David Schubert
222
THE SIMPLE SCALE
She is playing,
The Harmonious Blacksmith;
Inside the music is a window; there, she sees,
A raindrop's drop of dwindled rain,
A fly that lifts two legs, scratches, bored bourgeois.
The calculating air,-when lo!-
The music interrupts them all, as it interrupts itself.
I
That rushing tree is red! Breathlessly,-
!
ohn, where are you
l
ohn?-an
errand waits.
II
Shall he speak the slight mistake, without
The waving of handkerchiefs, the flat
Roofs falling, in the hurricane of hands.
Goodbye's a slight mistake; dist.ances
Beside the secret conversation stand,
Beholding, like milestones, the harmonioui blacksmith.
III
Their voices are thinned, and threadbare; they both sound,
A chinese school, a tawdry merry-go-round.
IV
Far, how far, 0 out of the sea's smoke quarries,
Its thousand skies, its gull claw sail,
Its horse's flashing tooth,-
And farther than the scream, that coils around
The underside of her smile,-to hide ... underground!–
Their faces are like hollyhocks,
Across a fence of rain they mock
The puddle, and the chewing gum wrapper!
v
Pencil, pencil, speak it again,
How the woman is playing,
The Harmonious Blacksmith.
VI
She is playing,
The Harmonious Blacksmith.
Inside the music is a window.
