The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press

IX
Bring me my horse! The steppes are calling me!
On his back, glad rider, I’ll thump and thud,
fill the dale with my echoing thunder.
His shining hooves strike sparks, his streaming mane
repeats the wind like a Cossack’s banner.
The bright ice creaks when we cross the river.
But the days are so short! Already dark!
I read my book in guttering hearth-light,
nourishing immortal longings again.
X
And in the silence sweet I forget you
(Sad to admit, but everyone and all
seem not to be when I’m lulled by fancy.)
Sit there — empty — wait for the Muse to come —
I am troubled again with lyric fever.
My soul shakes, it reverberates, it wants
to burst the dam of reticence, I dream
of how the verses I’ve not yet finished
will pour down Time, cross into languages
unknown to me, leap continents and seas,
the children that my visions bore, upright
complete and singing for all to hear them!
Invisible throngs fill me — demon? Muse?
ancestor poets? poets yet to come?—
Take me! Fill my reveries! Make these songs!
XI
So I’ll say everything I meant to say.
The brave thoughts have come — rhymes run to meet them
on winged feet. My fingers reach for the pen,
and the neglected pen says “Ink! And where’s
that yellow tablet whose narrow green lines
seem always to pull the right words downward?”
Just wait — a little tea — just hold the pen —
wait calmly and the verses will follow.
Thus a still ship slumbers on a still sea.
Hark: chimes! now all hands leap to the rigging.
Exhale! the sails are filled with ideas,
they belly in the wind — the groaning mast —
the monster poem moves to deep water —
the harbor far behind the foaming track.
XII
It sails, but where is this ship taking me?…
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