Conrad Potter Aiken Poems

'Draw three cards, and I will tell your future . . .
Draw three cards, and lay them down,
Rest your palms upon them, stare at the crystal,
...

Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel,
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!--
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.
...

I.

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
...

Harsh, harsh, the maram grass on the salt dune,
seen by the cricket’s eye against the harbor moon,
...

One, from his high bright window in a tower,
Leans out, as evening falls,
And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
...

Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
...

Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
...

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
...

She looks out in the blue morning
and sees a whole wonderful world
she looks out in the morning
and sees a whole world
...

1

Senlin sat before us and we heard him.
He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him.
...