ONCE they were flowers, or apples, and said it all.

They were red and white peonies, red Baldwins.

My symbols were ships, Octobers, bells, trees,

Or they were surf, or ordinary animals, or sky clouded.

Leaves leaves, and leaves. The million excited me,

Oh green! and I worshipped at trees blowing

All in small sun-windy levels, and up, and up,

How the whole airy tower of the tree stood, flowed, and stood.

I said mountains. I had said rope, birds, maps, and roofs.

Now my symbols change. Now I want them harder,

Not from the Bible half-learned, not from art,

Condescending. I am not old, but too old for quotations.

Roses and birds are constant, but I am not constant,

Except that I fly and cry, except that I open

Like the rose's wings, like the bird's petals,

To color air, or the air to rose me, or color cry and flow.

I don't know what next, daggers or daguerreotypes, or know

A good symbol for love. Roses? Why? Why not eels?

I don't know how to say death any way but silence,

Or a ? or a smell the air thins, if you wait. If you can wait.

I said heart; and good; and strange; I said stars memory music

Flags bones boundaries hawk meadow. I should have

Crazy-coupled them, hawk-memory, bones'-boundary,

Meadow of music, bony stars on the heart's flag. Anything.

The hemline of that girl's dress at her knees, her nakedness

Under it waiting in July not for me. I went back, she's

Not there, the street-corner wind flares at no body.

Say what pleases you, pleases you most, or as she aches in you.

Ah then-the green knock of a hammer driving a nail deep, deep

Echoed across springtime roofs. Where? Where is he?

I dive into cold water, a naked nail, and up to air.

I drive my car wearing it like a coat, its-going my-going.

The urn of ritual, shaped and always there, does my eye good,

And the returning curve containing all, spills all.

Weather changes, I change my shoes for the weather

For a walk under air full of wing-work never the same.

What changes: land outside the window-flying train, time slid

The way all the somebodies live it somewhere else:

They say the whole skin changes every seven years:

Or burl-growth or might-be or boy's height dated on a doorside:

What changes: Elizabethan flowers gone except from the poems:

The young American face 1870, the face now, boned

Lighter, mouth and the eyes for three times later:

The air-masses or unclenching fern: I watch for what becomes.