Always asking: Where did that blood come from?

They laid hands on him

And the fool killers had a laugh

And the necktie party was a go, by God.

They laid hands on him and he was a goner.

They hammered him to pieces and he stood up.

They buried him and he walked out of the grave, by God,

Asking again: Where did that blood come from?

Grieg Being Dead

Grieg being dead we may speak of him and his art.

Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was any good or not.

Grieg being with Ibsen, Björnson, Lief Ericson and the rest,

Grieg being dead does not care a hell’s hoot what we say.

Morning, Spring, Anitra’s Dance,

He dreams them at the doors of new stars.

Sherwood Anderson

To write one book in five years

or five books in one year,

to be the painter and the thing painted,

the writer and the written of

—where are we, bo?

Wait. Get the number of this guy.

The barbershop handling is not all

nor the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch mist,

nor the flame orange scarf.

On looks he is “bushwah”*—

And yet—he sleeps under bridges with lonely

crazy men; he sits in country jails with icono-

clasts and sab cats*; he drinks beer with broken-

down burlesque actresses; he has cried with a

heart full of tears for Windy MacPherson’s father;

he draws pencil sketches of the wrists of lonely

women whose flowers are ashes.

Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois,

and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa

and feel the tall grass coming up in June

and the ache of the cottonwood trees

singing with the prairie wind?

Ask this guy. Get his number.

Jack London and O. Henry

Both were jailbirds; no speechmakers at all;

speaking best with one foot on a brass rail;

a beer glass in the left hand and the right

hand employed for gestures.

And both were lights snuffed out . . . no warning

. . . no lingering:

Who knew the hearts of these boozefighters?

Without the Cane and the Derby

(For C. C.)*

The woman had done him wrong.

Either that . . . or the woman was clean as a white rose in the morning gauze of dew.

It was either one or the other or it was the two things, right and wrong, woven together like two braids of a woman’s head of hair hanging down woven together.

The room is dark. The door opens. It is Charlie playing for his friends after dinner, “the marvelous urchin, the little genius of the screen,” (chatter it like a monkey’s running laughter cry.)

No . . . it is not Charlie . . . it is somebody else. It is a man, gray shirt, bandana, dark face. A candle in his left hand throws a slant of light on the dark face. The door closes slow. The right hand leaves the door knob slow.