass.
When you look at them,
There is nothing in your mind
Except the reflections
Of my flowers.
But when I look at them
I see only the reflections
In your mind,
And not my flowers.
It is my desire
To bring roses,
And place them before you
In a white dish.
SONG
There are great things doing
In the world,
Little rabbit.
There is a damsel,
Sweeter than the sound of the willow,
Dearer than shallow water
Flowing over pebbles.
Of a Sunday,
She wears a long coat,
With twelve buttons on it.
Tell that to your mother.
##174 WALLACE STEVENS
SIX SIGNIFICANT LANDSCAPES
I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II
The night is of the color Of a woman's arm: Night, the female, Obscure,
Fragrant and supple, Conceals herself, A pool shines, Like a bracelet Shaken in a dance.
##WALLACE STEVENS 175
III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree. I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.
IV
When my dream was near the moon, The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair rilled
With certain blue crystallizations From stars, Not far off.
V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts.
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes And high towers,
##176 WALLACE STEVENS
Can carve
What one star can carve, Shining through the grape-leaves.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses—
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon—
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
INSCRIPTION FOR A MONUMENT
To the imagined lives
Evoked by music,
Creatures of horns, flutes, drums, Violins, bassoons, cymbals—
Nude porters that glistened in Burma
Defiling from sight;
Island philosophers spent
##WALLACE STEVENS 177
By long thought beside fountains; Big-bellied ogres curled up in the sunlight, Stuttering dreams.
BOWL
For what emperor
Was this bowl of Earth designed?
Here are more things
Than on any bowl of the Sungs,
Even the rarest—
Vines that take
The various obscurities of the moon, Approaching rain
And leaves that would be loose upon the wind,
Pears on pointed trees,
The dresses of women, Oxen. . .
I never tire
To think of this.
##178 ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
THE DANCER
They were godly people, all of them, With whom I dined In the cafe that night— Substantial citizens With their virtuous wives And a stray daughter or two.
And when I spoke my admiration of your dancing,— You, the little half-clothed painted cabaret performer Who was pirouetting before us,— I received a curious answer.— It was only as the absurd voicing Of a preposterous fancy
That one of the virtuous wives said to me—
"Why don't you go over and dance with her yourself!"
Her voice stung me,—it was so sure
That to dance with you would be a shameful and
unpleasant thing. So I answered crossly— "For a nickel I would." And one of the daughters,
Who doubtless suffered later for her evil act, Handed me the nickel......
And that was how it came to be That you and I
Before the gaping herd of my respectable fellow-townsmen##
arthur davison ficke 179
Forgot the world.
Light was the pressure of your hand
And your body was as answering to my touch
As is a little willow to the wind.
I could not see your painted face against my shoulder; I forgot that you were clad in veils to lure the lustful crowd ;
The tawdry glitter of the hour faded and died As you and I soared up Upon the music. O soul of a bird !
O cooling wind from the mountains of wild laurel! O dreamer of a pattern of whirling stars Down which we moved In dizzy orbits !
Perfumes of Arabia were around us ;
Tremulous melody heard by none other
Out of some distant garden poured in wild song.
And there were lights in the air;
And there were memories
Of forgotten Thracian hillsides,
And madness, and oblivion,
And a fierce white peace.
Then the dance ended.....
And you were once more a little painted harlot In an ugly cafe
Before a vulgar audience.
##180 arthur davison ficke
So I led you back to your table And thanked you conventionally, And turned to go.— But a sudden impulse
Swept me.—
And in the sight of all the gaping respectabilities
I turned to you again
And kissed you
In recognition and farewell
To that winged spirit which you late had been.
##carl sandburg 181
CHILD
The young child, Christ, is straight and wise
And asks questions of the old men, questions
Found under running water for all children
And found under shadows thrown on still waters
By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled,
Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,
Singing a low song in the loneliness.
And the young child, Christ, goes on asking
And the old men answer nothing and only know love
For the young child, Christ, straight and wise.
STATISTICS
Napoleon shifted
Restless in the old sarcophagus
And murmured to a watchguard:
"Who goes there?"
"Twenty-one million men,
Soldiers, armies, guns,
Twenty-one million
Afoot, horseback,
In the air,
Under the sea."
And Napoleon turned to his sleep: "It is not my world answering;
##182 carl sandburg
It is some dreamer who knows not
The world I marched in From Calais to Moscow."
And he slept on
In the old sarcophagus
While the aeroplanes
Droned their motors
Between Napoleon's mausoleum
And the cool night stars.
LOUIS MAYER'S ICE PICTURES
"Icy Shores"
Why has the sea hurled itself on the land Now that summer is gone And winter is the big player?
Neither is the winner.
Both strugglers, sea and land,
Are locked in a standstill.
Only the ice is a victim.
It happened to be caught between.
So the ledges are crumpled . . broken playthings.
They are equal to a toy town of blocks
Kicked over by children
Who are gone away.
##carl sandburg 183
"Walrus Bay"
High banks with a hard feel to them Stand up from a slow plash of gray waves. Humped rocks too
And looking twice at the humped rocks
We see they are not walrus playing tag
As we guessed at first.
No life of blood, throat and nostril
Runs under them; they are granite
Heaved up years ago to companion the sea.
"Solitude"
I can have this cool loneliness
And you can take along what you want
Here of this cool loneliness.
It is not like prairie land
Nor a single crag
Nor a level of ocean.
Little hills around it
Keep off winter,
The big rough player.
A disc of cool loneliness,
I always ask it:
What are you waiting for?
It seems so sure somebody is coming.
##184 kenneth burke
ADAM'S SONG, AND MINE You pass me merrily.
Your hair dashes back like the spray under a racing
bowsprit. Your eyes are alight. You beckon me. You dare to beckon me Because you do not understand The baby rabbits at your feet. Virgin !
You do not understand my quivering. Your legs are bare. I am ashamed !
Yes,
I am coming.
I am coming to scramble with you
Through the angry bushes.
I shall race with you over the wet sand,
And I shall bear with your innocence
Until
You feel how warm my breath is,— Virgin !
##edward ramos 185
CHANSON TRISTE
My heart is sorrowful and my dreams are broken, The light of the sun shines not upon my house.
I went into the forest
Treading the dry leaves
And I saw two gleaming black eyes.
I thought it was a tiger
And my bones cried out in terror.
I thought it was a snake
And my soul writhed in anguish.
I tumbled on a wet tree-root
And fell fainting into the morass, The green toads croaked at me
The mud oozed round my belly ....
I turned and saw
Two black gleaming eyes ....
My heart is sorrowful and my dreams are broken, The light of the sun shines not upon my house.
##186 edward ramos
L'ARBRE MYSTIQUE The slender tree
Has leaves that droop like little folds of silk;
Their delicate green
Melts into the blackness of the night.
Passing beneath
I seem to feel soft touches on my cheek As though invisible wings
Or the stretching hands of some body-searching spirit Brushed past me.
My soul Disintegrates ;
Like a wave driven by the wind It bursts. Each spark Flies up
To find a body in the silent leaves.
RAPIERE A DEUX POINTS (To G. K.)
Your eyes
are like two flames
dancing
on the carved surface of a gem.##
ROBERT ALDEN SANBORN 187
THE DESERTED BALLROOM
I
The dancers all have gone,
Leaving their souls behind them ;
Pallid and frail their souls,
With not a fleeting foot to mind them; Their souls are not their own.
Wearing their fleshly wraps, They have returned to the prose Of the sandy shore,
Robed in the rags of dancers long before.
And still,
But never still,
The lyric water of the ballroom floor Laps the firm prose of the sand, And ever laps.
The sea is still;
Only the rhythm of the waltz,
Sprinkled in waves upon the starlit space,
Lingers like dropped petals of the dancers' grace
The sea is mirror of the will
To paint the laugh of pleasure
Forever on the face.
##188 ROBERT ALDEN SANBORN
II
My breath faints upon my lips.
For forth from the untenanted night One cometh wandering in a dream.
Holding aloft a taper whose wan flame skips
On the faded rhythm of the ballroom floor;
Some sated dancer in a plight
Of loss, spreading a ghostly gleam.
There is no tide of music, is it to dance once more She brings her light?
The sea, how still.
The moon, how very pale.
Is it without avail
Her beams drip from the eaten candle, spill Gouts of warm gold upon the sable floor?
Who passed in sobbing haste from prose of sand
To descend upon the sea that echoes with the dance?
A splash of welcome in the glance Of feeble rays descending; And a clasp of mortal hand With spirit, in a hope unending.
The waxen moon confers a lure that glozes
The prose of sandy shore, and closes
The reaching gap from satiate dancer to his soul.
##ROBERT ALDEN SANBORN 189
She comes with pity of forbidden light
In which to find again his loosened aureole.
III
There is a lustral peace abiding In the moon upon the sea; There is no lost soul hiding In hope bereft of Thee, O august Beauty !
Dropped cadences on the water mutter, And hush like fragrances in a deserted hall Where the last dancer closed the door. No more tonight does the candle gutter, And stain the ballroom floor.
In the blue moon's sleep forgotten souls are gathered
to the shore, Its prose melted in the rhythmic fall Of crescending light.
Ended in dream the wasted dancer's plight.
And yet I hesitate to sleep;
For does not the revealing Goddess keep
##190 ROBERT ALDEN SANBORN
The sanctity of pleasure And Artemis in her might
Bestow the boon of Beauty on our fevered measure?
In the blinding nakedness of silence
Over Poseidon's floor,
On this sea of failed emotion,
Is there not more
The freed spirit of the dance
When spent is the last forlorn devotion?
Grey prose of sand and shore
Is to blue magic dedicated;
And when, the fever of the quest abated,
The body shakes its tattered clothes
Upon the floor,
Do we not pass from beauty simulated To the one Beauty that is more?
######MUSHROOMS
A BOOK OF RHYTHMS
BY
ALFRED KREYMBORG
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