384
PARTISAN REVIEW
COOTCHIE
Cootchie, Miss Lula's servant, lies in marl,
black into white she went
below the surface of the coral-reef.
Her life was spent
in caring for Miss Lula, who is deaf,
eating her dinner off the kitchen sink
while Lula ate hers off the kitchen table.
The skies were egg-white for the funeral
and the faces sable.
Tonight the moonlight will alleviate
the melting of the pink wax roses
planted in tin cans filled with sand
placed in a line to mark Miss Lula's losses;
but who will shout and make her understand?
Searching the land and sea for someone else,
the light-house will discover Cootchie's grave
and dismiss all as trivial; the sea, desperate,
will proffer wave after wave.
SEA-SCAPE
This celestial sea-scape, with white herons got up as angels,
flying as high as they want and as far as they want sidewise
in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections;
the whole region, from the highest heron
down to the weightless mangrove island
with bright green le.aves edged neatly with bird-dropping
like illumination in silver,
down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots
and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture
where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wild-flower
in an ornamental spray of spray;
this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope:
it does look like Heaven.
But a skeletal lighthouse standing there
in black and white clerical dress,
