Down the roadway in the dusk,

Where shapes of hunger wander

And the fugitives of pain go by.

I shall foot it

In the silence of the morning,

See the night slur into dawn,

Hear the slow great winds arise

Where tall trees flank the way

And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road

Shall not commemorate my ruin.

Regret shall be the gravel under foot.

I shall watch for

Slim birds swift of wing

That go where wind and ranks of thunder

Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the traveled road

Shall touch my hands and face.

Style

Style—go ahead talking about style.

You can tell where a man gets his style just

as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs

or Ty Cobb his batting eye.

Go on talking.

Only don’t take my style away.

It’s my face.

Maybe no good

but anyway, my face.

I talk with it, I sing with it, I see, taste and feel with it, I know why

I want to keep it.

Kill my style

and you break Pavlowa’s legs,

and you blind Ty Cobb’s batting eye.

Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs

Rum tiddy um,

tiddy um,

tiddy um tum tum.

My knees are loose-like, my feet want to sling their selves.

I feel like tickling you under the chin—honey—and a-asking: Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road?

When the hens are a-laying eggs, and the roosters pluck-pluck-put-akut and you—honey—put new potatoes and gravy on the table, and there ain’t too much rain or too little:

Say, why do I feel so gabby?

Why do I want to holler all over the place?

* * *

Do you remember I held empty hands to you

and I said all is yours

the handfuls of nothing?

* * *

I ask you for white blossoms.

I bring a concertina after sunset under the apple trees.

I bring out “The Spanish Cavalier” and “In the Gloaming, O My Darling.”

The orchard here is near and home-like.

The oats in the valley run a mile.

Between are the green and marching potato vines.

The lightning bugs go criss-cross carrying a zigzag of fire: the potato bugs are asleep under their stiff and yellow-striped wings: here romance stutters to the western stars, “Excuse . . . me . . .”

* * *

Old foundations of rotten wood.

An old barn done-for and out of the wormholes ten-legged roaches

shook up and scared by sunlight.

So a pickax digs a long tooth with a short memory.

Fire can not eat this rubbish till it has lain in the sun.

* * *

The story lags.

The story has no connections.

The story is nothing but a lot of banjo plinka planka plunks.

The roan horse is young and will learn: the roan horse buckles into harness and feels the foam on the collar at the end of a haul: the roan horse points four legs to the sky and rolls in the red clover: the roan horse has a rusty jag of hair between the ears hanging to a white star between the eyes.