Car poems
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The House Of Dust: Part 04: 02: Death: And A Derisive Chorus
© Conrad Aiken
The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.
Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
© John Keble
There are, who darkling and alone,
Would wish the weary night were gone,
The Jilted Lover To His Mother
© Edith Nesbit
You needn't pray for me, old lady, I don't want no one's prayer,
I'm fit and jolly as ever I was--you needn't think I care.
When I go whistling down the road, when the warm night is falling,
She needn't think I'm whistling her, it's another girl I'm calling.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter
© Conrad Aiken
From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude
© Conrad Aiken
Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 06: Portrait Of One Dead
© Conrad Aiken
Here is the roomwith ghostly walls dissolving
The twilight room in which she called you 'lover';
And the floorless room in which she called you 'friend.'
So many times, in doubt, she ran between them!
Through windy corridors of darkening end.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 02: The Screen Maiden
© Conrad Aiken
You readwhat is it, then that you are reading?
What music moves so silently in your mind?
Your bright hand turns the page.
I watch you from my window, unsuspected:
You move in an alien land, a silent age . . .
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 08: The Box With Silver Handles
© Conrad Aiken
Well,it was two days after my husband died
Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number fourthe room with the red wall-paper
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones
© Conrad Aiken
'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?'
They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 04: Nightmare
© Conrad Aiken
I sit before the gold-embroidered curtain
And think her face is like a wrinkled desert.
The crystal burns in lamplight beneath my eyes.
A dragon slowly coils on the scaly curtain.
Upon a scarlet cloth a white skull lies.
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 03: Interlude
© Conrad Aiken
The warm sun dreams in the dust, the warm sun falls
On bright red roofs and walls;
The trees in the park exhale a ghost of rain;
We go from door to door in the streets again,
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 07: Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
© Conrad Aiken
'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She diedyou know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'
Breitmann In Forty-Eight
© Charles Godfrey Leland
DERE woned once a studente,
All in der Stadt Paris,
Whom jeder der ihn kennte,
Der rowdy Breitmann hiess.
The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)
© Conrad Aiken
. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden"
in Part II.
The Carver
© Conrad Aiken
See, as the carver carves a rose,
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,
In cruel granite, to disclose
The soft things that in hardness lie,
Senlin: His Futile Preoccupations
© Conrad Aiken
Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chips in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
The Deserted Palace
© Robert Laurence Binyon
``My feet are dead, the cold rain beats my face!''
``Courage, sweet love, this tempest is our friend!''
``Yet oh, shall we not rest a little space?
This city sleeps; some corner may defend
