I saw then the fires flash one by one: good-by: then smoke, smoke;

And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool stars, sitting women arranging their hair,

Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, waiting and half-murmuring:

“Since you know all

and I know nothing,

tell me what I dreamed last night.”

* * *

Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,

in only a flicker of wind,

are caught and lost and never known again.

A pool of moonshine comes and waits,

but never waits long: the wind picks up

loose gold like this and is gone.

A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed

on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;

sleeps slant-eyed a million years,

sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,

a shirt of gathering sod and loam.

The wind never bothers . . . a bar of steel.

The wind picks only . . . pearl cobwebs . . . pools of moonshine.

The Lawyers Know Too Much

The lawyers, Bob, know too much.

They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.

They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,

A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,

The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.

The lawyers know

a dead man’s thoughts too well.

In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,

Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,

Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,

Too many doors to go in and out of.

When the lawyers are through

What is there left, Bob?

Can a mouse nibble at it

And find enough to fasten a tooth in?

Why is there always a secret singing

When a lawyer cashes in?

Why does a hearse horse snicker

Hauling a lawyer away?

The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.

The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.

The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.

The land of a farmer wishes him back again.

Singers of songs and dreamers of plays

Build a house no wind blows over.

The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer’s bones.

The Liars

(March, 1919)

A liar goes in fine clothes.

A liar goes in rags.

A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells

and dies in a life of lies.

And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—

on the tombs of liars.

A liar looks ’em in the eye

And lies to a woman,

Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.

And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.

A liar to nations.

A liar lies to the people.

A liar takes the blood of the people

And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,

A laugh in his neck,

A lie in his mouth.

And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.

He is straight as a dog’s hind leg.