.

        CRIMSON MIRROR

I went into the woods again today
To let their quiet drive my cares away.
I saw the sunrise - like a crimson flood,
Reminder of grim Eastern fields of blood.
A dove's low moaning in a red-bud tree
The cry of wounded men became to me.
And what I thought were bluebirds in the sky
Were really bombers passing, flying high.
At evening time the sky again was red -
A mute dispatch to tell of Western dead.

O God of merry! Can the sunlight fall
On red-stained German fields, and cast a pall
Of crimson on a dawn so far away?
Does that same sun reflect, at close of day
Upon Pacific waters red with gore
And write upon our sunset, "Nevermore"?

Such angle of reflection could not be
As mirrored that mirage of death to me;
But laws of light and physics fall apart
When shining through a broken human heart.

I went into the woods again today -
I wish I'd stayed away.
                                            (1945)
(This and the next four poems are out of the tragic years of World War II.)



        BREATH OF DESTINY

What wind of mischief! What malicious gale
Now rends with talon'd feet this tranquil vale
Where beauty reigned, and yearning hovered o'er?
What souls are those caught in its hungry roar -
Dragged helplessly by mad, cyclonic breath,
Together driven into its cavernous death?
The livid lightning of its living eyes
Illuminates the ragged, rending rise
Of vortex to the angry clouds above,
Reveals the barren earth devoid of love.
Yet in its fire that barreness is warm,
And gathers insane glory from the storm!
No masters, we! The storm controls our fate -
Once caught within its charms, 'tis far too late
To miss its destiny! So yield thy rebel flesh
And know the mad adventure all afresh.
And do not tremble as a child in fricht -
'Tis simple yielding brings the sweet delight!

        THREE VOICES CRY

High is the cry of the warriors -
Strong and high!
But it comes o'er the noise of battle
Faint as a sigh.
Like the cry of little children
About to die.
Low is the cry of the wounded -
Softly they moan.
Lending to war's dread music
A minor tone;
And the human heart can hear it
By love alone.
Loud is the cry of the dead ones
Prone on the sod.
Out of the maddening silence
Still hearts, o'ertrod,
Cry for the end of all battles.
One hears - even God!
                                        (1944)
I wish I could set these words to funeral music and have them
chanted in low tone to all the leaders of the nations, unceasingly.



        MISERERE FINI

One whose lips seemed moved by rare delight,
As though her dwelling were the verge of bright
New visions; told of wandering in a dream
Of transient beauty by an unquiet stream
                    To hear an oriole sing.

In simple words almost akin to sighing
She said: "He wasn't singing, he was crying."
Then like a hot, barbed arrow came the thought:
Can it be this sombre mood has caught
                    In every living thing?

Are even singing birds, then, ill at ease?
Does human sorrow rise, engulf the trees
As some dread force invisible, to clasp
The whole of nature in its sickening grasp
                    of melancholy blight?

"The whole creation groaneth as in pain -"
My dirge began. With radiant joy again
The maiden spoke. Me oriole soared above
The shadow of the mom, and found his love
Within the higher light."
                                            (1944)



        AUTUMN REVISITED

                                        I had forgotten
Cathedral silences of forest halls at mom,
And smell of fallen leaves in autumn rain;
The jewelled glory of a frosty moonlit night;
The hard blue brilliance of October days,
                                            And the ways
Of cackling tours of southbound birds in flight;
Pathetic wings of butterflies late- born
All vainly hailing summer back again.

                            I had forgotten these
And many other poignant memories
That now come rushing back at every brown
Leaf that drifts on autumn's fitful breeze.
But now I have them here all written down,
I'll not again forget, tho' ne'er again
Will I behold my hills at this blest time
Of year. I cannot capture in one rhyme
Forest odors, frost, and sun and rain.

                                No, I will not forget
For I have had a promise from my Lord
That Paradise shall come - He gave his word,
And I shall enter heaven even yet!
For what is heaven but the having, at long last,
Of all the perfect things from out the past?

I had forgotten, yes. But after all life's pain
Is over, I shall have them back again.

--- And love, if this is true,
Shall I not also have you, too?
                                        (October, 1959)



        MORNING WATCH

Morning!
Sunlight pours!
Blinding crashes burst the doors
        Of night.
            Swords of light
Put the black-robed shades to flight.
        Wild voices
            Of the spaces
Chant the victory song of light.

Trees lift limbs in worship far and near.
Hills and valleys clap their hands and cheer,
And morning-glory trumpets sound so clear
I have to put my finger in my ear.

                                Even the soft south wind
Storms my heart like a cavalry charge:
            How can I worship in this din
Of nature's shouting in a sanctuary so large?

Please forgive me, Lord,
If I confuse thy written and thy new-created word
                Haven't you heard?
                            It is morning!



        A MAP IS A THING OF MAGIC

Across the vale
Outside my window to the west arises
A mountain wall
Sinister against the sunset, tall
And part of all
That time and space so cruelly comprises
For my heart a jail.

And I recall
That eastward from your window, too,
Is lifted high
A mountain by a lake, in crimson hue
From sunset sky.
I am reminded - hills imprison you!
Your soul, too, has a wall.

Then, like a part
Of some weird conjure, there is lying
Within my hand
A map - a thing of magic - and I span
The intervening reaches. All the land
Between us melts, and miles decrying
I hold you to my heart!

(To Betty) - (October, 1955)

(Written while I was at Shenandoah and too busy to take vacation trips. Not wishing to deprive my wife I insisted that she take the western trip with her sister, Elma, and her niece Annis, which she was invited to take.)



        RELATIVITY

I waited alone in the darkness,
And my yearning was like pain!
I longed for you in the darkness,
But my longing was in vain!

Though I could hear our breathing,
You were never so far away,
And the long, long night was lonely,
And I wept, and prayed for the day.

The few short steps between us
Were wide as the gulf of space!
And I learned that doors that are open,
Not closed ones, prison a place!

But tonight there are miles between us
Yet I hold you close to my heart,
And I know now that often you're nearest,
When we are farthest apart.

So I doubt the nature of distance
When it keeps me from your charms.
For when you are near, you're far away
- Except when you're in my arms.

I think I have learned a secret
Not opened by science or art.
The hands reach out as the arms are long,
But a heart reaches out to a heart!
                            (For Betty) 1956
(Written when Betty was on a Canadian trip with her
sister, Elma Bornstein.)



        CONQUEROR OF THE YEARS

I found a chimney-stone among the grasses
And reverently turned it over with my hands,
And - quick as thought - the fleeting present passes
For scenes more real! The past before me stands!
A house is there, with every chink and cranny
And mark of axe, and weatherbeaten stain.
But reason, cruel-hearted, wise uncanny,
Cries out, "These things shall never be again."

I feel a breeze with tang of wood-smoke laden;
Incense divine! So rare it has no name -
And see once more my firelit forest haven
Where green-cut oak lies seething in the flame;
Hold out my hands and watch the smoke uprising
While fire-born wild flame-dancers leap and start;
Hold out my soul, to thaw within their blazing
The frozen memory-chambers of my heart.

I hear a voice familiar to my teardrops,
But laughter makes a rainbow of my tears,
For fancy loans its magic to the moment
And cancels all the intervening years.
To make untrue the charge that childhood's laughter
Must wait to ring again in courts above.
What has been, and shall be hereafter
Is now, by every law of yearning love.
                                                    (1944)

        ACCUSER VS. ADVOCATE

("And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by
the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives
unto death."
                                        - Rev. 12:11)

To cause to faint the weakest saint
The demons all engage,
To stem the flood of Jesus' blood
All hell is in a rage!
See Satan stand at God's left hand-
Accuser of us all!
Opponent of the Son, whose love
Redeemed us from the fall.
"Your sins," he cries. The Blood replies,
"There is no sin."
He screams, "The past!" and to the last
The blood, above his din,
Speaks out alone there at the throne,
"There is no past."
'Til Satan, prone, must leave alone,
And we are free at last!
                                        (8-3-1961)



        HISTORY

Men, money, politics, God
Almighty dollar, sacred sod,
Die for your country, feed the poor,
Love one another, blood on the floor.

Men, money, politics, - No!
How can that other word be so?
Cut out the heart of this civilized clod
All you have left is "Men" and "God."

(There is no illness quite like the nausea created by demagogues.)



        SEDITION

My soul cries out!
Things are not good enough!
I am not satisfied with democracy
The democracy of nineteen hundred
Forty-five

Woe to you who sit
Complacent - who
Wildly acclaim the status quo -
Woe!
Because you hold no honor,
No high exalting of justice,
No dream of a more excellent way,
Higher!

Have you let vision fade
In blind indolence?
Do you see no violation in this day -
This day when men
Become as dust,
The dust of atoms?

My soul cries out!
I am not just sounding brass,
I know a better tune.
Its grandeur is the march of ages.
I am not satisfied
With democracy!
I have seen a Kingdom.
I have seen peace, plenty, purity!
I have seen God!
                                    (1945)
(In this year many looked to the United Nations as the very
"Kingdom of God." This idol, too has feet of clay!)



        THE THREE REBELS

See, in the waning light!
There - there dwells humanity.
Scarce a third of the way to the height!
Content in mediocrity.
High are the legal walls
Of their cultural halls,
And of gates well-guarded - three.

                    Rebel the First
Solemn and sure the clan's decree:
"None shall go back into that vale
Whence all of us have come."
Thus Virtue declared beyond the pale
The black enigma of this blacker sea.
But there was one
Who looked with curious eyes upon its edge;
And from the curious turned to keen desire,
Catching the lure that drifted to the ledge
Where dwelt the tribe in restless decency.
Feeling within the burning of a fire,
With lowered eyes the beast that lay within
Plotted and planned - began to rebel,
Clamored for freedom - raised such noisy din
That to remain would be a greater hell.
And so she scaled the wall;
And gossips mouthed the morsel of her fall.
Days hence, the story goes, upon the sand
There washed the fragment of a human hand
With such a stench upon it, so they say,
As spoke of more than ordinary decay.

                        Rebel the Second
About the village wall, to left and right
A forest grew - a place of strange delight!
Where pleasures were legitimate and high;
For it was growing at the self-same height
Upon which all mankind shall live and die.
But in its leafy aisles dwelt other men
Who lived not like the dwellers in the walls
But stood within the forest, made low calls
To those whose lives were prisoned in
The more monotonous walls of legal sin.
Men called to maids. Both were exceeding fair.
Yet there was not the same full shade of skin,
Nor yet a similar texture to the hair.
Strong guards stood at the forest gates and barred
The way with signs that read, "Tabu.'
81 But one bright maid within whose heart there warred
A rebel love, with strong defiance eyed
The sign which told her what she dared not do,
Climbed with agile hands the foolish wall;
Answered with eyes aglow, her lover's call.
The woman that was in her found a mate,
So cheerfully she faced an outcast's fate.
Too soon there came to dwell outside the town
A couple in whose unequal yoke no word
Was spoken. Hate passed between them like a sword,

To pierce the very soul, and shatter down
Their love for that which love had given - a third
So like them both - and yet so unlike each
That fellowship was stolen from their reach.

                            Rebel the Third
In close-walled streets men whispered of the trail
which led to higher levels--pierced the veil
That lay above their prison; challenged all
who dared the only gate within the wall
which had no guard, but stood with doors unbarred
(Except by that poor envy of low minds
who in their misery have forever warred
Against the souls which glorious courage find
To leave their prison in the world's half night
And climb the crags upon a path of light.)

But there is one whose heart within her sings
That God has come to dwell within her breast!
And in rebel stirrings of divine unrest -
Held back by doubt - half-anxious questionings,
She breaks the gasp of ordinary things
And gives herself to climb, with feet like wings
Upon a path of dreams. By faith made fleet
She treads in ecstasy the very clouds of air
As dust beneath her feet.

Those she left below her in the place
where dwell self-blinded men in groping night,
Gaze wistfully upon her face
Glowing through the mist with heavenly light.
        ****************

Three human hearts with rebel spirits burned.
Two returned!
                                                (1945)
(Rebel minds are common in college; rebel acts less so. Here is the
allegory of three I knew who defied convention.)



        STRANGE GIFT

There's a gift the Father gave us
Beyond the power that others share
In this strange and vivid nearness
We keep with us everywhere.
Gifts that makes the miles between us
Just as the' they were not there!
Blessed gift that lets me hold you
When you're burdened down with care.
And my arms in love enfold you,
When you have no help elsewhere.
So I share in your distresses,
And you have a comfort sure
From this wondrous gift that blesses.
I can help you to endure.
So, with all the deep devotion
That a husband ever gave
I will come in each commotion,
As your lover, friend and slave.
All I ask you in return, dear,
When my road of life is long,
And my sky is dark with storm clouds,
And its hard to find a song--
Then, please use the gift God gave you!
Come and hold me to your heart!
Then my joy will know no ending,
And my heartache will depart.
So our gift will be a blessing,
And a solace for each day
Through the comfort of caressing,
Till God gives a better way.
In the meantime when a moment
Comes when we two are alone,
Shall our arms not find each other,
And our two hearts beat as one?
Shall our lips meet without fear, love?
Shall we say "Yes" to our heart?
We should have, when we are close, love,
What is ours when we're apart.
                                    February 1975



        THE HORRIBLE PIT

I crept to the edge of passion's brim,
And gazed below as the fearful din
Of souls all twisted and torn with sin--
All seared by a flaming hell within,
                        -tortured and screaming.

I saw the dragon there, within his den,
And watched him feed on the souls of men,
Devouring--and spewing them out again.
Disgorging them--putrid with filthy stain,
                        -his lurid eye gleaming.

I saw a youth and a maiden fair,
With frozen and fascinated stare
Trapped with the beast in his filthy lair,
Enwrapt in his coils and beyond all care,
                        -for virtue's gladness.

A miser was there, all shrunken and old,
With a skin like the master to whom he was sold;
Distended with gorging on silver and gold
'Til his clanking, metal-fed body grows cold,
                        -in his grasping madness.

And there is the wandering, pleasure-mad throng
Like fire-driven demons they hurry along,
With shouting and stomping, sorrow and song,
They vainly endeavor to silence the gong
                        -of death resounding.

The dreary and drunken disciple of greed
Is plunging along on a fire-breathing steed.
The chimera of lust is demanding his feed!
Then hurry, fool, hurry! 'is no time to heed
                        -The death-drums pounding.

And lo! as I shudder and gaze in the pit,
It seems--am I dreaming? -to brighten a bit,
And then, with quick splendor and beauty all lit,
A miracle gleams in the midst of it-