Evelyn Scott

“ VENUS' FLY TRAP A wax bubble moon trembles on the honey-blue horizon.
Softly heated by your breast
Pearl wax languorously unfolds her lily lips of mist,
Swells about you,
Weaves you into herself through each moist pore,
Absorbs you deliciously,
Destroys you.
SUICIDE A dirty little beetle
Peers into motionless eyes
Transfixed to their depths
As by shining needles.
Limbs are taut in ultimate resentment.
A bare sky confronts an upturned face. ”

“ Hands of God
Fashioned of clouds
Have finger tips that balance the almond white moon.
The pale sky is a flower
White tipped and pink tipped with dawn.
White hands of God gather the blossoms with fingers that hold me,
Cloud fingers like milk in the azure night,
Weaving strong chords.
DESTINY I am lost in the vast cave of night.
No sound but the far-off tinkle of stars,
And the cry of a bird
Muffled in shadows.
The light flows in remotely
Through the hollow moon,
Dim strange brilliance
From waters beyond the sky. ”

“ Is it the moon I see there,
Or does my own white face
Hang in blank agony against the sky
As if blinded with giving?
V Little inexorable lips at my breast
Drink me out of me
In a fine sharp stream.
Little hands tear me apart
To find what they need.
I am weak with love of you,
Little body of hate!
BRUISED SUNLIGHT WATER MOODS RAIN ON THE SEASHORE Curling petals of rain lick silver tongues.
Fluffy spray is blown loosely up between thin silver lips
And slithers, tinkling in hard green ice, down the gray rocks.
White darkness—
An expressionless horizon stares with stone eyes. ”

“ Folds back the mist.
FROM BROOKLYN Along the shore
A black net of branches
Tangles the pulpy yellow lamps.
The shell-colored sky is lustrous with the fading sun.
Across the river Manhattan floats—
Dim gardens of fire—
And rushing invisible toward me through the fog,
A hurricane of faces.
SNOW DANCE Black brooms of trees sweep the sky clean;
Sweep the house fronts,
And leave them bleak in sleep.
High up the empty moon
Spills her vacuity.
I dance.
My long black shadow
Weaves an invisible pattern of pain. ”

“ MOUNTAIN PASS IN AUGUST Night scatters grapes for the harvest.
The moon burns like a leaf.
Along the mountain path
A thin streak of light
Creeps hungrily with its silver belly to the earth.
The old hound laps up the shadows. ”

“ The black ragged palm fronds flung themselves against
the twilight sky.
The moon stared up from the water like a fish's eye.
I had the loneliness that sings.
It made me light and gave me wings.
Is it the dust and the iron railings and the blank red brick
That makes me sick?
There is no space to be lonely any more
And crumbling feet on a city street
Sound past the door.
TO A SICK CHILD At the end of the day
The sun rusts.
The street is old and quiet.
The houses are of iron.
The shadows are iron.
Shrill screams of children scrape the iron sky.
Let us lock ourselves in the light. ”

“ The crystal silken milk
That flows from the death wound
In a young flower-soft, jewel-soft body.
BRAZIL THROUGH A MIST THE RANCH TROPICAL LIFE White flower,
Your petals float away
But I hardly hear them.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS The day is so long and white,
A road all dust,
Smooth monotony;
And the night at the end,
A hill to be climbed,
Slowly, laboriously,
While the stars prick our hands
Like thistles.
RAINY SEASON A flock of parrakeets
Hurled itself through the mist;
Harsh wild green
And clamor-tongued
Through the dim white forest. ”

“ Hurt eyes mist in the blue behind me.
The moon uncoils in glistening ropes
And I glide downward along the dripping rays
To a marble lake.
DESIGNS I Night
Fields of black tulips
And swarms of gold bees
Drinking their bitter honey.
II New Moon
Above the gnarled old tree
That clings to the bleakest side of the mountain,
A torch of ivory and gold;
And across the sky,
The silver print
Of spirit feet,
Fled from the wonder.
III Tropic Moon
The glowing anvil,
Beaten by the winds;
Star sparks,
Burning and dying in the heavens ”

“ Feel the clammy shadows about my shoulders.
THE RED CROSS HECTIC I Ruby winged pains flash through me,
Jewel winged agonies:
They vanish,
Carrying me with them
Without my knowing it.
II Pain sends out long tentacles
And sucks.
When I have given up struggling
He takes me into his arms.
ISOLATION WARD We are the separate centers of consciousness
Of all the universes.
We vibrate statically on a trillion golden wires.
Our trillion golden fingers twine in the weltering darkness,
And grasp tremblingly,
Aware in agony
Of the things we can never know. ”

“ They lift pale heads nimbussed with golden spikes.
Up the lanes of liquid onyx
Toward the high fire-laden altars
Move the saints of Manhattan
In endless pilgrimage to death,
Amidst the asphodel and anemones of dawn.
ASCENSION: AUTUMN DUSK IN CENTRAL PARK Featureless people glide with dim motion through a quivering
blue silver;
Boats merge with the bronze-gold welters about their keels.
The trees float upward in gray and green flames.
Clouds, swans, boats, trees, all gliding up a hillside
After some gray old women who lift their gaunt forms
From falling shrouds of leaves. ”

“ Bare white feet are running across the water.
White feet as bright as silver
Are flashing under dull blue dresses.
Wet palms beat,
Impatiently,
Petulantly,
Slapping the wet rocks.
HUNGRY SHADOWS RAINY TWILIGHT Dim gold faces float in the windows.
Dim gold faces and gilded arms...
They are clinging along the silver ladders of rain;
They are climbing with ivory lamps held high,
Starry lamps
Over which the silver ladders
Thicken into nets of twilight.
THE STORM Herds of black elephants,
Rushing over the plains,
Trample the stars.
The ivory tusk of the leader
(Or is it the moon?) ”

“ Sitting back there in the hollow shadows of your wombs.
The crafty fibers of your souls
Are woven in and out
With the fibers of life.
POOR PEOPLE'S DREAMS Sometimes women with eyes like wet green berries
Glide across the slick mirror of their own smiles
And vanish through lengths of gold and marble drawing rooms. ”

“ With bitter and resentful tenderness.
A PIOUS WOMAN You can bury your face in her thick soul of cotton batting
And smell candle wax and church incense.
When she dies she must be burned.
Laid in the ground she would only soak up moisture
And get soggy,
As now she has a way of soaking up tears
Never meant for her.
A VERY OLD ROSE JAR She ran across the lawn after the cat
And I saw through the old maid, as through a shadow,
A young girl in a white muslin dress running to meet her lover. ”

“ A pale face looks from a window in the sky.
O Moon, is it because you have seen her that you are beautiful?
Is she happy among the saints?
I placed white flowers in the coffin.
Are they the blossoms that lie scattered along the horizon,
Tangled in your light?
Dim stars drop into the sea.
So you give my flowers back to me, do you, Bella Dona?
I might gather the petals and carry them to Antonietta to trim
her hats.
So much for life with a little negro milliner
In the Rua Chile!
CONVENT MUSINGS Eleven thousand white-faced virgins in the sky. ”