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1 " ARRIVAL And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...! "
― William Carlos Williams , Sour Grapes
2 " Portrait of the Author"The birches are mad with green pointsthe wood's edge is burning with their green,burning, seething—No, no, no.The birches are opening their leaves oneby one. Their delicate leaves unfold coldand separate, one by one. Slender tasselshang swaying from the delicate branch tips—Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word.Black is split at once into flowers. Inevery bog and ditch, flares ofsmall fire, white flowers!—Agh,the birches are mad, mad with their green.The world is gone, torn into shredswith this blessing. What have I left undonethat I should have undertaken?O my brother, you redfaced, living manignorant, stupid whose feet are uponthis same dirt that I touch—and eat.We are alone in this terror, alone,face to face on this road, you and I,wrapped by this flame!Let the polished plows stay idle,their gloss already on the black soil.But that face of yours—!Answer me. I will clutch you. Iwill hug you, grip you. I will poke my faceinto your face and force you to see me.Take me in your arms, tell me the commonestthing that is in your mind to say,say anything. I will understand you—!It is the madness of the birch leaves openingcold, one by one.My rooms will receive me. But my roomsare no longer sweet spaces where comfortis ready to wait on me with its crumbs.A darkness has brushed them. The massof yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken.Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed.I am shaken, broken against a mightthat splits comfort, blows apartmy careful partitions, crushes my houseand leaves me—with shrinking heartand startled, empty eyes—peering outinto a cold world.In the spring I would be drunk! In the springI would be drunk and lie forgetting all things.Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei!your hands, your lips to drink!Give me your wrists to drink—I drag you, I am drowned in you, youoverwhelm me! Drink!Save me! The shad bush is in the edgeof the clearing. The yards in a furyof lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror.Drink and lie forgetting the world.And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one.Coldly I observe them and wait for the end.And it ends. "