Falling away, the brute is working.

Sheets of white veils cross a woman’s face.

An eye socket glooms and wonders.

The brute hangs his head and drags on to the job.

The mother of mist and light and air murmurs: Wait.

The weavers of light weave best in red,

better in blue.

The weavers of shadows weave at sunset;

the young black-eyed women run, run, run

to the night star homes; the old women

sit weaving for the night rain gods,

the night luck gods.

Eighteen old giants throw a red gold shadow ball;

they pass it along; hands go up and stop it; they

bat up flies and practice; they begin the game, they

knock it for home runs and two-baggers; the pitcher

put it across in an out- and an in-shoot drop; the

Devil is the Umpire; God is the Umpire; the game

is called on account of darkness.

A bluejay blue

and a gray mouse gray

ran up the canyon walls.

3

Good night; it is scribbled on the panels

of the cold gray open desert.

Good night; on the big sky blanket over the

Santa Fe trail it is woven in the oldest

Indian blanket songs.

Buffers of land, breakers of sea, say it and

say it, over and over, good night, good night.

Tie your hat to the saddle

and ride, ride, ride, O Rider.

Lay your rails and wires

and ride, ride, ride, O Rider.

The worn tired stars say

you shall die early and die dirty.

The clean cold stars say

you shall die late and die clean.

The runaway stars say

you shall never die at all,

never at all

A Couple

He was in Cincinnati, she in Burlington.

He was in a gang of Postal Telegraph linemen.

She was a pot rassler in a boarding house.

“The crying is lonely,” she wrote him.

“The same here,” he answered.

The winter went by and he came back and they married

And he went away again where rainstorms knocked down

telegraph poles and wires dropped with frozen sleet.

And again she wrote him, “The crying is lonely.”

And again he answered, “The same here.”

Their five children are in the public schools.

He votes the Republican ticket and is a taxpayer.

They are known among those who know them

As honest American citizens living honest lives.

Many things that bother other people never bother them.

They have their five children and they are a couple,

A pair of birds that call to each other and satisfy.

As sure as he goes away she writes him, “The crying is lonely”

And he flashes back the old answer, “The same here.”

It is a long time since he was a gang lineman at Cincinnati

And she was a pot rassler in a Burlington boarding house;

Yet they never get tired of each other; they are a couple.

The People, Yes

1

From the four corners of the earth,

from corners lashed in wind

and bitten with rain and fire,