392
PARTISAN REVIEW
5
(Flushing Meadows)
The flags in the water
Like grain that will not grow–
Out of the way
Out of the flow-
Silt and the sand
Where there is no harbor
Grow for the eye
That slows the hand.
THE EGYPTIAN
Lours
ZuKOFSKY
The Egyptian strides toward me through the blossoming keyhole
with a crowing cock on his shoulder and a mouthful of birds.
I rise from my rest to greet him with a bouquet of words,
but he strikes them from my lips with the lash of hours.
My enemy! whose numberless pyramids loom
like incandescent elephants through the blue tears of the sky.
My lily of love lies withering at the foot of day,
and once again I am given my load of unbearable brick.
Why should I build
his
monuments with unbearable brick?
I sit by the ocean anti finger the harp of its flood;
he spins in his robes like an ugly whirlpool of blood:
and the lash of hours finds me bending to build.
But the time for my challenge explodes, and, giant of straw
though I am, we grapple, and trample the ashes of flowers,
jarring the noonday sun from his pedestal towers:
the pyramids melt in his heart, and evening rolls in off the sea.
A shadowy isthmus
is
opened toward the lily of the horizon
that beckons me with a haven of stars across the musical ocean.
I cross dry-footed, and hear the cry of the lost Egyptian
drowning in his chariot under noiseless fathoms of slumber.
EDITH
WEAVER
