Lorine Niedecker

My mother saw the green tree toad on the window sill her first one since she was young. We saw it breathe and swell up round. My youth is no sure sign I’ll find this kind of thing tho it does sing. Let’s take it in I said so grandmother can see but she could not it changed to brown and town changed us, too.

Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths? Fourteen washrags, Ed Van Ess? Must be going to give em to the church, I guess. He drinks, you know. The day we moved he came into the kitchen stewed, mixed things up for my sister Grace— put the spices in the wrong place.

A monster owl out on the fence flew away. What is it the sign of? The sign of an owl.

Nothing worth noting except an Andromeda with quadrangular shoots— the boots of the people wet inside: they must swim to church thru the floods or be taxed—the blossoms from the bosoms of the leaves * Fog-thick morning— I see only where I now walk. I carry my clarity with me. * Hear where her snow-grave is the You ah you

Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance to be considerate in lighted, glass-walled almost outdoor office. Business wasn’t all he knew. He knew music, art. Had a heart. “With eyes like yours I should think the dictaphone” or did he say the flute? His sensitivity—it stopped you. And the neighbors said “She’s taking lessons on the dictaphone” as tho it were a saxophone. He gave the job to somebody else.

I rose from marsh mud, algae, equisetum, willows, sweet green, noisy birds and frogs to see her wed in the rich rich silence of the church, the little white slave-girl in her diamond fronds. In aisle and arch the satin secret collects. United for life to serve silver. Possessed.

I married in the world’s black night for warmth if not repose. At the close— someone. I hid with him from the long range guns. We lay leg in the cupboard, head in closet. A slit of light at no bird dawn— Untaught I thought he drank too much. I say I married and lived unburied. I thought—

William Morris I —how we’re carpet-making by the river a long dream to unroll and somehow time to pole a boat I designed a carpet today— dogtooth violets and spoke to a full hall now that the gall of our society’s corruption stains throughout Dear Janey I am tossed by many things If the change would bring better art but if it would not? O to be home to sail the flood I’m possessed and do possess Employer of labor, true— to get done the work of the hand… I’d be a rich man had I yielded on a few points of principle Item sabots blouse— I work in the dye-house myself Good sport dyeing tapestry wool I like the indigo vats I’m drawing patterns so fast Last night in sleep I drew a sausage— somehow I had to eat it first Colorful shores—mouse ear... horse-mint... The Strawberry Thief our new chintz II Yeats saw the betterment of the workers by religion—slow in any case as the drying of the moon He was not understood— I rang the bell for him to sit down Yeats left the lecture circuit yet he could say: no one so well loved as Morris III Entered new waters Studied Icelandic At home last minute signs to post: Vetch grows here—Please do not mow We saw it—Iceland—the end of the world rising out of the sea— cliffs, caves like 13th century illuminations of hell-mouths Rain squalls through moonlight Cold wet is so damned wet Iceland’s black sand Stone buntings’ fly-up-dispersion Sea-pink and campion a Persian carpet

He lived—childhood summers thru bare feet then years of money’s lack and heat beside the river—out of flood came his wood, dog, woman, lost her, daughter— prologue to planting trees. He buried carp beneath the rose where grass-still the marsh rail goes. To bankers on high land he opened his wine tank. He wished his only daughter to work in the bank but he’d given her a source to sustain her— a weedy speech, a marshy retainer.

Tell em to take my bare walls down my cement abutments their parties thereof and clause of claws Leave me the land Scratch out: the land May prose and property both die out and leave me peace