Evangel

[4 morgue. Around a white oblong stand three women,

who meditate in silence.)

Round these ashes of a fire,

Sisters, burn your dead desire-

Black for woe, and red for hate,

And white for love and green for fate.

On the air of death-rot cry-

Snatch the shroud and see his eye.

The Drab. When heat steamed from the low gutter,

The window-shades banged loudly, the house rested.

I used to lie with my stockings off, feeling greasy,

A trickle of sweat between the pillow

And my bare back, trying to sleep. But

Always down through my dark eyelids

Came damp light from the dazzle off the ceiling.

The Lady. He said to me, "We go two ways, not one."

And so these twenty winters of no feeling!

The Drab. At nightfall came singing,

And tinny tambourines.

The Old Woman. O Lord, Lord, Lord!

The Drab. And we went out-Mae, Pearl and me-

To see whatever was it, the crowd running.

And he stood on the corner, on a soap-box, preaching.

The Old Woman. O Lord, Lord, Lord!

Come in here, ducky, let the calf alone.

Can bobbing curls get like old barn-web?

The Drab. And he looked down at me out of the arc-

light,

At me in my war-paint.

The Old Woman. It might be him. It might be him.

The Lady. Summer in the country is, oh, quite lovely.

Sunday night so different-not the avenue,

Crowds and black-bastioned churches and dim cold doors.

The Drab. Beautiful he was with his queer eyes

Snapping out from under his moppy hair.

The Lady. Country churches strike a reverential bell.

They told me of him, and I went in to prayer.

The Drab. A man is known by his fine thin body,

And by the eyes out of which he looks

Gold at you often through the night, and by his hair

When it makes a gold pool

In the dip of your shoulder, and by his hand

Lying like warm gold on your breast.

By none of these was he known to me.

T let him save me.

The Lady. A face came through

The faint light of old white-painted wood-

"I see one here among us from the city."

(Escaped from town fatigue, felt that year as usual.)

The Drab. There was Pearl and Mae, but he looked at

me,

And, "Out of the street," he said, "I will lift you up."

They laughed, but I let him take my hand.

The Lady. Always quivering up like a pointer smelling

birds.

Souls to be saved, souls to be saved, was what the wind blew.

The Old Woman. Looks older than his father dead in the

four-poster.

I rinsed his teeth and drew them from the water.

The Drab. Old black black-a-muffins mumbles.

The Old Woman. He thought he was a prophet. All life

jumbles.

The Lady. Following his voice that seemed to cry out of

a red wood

Between the gloomy fiery boughs-

The Old Woman. He always seemed to blame.

The Lady. "For He is love, love, love-love ye and

learn by fire.

Love's in the strokes, love's in the flame!"

The Old Woman. His father used to give him up and

down!

"] must be about my work." Lord, see his work.

And, "One can't gather power in this town,

It lies beyond-outside-while one is young."

This was his springtime, couldn't we see that!-

"Later I shall go down"-stomp, stomp, stomp-

Pacing in the dead leaves out in the yard.

The Drab. God made him ugly at last, with his nose

peaked.

The Old Woman. Sometimes half the night he kept his

father wakeful.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, upstairs across his room-

Back and forth, back and forth. The floor creaked.

The Drab. What good did it do him to go get crazy?

The Old Woman. Now you could gather the dead leaves

of him in a rakeful.

The Lady. "Down through the smoky autumns of this

world

I shall go down, later I shall go down,

When power shall scatter off me like dry leaves,

And I shall burn to wind"-an August noon,

With the burnt hills expectant of September.

The Old Woman. That spring came all wind-like, and he

was gone.

The Lady. "1 shall go down"-to gutter-trotting and

singing?

The Drab. Me carrying the hymns and Bible for him all

that time!

The Lady. The things we dream are in our end's indict-

ment.

The Drab. And the little bell I went on ringing!

Feeling the flesh no more nor the drink's excitement.

The Lady. "Not a sparrow falls"-the bird we found

wing-broken.

The Drab. Saved. Saved. His queer eyes through me

gleaming.

One long shiver held me, in cool touch

With purple and music, and a white shape

Hanging toward me in pain that pleased me.

The Lady. Against his mouth he held it, suffering such.

The Drab. "You hymning bat! oh, you beholied smutch

Of whoredom!"-nice words from girls you worked with!

The Old Woman. Lord, Lord, you lay upon me doubt.

The Drab. 1 struck the tambourine.

The Lady. My burning wish:

Oh, for the soft keen muzzle to point me out,

To part the cover where J hide, and find me,

The wild bright-feathered me!

The Old Woman. Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Last week the land looked dead.

The Lady. The ground froze round me. I was bred

For opulence, not his bleak woods of hunting.

The Drab. "Sleep, sleep no more upon sin's gilded

bed" -

So me the white candle, like before a cross.

The Old Woman. Old rubbish and old boughs trod

under.

The Lady. The callow prophet-he never saw the letter!

The dim old farmhouse. Answering it at night.

Downstairs they were closing windows. There was

thunder.

The Drab. Me floating back at him a holy light-

So he could remember God is love!

The Lady. The lightning played while I suspended

words

To answer his, my husband's (written smooth)-

"You've been away too long religionizing-"

(That? Not quite, my silver-shaking fool!)

The Old Woman. Life like an old cow chewing of her

cud.

The Lady. "-Doing as always what you ask me, I've

procured

The place for him assisting in our church."

The Drab. 1 was a fool, a fool!

The Lady. Three drops of rain crashed down.

The Old Woman. Ducky, now leave off Daisy with that

birch!

The Lady. 1 wrote: "I'm coming home tomorrow. It's

so cool.

About him-I have changed my mind.

Where, after all, would he fit,

Smudging our pulpit with his Jordan mud!"

The Drab. 1 was a loony fool!

The Lady. So never for him

Wine for water, sweetmeats for bread, for dreaming

A cushioned seat beneath a Toledo choir,

A gilded organ Seraphim-tall behind him, .

With angels and devils blowing in its pipes

Until he cried, "Love, love, love-

Love in the flame, in the strokes!"'-

Coming to me in a music of fire.

The Drab. 1 ought to've seized him on the mouth-

I ought to've kissed him like a warm snake-

I ought to've licked him, whispered, "See,

I have cheated you-I'm still a whore-feel my flesh-

Maybe I am the mystery you are burning for!"

The Lady. Dry corpse, sleep with your prophecy and

drouth.

The Drab. Now Pearl and Mae lift back their skirts

from me.

The Old Woman. Try. Try. Alone. Bury him

decently.

Cover him up and leave him dead.

Sisters turn and sisters tread-

Slow for woe, and fast for hate,

And light for love, and hard for fate.

Round and around and around him go,

Hate-foot, hot-foot, rickets-toe.