Lola Ridge Poems

I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day....
(Air
...

You can see the sandhills from our new room.
Butterflies
live in the sandhills
and lizards
...

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
...

Light!
Innumerable ions of light,
Kindling, irradiating,
All to their foci tending…
...

Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines -
Wind in the grass
...

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
...

Men die…
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
...

Out of fiery contacts…
Rushing auras of steel
Touching and whirled apart…
Out of the charged phallases
...

When Art goes bounding, lean,
Up hill-tops fired green
To pluck a rose for life.
...

A late snow beats
With cold white fists upon the tenements -
Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters,
Like tall old slatterns
...